The Manuscript

by Russell Blake

  “He’s on the second floor. Number Two A. Shouldn’t be hard to find,” the heavier of the two grumbled to his partner, eyeing the old staircase skeptically and consulting his notebook.

  “Looks like you can skip your Zumba class tonight after this workout,” his partner replied, smirking. Neither had been within a hundred yards of a gym in their lives.

  They mounted the stairs reluctantly, sniffing at the stagnant air with distaste. The garbage collection bin was off to one side, its door hanging partially off its hinges, allowing the odor of rotting food to fill the area. When they arrived at the second floor, there were only two doors, so it wasn’t hard to make out which was Koshi’s. One of the officers knocked, calling his name, but there was no response. His partner tried the door handle, which turned.

  They glanced at each other, and tried once again.

  “Mister Yamaguchi. NYPD. Are you here? Hello?”

  There was no response. The cop who’d turned the knob unclipped the safety strap on his pistol holster and drew his gun, pointing it at the ceiling after carefully moving the gun’s safety lever to the off position. His partner followed suit.

  “Mister Yamaguchi? We’re entering your apartment now. We have been asked to check on your wellbeing by a concerned friend,” the cop called out. He pointed at the lower part of a leg on the living room sofa, ensconced in a combat boot, which was visible from the narrow hall. “Mister Yamaguchi?”

  Nothing.

  They moved down the hall until they were in the small living area, and they looked at each other again and holstered their weapons. The heavier officer activated his shoulder radio handset to call in their discovery. His partner pushed the bedroom and then the bathroom doors open with his toe, verifying they were alone.

  “Fucking A. Well, there goes any shot at an early lunch,” the heavier officer complained.

  Koshi’s body lay sprawled on the sofa, a syringe still protruding from his arm, partially filled with blood. Another junkie who got the purity wrong on a street buy and unwittingly gave himself a hot shot. The scumbag needle-freaks never seemed to learn that heroin would be the death of them. A common story in the big city, and annoying for the police as it would waste half a day processing the body and the scene, which was inevitably a complete waste of time and money.

  Ken got the call a few minutes later and instructed the dispatcher to warn the uniforms they were to treat the scene as a homicide, not an overdose. He shook his head wearily, and nodded to Chuck, who raised one eyebrow before standing and grabbing his jacket and gun.

  “I’ll fill you in on the way. Looks we have another 187 related to the literary agent. Probably framed to look like an overdose. Seems like everyone who came into contact with the old man’s office is suddenly suffering from a decreased life expectancy. Jim went sidewalk diving last night, and now the guy who processed the old man’s computers shows up with a needle in his arm,” Ken reported bitterly.

  “That’s a lot of depressed security professionals in a short period of time…” Chuck commented, deadpan.

  “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”

  “Remind me not to go into that line of work when I’m looking to make some extra cash after retirement. Maybe something safer, like lion taming or mercenary,” Chuck said drily.

  They made their way down to their cruiser, and Ken popped a rotating blue light onto the roof before starting the engine and pulling away from the curb into the dense late morning traffic.

  ********

  The scene at Koshi’s was confused because the forensics group wasn’t sure why they were being told to treat an obvious overdose as a homicide. Ken and Chuck arrived to find them griping, which Ken dealt with in short order. Rebuffed, they began processing the apartment with care while Ken moved alongside them wearing paper booties, so as not to contaminate the area.

  “Your boy here doesn’t look like he was a regular user. There’s no obvious evidence of track marks, although we’ll need to get him to the morgue to process him and check his legs and other areas,” the lead tech, Melanie Gomez, told him.

  “I don’t think he was a user. I think this might be staged,” Ken told her.

  “Well, we found some cooking paraphernalia on the table and two dime bags of Mexican brown, but obviously if this is a setup, that would be the expected part of it,” she added.

  “Exactly. I think I’ll go next door and talk to his neighbor, see if he heard anything.” Ken nodded in the direction of the corpse. “How long ago did he die?” Ken asked.

  “From preliminary temperature, I’d say ten hours, twelve max. So you’ll want to focus on between midnight and two,” Melanie said.

  “Let me know if you find anything that looks odd. I’ll be next door for a bit.”

  Ken moved back down the hall to the front door, where he spotted the neighbor standing with his arms crossed, watching the commotion. He was wearing a stained jogging ensemble that looked like mid-eighties K-Mart. His face had the blotchy red quality of a man who put down a good liter of scotch every day by the time it was dark out. He smelled like cheap booze and sweat.

  “I’m Detective Ken Romer. I’m heading up the investigation into Mister Yamaguchi’s death and I’d like to ask you a few questions,” Ken explained reasonably, holding out his badge as he spoke. “And this is my partner, Charles Barron.”

  Chuck had his notepad out and looked somewhat narcoleptic, about to drift off to sleep. The neighbor didn’t look much better.

  “Name’s Sam Rigley. What happened in there? He slit his wrists?” Sam asked.

  “This will probably go smoother if I ask the questions. This is just routine follow-up. We can take your statement here, or at the station. Which would you prefer?” Ken asked politely, knowing full well nobody ever wanted to go to the station.

