The Last Assassin

After a moment, she took the money. 'I'll call you later,' she said, and was gone.

30

I needed to clear my head, so I drove the van into Jingumae and parked, then made my way to a place I liked there called Volontaire. Coffeehouse by day and bar by night, Volontaire opened in 1977, around the time I returned to Tokyo following the late unpleasantness of my mercenary days, and I'd spent some time there while living in the city. Hidden on the second floor of a dilapidated wedge of a building off Meiji-dori, Volontaire is the ultimate neighborhood place, seating fewer than a dozen people on faded red velour-covered stools tucked up against a peeling L-shaped counter, with the space behind the bar given over more to a couple thousand vinyl jazz albums than to bottles of booze, and featuring a bathroom so tiny that its door folds in half so as to avoid banging into the toilet and sink inside.

I navigated up the spiral staircase bolted to the building's facade and went through the tiny exterior door. The place hadn't changed at all, not at all. The mama-san was behind the bar, working the espresso machine. I recognized her from before, and, in keeping with the overall timelessness of the place, she seemed not to have aged: a smart, good-looking woman, probably in her fifties, but who could really say? She called out irasshaimase — welcome — without looking up. When she saw me a moment later, she smiled and said, 'Hisashiburi desu ne.' It's been a long time.

That's the problem with the really great bars. They remember their customers.

'So da ne,' I said, offering agreement without inviting conversation, and went in. The door closed behind me and the sounds of traffic outside faded away.

The place was half full — it was lunchtime, not yet coffee hour — and I took a stool along the short end of the bar. Alto sax Lou Donaldson's 'Light Foot' was playing, and the album was displayed face out on one of the shelves for all to see. Volontaire's customers come for the music as much as the atmosphere, and like to know what they're listening to.

I ordered the house blend and a roast beef sandwich, then let the smell of the beans, the assured notes of Donaldson's sax, and that wonderful feeling of being alone in a place with some history and gravitas, open my mind and help me start to think.

I hoped I was doing the right thing. Not just in asking for Delilah's help, but in the entire enterprise. I'd started off hoping to see Midori and my son and now found myself in a war, struggling simply to get back to the status quo antebellum. Every move I made seemed to hold in equal measure the promise of a complete fix and the threat of the worst possible outcome.

And I'd been hiding from that outcome, I'd been refusing to face it. Even when Tatsu had brought it up in the hospital, saying how afraid he was that he might have put my son in danger, I'd cut him off with some bromide about how we were just going to make everything all right.

But maybe we weren't. Things went wrong in war, they always did. You could manage the influence of luck and chance but never eliminate them as factors. And if my luck turned sour now, or if I did something sloppy like what had happened in Manila not so long ago…

Say it, goddamnit. Face it.

Midori and my tiny boy would be slaughtered before I could even try to stop it. And it would be my fault.

A chill swept through me as the reality of the concept settled into my gut, my bones.

For the first time, I was facing a real risk, so much so that suddenly all the risks I'd ever run previously felt like silly games by comparison. Up until now, the only chips I'd ever laid on the table had been my own. This time, if I lost a round, my son's life was the collateral to be foreclosed.

I recognized that in some ways I was making a mistake thinking about it. If you focus on the risks, they'll multiply in your mind and eventually paralyze you. You want to focus on the task, instead, on doing what needs to be done.

So why was I tormenting myself like this? It was counterproductive, it was…

You know why.

I sighed. There was an alternative. And I had to face it squarely, choose it or discard it deliberately and consciously. Otherwise I was never going to be able to clear my mind and act decisively.

Saturday night, I could walk right up to Yamaoto and blow my own brains out in front of his eyes. Then we'd be quits. Any motivation he or the Chinese might have to harm Midori or my son would end with their ability to harm me thereby. It would be the closest thing possible to a guarantee of their safety.

I didn't want to do it. If I had to do it, if I knew it was the only way, I would. But how could I, while there was still a chance of succeeding by something less extreme?

My own father died just after I turned eight. I grew up without him, and his loss and subsequent absence were the first and perhaps most significant of the scars that shaped what I became. What would it be like for my own son to grow up without me? Would the lack of a father harm him the way it had me? Or would it even make a difference, if I had never been there to begin with?

It didn't matter. My desire to be part of his life, and to have him as part of mine, had impelled me to risk seeing Midori in the first place. My feelings in that regard were as strong now as ever.

Besides, I could hold suicide in reserve. If at any time I concluded it was my only means of preventing harm to my son, I would do it willingly, gratefully. But not now. Not while there was still a chance of a better way.

I'd talk to Dox, though, make sure he knew how to get my share of what we'd taken at Wajima to Midori and Koichiro. Just in case.

I realized I might have been rationalizing. I didn't care. I wasn't going to offer Yamaoto my life until I'd taken my best shot at ending his.