Requiem for an Assassin

sweet. I checked my rear again. All clear.
    It was going to be a fast interview, I could tell. One, maybe two more questions to distract me and confirm my vulnerability; a sucker punch to drop me and signal his friends to move in; a joyous multiple stomping; then off with my wallet, watch, and anything else I would no longer be needing.
    “It’s cool,” he said, coming into range. “I know you come for something here in La Goutte. I want…”
    Most people find it hard to do two things at once, like complete a sentence and avoid a palm heel to the nose. Which was why I nailed him that way in mid-thought. It wasn’t the world’s hardest shot, but as a simple setup, it didn’t need to be. It just needed to disrupt his focus and rock him back onto his heels. Which it did.
    I stepped past him, my right hand catching his throat in an eagle claw grip and my right leg sweeping both his legs from under him. But for the throat grab and substitution of concrete for a mat, it was pretty much the classic osoto-gari , or big outer leg reap, I had performed hundreds of thousands of times in my years at the Kodokan. Basic, but still one of my favorite throws.
    For a split second, Mr. Helper was suspended horizontally. Then he was accelerating downward, assisted substantially by the downward force I was exerting on his neck. The back of his skull blasted into the sidewalk with a resounding crack , like the sound a thick book makes when someone slams it closed.
    Palming the folding knife I had clipped to my front pocket, I checked my perimeter. Still clear. I took a step toward his two friends, who were rooted in place. “Do you still want to help me?” I asked, my voice calm.
    “No, man,” one of them answered, his hands raised palms out in supplication. They started backing away. “It’s cool, man.”
    I checked the papers the next day, and there was nothing about a killing in La Goutte. So Mr. Helper must have had a hard head. The only downside of the whole thing, from my perspective, was that prudence required I steer clear of the area for a while.
    There were other places, though, and I continued to visit them at night. Still, the nocturnal prowling helped only so much. Situational awareness for countering potential street crime is one thing. The fever pitch alertness required to survive professionals who are patiently, dispassionately, specifically, maneuvering to take your life is something else. If you’re addicted to the latter, and maybe I was, the former is no more than an occasional dose of methadone in the face of a long-term heroin habit.
    As my relationship with Delilah deepened, and as I gradually eased myself away from the mindset you need to survive in the life, it was as though the part of myself that was so adept in dangerous environments, the part that had kept me alive in the jungle in Vietnam and then in countless urban jungles afterward, didn’t like what was going on. That killer inside me, that iceman who could always do what needed to be done, felt he was being marginalized, disenfranchised. But what could I do? I didn’t know how to propitiate him, or even if I could. All I knew was that he was deadly, as deadly as anyone I’ve ever known, and capable of almost anything if he felt his survival required it. I could feel him looking for a reason, a rationale, an excuse to come surging back and shove me out of the way.
    Someone who needed him, say. Someone in danger. Someone like Dox.

4
    D OX CAME TO SUDDENLY. One moment he was out, gone, and then it was as though someone had pressed his reboot button. He blinked and swallowed, and for a moment he thought maybe it had been a nightmare. He had that kind of dream from time to time, where the bullets would just plop out of his rifle, or his knives would all get stuck in their sheaths, and when it happened he knew he needed to train, because hard training was the only way to sleep well again. But this time, as he came around, the images in his mind only grew sharper, and he knew it had really happened. He’d gotten grabbed.
    Christ, he was sore all over. Must have gotten bounced around some while he was out. He tried to move and couldn’t, then realized why. His wrists and ankles were secured, and his hands were stretched back above his head. Actually, below his head was more like it, because as he recovered his senses he saw that he was strapped to a declined board, with his feet about a foot higher than his head. Well, that wasn’t a good