  “Uh, I’d just as soon do it here then.”

  “Okay. Officer Barron is going to tape this so we’re sure we don’t get anything wrong later. Is that all right with you, Mister Rigley?” Ken asked, for the record.

  “Sure, whatever. And you can call me Sam.”

  “Great, Sam. Let’s move over to the stairs, where it’s quieter, unless we can come inside…” Ken suggested.

  “Stairs are fine. What do you want to know?” Sam asked, squinting at Ken dubiously.

  “Did you know Mister Yamaguchi well, Mist…Sam?” Ken asked.

  “Not really. Kept to ourselves, mostly. Hardly saw each other. I…we musta kept different hours. I don’t go out a whole lot. I’m a vet, on disability,” Sam explained, as though that clarified everything.

  “What was your impression of him?” Ken probed.

  “Whadda ya mean?” Sam looked like he was having a tough time following the simple questions and seemed to lose focus every few seconds. Ken noted his hands were shaking with a subtle tremor, which Sam seemed accustomed to.

  “Well, you know, was he loud? Did he play music all night long? Did he throw parties? Have a lot of friends over, or high traffic?” Ken suggested.

  “Nah. Kid was a freak, looked like some punk rocker but he was quiet. Kept to himself, like I said. I think he was a computer geek. Garbage was always full of boxes for some new gizmo or another. What, was he running a porn operation or something? Is that what this is about?” Sam asked, grinning suggestively.

  “So he was quiet, and you didn’t see him much. Does that pretty much sum it up?” Chuck interjected impatiently.

  “Yup.”

  “How do you like living here? Are the walls pretty thin, do you hear everything? My place, you can hear my neighbor drop a quarter at the other end of the building,” Chuck asked, apparently curious about acoustics.

  â�
�œNah, this place is built outta brick and rebar. You could shoot a gun off next door and not hear a sound, except for the traffic outside. That you hear twenty-four seven,” Sam complained.

  “Nice. So, again, back to the routine, did you hear anything last night…anything unusual or unexpected?” Ken queried.

  “Like what?” Sam fired back, unsure of what answer they were looking for.

  Ken tried again. “I don’t know. Anything at all. Did you hear anything last night you can remember as being odd or out of the ordinary?”

  “Chief–”

  “Detective, Sam.”

  “Er, Detective, I tend to get to sleep early, and I’m a sound sleeper with my medication and all. So I didn’t hear nuthin’ last night, or any other night. I was snoozing like a baby till morning.” Sam grinned a barfly’s smirk, his eyes recessed in their sockets, yellowing from jaundice.

  “So for the record, you heard nothing last night,” Ken summarized.

  “That’s right. Not a thing. Sorry I can’t help you on that. Now, mind tellin’ me what happened in there? I overheard one a your guys say it was a dope thing?” Sam probed.

  Ken’s cell phone rang. He extricated it from his jacket pocket and looked at the number. “I have to take this. Detective Barron will finish this up,” he told Sam, and moved to the landing to descend the stairs to the street.

  “Ken, this is Michael. What did you find out? Is Koshi okay? Did you find him?” Michael asked.

  “Yeah, we found him, but no, he’s not okay. Did Koshi have a drug problem, Michael?” Ken inquired.

  “Did he? Past tense…no, I don’t think so, beyond the usual booze and weed thing, although I’m guessing on the pot. What happened, Ken? Why is Koshi past tense?”

  Ken explained the situation. Michael listened in silence.

  “Ken, you can’t possibly believe that this is an accident or a genuine OD, right? I mean, Jim ends it all, and Koshi ODs within hours?” Michael blurted, frustrated with what he was hearing.

  “Do I seem like a rookie to you, Michael? Am I giving off the first day on the force vibe? I hate it when I do that…”

  “Sorry, Ken. Really. It’s just…it just wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, I guess,” Michael said.

  “Are you sure you’re that surprised? I mean, you seem like you were pretty worked up about making sure Koshi was safe, so that tells me you had a better than fair idea he could be in real danger…” Ken observed.

  “I…I assumed the worst when you told me about Jim. Someone’s taking out my security group, one by one…” Michael explained.

  “Not just your team, Michael. I called your agent buddy’s office again, and nobody’s heard from the receptionist since the day you saw her. Want to bet a dollar that she’s gone missing? Look, I don’t have a lot of time here, but I’ll give you some free advice. Stay gone until we figure out what the hell is going on here, because otherwise I have a feeling I’m going to be putting a tag on your toe next,” Ken advised.

  “Thanks. I get it. But it’s not looking good, Ken. I think you’ll find that there are no leads on any of these, at the end of the day. If this is a covert ops team doing this, they’ll be ghosts and you’ll never get within a mile of them. That’s my best guess given what I know so far, and it scares the hell out of me,” Michael admitted.

  “It should. I’ll tell you what. I don’t want to know where you are. And I don’t want to hear any more half-truths. Two of your team are dead, for doing nothing but a routine security sweep. That doesn’t add up. People don’t get killed for trying to recover a file or checking phone lines. So either there’s way more going on here than you’re telling me, and you know what it is, and are keeping me in the dark for some reason, or you don’t know, which is almost worse. Either way, though, you need to stay gone indefinitely. And if you call me, do so from a line that can’t be traced, because this is scary shit and I’m out of my depth on it,” Ken finished.

