Requiem for an Assassin (19 page)

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.

And then, for the second time that evening, my eyes filled with tears, this time at the tenuous, terrifying hope that maybe Delilah had been right. That, improbably, even accidentally, I had proved her right. And that, if I could do it once, I could do it another time. And another after that.

You can,
I told myself, again and again, my lips forming the words like a prayer, an incantation.
You can. You can.
And, breathing that silent mantra, clutching it as though it was my last and only hope, finally, fitfully, I slept.

I
GOT UP AT
five the next morning. The first thing I did was check the transmitter. Accinelli’s car hadn’t moved—it was still at his house in Sands Point. I showered, shaved, and got dressed, then went down to the restaurant for breakfast. I kept the iPhone open in front of me while I ate, in case Accinelli moved earlier than I thought likely.

At six o’clock, I started driving circuits on 25A and the Long Island Expressway between Mineola and Sands Point. At six-thirty, the transmitter started moving. I wasn’t surprised. Accinelli was a self-made man, with all the ambition self-made success implied. I hadn’t expected him to show up and punch a time clock at nine.

I watched on the iPhone as he came down Searingtown Road, then fell in behind him on the LIE. Traffic was already thick in the other direction, toward New York, and I supposed one of the benefits of living in Sands Point and working in Mineola was that doing so offered him a reverse commute.

As I followed him I hoped, but didn’t really expect, that he might pull over at a rest stop, or a favorite diner, or some other place where I might find an opportunistic few minutes alone with him. But he didn’t. From the LIE, he went south on the Northern State Parkway, then onto East Jericho. By the numbers, from home to the office. I went past as he waved to the guard in front of the parking lot, then watched him drive inside.

I picked up some sandwiches and fruit at a supermarket and went back to the hotel room. If Accinelli didn’t go anywhere until he was done at work, it was apt to be a long day of watching and waiting.

But at just before eleven o’clock, he moved. I went to the car, watching on the iPhone as he headed west on the LIE, toward New York. On the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I came close enough to spot his car, and stayed behind him across the Williamsburg Bridge. Downtown again. Interesting.

I followed him onto Delancey, keeping several cars between us.
Where are you going?
I wondered.
Same place as yesterday?

I expected him to go right on Bowery and park at the lot I’d seen him use the day before. Instead, he continued onto Kenmare, then made a left on Mott, going the opposite direction from where I’d spotted him yesterday. Then right on Broome, right on Crosby, and into a parking lot between Spring and Prince. And all at once it came together for me. I knew why he was here.

I drove past the lot, made a right onto Houston, then another right onto Mott, the same block I’d seen him turn off yesterday. I paused at the corner of Mott and Prince, but didn’t see him coming. If I was wrong, I had already lost him, and wouldn’t be able to reacquire him until he was moving in the car again. But I knew I wasn’t wrong. The signs had all been there; I was just too distracted by thoughts of Midori and Koichiro to put them together.

Accinelli had a mistress.

Why had he still been in his golf clothes when I saw him yesterday? Why was he hurrying, first on foot, then on the highway? And he hadn’t been shopping here—he was carrying no packages.

I pictured it: he tells his wife he’ll be golfing at the club, and he will be, too, because it’s important that he’s seen there, that his buddies will unintentionally vouch for him, unwittingly provide an alibi. But he’s only staying for nine holes, not eighteen. The difference creates a two-hour window for him. He wants to make the most of it, so he doesn’t even change his clothes. In fact, he wants to stay in the clothes, wants to be wearing them when he gets home later. And then he stays too long, and hurries to return before his wife gets suspicious.

And why the different parking lot today? Everything else I’d seen about Accinelli indicated he was comfortable with patterns—foolishly comfortable, in my opinion, because even aside from the fact that Hilger wanted him dead, his wealth and stature made him an inviting target for kidnapping. But today, he’d practically driven right past the lot on Bowery, in favor of another that wasn’t a half-mile away. Why the change, and why only now? Could it be because he didn’t want to be seen by the same attendant every time he came here?

I’d come across this kind of thing before. When a large part of your job involves following people surreptitiously, discovering patterns you can exploit, you see a lot of behavior that goes unnoticed by the outside world. Drugs. Prostitution. Gambling. Affairs. Closet homosexuality. Addictions and compulsions, cravings and lust. The real world, the id, the dark constants of our nature.

