“Grab us a double-wide cab,” said Nick. “I’ll check something in the admin building here and be back in a second.”
Nick ran uphill under the elms, but instead of going straight to the administration building, he reentered the auditorium and jogged down steps, checking beds as he went. The monks were just preparing to administer the intravenous flashback to Derek Dean when Nick leaned in between them and the skeleton in saffron.
“Sir,” the tall male monk said softly, “you must not interfere with…”
“Shut up,” said Nick. He grabbed Derek Dean by his saffron robe front with both hands and lifted him closer until their faces were inches apart. Nick could smell death in the older man’s breath and pouring from his pores.
“Can you hear me, Dean?” He shook the man. The rattling sound was not imaginary; it was Derek Dean’s loose teeth clacking together. “Can you hear me?”
The former exec nodded. His eyes were very wide.
“Did you meet my wife—Dara—either when Keigo was interviewing you or later, perhaps at the party?”
“Wife…,” Dean repeated.
“Focus, you worthless sonofabitch.” One of the monks reached to intervene but Nick shook him away as one would a child. “Have you ever seen this woman?”
Nick was holding up his phone with Dara’s photo filling the entire screen.
“No. I don’t think so.” It was a whisper.
“Be sure,” hissed Nick, holding the photo closer. “If I find out you’re lying to me, I swear to Christ I’ll come back here and kill you.”
Derek Dean’s gaze sharpened, focused on the photograph. “No, Detective, I have never seen that woman. But I would enjoy fucking her, if I did see her… which I haven’t. I don’t think.”
“I must protest,” cried one of the hovering monks. “We shall call security. We shall…”
“Go to hell,” said Nick. He dropped Dean back onto the crisp-sheeted bed, tucked his phone away, and left the auditorium.
It took less than a minute at the adjoining administrative building to get the information on Dean’s former teacher from a rather attractive bald young woman at the main desk. Evidently she hadn’t yet been alerted that Nick had just threatened to kill one of their paying Total Immersion students. Yes, she confirmed, Shantarakshita Padmasambhava had indeed been one of the outstanding teachers at the Naropa Institute. Eighty-four years old when he had accepted Mr. Derek Dean as an applicant for the Path of Total Immersion, the beloved Sensei Shantarakshita Padmasambhava had shuffled off this mortal coil three years ago. His ashes had been scattered from the top of Flagstaff Mountain looming above the Chautauqua campus.
Nick thanked the young woman with the shapely skull and healthy, tanned scalp and—for some reason he couldn’t explain even to himself—asked for her phone number. She showed a wide, white, sincere, perfect smile and put her palms together and said, “Namaste.”
THEY WAITED UNTIL THEY were out of the pedicab, in Sato’s car, out of Boulder, through and beyond the exit customs checkpoints, and over the ridge to where the People’s Republic was no longer in the rearview mirror before talking about things.
“Well, Sato-san,” said Nick, “did we just buy the biggest load of pure, unfiltered, overacted bullshit in the history of total bullshit answers, or is suspect Mr. Derek Dean well and truly too nuts to keep on our list of suspects?”
“If he is not too crazy now, Bottom-san,” said Sato, “he certainly will be by the time he enters… what do you call it here… sixth grade.”
Nick grunted. He hadn’t told the security chief about his final, brief interaction with Dean back at the totally immersed asshole’s auditorium bed.
“There is always the question of motive,” added Sato. “Mr. Dean appears to have had none.”
“No one we have on our suspect list appears to have had one,” said Nick, settling back in the car seat and closing his eyes. He had a headache that was pounding spikes of pain deeper with every beat of his heart.
“Someone had a motive,” Sato said sharply. “But I fail to see it with Mr. Dean. Our own investigations showed absolutely no cross-referencing between Dean and Keigo or Mr. Nakamura.”
“Dean was a corporate bigwig in the last days of a world empire of a corporation,” said Nick without opening his eyes. “Professional competition? Trade jealousies? Google made a lot of enemies before it was broken up and flushed.”
