“Here it is,” Brennan said. “What a palace! What’s the plan?” He was looking out his window at the overgrown yard filled with all manner of rubbish, including a rusting tricycle, a broken swing set, several bald tires, and a collection of empty beer cans. “What do you want us to do?”
Susumu opened one of the rear doors, and he and Yoshiaki slid out. Yoshiaki leaned back in. “We’ll be quick. Maybe it would be best if you turn off the headlights.”
Brennan did as he was told. The scene retreated into a misty gloom, which at least eliminated most of the trash and junk strewn about all the yards. At the same time it emphasized the dead-looking, skeletonized trees silhouetted against the pale, turbulent sky. “This place gives me the creeps,” he said.
“Ditto,” Carlo said.
The two hoodlums watched as the Japanese men hastily mounted the rickety steps leading up to a small covered porch. At that point they were mere dark silhouettes against the muted incandescent light emanating through the glazed front door. Pausing, both pulled out handguns from shoulder holsters.
“Holy shit!” Brennan voiced. “What the hell are they going to do?”
The next instant one of the intruders used the butt of his gun to smash the glass in the front door, reached in, and then opened the door. In a blink of the eye, both disappeared inside with the door left swinging silently on its hinges. Brennan turned to Carlo. “I don’t like this! This is potentially turning into something that’s a lot more than I expected. Worst case, I thought these clowns were going to beat someone up.”
“I don’t like it either,” Carlo admitted. “I don’t like being any part of this.” He glanced at his watch. “Five minutes, then we’re outta here. They can find their own way back to the city.”
Both men fidgeted, keeping their eyes on the ostensibly peaceful little house. A few minutes later there was the muted sound of a gunshot followed quickly by several others. Both men jumped at each of the reports, guessing what each meant: a person was being killed in cold blood, and they, Brennan and Carlo, were accomplices.
During the next minute there were three more shots, for a total of six, causing Brennan and Carlo’s fears and anxieties to skyrocket. The problem was that neither knew what they should do, meaning exactly what would their boss, Louie Barbera, want them to do. Would he want them to stay and risk getting caught and charged as accomplices, or should they get the hell away from there to avoid putting the whole Vaccarro organization in jeopardy? Since there was no way of knowing the answer to this question, they stayed frozen in place until Carlo suddenly had the idea of putting in an emergency call to Barbera.
With the sudden movement of getting out his phone, Carlo caused Brennan to start anew. “Jesus!” Brennan complained. “Give me some warning!”
“Sorry,” Carlo said. “I’ve got to talk to Louie. He has to know what’s going down here. This is crazy.” Intent on dialing, Carlo didn’t even feel Brennan tapping on his shoulder until Brennan increased the force to a near punch.
“They’re coming out!” Brennan said anxiously, pointing out his side window.
Carlo looked. Both Susumu and Yoshiaki were charging down the porch steps and running toward the idling Denali, carrying loaded pillowcases over their shoulders. Carlo flipped his phone shut just as the men reached the vehicle and piled into the backseat. Without anyone speaking, Brennan put the SUV into gear and pulled away. He waited almost a block to turn on the headlights.
Brennan and Carlo didn’t speak for about ten minutes, whereas the two Japanese men had been carrying on a progressively animated conversation in Japanese. It was obvious they were not pleased with their accomplishments inside the house. By the time they reached the George Washington Bridge, Carlo had relaxed enough to talk.
“Did something go wrong?” Carlo questioned. He made it a point to sound disinterested.
“We were looking for some lab books, which we didn’t find,” Yoshiaki said.
“I’m sorry,” Carlo responded. “We heard what sounded like a number of gunshots. Were they?”
“Yes. There were six people in the house, more than we expected.”
Carlo and Brennan exchanged worried glances. Their intuitions told them that Louie was going to be surprised, and it wasn’t going to be in a good way.
1
MARCH 25, 2010
THURSDAY, 5:25 a.m.
