by Mark Terry
Now the client wanted to him take out this cop and this fed, and he wasn’t finished with the original job. Madness.
If he had any sense, he’d take out Ichiro Makatashi ASAP and head back to his home in Japan.
He realized he’d finished off his glass of Jack. He was drinking too much, which was unusual for him. Discipline.
He flinched. Even the mention of the word reminded him of his father. After his mother’s death of ovarian cancer, his father, unable to cope, had become distant, cold, demanding perfect grades, perfect behavior. Insisting on karate and judo and aikido instead of the baseball he preferred, insisting he go to the National Defense Academy to become an officer in Japan’s Defense Forces.
He had not been tossed out, not exactly.
In his second year, he was attacked by three cadets. Three bullies, seniors, who felt it was their duty to keep the underclassmen in line. They knew he was smart, that he had multiple black belts, that he was ruthlessly competitive.
They jumped him one night on his way from the library.
He suffered a broken wrist.
All three of his attackers ended up in the hospital. One lost an eye from a broken eye socket and a fractured skull. Another’s knee had been shattered, with several broken ribs. The third died of multiple internal injuries, including a punctured lung from broken ribs, a ruptured spleen, and a fractured vertebra that would likely have paralyzed him.
The Academy ousted him.
But he was met by a man from the government who asked him a question. “Do you feel guilty about what you did to them?”
He had stared at the man, a stocky bald man in a gray suit. There was something odd about the man. He often thought of him simply as The Gray Man. Balding with gray hair. Eyes so dark as to seem impenetrable. Gray suit. Black shirt. Muted silver tie. Dark shoes.
A man who seemed to disappear into the crowd the minute he walked away. A man that seemed hard to describe, he was so nondescript.
“No,” he said after a moment. “They attacked me.”
“You didn’t have to damage them as much as you did.”
He had shrugged. “It was three on one. They got what they deserved.”
“Even the one who died?”
He shrugged again.
“Naicho,” the man said.
The nickname for Naikaku Joho Chosashitsu, the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office of Japan.
“A spy,” he’d said.
“How are you at lying?”
He had stared at the man.
The Gray Man handed him a business card. It had a single phone number on it. Nothing else.
“Call that number at noon tomorrow. Exactly at noon.”
The man had disappeared.
At noon he had called. He had been told to take a train to the Musashi-Koyama Station.
Walking off the train, looking around at the crowd, a kid, maybe twelve, maybe thirteen, walked up and said, “Guy told me to tell you, Amameria Espresso.”
“What’s that?”
“Coffee shop, dummy.” The kid ran off.
Slipping through the crowds at the Station, he paused at a map kiosk, staring. He didn’t know where the Amameria Espresso was located. “Fuck it,” he muttered.
He considered catching the next train back … to where?
Trudging up the stairs to the street, he popped into the first store front he found and asked where Amameria Espresso was, and was given directions. Easy as that.
The Gray Man was there, drinking coffee. “Have a cup,” the man said.
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Learn.” He nodded to the man behind the counter, who went about the elaborate ritual behind his coffee.
“What do you want?”
“What do you want?” The Gray Man returned the question.
“What sort of game is this?”
“It’s not a game. Not exactly. But the question I have is about discipline. Your grades. Your training. You’re smart. You’ve worked hard. But do you have discipline? Can you take orders? Follow directions?”
“To do what?”
The Gray Man paused, sipped the coffee. The man who ran the store slid a cup of coffee to him. He ignored it.
“Try it.”
“I said I don’t like coffee.”
“Learn to do things you don’t like. You might find you like them after all. And this isn’t just a cup of coffee. You can trust me on that statement.”
“And on other statements?”
The Gray Man nodded. “You’re learning.”
#
Ronin checked his wound. It had stopped bleeding. He carefully changed the dressing, but the change caused the clot to break. It was bleeding some more.
He decided he wanted ice. He grabbed the ice bucket, slipped the key card in his pocket and walked down the hotel hallway to the ice machine just past the elevator. As he came out with his bucket, the elevator opened and two girls, maybe out on the town, business women, who the hell knew, maybe kindergarten teachers out for the night. One a blond, tall, tight black skirt, black silk blouse, high heels. One Asian, he thought Vietnamese, shorter, wearing a tight-fitting red dress and even taller heels.
Party girls out on the town.
“Hey,” he said.
They eyed his bare chest. He was ripped.
The blond said, “You’re bleeding.”
“Yeah. I just changed it.”
“What happened?” she said.
“Got shot.”
“Bullshhhiiiiittt,” the other girl said.
He held up the ice. “Got a bottle of Jack in my room. Want to party?”
“Maybe a drink,” the blond said. “Let you tell us how you got shot.”
He grinned. “Can order up some room service if you’re … hungry.”
They went back to his room with him.
