Ji scratched his tiny mustache and explained that he was able to talk his way into reviewing the main crime scene, our former apartment. “I haven't seen that many bullet holes since my squad car blew a tire in the middle of a gang initiation. All hell broke loose.”
“By the way, how'd you convince them to let you in behind the tape?”
“Couple of my old buddies were among the cops working the scene. Told them I was head of security for Mr. Chao, and that he desperately wanted to ensure some family pictures weren't harmed. Once I got up there, I blended in with the environment, and I was able to find what I was really looking for.”
Ji slid a hand into his pants pocket, pulled out something white, and tossed it in the air, caught it.
“The plug adaptor?” I said with a puzzled look.
An eyebrow twitched, Ji's gaze never leaving the pronged object. He rolled it over, inspecting every angle, almost like he expected it to have a heartbeat, breathe.
“You think that guy who broke into our hotel room was connected to the threats, the attempts on our lives?” Andi asked, still fidgeting with the remote.
Ji released a breath, still toying with the adaptor. “Besides your wounds, concussions, arrest record..." He paused and looked at me without changing his facial expression. "And your brief conversations with the vic, we have nothing in our possession that we could really call a clue.”
“We do have that data from Satish, the info that he and his buddies pulled together on the folks who accessed the network at Swan Massage Therapy. That might lead us somewhere.”
“Maybe.” Ji's mind appeared to have made a leap. He walked into the kitchen, sifted through what I would call a junk drawer, and pulled out a miniature screwdriver set. He tested two screwdrivers, trying to match the screw holding the adaptor together. Neither fit, so he grabbed a third. Within seconds, he'd pulled the plastic shell apart.
He wedged his pinky into one side of the plastic and picked at a small object until it pried loose and fell onto the granite countertop—the same island in which Dr. Jimsic had played Operation on my mangled ear.
The piece was no more than a few centimeters in diameter. Plucking it off the counter, Ji held it up between his sausage-like fingers.
“What the hell is that?” I could feel my neck turn red, and my hands became clammy. I wasn't sure if I was anxious or pissed. Likely both.
Flipping back to the junk drawer, Ji pulled out a roll of duct tape, then held a finger to his lips, mouthing us to not say anything. He turned, marching to the front door, yanked it open, and left. I eyed Andi.
“Where's he going? And what was that?”
“I don't want to play a guessing game,” I said, and I attempted to jog to the door, holding my ear as if it might fall off, and chased after Ji. I could hear Andi just behind.
Ji had already turned a corner in the maze of hallways. I couldn't let him out of my sight. He'd given no indication what he was doing, where he was going, what this meant for us. I needed answers, although I apparently needed to act like a mime to get them. But I couldn't let him walk away.
Huffing a few breaths to keep pace at my current distance—about twenty yards—I withheld the urge to yell out his name. He flipped open the front door to the complex and made a beeline for a cab parked on the street.
“He must know we're following him,” Andi said, her leg still gimpy as she tried to stay with me.
I opened the same front door and stopped in my tracks. Ji was down on his knees behind the cab. I couldn't determine exactly what he was doing. The cab's driver was slumped down in his seat, a cap hanging over his eyes.
“Hold on.” I held my arm out.
Seconds later, Ji casually rose up and headed toward us.
“He's looking right at us,” I whispered.
Ji stopped in the courtyard, pulled out his cell phone, and typed in a number. Someone must have answered. He spoke briefly, then punched the line dead.
When he calmly approached us, I whispered, “Can we speak now?”
“Yes,” he said turning back and looking at the cab. A moment later, the cabbie jumped in his seat, his hat tumbling around. The car started and screeched away from the curb, heading south.
Ji started walking back to his apartment.
“Hopefully, we'll be safe. Let's get inside, lock up just to make sure.” He cautiously scanned the area until we got back to his apartment.
He locked the door, set the alarm, and then clicked a button on his TV. The big screen blinked, then opened a smaller window that showed the hallway entrance to Ji's apartment.
