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Delilah was good. I was an idiot for doing anything to risk it.
    But I had to see the child. I had to know.
    The problem was, it wasn't just Delilah I was risking. It was much more than that, and I knew it.
    But I couldn't think of the stakes now. I couldn't fully face them.

5

    I called Dox Monday evening as we had discussed. He had already arrived and checked in at 60 Thompson in SoHo, and at his suggestion we met at a place called The Ear Inn, on Spring between Washington and Greenwich. It was about a half-hour walk from the Ritz and the weather was cold and crisp, so I strolled north along the river, then cut east to the restaurant. I went inside and liked what I saw: a dark, unpretentious room of wood and brick with a palpable sense of history. There was a long bar and a dozen wooden tables scattered throughout.
    I looked around and there was Dox, big as a linebacker and still as the Buddha, sitting at a corner table with a view of the entrance. When he saw me, he got up, strode over, and gave me one of his bear hugs. Other than the momentary inability to breathe it induced, it felt good, I had to admit, and I found myself hugging him awkwardly back.
    'Good to see you, man,' he said, slinging an arm around my shoulders. 'And in the Big Apple, of all places.'
    I scanned the room and saw an odd but somehow natural mix of what I classified as teamsters and hipsters. No one was posturing, no one was using a cell phone, no one was paying us any attention. People were just enjoying themselves. No one set off my radar.
    'It's good to see you, too,' I told him. 'No goatee today?'
    He grinned and rubbed his chin. 'You heard Delilah, partner. When she told me in Hong Kong I had good bones, my facial hair was gone forever.'
    I laughed. We walked back to his table so we could watch the room and talk more privately.
    'You just fly in today?' I asked.
    'Nah, I drove in. Been away a lot and wanted to spend a few days seeing the country go by. Plus there's so much security in airports these days. I hate to choose between death by paperwork on the one hand and disarmament on the other just to travel a little, you know what I mean?'
    'You mean they wouldn't let you bring a rifle on the plane with you? There's no justice, Dox.'
    He laughed. 'Well, there's always a workaround. Got my trusty M40A1 in the trunk, just in case. Like they say in the ads, don't leave home without it.'
    We ordered burgers and Guinness stouts. While we ate, I briefed him on everything: Midori, and my role in her father's death; my last night with her in Tokyo; Tatsu's revelation about the baby; what was going on with Delilah. Everything.
    'Damn, man, my first impulse is to congratulate you,' he said, when I was done. 'But you seem so ambivalent I don't know what to say.'
    'How would you react?'
    'Well, that's a fair question. I've had a few scares along the way, but they all seemed to resolve themselves before I really had a chance to panic.'
    'So you were on the verge of panic at the prospect, and you're giving me a hard time for being ambivalent at the reality?'
    He smiled. 'Not a hard time. Just trying to be sensitive to what you're going through. Underneath this rugged exterior I'm actually a caring and compassionate man.'
    'I don't know what I'm going through.'
    'Well, what do you want to do?'
    'I need to see her. And the baby. But with Yamaoto's people watching her… it's complicated.'
    'What's with you and this Yamaoto again?'
    'He's a politician with his fingers in everything in Japan — construction kickbacks, bribery, prostitution, narcotics, extortion, you name it. Close ties to the yakuza. In fact, he
is
yakuza. They take orders from him, not the other way around. The politics is just a hobby he can use to indulge his right-wing convictions and convince himself that all the crime is really for a noble purpose.'
    He scratched his head. 'And you met Midori through him?'
    'Sort of. He was the one who hired me to take out her father, although at the time