30
Derek
It was not a good night for sleep. His wake-up call was at seven. He lay there, thinking about his conversation with the Anne Sakura, AKA the Cobra. After she left he had pulled up her file on his computer again, read it through a couple times, and decided he still didn’t have much insight. He was inclined to take her interest at face value, and although the assumption might be risky, it seemed likely she’d been hired by someone at the Makatashi Corporation. She hadn’t flat out said so, but not denied it either. Not exactly.
He plucked his phone off the end table and dialed a number. A growly voice said. “What do you want, Derek?”
“A Japanese assassin who goes by the name Ronin pushed me in front of a train yesterday, tried to break into Detective Beach’s house last night and got shot by her mother, and quite likely set off a fire bomb in Beach’s apartment, killing what is probably some unlucky asshole who broke in by accident.”
There was brief silence on the line, then, “Run that by me again, one at a time.”
He did. He was speaking to his boss, James Johnston, the Secretary of Homeland Security.
“Well, hell. This spiraled out of control. Knowing you, I imagine this isn’t a call just to update me, although I appreciate it.”
“A couple things. I need to know a lot more about this government contract.”
“Huh. DoD. I’m sure I can do that. Might have to rattle some cages, but sure. What else?”
“I need a professional opinion by someone in the know over at DoD about what would happen if the principles in this contract weren’t able to deliver because some of the key people were dead.”
“I have someone in mind. Once I get my hands on the contract information I’ll get her to contact you. Her name’s Shelly Eisenstein. What else?”
“Get me and Beach in over at Makatashi. The higher the better. The sooner the better.”
“Should be straightforward. Anything else?”
“Anything else you
can find me on Anne Sakura, although we may already have everything we know. And anything else on the Ronin. Their files were a little sketchy.”
“I’ll call Mandalevo.”
Bob Mandalevo was the Director of National Intelligence.
“Appreciate it.”
“Sure. Derek, watch your six.”
“Always.”
He dragged his sorry ass out of bed, threw on shorts and a T-shirt and went down to the gym for an hour, afterward took a shower, grabbed coffee and a bagel from the vendor in the lobby and drove over to Northwestern University.
The schedule on Lisa Vhong’s door indicated she was teaching an undergrad class. He went back to the office and asked where Vhong’s class was. Ten minutes later he slipped into the back of a lecture hall where Lisa, dressed in black slacks, a white blouse and black blazer, was writing on the whiteboard. It was a series of calculations.
The class had maybe fifty students scattered across the hall.
He’d had some calculus in his undergrad and graduate programs, primarily because he needed it for physical chemistry, which he’d needed for some of the higher-level biochemistry needed to understand and work with biological and chemical weapons. But he wasn’t a mathematician and it had been a long time since he’d needed it.
The sense he got was that Lisa was pretty good. She lunged around the front of the room, scribbling equations, moving like a fencer, her foil the marker. En garde! Parry! Riposte!
She was a good teacher, he thought. Energetic. Clear. Even passionate.
Sexy as hell.
She caught his eye. “Do you need to talk now, Derek? I’ll be done in about ten minutes.”
“I can wait.”
She nodded and went back to her lecture. When she was done, a couple students came up to ask her questions. He got the impression a few of them might be bargaining for an extra credit point or two. One or two of the guys looked like they wanted to ask her out or were in some way just flirting with her, trying to get her attention.
Finally, they all left and she said, “Didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.”
“Here I am. I need you to check the photo IDs again.”
“What was the emergency?”
“Probably the guy you saw attempted to assassinate a cop, but ran into the cop’s mother, an ex-cop with a gun and a lot of attitude.”
Lisa slouched down in the chair next to him. “You live an exciting life.”
“Sometimes. And sometimes ‘exciting’ means ‘Holy shit, I’m going to die.’”
“Not teaching calculus.”
“I taught at Annapolis for a while.”
“You were in the Navy?”
“Army, but I live in Baltimore.”
“What did you teach?”
He grinned. “Topics related to biological and chemical warfare.”
She stared at him. “Um—“
“My area of expertise. You want to go back to your office to do this or right here?”
“I’ve got a faculty meeting in about 20 minutes, so let’s do it now.” She giggled. “Well, you know.”
Hmmmm.
Booting up the laptop he brought up the shots of the Ronin. She studied the photographs, which were not high quality — they were pulled from the CCTV footage at the L station.
“Oh yes,” she said. “That’s definitely him.”
He nodded. It was confirmation. But he’d known. The Ronin was their murderer. And he was probably hanging around Chicago because there was someone else he needed to kill.
Who?
31
Sandy
I was sipping—ha!, more like guzzling—the largest coffee I could order at Starbucks on my way in. I pushed paper for a while, ignoring the many boxes from The Chemist case that still needed completion. I’d put Orville on the case, he didn’t much mind paperwork, and given him some minions from the ranks to help.
