The Last Assassin

room.
    Goddamn him! Tokyo? What was that about, going to meet the family? What? And what was that good-bye? Was it, good-bye ?
    He had just let her go, hadn’t he? They’d been getting closer and closer, she’d been opening up more and more, but as soon as he’d gotten a better offer, he was gone. What did he think, he could just have her for fun whenever it was convenient and then discard her at a whim?
    And all this after the risks she’d taken to help him in Hong Kong, too, which was exactly what had caused her current troubles in the first place. Damn him. Goddamn him.
    She knew she wasn’t taking this well, but at the moment she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to just sit alone on the other side of the world while the men in her organization tried to figure out what to do with her at work and the man in her heart tried to figure out what to do with her in his life.
    She thought again about what could have made Midori try to hide the baby from Rain, about what Rain could have done that would have precipitated that. Then she thought, The hell with it.
    She went to her laptop and made a reservation on the next afternoon’s Air France flight to New York. If he was going to fuck with her, he was going to see that she could fuck with him right back.

12
    D OX AND I met for dinner that evening at a Japanese restaurant called Omen on Thompson in SoHo. It was a good place, quiet and dark and private, and the food was first-rate. Over sashimi and beer, I explained the situation in Japan, the risks and the possible benefits.
    When I was done, he said, “There’s something I want to ask you about.”
    “Okay,” I said, thinking there was something serious.
    “Well, in all the excitement, you never did tell me how things went last night before everything went haywire.”
    I realized I should have known better. “It went okay,” I said.
    “Okay? What is okay?”
    “You know…okay.”
    “I’m talking about your lady.”
    “Yeah, it was good, I guess.”
    “Goddamn, man, what do I have to do, the old Rayovac to the nutsack to get you to talk?”
    “It was good. She didn’t throw me out. She let me see…my son.”
    My son. I wondered if the words would ever feel familiar. Just saying them made me feel slightly dizzy, good and anxious and confused all at the same time.
    “Well, how was that?”
    “It was…good.”
    He rolled his eyes. “John Rain, Captain Eloquence. Did you at least…you know.”
    I looked at him. “Did I what?”
    “You know…did you get any?”
    “Oh, for Christ’s sake…”
    “You got some then.”
    I shook my head in exasperation and said nothing.
    He grinned. “And here you were just in Barcelona with the lovely Miss Delilah. You slut.”
    “I just called Delilah.”
    “How was that?”
    “I don’t know. I told her things were complicated, that I needed a little time to sort them out. She got pretty sullen with me. She does that sometimes. But with the shit I’m up against, I just can’t deal with it right now. I can’t.”
    “Well, making a woman like Delilah sullen, that’s quite a privilege.”
    “Look, let’s talk about Japan, okay? Are you interested?”
    “’Course I am. You’re in a tight spot, I ain’t gonna let you down.”
    I nodded. I was going to owe this man more than I could ever repay. At least it looked like he might walk away with a good payday this time.
    “According to the informant,” I said, “the shipment is unusually large. So we should be talking about an unusual amount of cash, too. Still, no guarantees.”
    “Well, I never imagined myself squaring off against the Japanese and Chinese mobs, but I guess that’s where the money is. Plus it’s the kind of killing and thievery a man can feel good about after it’s done. You know, it ain’t like we’re raping and pillaging a bunch of candy stripers.”
    “No, you can bet these people won’t be candy stripers,” I said. I wanted to add, Don’t get cocky, but at the moment, I wasn’t in a great position to dispense advice.
    He took a swallow of beer, then leaned back and belched. “Well, the potential upside is fine,” he said. “You can count me in for that. But you’re not doing this for the money, are you?”
    “I’m not going to give it to charity afterward, if that’s what you mean.”
    “What I mean is, you’re doing this to try to clean up the mess you made outside of Midori’s apartment last night.”
    “That’s right.”
    “So you can be with her and