Laurie Montgomery rolled over onto her side to look at her alarm clock. It wasn’t quite five-thirty in the morning, and the alarm wouldn’t go off for almost another half-hour. Under normal circumstances she would have been pleased to be able to roll over and go back to sleep. All her life she’d been an incurable night person who couldn’t fall asleep and had even more difficulty waking up in the morning. But this was not going to be a normal day. It was going to be the first day back to work after an unexpectedly long maternity leave of nearly twenty months.
After glancing briefly at her husband, Jack Stapleton, who was sound asleep, Laurie gently slid her legs out from beneath the down comforter and placed her bare feet on the ice-cold wood floor. She thought briefly about changing her mind and climbing back under the warm covers. But she resisted and instead clutched Jack’s T-shirt more tightly around her midsection and ran silently into the bathroom. The problem was that there was no way she’d be able to go back to sleep, as her mind was already going a mile a minute. She felt great turmoil stemming from her ambivalence about going back to work. Her main worry was for her just-over-one-and-a-half-year-old son, John Junior, and whether it was appropriate to leave him with a nanny for what would often be long days. But there was also a personal issue concerning a real fear of competence after such an unexpectedly long break: Would she still be able to handle her job as a medical examiner at what she thought was the most prestigious ME office in the country, if not the world?
Laurie had been working at OCME, or Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, in the city of New York for almost two decades. Self-confidence had always been an issue with her, going back to her teenage years. When she’d first started work at OCME, she’d worried about her competence at such an extremely challenging and demanding position, and she’d not overcome the concern for years, far past the time that her colleagues had dealt with similar fears. Forensic pathology was a field where book learning was not enough. Intuition played a major role in being good at practicing it, and intuition came from constant experience. Every day a good forensic pathologist was confronted with something he or she had never seen before.
Laurie studied herself in the mirror and groaned. From her perspective she looked terrible, with dark circles under her eyes and a pallor that was more suited to one of her patients. Motherhood had been more difficult and exhausting physically and mentally than she had ever imagined, particularly having had to deal with a serious, often fatal illness. At the same time, it had also been more rewarding.
Taking her robe from its hook on the back of the door and pulling it on, she slipped her feet into her mules with the pink puffs over the toes. She smiled at the slippers. They were the sole reminder of the time when she could feel sexy with lingerie and enjoy the feeling. Vaguely she wondered if that feeling would ever come back. Becoming a mother had changed her sense of self in a number of domains.
Back out in the hall, Laurie padded down to JJ’s room. The door was ajar, and she walked into the room, which was bright enough for her to see. Dawn was approaching, but more important there were a number of night-lights conveniently spaced along the baseboards. Thanks to her mother, the room was decorated with riotous blue wallpaper and matching curtains covered with images of airplanes and trucks.
The furniture consisted only of a rocking chair, which Laurie had used for breast-feeding, a bassinet swathed in eyelet, and a crib. The bassinet was still there for sentimental reasons, as was the rocking chair, although she used the rocker occasionally when JJ was fussy and needed her presence to fall asleep.
Moving over to the crib, Laurie gazed in at her son, th
ankful for his healthy complexion. With a shudder she could remember distinctly when it hadn’t been so. At the age of two months JJ had been diagnosed with high-risk neuroblastoma, a very serious and often deadly childhood cancer. But Laurie had been able to thank the lucky stars, or God, or whomever or whatever, that the cancer had disappeared. Whether it had been through the divine intervention of a faith healer in Jerusalem, the dedication of the doctors at Sloan-Kettering, or the fact that neuroblastoma can, on occasion, spontaneously resolve, Laurie would never know—nor care, if truth be told. The only thing that mattered to her was that JJ was now a normal one-and-a-half-year-old boy whose growth and development, despite chemotherapy and what was called monoclonal antibody therapy, had reached normal percentiles in all aspects, enough for Laurie to consider returning to work.
