The Last Assassin

grateful to Dox for managing the tension in the room, but it was irritating to see them getting along like old friends while I could hardly find anything to say to her that didn’t provoke an angry response.
    “Start with the entrance,” I said. “How do you get in? Do the doors open freely, or does someone need to buzz you in from inside? Is there a camera out front? Security? All I could see when I reconnoitered was a pair of valets.”
    I pointed to the plans. “Now we go inside. This space inside the front entrance—I would guess there’s a hostess or hostesses waiting there, probably to check coats and lead customers into the club itself. There might also be security. Maybe an additional set of doors. And here, this small room opposite the entrance doors. Probably a back office. It would be good to know what and who is in there.”
    “Got it.”
    “Now this big space,” I said. “Presumably it’s the main room. I’m guessing tables, booths…Is it cluttered? Spacious? Are there clear fields of fire? If there are obstructions, I want to know where.”
    “Okay.”
    “These rooms here, off the main room,” I said, pointing to the plans again, “my guess is that they’re for private meetings, like the one Yamaoto is hosting tomorrow night. One is bigger than the other, but we don’t know how much of an entourage he’s going to have, so I don’t know which he’s likely to use, if he uses one at all. And this room here, probably a kitchen.”
    She looked at the plans. “No kitchen entrance?”
    “Not according to the plans.”
    “Where do they take the garbage out?”
    “I don’t know. My guess is, they take it out the front after hours. But I’ll check out the exterior and grounds to make sure.”
    She nodded.
    I pointed to another area. “There are two emergency exits—here off the main room, and here in the basement. The exterior basement stairs lead to the same side of the building where the front entrance is located, so Dox can cover both the main entrance and the basement emergency exit simultaneously. But the main room exit goes out the other side of the building. We’re going to need to find a way to close it off to make sure anyone who gets past me has to cross Dox’s field of fire on the way out. Anything you can tell us about the exit doors would be useful.”
    “Okay.”
    “Now this staircase leads down to the basement level, which is restrooms, a utility room, and again that emergency exit. See if you can use a bathroom break to get into the utility room. My source tells me that code for this building requires emergency lighting run off a backup generator. I need to know what they’re using and whether you can disable it tomorrow night. And regardless, look around for stand-alone battery-operated units, especially in stairwells and above doorways. If they’re already required by the building code to have a generator system, I doubt they’d go to the expense of installing stand-alone units, too, but we have to know.”
    “Okay.”
    “The final thing is cameras. They probably don’t have any overt ones, except again possibly one monitoring the front entrance. The place is supposed to be the ultimate in discretion, and obvious security cameras inside would spoil the ambience. But they might have some less obvious ones. Here’s something that will help you spot them if they do.”
    I took out the custom-made, pocket-sized bug detector Harry had made for me before he died, and handed it to Delilah. “Here. It picks up the horizontal oscillator frequency radiated by video cameras. It’s not exactly a divining rod, but it’ll give you an idea.”
    Delilah hefted it in her hand and looked at it approvingly. “Nice.”
    “I’d like it back, if possible. It’s one of a kind. And it has sentimental value.”
    Dox started to break out into the grin. “You? Sentimental?”
    I looked at him, thinking of Harry. “Is there a problem?” I asked.
    The grin retreated. “No problem.”
    I looked at Delilah, then Dox. “Questions? Comments?”
    Delilah said, “So Plan A is for Dox to drop Yamaoto as he leaves his car and enters the club. The rest of this is all Plan B.”
    “That’s right. But Plan A is nothing to count on here. You’ve seen the street the club is on. There aren’t many places we can position Dox for a shot at the front entrance. There’s no parking on the street, so we can’t set him up in the van. There’s a building site near Aoyamadori that