“No,” said Sato. “There is no record of any interactions—hostile or otherwise—between Mr. Dean when he was a relatively minor corporate officer and any of Mr. Nakamura’s interests. Should there have been some sort of corporate animosity, it is very unlikely that it would have extended as far down as Mr. Dean’s level. He was a player but, in all senses of the word, a very, very minor player.”
“Maybe he just took a dislike to Keigo when the boy interviewed him,” said Nick. Sato’s armored Honda had good shocks, but every bump on the worn, potholed, and poorly maintained highway sent more hard-driven nails of pain into his skull.
“Disliked him enough on first sight to kill him?” said Sato.
Nick shrugged. “It happens. I know the feeling myself. But in this case, perhaps Derek Dean did it for precisely the same reason that these roving flashgangs do—to give him something powerful, almost climactic and orgasmic, to flash on during his fucking Total Immersion therapy.”
“To flash on in forty-four years plus as many years added on due to the six hours a day out of flashback…,” began Sato.
“Eleven years extra,” said Nick. “He spends eighteen hours a day under the flash, six out… more or less. So, if he keeps with the chronological real-time flashing the way he’s going now, it would be fifty-five years until the murder would roll around again. He’d be ninety-seven years old.”
Sato grunted. “The odds then are low that there will be an orgasm involved if Mr. Dean makes it to that age. But Bottom-san, let us consider the possibility that Mr. Dean is flashing on the murder every day and that all that ‘Mrs. Howe is letting us do the Alamo mural’ was pure misdirection. The Naropa Total Immersion program would then serve as a wonderful alibi for a murderer who has to hide from the world.”
“Good point,” said Nick. “But although Derek might have been capable of faking the overdosing flashbacker’s idiocy, he wasn’t faking the physical decline. He was a dead man walking.” He opened his eyes and took the pain the light added, grateful that the low clouds hid the full hammerstroke of the sun.
“Shall we go straight to Coors Field?” asked Sato. He sounded eager.
“This afternoon?” said Nick. “No way. Take me home, please. You have the flashback vials for my preparation for the next interviews, don’t you?”
“In my briefcase,” said Sato. “But it is still relatively early. We could…”
“No, the light has to be better than this for Coors Field. It’s supposed to be clear weather tomorrow. We’ll wait until early afternoon when the slant of light will be right.”
“Why must the light be better, Bottom-san?”
“There’s no artificial light in the ballpark during the day,” said Nick.
“Yes?”
“The light should be to your best advantage,” said Nick. “Since you’re going to have to be my sniper-second.”
“Me? The detention center provides professional snipers.”
“For officers of the law and lawyers there by court order it does,” said Nick. “You and I have no more official business there than a family member.”
“Certainly the official status of the Advisor’s office…,” began Sato.
“Will allow me to provide my own sniper-second,” said Nick. “That’s you. How good are you with a long gun?”
Sato said nothing.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” said Nick.
“How can this be the case, Bottom-san?”
“There are thirty-some thousand rapists, thieves, thugs, and murderers in Coors Field,” said Nick. “If even hal
f a dozen or so come after me at once—or if they pull me behind a girder or into one of their hovels and out of sight—you’re not going to be able to stop them in time. The sniper-second is really there to put the captured visitor out of his misery before the fiends and felons start having too much creative fun.”
“Ah, so,” said Sato. He did not seem overly horrified or displeased by the news.
Sato’s phone told them through the car speakers that a major IED blast had gone off at the Pecos Street and Highway 36 interchange and that all traffic was being diverted south on Federal Boulevard for the detour. Nick could see the smoke and dust rising ahead, just as it had from the Mousetrap explosion a few days—a few years—earlier.
DARA, WHO IS READING in bed, closes her book and says, “Nick, how is the investigation going?”
He closes his car magazine but keeps his finger in place for a bookmark. “In circles, kiddo. None of it makes any sense.”
“Well, it’s early days, as the British used to say.”
“Yeah.”
He expects her to go back to her reading—Thomas Hardy—but she keeps the book shut and looks at him. “There’s no danger for you in this investigation, is there, Nick?”