  “This line’s clean. I’ll check back in a day or two, Ken. I wish I could tell you something that would help you nail whoever is doing this, but I don’t have anything that will get you any closer,” Michael said.

  “Meaning you either don’t know, or you’re sure that these will never get solved because of what you do know.” Ken was astute, and was losing patience with Michael.

  “Either way, sounds like I’m fucked,” Michael muttered.

  “At least you’re alive. That’s more than Jim and Koshi can say,” Ken reminded him and then terminated the call. It wasn’t going anywhere, and he wasn’t feeling chatty. Michael sounded scared, and worse, resigned. Like he was facing certain death. Ken didn’t envy him.

  Although given what he knew of Michael’s background, it wouldn’t be so easy to take him off the board. He was one tough bastard, Ken knew firsthand. His brother had been a marine and had told him stories about the SEALs, so he understood that Michael was a capable adversary and wouldn’t go down without a fight. He just hoped that whatever it was he’d gotten involved in would eventually die down so Michael didn’t have to have a showdown he could never win.

  What a cluster fuck.

  He turned and made his way back up the stairs to the apartment. Chuck was waiting for him in the hall, the interview concluded. They compared notes. There wasn’t a lot to go on, and their best hope was that CSI would be able to find something, some trace, to point them in a direction.

  Ken doubted that was going to happen, but he still had a trick or two at his disposal.

  ********

  “Sir, we just intercepted a cell call at one of the active sites. The target was communicating with the detective who is investigating the overdose of the computer hacker. We have confirmation that he’s gone to ground and is probably not in the city any longer. Couldn’t trace the calling number, unfortunately, but we were able to record the discussion,” the voice recounted evenly.

  “I don’t need to hear it. Just give me the top level,” Sid instructed.

  “The detective believes the OD is a homicide and is handling it as such, treating it as linked to the book agent and the surveillance technician’s fall from grace. He sounds sharp, so we should assume he’ll continue to investigate them as a related set of deaths,” the voice said.

  “Do we particularly care?”

  “No, not really. We’ve taken steps to ensure these incidents will never be solved and I’m confident there are no loose ends. But I would advise that, from this point on, there’s no reason to continue working the literary agent’s staff. The risks now outweigh any possible reward.”

  “Fair enough. I’m not sure there’s a lot more to do now other than monitor the detective’s communications and maintain a watch on the target’s apartment, on the off chance he’s stupid enough to stop by. I think that’s a long shot, but you never know. And of course, implement the usual database monitoring so that whenever he accesses funds or uses a credit card, we’re pinged. Am I missing anything?” Sid asked.

  “That’s about all we can do. I understand this is less than an optimum solution, but as of now, there’s nothing to do other than be prepared for whenever the target surfaces. I’m sure he will. It’s inevitable. There’s no evidence of the kind of financial resources he would need to disappear indefinitely, so worst scenario, we have to wait for his cash to run out. The moment he uses an ATM, we’ll know. Just a matter of when.”

  “I hope you’re right. So far this man has managed to elude your team with little apparent effort and has now vanished without a trace. Given his background, it would be foolish to underestimate him, or his ingen
uity. It’s theoretically impossible he would have made it this long without tripping up, and yet here we are, holding our dicks in our hands hoping he makes a rookie mistake,” Sid warned.

  “I agree, and your input is noted. He obviously went dark almost immediately upon discovering the agent was dead, which shows above-average paranoia, as well as significant stagecraft. Then again, his business is security, and it pays to be paranoid in that field. So we can expect him to be difficult to trace. But not impossible. Nobody’s that good.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to modify that statement to, ‘Nobody’s ever been that good before’. What about the source of the document – the author? Any leads?” Sid shifted gears.

  “No, we’ve analyzed it, and there’s nothing to go on, other than an e-mail address. But it’s hosted in Austria, and not only do we not have a lot of reach there, but given the depth of knowledge of our operations and capabilities, we can expect that the Austrian address was set up using a blind account somewhere like the Ukraine, so we won’t be able to get anything on it. We’re still working the issue, but for now it’s a non-starter.”

  “Until we discover the source, we’re exposed in much greater way than acceptable. I want all available resources committed to tracking down who drafted this, and terminating him. I can’t underscore enough the importance of us putting an end to this misadventure, with extreme prejudice,” Sid stated, slamming the table top with his hand for emphasis.

  “I understand. I’ll report in when I have something more,” the voice said and then disconnected.

  Sid paced the floor, furious at the way things had developed. They were exposed. Secrets that could bring the power structure of the greatest nation on the planet to its knees were now out in the world, where they could potentially surface at the worst possible moment. Everything he’d worked so hard to build and to protect, his entire life, was jeopardized. The honor of every administration for decades would be called into question and regardless of how much spin and rationalization they brought to bear, the nation’s allies would know the truth, as would the rest of the world. It would be the end of the empire, with a who’s who of the most important dynasties in the country brought to disgrace and ruin.