Maybe it wasn’t a mistress. Maybe it was a gay lover, or a catamite, or some such thing. My gut told me a mistress, but it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that I had a new focal point, one potentially more accessible than his home or his office.

I crossed Prince and parked in front of a hydrant on the other side of Mott. I didn’t expect to be more than five minutes, and confirming my suspicions would be worth the small chance of a ticket, and the even smaller chance that the BMW’s presence here today would ever be discovered as meaningful.

I got out, the hat and shades already on, and headed north on Mott, my breath fogging in the cold. Cars and trucks lurched along on Prince in front of me, gears grinding, the occasional horn honking. I heard children yelling and laughing somewhere, probably at a nearby school. A construction team was tearing up a sewer line, and for a moment the explosive pounding of a jackhammer drowned out everything else. I glanced left at the corner of Prince and bingo, there he was, wearing a navy suit, coming toward me. The light across Prince was red, and I was happy to be a good, law-abiding citizen and wait for it. It gave Accinelli time to make a left on Mott and get ahead of me.

The light changed. I crossed Prince with a dozen other people and stayed on the west side of Mott, the opposite side from Accinelli, and therefore the more likely to escape his notice if he were to glance behind. To my left was a church, the grounds around it enclosed by an old brick wall. On the right side of the street, various awnings and signs for ground-level stores and cafés; above them, fashionable, red brick apartment buildings that had once been tenements and warehouses, dark fire escapes zigzagging down their façades. I counted four floors of living space on some of the buildings; others had five. My eyes tracked everywhere as I walked. Two men and a woman stood smoking and shivering in front of a place called Café Gitane, but they were too young, too hipster-looking, and I didn’t make them as a problem. An attractive brunette in a long leather coat was rolling up the metal gate in front of a store, opening for the day’s business. She displayed no awareness of anything around her and again I detected no problems. A bike messenger in dreadlocks and shades was taking a package from a woman in an apron in the doorway of a florist called Polux. Like everyone else I’d seen so far, they paid no attention to the street scene around them. They felt like civilians, and nothing more.

As he walked, Accinelli reached into his pocket and took out a set of keys. Right, keys out now for faster entry, don’t want to linger on the street where you might be seen. About halfway down the street, he turned and went up a flight of four granite stairs to an apartment building entranceway. He unlocked the metal framed glass door and went in.

I continued on Mott to Houston, then crossed the street and came back, checking hot spots. Everything still seemed fine. No good hides for a sniper, I was glad to see: this stretch of Mott offered no parking; the crosstown traffic on Houston and Prince rendered untenable a shot from a vehicle farther away; and with the church grounds across the street from the apartment, the only accessible windows and rooftops were directly overhead, too sharp an angle to be useful.

I stopped in front of the building Accinelli had entered. It was sandwiched between two stores: a high-fashion men’s clothing consignment shop called INA Men, and a tiny place called A Détacher that looked equal parts fashion gallery and couture boutique. If I were Accinelli, paying my mistress’s rent, I would have selected a spot very much like this, with the church across the street, so no apartment windows from which someone might look down and see me, and the easy access to the Williamsburg Bridge and the LIE beyond it. Also, the nearby boutiques that would provide cover for action if I were seen: “Yeah, what a surprise running into you here, Bob; right, I’m just buying a present for the wife at A Détacher. And you?”

I walked up the steps and looked through the door, putting my hands up and my face close because the light from outside was mirroring the glass. The first thing I noted was the absence of a doorman. Good for Accinelli—he wouldn’t want to have to announce or explain himself, or to be noticed or remembered. And maybe good for me, too.

There was a narrow corridor stretching for about twenty-five feet past a group of metal mailboxes and back to an elevator. Fluorescent lighting. No cameras I could see—another plus, from Accinelli’s standpoint.

I stepped back. There were no hinges visible, and there was a push handle on the left. The door would open inward from that side. To the door’s left was a metal call box. A few FedEx and postal service signs were taped to it. So package and mail delivery occurred before—I glanced at my watch—eleven-thirty, at least today. I counted thirty buttons from among which a visitor would select to call his host and be buzzed in. Each had a last name next to it. I read through the list quickly. None of the names meant anything to me, and I doubted any of them would prove relevant for what came next regardless.