Surprised, he looks her straight in the eyes and says, “None at all. Why should there be?”
“It’s political, Nick. I hate anything involving politics, much less with the son of a famous Japanese industrialist or whatever the hell he is.”
“Nakamura’s people are cooperating,” says Nick. “What danger could there be for a police officer?”
Dara rolls her eyes. “There’s always some danger, damn you. Don’t treat me as if I just fell off the turnip truck or just married a newbie patrolman without knowing the lay of the land.”
Nick shakes his head and grins. “I like that verb.”
“What verb?”
“Lay. As in, to be laid, to get laid.”
The hovering Nick is surprised. Do they make love this night? He’s never flashed on this time before—had had trouble even finding an entry point for the thirty-minute flash—and has no idea whether they ended the evening with sex. He’d only barely remembered the conversation.
It’s Dara’s turn to shake her head. She’s not amused and not distracted. “They’re not going to send you back to Santa Fe, are they?”
The torn abdominal muscles of six-years-ago Nick Bottom flinch and tighten at that question even as the gut of the now-Nick also tightens in fear.
“No,” he says seriously, looking into her eyes again. “There’s no chance of that, Dara.”
“You said there was a suspect or potential witness or something down there…”
“Not so important that Captain Sheers or the department’s going to risk one or both of their chief investigating detectives,” interrupts Nick. “New Mexico’s more hostile territory than three years ago when… than three years ago. We’ll phone the Santa Fe sheriff’s office and have him or her get what we need.”
Dara is looking dubious. She’s set Thomas Hardy on the bedside table.
“I swear, kiddo,” says Nick. “I’m not going back to Santa Fe. I’d resign first.”
“Good,” says Dara, smiling for the first time. “Because I think I’d shoot you first.”
He tosses his car magazine aside and puts his arm around her.
Fifteen minutes later, coming up and out of the flash, Nick wonders how he ever could have forgotten the lovemaking of that evening.
IT WASN’T QUITE 10 p.m. when Nick came up out of that flash. He had no intention of using the vials he’d received from Sato to flash on Delroy Brown or any other suspect’s interview. He was planning the next six or eight hours in terms of finding every conversation he could with Dara on what she was doing for ADA Harvey Cohen, hunting for any clue as to why they might have been at Six Flags Over the Jews the day of Keigo’s interview with Danny Oz.
Nick knew that he couldn’t restrict this investigation—his real investigation now—to flashback sessions. He’d have to go interview Dara and Cohen’s former boss, District Attorney Mannie Ortega, and probably have to ask his old partner K. T. Lincoln for help in getting access to files.
The thought of seeing K.T. again—of having to ask her for help—made Nick’s insides hurt.
And, he realized, he’d have to get rid of Sato so that he could interview DA Ortega, K.T., and others. He had to know more about the auto accident that had killed his wife. He had to know more about what she and fat, balding Harvey Cohen were doing before that accident.
The phone chirped.
Without identifying himself, Hideki Sato asked, “What do you think about the Santa Fe trip, Bottom-san? Tomorrow after Coors Field or later in the week?”
Nick waited until his insides unclenched a bit before answering. “Whenever Mr. Nakamura’s plane or helicopter is ready.”
“Plane?” said Sato. “Helicopter? There is no plane or helicopter.”
“Bullshit,” said Nick. The fear was rising in him like a terrible tide, making his arms and legs feel weak. “I saw you fly away from the roof of my building here in one, remember? That silent, stealthy Sasayaki-tonbo whisper-dragonfly or whatever you called it. And Keigo took one of his daddy’s corporate choppers down there six years ago.”
“The skies between here and Santa Fe were not so dangerous six years ago,” said Sato. “Mr. Nakamura has no aircraft tasked for this trip. The company’s insurance carriers would not allow it.”
“Then how the hell are we supposed to get there?” shouted Nick. He hadn’t meant to shout.
“Two vehicles. Armored and weaponized. Four extra security people.”
“Blow me,” said Nick.