“I never noticed a camera outside your door,” I said, scratching my chin.
“That's the point. It's small and is made to look like a light fixture, set up wirelessly,” Ji said.
“The metal object that fell out of the plug adaptor. You attached it to the back of the cab with the duct tape.”
Ji nodded.
“What was it?”
“Most likely a GPS device. Can track where you are at any time. That's how they showed up at certain times—or not, when you didn't have the plug on you.” Ji folded his arms, half-facing me and half-facing the big-screen TV, the news still on in the background.
“Why did you tell us to be quiet?” Andi asked.
“Could have also been a listening device. Over the years, I've seen the technology get more advanced, adding more functionality to smaller and smaller devices. It would take a true expert to examine the tiny thing and tell us, but if we did that, they could track our movements, hear our plans.”
“Which is why you attached the GPS to the cab, then called the cab company to get the vehicle moving throughout the city,” I surmised.
“It's like working with Holmes and Watson.” Andi cracked a smile, shifting her eyebrows upward.
“Can't be too careful...not at this point,” Ji said, ignoring Andi's comment.
I touched my ear. It felt like it had been pierced in a dozen places.
“How's the ear?” Ji asked.
I released a breath, visions of stars flashing around me from the insurmountable pain I'd experienced during the procedure. “Doc said I'll be fine.”
“Michael didn't want the doctor to stick a needle in his arm.” Andi crossed her arms and tapped her foot, like a disapproving little sister. “I'm not sure which was more agonizing, watching you suffer while the doctor pulled glass from your ear, or your stubbornness. Geez!“
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the background change on the TV. The red CNN logo appeared in the upper left corner—the local news must have picked up the CNN feed for a major story. A bold headline appeared in front of a reporter, who stood outside a three-story building in Mumbai, India.
Possible Terrorist Strike Hits Mumbai
Under the main header, it read: 12 Confirmed Dead - Could Grow Higher
Andi and Ji continued the discussion about the GPS device, the likelihood of the assassins still being able to locate us. But the more I watched the scene on the TV, the more their voices became white noise.
With the cover of night serving as a backdrop, the brown-haired male wearing a causal khaki shirt glanced down to a notepad, then raised his eyes and spoke to the camera, constantly twisting his back to watch the mayhem behind him unfold, his forehead crinkled with anxiety. I couldn't hear a thing, but I could imagine the competing sirens from official cars and trucks with flashing lights arriving on the scene. Dust billowed around the area, likely from vehicles spewing sand and dirt.
Two men carrying an orange plastic stretcher emerged from a throng of chaos, entering the frame from the right side, small medical masks covering their faces as they jostled what looked like a woman, larger than average size. Her arms fell outside the stretcher and bounced at the same awkward rhythm of their bouncing jog. Two other men, dressed in what looked like paramedic outfits, ran up and helped the other pair, guiding the stretcher to the back of a boxy, white vehicle with a single red stripe down the side and
a swirling red and white light on top.
This all took place no more than twenty feet from the reporter, who paused with his back to the camera. Perhaps he'd seen something up close that had torn at his heart.
I peeked at the smaller window on the TV, the view outside Ji's front door. Still void of anyone. I could feel the thump of my pulse in my neck, faster than normal. My eyes darted back to the action, where I thought I read the reporter's lips: “...this video could be disturbing.”
“Andi, quick, turn it up!” I waved my hand in her direction to get her attention. She looked shocked for a moment, but then she saw my concerned expression and upped the volume. A commentator's baritone voice came to life.
“For those of you who've just joined us, we've secured this video, a camera inside the Mumbai Call Centre. Taken from the upper corner of the large open room on the third floor—and this is where it starts to get very disturbing—you see one man, right there, grab his throat, his arm flails, it almost looks like he's convulsing, or struggling to take in oxygen, then he falls headfirst onto his keyboard. He doesn't move.“
I looked right. Both Ji and Andi had taken a step closer to the TV, their faces now as troubled as mine. The commentator continued.