Glancing in at the peacefully sleeping child, a smile spread across Laurie’s face despite the concerns and ambivalence she was suffering about going to work. JJ’s angelic face reminded her of a conversation she’d had with Jack just the previous evening. It had started when they had both gone into JJ’s bedroom to check on the baby before going to bed themselves. As they gazed at the boy, she admitted something she’d never mentioned before to anyone: She was so certain that JJ was the most beautiful child in the world that whenever she chatted with the other neighborhood mothers at the playground across the street, she couldn’t help but wonder why someone had never remarked about it. “It’s so obvious,” she’d said to Jack.
To her surprise, Jack’s response had been to break out in a guffaw so loud she had to caution him not to wake the baby. It wasn’t until they had ducked out into the hall that Jack explained his reaction. By then Laurie was indignant, feeling as if Jack was making fun of her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Your comment tickles my funny bone. Don’t you realize that all the mothers feel exactly the same?”
Laurie’s indignation faded rapidly, as did her frown.
“A mother’s love must be somewhere in our genome,” Jack had continued. “Otherwise we as a species would never have made it through the ice age.”
Snapping herself back to the present, Laurie became aware that she wasn’t alone in JJ’s room. Turning her head, she found herself staring into Jack’s shadowed face. All she could really see were the whites of his eyes, although there was enough light to appreciate that he was buck naked.
“You’re up early,” Jack said. He knew Laurie liked to sleep late, and it was part of the Stapleton routine for him to get up first, shower, and then nudge Laurie out of bed. “Are you all right?”
“Nervous,” Laurie admitted. “Very nervous!”
“What on earth about?” Jack questioned. “Leaving JJ with Leticia Wilson?” Leticia Wilson was a cousin of Warren Wilson, one of the local men with whom Jack regularly played basketball. Warren had suggested her to Jack one recent afternoon when Jack had mentioned they were looking for a nanny so that Laurie could go back to work.
“That’s part of it,” Laurie admitted.
“But you said these last few days that you’ve had your so-called dry run and that things had gone terrifically.”
Laurie had asked Leticia to come for two days, take JJ, feed him, take him out to the park, both the local playground and Central Park, and keep him until the time Laurie guessed she’d generally be getting home from OCME. There had been no problems, and best of all, both JJ and Leticia had taken to each other and had demonstrably enjoyed themselves.
“Everything went well,” Laurie admitted, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t still feel guilty about the situation. I know I’m going to suffer the maternal quandary, meaning that when I’m here with JJ, I feel guilty about not working, but today, while I’ll be working, I’m going to feel guilty about not being home. JJ is going to miss his mommy just like Mommy is going to miss JJ. Also, even though he’s been symptom-free for over a year, I’m continually worried he’s going to relapse. I guess I’m always going to be a little superstitious that the continuance of his recovery has something to do mystically with my presence.”
“I suppose that is understandable,” Jack said. “What’s the other part of your nervousness? It’s not anything about OCME personnel, is it? I mean, everyone is looking forward to your return, and I do mean everyone, from Bingham all the way down to the security personnel. Everyone I run into has said something about looking forward to your return today.”
“Really?” Laurie questioned with disbelief. She thought it had to be a gross exaggeration, especially including Bingham, whom she was aware she addled on occasion with her independence and doggedness.
“Really!” Jack echoed spiritedly. “You are one of the most popular people at OCME. If you are nervous, it can’t be about fitting back into the team. It has to be about something else.”
“Well, maybe you are right,” Laurie admitted reluctantly. She had a good idea about what he was going to say if she admitted to her worries about competency and wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it, as nothing he said would make her feel differently.
“Let’s continue this discussion,” Jack said, his voice quavering. “But can we do it in the warm bathroom? I’m freezing in here wearing nothing but my pride.”
“Good idea!” Laurie responded. “Let’s go! I’m cold even with my robe.” After pulling JJ’s blanket up around his shoulders and tucking it in gently, she hurried after Jack, who’d made a beeline into the bathroom. When she got there he already had the hot-water tap going full blast, filling the room with warm, billowing steam.
