Barry Eisler - Requiem for an Assassin

I saw an open space just east of Waverly and decided it was an omen. I parked the car and angled the side mirror so I had a view of her apartment, a seventeen-story prewar building a block away. It was cold the last time I had been here, the way it was now. I remembered everything from that last time. I remembered every word.

When he’s old enough, I’ll tell him you’re dead. That’s what I was planning to do anyway, after tonight. And you are. You really are.

And was he old enough, now? Had she already told him the father who now sat not a hundred yards away died before he was born, and so for the son had never even existed?

I sighed. It was Koichiro I wanted to think of, not Midori. I thought of a line I’d once read somewhere: You forget the things you want to remember and remember the things you want to forget.

What the hell was I doing, anyway. It was going to be dark soon. I was tired, and I wanted to be up at dawn in case Accinelli was an early riser. I should go.

But I lingered a few minutes more, watching the building, watching the windows I knew were hers, wishing I could undo the past and make a different present. Just a few tweaks, a few different decisions, and maybe I would be walking up to the doorman now, announcing myself, a present under my arm, knowing my son and his mother were expecting me and eager for my arrival.

I glanced at the iPhone screen. Accinelli’s car hadn’t moved. All right, it was time for me to go. Check the bulletin boards, a quick bite, then sleep.

I looked up and saw a couple walking down Christopher toward me on the other side of the street, a small child between them. They were all wearing hats and gloves in the cold, an Asian woman and a Caucasian man, and the child was laughing, swinging by their arms. I blinked and looked harder, then, instinct kicking in, slumped lower in my seat. It was Midori. And the child was Koichiro.

My heart started hammering. I glanced out again, conflicted, wanting to watch, wanting to hide, wanting to get out of the car, afraid to, resentful that I couldn’t, ashamed of my hesitation. And who was the white guy, walking with Midori, holding my son’s hand?

I sat there, slumped and cowering and impotent, and watched as they passed me on the other side of the street, then as they stood talking in front of Midori’s apartment. After a minute, the man leaned in and kissed her. It wasn’t a long kiss, but there was an intimacy to it, a familiarity, that enraged me. The man leaned over and said something to Koichiro, smiling. Koichiro laughed, and the man turned and walked away. Midori and Koichiro watched him for a moment, then went into the building.

The rage drained suddenly out of me, replaced by a hard, cold clarity. The man was on foot. I could leave the car here, get out right now and follow him. I was already wearing a hat and sunglasses, so no one would remember my face. And gloves, so there wouldn’t be prints. I didn’t need any time, or any special control over the environment because nothing had to look natural. I didn’t want it to look natural, I wanted it to look like what it would be, like some faceless anonymous someone came up behind him and broke his neck and was walking away unnoticed before the body even hit the pavement.

Midori would know, of course. But what could she do? She had no way of finding me. How could she punish me? Keep me from Koichiro, maybe? Tell him I was dead? Go ahead, tell him that, if you haven’t already. I’ll show you what dead really is.

I watched him in the side-view, walking down Christopher. Maybe he was taking the subway. Follow him down the stairs, then close around the corner, no one in front of us, bam, drop him and keep moving, up another set of stairs to the street again. Back to the car and gone like a ghost five minutes after.

Okay. I got out, locked the door, put the iPhone and keys in my pocket, and headed smoothly after him. I wasn’t angry now. It didn’t feel personal. It was just a job, like always. And I knew how to do it.

He was fifty yards up the street, moving quickly in the cold. He crossed to the other side of Christopher at Seventh Avenue, heading south. My gut told me he was going to the Sheridan Square subway station. Walking more quickly, I cut over onto Grove to intercept him.

He passed right in front of me when I was ten yards from West 4th Street. I fell in behind him, closing the distance. I logged my surroundings: moderate traffic on Seventh Avenue, none at all on West 4th. A handful of pedestrians going both ways on West 4th, talking, laughing, the usual New York polyglot. Storefronts, empty. Nothing out of place. It was near twilight now, and cold. People had their heads down, they were hurrying home to dinner, or even just to get inside. Nobody was going to notice, much less remember, one man in a watch cap and shades in the midst of the vast metropolis.

Sure enough, he took the stairs at the Sheridan Square subway entrance. I rotated my neck, cracking the joints, taking a last look behind me as I hit the stairs. All clear.

I followed him down, taking the ground noiselessly along the outer edges of my boot soles, my heart pounding now. Five steps behind. Four. Three.

He turned the corner. I glanced behind. Empty. I followed him around. Empty. I took a step closer. The range was perfect. Reach for his face with one hand, the other in his lower back. Pull him onto his heels, circle the neck, arch, crack, drop, done.

I was an eye blink away, a routine electrical command, a single fired synapse. In a thousand parallel universes, I did it and it was already done.

But here, in this life, I hesitated. In my eyes, I saw an empty subway station corridor and a perfect moment to act; in my mind, I saw Koichiro, laughing at whatever the man had said to him. My breath caught in my throat and my hands froze half outstretched in front of me. I stopped, my stomach clenching, my shoulders rolling forward as though at war with my rooted feet.

I watched him move down the corridor and turn another corner. Then he was gone.

I walked back to the car on unsteady legs. I got inside, slumped in the seat, put my face in my hands, and was suddenly convulsed in tears.

Maybe the man was like a father to Koichiro, or would be. Maybe he was as close to a father as my son would ever know. And I was about to take that away. Because I could? Because it would numb some hurt part of me?

I stayed there for a long time, feeling confused and helpless and miserable. Finally I got it under control. I fired up the car and drove away and I didn’t look back.

I FOUND A COUPLE Internet cafés and checked the bulletin boards. Nothing on either. Then, on foolish impulse, I Googled: “Jan Jannick bicycle Palo Alto.” The first hit was a front-page article in the Palo Alto Daily News. A bizarre accident, the article reported. Bicycle. Night. Rain. A tragedy. Jannick was survived by a wife and two small children, a boy and girl, all of whom were being cared for by relatives during this difficult time.

I purged the browser and rubbed my eyes. No choice, I reminded myself. It was Jannick or Dox. Jannick or Dox.

I stopped at a place called Katz’s Delicatessen at Houston and Ludlow. The food was good, but I ate with neither hunger nor relish, only to keep my body going. Finally, I drove out to Great Neck and checked in at the Andrew, where I took the hottest bath I could stand, trying to boil the tension out of myself.

I lay in bed afterward, exhausted but unable to sleep. A thousand fragmented images and voices pressed close inside my head, each a hungry demon, gnawing at my mind. Then, in the midst of that mental cacophony, I heard a single voice, Delilah’s, telling me about choice, how it was within me to make the right one, that it was my choices that would make me who and what I am. I seized on her voice, followed it, and it began to drown out the others.