I walked up and down the street twice more, taking in the details: where I—or someone else—might set up to wait and observe; which stores and cafés would offer a view of the street; how people were dressed and what they were doing. The vibe wasn’t quiet, exactly, but it wasn’t bustling, either. It was still a little early for lunch, and even some of the shops hadn’t yet opened. Accinelli probably favored visits at this hour as much for the relative lack of crowds as for the built-in “going out for a business lunch” excuse the time afforded him.

I went back to the car and was relieved to find that no passing law enforcement official had noticed my parking peccadillo. I drove around the block several times, cementing details in my mind, then widened my perambulations to include more of the neighborhood. Then I found a parking space on Bleecker Street, where I waited and monitored the transmitter. At twelve thirty-five, the Mercedes pulled out. I followed from a distance just in case he stopped somewhere and an opportunity presented itself. But I doubted he would. As it was, the whole thing could have been a two-hour “lunch.” I doubted he wanted to be away longer than that.

I was right. He went straight back, pulling past the guard post at one o’clock sharp.

I drove around for a while, going nowhere in particular, letting all the details of what I’d just seen—the layout, the openings, the flow, the risks—run through my mind. Accinelli would be back to his secret spot on Mott Street, of that I had no doubt. Probably his schedule, and his ability to fabricate plausible reasons for two-hour absences, would be the only limiting factors. Lunchtime would typically be convenient. And if a secretary harbored suspicions about why certain appointments were always made directly, rather than through her, so what? Did she really want to risk her job through an indiscreet comment that got back to a powerful man like her boss?

I thought of the bike messenger I’d seen, and felt a plan beginning to cohere. I started with the general parameters, then built in details. I asked what-if questions, and played when/then games. I liked what I was coming up with. It wasn’t perfect, and there were risks. But there always are. I doubted I was going to have a better opportunity than Mott Street.

I found a bike shop in Great Neck, where I bought the cheapest twelve-speed they sold, along with a pair of long neoprene biking gloves; a fleece balaclava and a helmet to go over it; a nifty side-view mirror called Third Eye that attached to the earpiece of a pair of sunglasses; and a three-foot, case-hardened, steel bike chain called the Kryptonite Fahgettaboudit. Next, an Office Depot, where I bought a large box of styrofoam peanuts. Finally, a hardware store, where I picked up a file, a paintbrush, and two cans of paint—black, and mud brown. I wiped down everything and didn’t handle any of it afterward except with the gloves.

At a nearby park, not far from young mothers pushing their toddlers in strollers and on swings, I slathered paint all over the bike frame. I started with the can of black, using little care in my application. I just wanted the bike to look old, or as though someone had tried to make it a less enticing target for theft. Later, in a more private setting, I would file down the serial number until there was a hole in the metal beneath.

I ran the brush back and forth, back and forth, letting my mind drift. Of course it was impossible not to think of Koichiro. To have just seen him, to know that he was so near. To be within earshot now of all these young mothers with their children, hearing them laugh and chat and gossip about goings-on in the neighborhood. To have read of the fallout, the consequences, of what I’d done to Jannick.

I opened the can of brown and kept at it, the sun providing a hint of warmth to the otherwise chill air. Midori’s parents were dead, and she had no brothers or sisters. If something happened to her, who would take care of Koichiro? No one but Midori knew I was his father. Even if someone did, there was no way to find me. What would happen to my son? Who would step forward?

My hand stopped in midstroke and I stood completely still for a moment, frozen by sudden insight. It had been right in front of me, and I’d missed it. I’d been too focused on the CIA funding of Jannick’s company, that was the problem. It seemed like a connection. But it wasn’t impossible that it was nothing but a distracting coincidence.

Who would step forward?
The article said Jannick’s wife and children were being cared for by relatives. Who, though? Grandparents? Brothers? Sisters? Uncles? Aunts? Whoever they were, they were like pieces on a chessboard, and Jannick’s death had rearranged their positions. Maybe that new positioning was what Hilger was really after.