“So what else has you nervous?” Jack asked, raising his voice over the sound of the shower as he reached in to adjust the temperature before climbing in. “And don’t talk to me about worries concerning your competence, because I don’t want to hear it.” He’d heard her talk about her fears of competence back when she’d first started at OCME and was intuitive enough to guess it was bothering her again.
“Then I’m not going to say anything,” Laurie shouted back.
Jack stuck his face out from the stream of water, wiped his eyes, and cracked open the shower door: “So it is fear of your abilities! Well, I’m not going to try to change your mind, because I know nothing I’d say would have any effect whatsoever, so you go on and worry. But you know something, the fact that you do worry is probably what makes you such a good medical examiner. You’re a better forensic pathologist, in my mind, than anyone else in the whole place, because you’re always willing to question and learn.”
“I’m flattered to hear you say that, even though I don’t believe it. I was okay before this maternity leave, but it’s been almost two years since I’ve done an autopsy or looked at a microscopic slide.”
“That might be, but over the last month you’ve been burning the midnight oil reading several standard forensic-path books. You’re probably up to speed more than any of the rest of us who haven’t looked at a textbook for years. You could probably even pass your board exams again today, which none of the rest of us could do.”
“Thank you for your support,” Laurie said. “But reading and actually doing are two vastly different things. I’m truly worried I’m going to mess up big-time in some form or fashion, maybe even on my first case.”
“Could never happen!” Jack stated with surety. “Not to you with your experience. But look, let’s make a point of doing our cases on adjoining tables and sorta maintain an ongoing conversation about what we are doing. Then, after the autopsies, we go over them together just to make sure we’ve both hit all the appropriate buttons. What do you think of that idea?”
“I like it,” Laurie admitted. “I like it a lot.” The idea didn’t absolve her of all her anxieties, but it did lessen them. Most important, by relieving some of her nervousness, she knew she’d be able to turn her attention to what she had to do to get ready to leave for OCME. Leticia was due to arrive in less than an hour, and Laurie had a lot to do before she got there.
2
MARCH 25, 2010
&nb
sp; THURSDAY, 6:57 p.m.
KOBE, JAPAN
Hisayuki Ishii’s driver, Akira, pulled into the roundabout facing the Hotel Okura Kobe and halted in front of the main entrance. Stopped ahead of them was the first car of the three-car motorcade that had driven the oyabun of the Aizukotetsu-kai Yakuza organization and his saiko komon, Tadamasa Tsuji, the forty-six miles from Kyoto to Kobe. The bodyguards climbed out of the first vehicle, all with their hands stuck inside their jackets, clutching the butts of concealed handguns so that they could be drawn out in an emergency. No one was comfortable visiting Kobe, the traditional home of the rival Yamaguchi-gumi Yakuza family, especially for an impromptu meeting with the organization’s oyabun. If the Yamaguchi-gumi were inclined, there was too much opportunity to plan an ambush.
Akira leaped out and rounded Hisayuki’s armored LS 600h L sedan and waved away the hotel doorman. Hisayuki preferred to have his own driver open his door to avoid any unwanted surprises. Behind came the third car with its additional host of bodyguards.
The move from vehicle to inside the hotel happened in seconds. Inside, Hisayuki was formally greeted by the general manager and guided to a private elevator, whisking him, his saiko-komon, and two of his most trusted lieutenants up to the penthouse floor, where they were escorted into a private dining room. There Hisayuki was greeted by his Yamaguchi-gumi equivalent, Oyabun Hiroshi Fukazawa. He too was accompanied by his saiko-komon, a slight bespectacled man by the name of Tokutaro Kudo, who, by his diminutive size, made his boss appear to be a giant.
Actually, Hiroshi was big. Although not a giant, he was almost a head taller than Hisayuki, with a broad, serious face. He was dressed as nattily as his guest, in elegant European business attire.