“Another person walks over to the first man who collapsed, then, as you can see here, she begins to lose her balance. She grabs the back of his chair, her knees begin to wobble. Right there, I think you can make out the whites of her eyes. Her eyes must be rolling back in her head, then she drops to the floor, her chin bouncing off her own knee. Then her body flops to the ground.“
People jumped out of their chairs, some held their heads as if they might pop off, others scurried around like frantic ants in a colony that had just been attacked. I wondered what was causing this, and who would want to harm these poor people.
One lady ran away from the first two, sheer panic painted on her face which appeared to be drenched with sweat. Out of nowhere, it was as if she'd been shot, her legs crumpling beneath her, a stiff arm reaching for help that would never come. Then you could see her brain turn off, her eyes shutting suddenly, her body bounce off the unforgiving floor.
“This is sick to watch,” Andi said, but her eyes didn't leave the screen.
We'd been consumed up by all the drama and death, fearing...running for our lives that we'd forgotten about the cycle of life continuing around us, how our world was so connected. In some respects, even despite the hell I'd endured, I was lucky to have the life I did. These poor folks never had a fucking chance. It appeared someone had somehow randomly murdered these unsuspecting people, like shooting ducks in a very small pond—more like a bathtub. But I wondered who had pulled this horrifying trigger?
“In reaching out to several experts at universities across the nation,“ the commentator said, “The consensus is that this was an act of bioterrorism. At first glance, it appears that a toxic gas of some kind blew in through the ventilation system. But in speaking with Dr. Ben Sharon from the Center of Bioterrorism in Tel Aviv just moments ago, he believes there is evidence to suggest we've seen our first ever cyber bio-terrorist attack. Yes, the toxic gas, whatever kind it is, apparently, somehow came from the computers.”
I blinked twice, replaying the words in my mind, then looked at my comrades, whose eyes were as wide as saucers. My mouth had gone dry. I'd forgotten to swallow the last couple of minutes and, once again, thought how frickin' lucky we were to live in the United States. Then again, I wasn't naïve. I knew the fight against terrorism was never-ending, on this continent or any other. My gut felt a strange kind of emptiness, sorrow for watching people needlessly perish and anger at the maniacs behind it.
“Michael, this doesn't change our predicament,” Andi said, waving a helpless arm at the TV screen. “Ji and I have been talking. Our options are limited. He's thinking about how we could go to the authorities, bring in the FBI even. We don't have the means, the firepower, the training to deal with all of this.“
“I know I'm a bit jaded, but I don't trust the authorities right now. I know they're not all bad. But they haven't done a damn thing to find Gustavo's killer. They didn't listen to me when I told them about Franco hurting Camila, or my theory that she had been kidnapped. You'd think they would at least follow up on it. It's like they were on Franco's payroll or something.”
Ji's lips grew tight.
“You know something, Ji?” I asked.
He huffed out a breath threw his nose. “Big scandal hit the department in the late 1990s. Supposedly, Asian organized crime had a number of officials in their back pockets. Police...street level, higher up in the rankings, port authorities. It was like we were hit with a plague.”
“What was the angle of the Asian mafia?”
“Smuggling mostly. Drugs, people trafficking.”
Ji plodded into the kitchen and pulled the lever for tap water, then downed a full glass. I could see something else cross his mind. He filled another glass.
“Lots of accusations. Some people said it felt like McCarthyism from the 1950s. If you were Asian, you were looked at in a different way. For a few of us, we were guilty until we could prove we were innocent.”
He glanced at the TV, but his mind was elsewhere, maybe back to those days.
“Were you ever accused?” I asked.
He stared ahead. “Yes. Said I was seen socializing with a senior person from the crime family.”
“How did you get out of it?” Andi asked.
