Page 30 of Assassin Anonymous

“I traveled all this way,” I tell him. “And honestly, given a whole lot of factors, it feels a little like providence. I think I need to do it. Get the ball rolling. I told you about that one. My first on the job.”

He sighs. “It’s going to be uncomfortable. Be careful. Don’t linger.”

“Thanks, pal.”

“Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m proud of you,” he says, enunciating slowly, making sure each word lands.

They do.

“I love you, too,” I tell him.

We click off the call as I’m approaching my destination: a boxy, dilapidated apartment building that stands out in a long row of three-story row houses.

The Fuji Majestic.

Also known—not to most, but to me—as a base of operations for the local Triads.

Inside, if the intel I gleaned from the Via Maris is correct, is one of their lieutenants: Xie Yang, who goes by the name Billy. His dad was Wen Yang, a Triad enforcer who, a very long time ago, stepped onto the balcony of a room at the Millennium Hotel for a cigarette and had his neck snapped by an American assassin.

The apple, it seems, landed right next to the tree.

Which is why I said this feels like providence.

One, because I don’t want to do this, which is always a good reason to do something related to recovery.

Two, because my first amends may as well be with the first guy I murdered as an Agency hitter.

There’s a man smoking by the front door. Mid-twenties, shaved head, neat goatee, neon-pink tank top. Not Yang. I suspect I’ll see a version of his dad when I lay eyes on him. I walk up to the guy at the door and get close. Not too close to disrespect him, but close enough to show I’m not afraid of him, either. I tell him: “I’m here to see Billy.”

The man takes a deep drag on his cigarette, flicks it into the street behind me, and folds his hands in front of him, all without taking his eyes off me.

“Tell him it’s about his father,” I say.

The man stares at me for a moment longer, then slips through the front door.

He probably understood me. English proficiency in Singapore is high, especially among younger people. I watch through the metal security gate as he walks down a poorly lit hallway and gets on an elevator.

I wait, walking in circles. Thinking about what I want to say. Nothing really comes up, so maybe I’ll just wing it, which I’m sure is a terrible idea, but hey, this is a learning process.

The man returns and opens the door, nodding for me to follow. He didn’t have a weapon on him before, but now he sports the telltale bulge of a gun at his waistband, clumsily tucked into the front of his pants. That’s so dumb. You’ll never get a clean draw. Why do people do that?

The answer is: movies. Always movies.

We ride the elevator in silence, then walk down a long hallway. Thumping music rattles one door. A baby cries behind another. I am having second thoughts. Maybe I should have run as soon as I left the food market.

The man leads me to a door, which he opens, letting me step inside first. I don’t like that he’s behind me now. I expect it to be an apartment, but the living room is like an office, decorated by a grown-up who enjoys the aesthetic of a teenager.

It’s lit by purple recessed lighting, with framed posters on the wall for classic kung fu and action movies. Drunken Master, Five Deadly Venoms, Iron Monkey, Master of the Flying Guillotine, The Killer, Infernal Affairs. A few I don’t recognize.

There’s a massive wooden desk against the back wall, so big it looks impossible to have gotten through the door. Behind the desk is a glass display case of Chinese weapons: hook swords and tai chi swords and a beautiful, gleaming pair of butterfly swords. Sitting at the desk, which is covered with rolling papers and sloppy piles of pot and a shiny silver Taurus 856 revolver, is a young Chinese man wearing white Nikes and a red tracksuit.

In my mind, I see his dad. They have the same boyish softness, though that barely works to offset the hatred in his eyes. This is a wound he did not expect to have opened tonight.

On the wall to his left is a poster for the movie Hard Boiled. I nod my head at it. “Classic. Chow Yun-fat. The Chinese Tom Cruise, am I right?”

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