“I shall set the trip for Wednesday,” said Sato.
Not trusting his voice, Nick broke the connection. His hands were trembling too much to prepare the flashback vial or to concentrate on the entry point.
Padding over to his dresser, Nick poured three fingers of cheap Scotch and drank it down in two gulps.
When the trembling in his fingers abated some, Nick prepared a half-hour vial. He’d go back to a favorite time with Dara to clear his mind before doing more searching through the time after Keigo’s death and before hers.
2.02
Disney Concert Hall at Performing Arts Center—Friday, Sept. 17
THEY WERE ALL scared shitless. Everyone except Billy Coyne, that is. And Val had long since decided that Billy the C was as crazy as a shithouse rat.
Val had gotten that old-timer’s phrase—crazy as a shithouse rat”—from the Old Man, who, he’d once told Val, had got it from his Old Man.
And Billy Coyne was as crazy as a shithouse rat.
Coyne continued to give orders all that last week, but he reserved most of his real conversation for the Vladimir Putin AI in his T-shirt. And that conversation was mostly in Russian.
The seven boys had spent the week following Coyne’s orders and preparing everything in the sewer. They’d spent a day and a half in the darkness cutting through the rusted old rebar of the steel grate on the inside, but just in a few places to allow them to get at the steel panels covering the storm sewer opening. They left the majority of the inner grate intact to keep their pursuers from sliding in and following them. Then they’d spent another day filing through the soldered welding joining the two steel panels that covered the opening to the storm sewer.
Everything depended upon Billy Coyne’s information—supposedly from his mother—being correct about exactly where the Advisor’s limo would be dropping him off. The storm sewer opening was on the north side of 2nd Street on the south side of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. When they dared to peek out on Thursday night after their many hours of soft sawing and filing and more sawing, they were looking away from the weird Disney Concert Hall building itself. Coyne insisted that the streets would be shut off except for official traffic and that Advisor Omura’s armored limo would come south down Grand Avenue, turn right onto the short block of 2nd Street
, and stop just beyond the corner. The photographers, TV guys, and press were supposed to be cordoned off in the median between 2nd Street and an equally narrow lane called General Thaddeus Kosciuszko Way so all their lenses would be aiming north toward the concert hall and the steps that Omura, the mayor, and their security people and entourages would be climbing to enter the hall.
The eight members of the flashgang would have only two or three seconds to fling open the storm sewer doors and to open fire.
But they would be able to see out the closed steel panels. When the city workers welded the doors shut years ago, they’d left narrow horizontal slits near the bottom to handle the usual amount of runoff from heavy rains that built up there on 2nd Street. The gaps were too small to use as gunslits, but the boys could peer out of them until they saw Omura step out of his limo.
In the wee hours of the morning, with Sully standing guard on 2nd Street to let them know when it was clear of security guards, they’d rehearsed throwing the metal drain-cover doors open wide and crowding into the six feet or so of space to fire their weapons. The limo letting Advisor Omura out on this north side would be stopped less than twelve feet away. All the boys would be wearing ski masks, just like real terrorists. Coyne had bought Palestinian keffiyeh scarves for everybody, but Val definitely thought that this was a bridge too far. Too cute.
After they all blazed away, semiautos and flechette guns, the plan then was to run like hell. A curve in the sewer path just twenty feet from the opening would give them cover, although Coyne warned them to stay away from the walls. Ricochets would travel far down there. The inner grate would keep the cops or security people from sliding in to chase them and all the nearby manhole covers and storm sewer entrances were firmly welded shut. The cops wouldn’t know which direction to hunt for them. The first exit from the sewers was more than a mile east of where they planned to do the shooting, but Coyne’s plan was for them to run almost half a mile north and then west through the ever-twisting maze before coming up and out near Cigna Hospital. They’d hacksawed and cut that storm sewer door open as well. There was a Dumpster for biohazard materials next to the storm sewer behind that hospital—Coyne had carefully cut through the padlock chain so that the cut shouldn’t be noticed—and all their guns would be tossed there. They’d wear gloves during the shooting.