“I told them the truth. It took about two hundred times for them to believe me. Actually, I'm not sure they really believed my stories, but in the long run, they never found any hard evidence against me.”
I nodded, taking it all in. Ji let it all out.
“The senior crime official? He was my cousin Dale.” Ji looked at me, glassy-eyed, then glanced down at his glass of water. “Dale wasn't a horrible person, at least not the kid I grew up with. I never suspected a thing. Well, let me rephrase that. A couple of times I thought I saw him exchanging money with some folks who ran the port, but he gave me a good excuse, and I believed him. If I was guilty of anything, I was guilty of being naïve.“
Andi reached over and rested her hand on Ji's shoulder.
“The authorities came at me hard. They threatened my career, threatened to figure out a way to send my mother back to China. I was still young. I guess I thought they would believe the truth.”
“We've all learned lessons the hard way, Ji. Sorry you had to go through that.”
"That incident and investigation soured me on the department, on the purity of the government, local or federal, taking care of the average person. I realize there's not a massive conspiracy going on, but there are just enough bad apples to make me question the whole damn system.
“I left the force a few years later when they questioned me about stealing evidence.” He held up his middle finger. “I said 'fuck off' and walked out the door.“ Veins snaked up Ji's neck. He leaned back and emptied his glass.
“Sounds like you've convinced yourself we should stay the course and try to get the evidence ourselves, before turning it over to the police?” I asked.
“Just because officials were bought off fifteen, twenty years ago doesn't necessarily mean it could happen again...but it could,” Ji said. “So, let's figure out our next steps, how we can get on top of this.“
Andi chimed in. “You sound like Michael, when he essentially ran an investigation back at the paper, hunting down a serial killer.”
Ji gave me a perplexed look.
“Long story. Don't really want to relive that time of my life.” I gave a frustrated glance to Andi, who realized she'd touched a sensitive spot from my past.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
I held up a hand. “It's okay.”
Suddenly, my thigh muscle spasmed. I touched my leg and felt my phone vibrating in my shorts.
“It's a text. Don't recognize the number.”
“What does it say?” Andi took three step
s in my direction.
"On the run. YY is dead. Cant find Bogi. Meet me at SF AAM. 3 pm. Satish."
Andi dropped like a wet noodle.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Quiet had finally engulfed Camila's expanded lab and temporary home, but peace—internal serenity—had proven, once again, to be far more elusive.
Taut arms locked around her knees that were pulled in against her chest, her body huddled on the cot, rocking back and forth. She could feel metal springs through the thin mattress, but her mind couldn't shake the grip of death. It consumed her, ripped apart her insides like a meat grinder. It clogged every pore, restricted her airflow to a bare minimum. Pings of throbbing pain attacked her ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, even the tiny joints in her toes and hands.
Her hands. Not long ago, those same hands had served as tools to cure ailments, restore damaged muscles and emotionally drained bodies. To aid those who needed help. She'd never known her true calling until she opened her business and felt the adrenaline rush of helping people restore their health. She felt like she'd been put on this earth to enhance lives. To heal.
She unlocked her fingers and stared at the hands that had been the instrument of her imprisoned brain—hammering away on computer keyboards, performing tests with the flock of rodents, shoveling up one stiff corpse after another.
She rubbed her thumb against the palm of her other hand, then circled around to the top of her hand. Her usually smooth skin felt like a desert floor. Cracks had developed along two knuckles, and her nails had been chewed to the nub—a habit from her childhood that had returned with a vengeance. There had to be a parallel to the life she lived today to the one she thought she'd left behind as a teenager, when she moved from the scary streets of Rio to the safety of her adopted family in San Francisco.
As a youngster she could recall vowing to never let her environment define her, to not give in to all the temptations. She vowed to survive. Her glassy eyes drifted to the corner of her living quarters and noticed a small web. She knew her current environment—what she had created—would be inescapable, etched in her memory for eternity.
GREED Box Set (Books 1-4) Page 90