But Orville got called out on a shooting and his minions were currently doing other things—you could be assigned to focus on one thing as a cop, but that rarely lasted. Before you knew it, another asshole shot, stabbed, clubbed, poisoned or otherwise found some imaginative way to injure or kill one of their fellow citizens.
I didn’t know how long the captain was going to let me focus on this case with Stillwater, although I supposed if the Secretary of Homeland Security kept pushing, for a while longer at least. Technically I was on leave anyway—funny how that happened.
My phone rang. It was the D who was handling the Eron Jones case—the kid who died in my apartment. Not Walker, he was an arson investigator. He’d left me a message earlier, but I hadn’t called back yet. This guy’s name was Dan Gardner.
“What ya got?” I asked.
“That’s why I was calling.”
“What?”
“To ask you if you had anything else for me.”
“Like what?” I was confused.
“Lieutenant, you know how this is, right? I’m investigating a case. You’re kind of the subject of it. That means I get to ask the questions. So, do you know anything else about this Eron Jones?”
“I don’t know him at all.”
“But he was in your apartment.”
“Yeah, set on fire.”
“You don’t know him.”
“No, should I?”
“Never ran into him in one of your cases?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“CI?”
Confidential informant. “Nope.”
“Lover?” Gardner asked.
“What?!”
Now I knew where he was going.
“Look, Detective, I don’t know this kid. I’m pretty certain the guy who set the bomb in my apartment is the subject of a case I’m working with Homeland Security. He’s a Japanese assassin—“
“Are you fuckin’ with me?”
“I wish.”
“Run it by me.”
I weighed that. There were national security implications. “I … can’t. At least not over the phone. There appear to be national securit—“
“If you say if you told me you’d have to kill me, I’m gonna come over there and arrest you.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s always complicated, Lieutenant, but you know the drill. I’ve got a homicide case to investigate. And you ran out of the scene of the crime before I even got there. Which gave me pause, if you know what I mean. Maybe you got a case to solve, too—“
“More than you know,” she said, staring at the boxes and boxes of Chemist files.
“That may be, but you’re at the intersection of mine and I need information.”
“Want to come into my office?”
“No. I want you to come into mine just like you were a suspect.”
“Well, I’m not. Bye.” I hung up.
The door pushed open and Stillwater walked in. “Got a printer around here?”
I pointed across the room. “And good morning to you, too, Stillwater.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been okay.” He was pulling his laptop out of his bag, studying the printer and the computer. He seemed, as usual, not exactly distracted … maybe the opposite of distracted, so focused on one thing that everything else was out of focus for him. Another member of the OCD Club.
“What do you need to print?”
“Um…” He was fussing with the printer and the laptop, presumably trying to get them to talk to each other. “There you go.” He tapped more keys and stared at the printer.
“This fucker’s slow.”
“It’s the property of Chicago PD.”
“S’pose that explains it,” he muttered. He glanced over his shoulder. “That chick—“
“The hot mathematician you were trying to screw?”
“Um, no, not Lisa. The one that’s a hired assassin.”
&
nbsp; I sighed. Took a sip of my coffee. “Okay, yeah. The punk assassin. What about her?”
“She was waiting in my hotel room when I got in last night.”
“What?!”
The printer started to churn. He studied the printer and nodded.
“How’s your mom?” he asked, turning to me and resting his ass against the printer table, arms crossed over his chest.
“Nice segue, Doc,” I said, “but I’m not changing the subject. She make a run at you?”
“Your mom?”
“Dammit, Stillwater! Focus!”
The printer made a gurgling noise and a light on the top started blinking amber. Stillwater spun around. “Fuck!” He started popping open the printer’s numerous doors and hatches. “Fuck! Goddammit!”
He was poking his finger inside one of the hatches. A torn and crumpled piece of printer paper came out. He bent over and peered in again and I had the opportunity to notice his muscular ass in his tight jeans and the way his shoulders and lats stretched the shirt he was wearing.
“Would you snap out of it!”
Stillwater spun. “What?”
I realized I’d just said that out loud. I held up my hands in a whoa-whoa gesture. “Sorry. I’m juggling a lot of balls today—“
“Yeah, and somebody set them on fire. Like somebody set my balls on fire.”
“That’s what you get for having unprotected sex.”
He stared at me, expression blank. “What?”
The printer now seemed to be churning out files now. A lot of them. “What’s that?” I asked, pointing at the printer.
“Information about the contract between Makatashi, Maeda Photonix and the DoD. And some other stuff.”
My phone buzzed. I looked at it. Gardner calling me. I ignored it, let it go to voicemail.
A moment later the phone rang again. I gave it a peek. Somebody else. I didn’t recognize the number, but it looked internal. When I answered, a woman’s voice said, “Lieutenant Beach? This is Lana Zaretsky with the Bomb Squad—“
“Little busy right now,” I said, and clicked off on her, too.
“More flaming balls?” Stillwater said.