Dead End Deal (22 page)

The guard pointed to a door with a sign in Korean characters, then stepped away, eyeing him with suspicion. Grimacing, Jon gasped. The guard grabbed him by the collar and tugged him toward the door. Using the momentum of the tug, Jon lunged, wrapped his right arm around his shoulder and, putting all his weight into it, drove him hard into the opposite wall, heard a grunt and gasp of air leaving his lungs and the guard went down onto his knees, but not before Jon had the gun out and the barrel against his head. He pointed at the door. “Open it.”

Eyes wide, the guard nodded.

“Inside.”

The guard stepped in. Jon shut the door and flipped the latch, started trotting down the hall, dumped the gun in a trashcan and kept going, frantically trying to reconstruct the route to the basement. But he’d been in a mental fog when Park brought him up to this floor so he had no idea which way to go. He continued along the hall looking for an exit sign or elevator. The hall dead ended into another. Jon turned left and ended up face-to-face with a uniformed cop coming the other direction. Without missing a beat Jon asked, “Where’s the elevator?”

The cop stopped, sized him up, replied in Korean.

Jon gave him a friendly tap to the shoulder. “That’s okay. I’ll find it,” and kept moving, fighting the urge to run, but knowing that would only draw attention. At last, an elevator. He punched the down button.
Come on, come on
.

Footsteps approached. He froze, face forward, eyes on the crack between the elevator doors. The footsteps stopped. He could feel the presence of someone next to him.
Have to do something
. Jon turned to a lanky, weathered face in horn rims and charcoal gray suit. Jon nodded. “Morning.”

The man returned the nod just as the elevator dinged. The elevator door clattered open and Jon nodded for the man to enter first. Two uniformed cops already inside stepped aside to make room. Sweating, Jon followed him in and checked the panel of buttons. The ones for floors one and minus one, which he assumed to be a basement, already glowed. He faced forward and waited for alarms to start ringing or shouts. The doors closed and the cage started down. The man asked, “You American?”

Mind racing for an excuse, Jon turned to him, hand extended. “Jim Laing, Seattle Police. Sorry, didn’t know if you spoke English.”

They shook hands. “Yung, Chen-Wa, Seoul Metropolitan.” He eyed Jon a moment. “Your badge, where is it?”

Jon stared back at him in a bewildered moment, thinking,
game over
. Felt all three sets of eyes now drilling into him now and sweat streaming from his scalp. It clicked . . . should be wearing an ID badge, probably with VISITOR on it. Jon looked down at his lapel, felt along his neck, checked his blazer pockets. “I . . . don’t . . . know . . . It was here . . .” He probed his neck again in case they issued lanyard rather than clip-on tags.

“Who you with?”

Shit! Gave the only name he could think of: “Park. Detective Park.”

The cage jerked to a stop and the doors slid open, exposing a marble and glass lobby with a ceiling of tinted glass and armed uniformed guards manning a pair of metal detectors similar to those used in airports. Jon’s stomach knotted.
Now what?
He stepped out and asked Yung, “There a Starbucks nearby?”

Yung scratched his jaw contemplatively. “Out the front door, go right. Two blocks down.”

Jon smiled, “Thanks.”

33

J
ON HURRIED
toward the first door he saw as if late for an appointment, brushed past the first, then the second guard, then was pushing through the heavy glass doors into heat and smog. Just in case Yung was watching, he turned right and picked up pace. How soon before Park discovered his escape? Surely, by now, he knew. Why no alarm?

Soon as he thought he was out of sight of the lobby, he started trotting, scanning the area dead ahead for a subway station or taxi, saw nothing, so just kept on moving. A half block later he noticed a cab stand across the street. The traffic light changed, giving him a break in traffic. He broke into a flat-out run, crossed over and headed for the first cab in line, threw open the door, jumped into the back seat.

“Airport! Hurry!” He stabbed a finger at the street to make sure the cabbie understood, slammed the door, glanced back the way he came.

The cabbie, arm draped across the top of the seat, turned to him. “Kimpo, Incheon?”

“Incheon.” Jon struggled to keep panic from his voice.
Shit!
“C’mon, let’s go, I’m in a hurry.”

Jon slid down in the seat and dialed United Airlines on his cell. From this compromised angle he could see trucks and buses passing in the opposite direction. Bad time of day for trying to leave Seoul. Traffic was already beginning to coalesce into the usual quagmire.

A female answered in Korean.

“United Airlines?” Jon asked.

“United Airlines,” she confirmed in English. “May I help you?”

“What’s the next flight from Incheon to the United States?”

“What city?”

“Doesn’t matter . . . LA, San Francisco, whatever.”

“Hold, please.”

He became aware of a siren approaching from behind, slid left to peek between the seats at the rearview mirror but couldn’t see the cabby’s eyes. If he pulled over . . .

As the siren grew louder the driver edged the cab to the curb and slowed to a crawl. Jon moved across the seat to the curb-side door, figuring if they got stopped by the cops, he’d run for it.

“Sir,” the telephone voice said.

“Yes.”

A police car, blue lights flashing, shot past, not even slowing. Jon craned his neck and watched it disappear into traffic.

“—flight leaving for San Francisco in sixty minutes. Are you at the airport now?”

“No, but I’m heading there.”

“If you intend to take this flight you’ll need to check in at least thirty minutes before departure. Don’t forget you need to deal with Security.”

Jon gave her his name, asked her to hold a seat, thanked her and disconnected, leaned forward and prodded the driver’s shoulder. “Hurry!”

The driver nodded, then, to assure Jon he understood, turned into the outside lane, cut off another taxi, and gunned it while the other driver leaned on his horn.

Time raced on with minutes slicing to a fraction of normal, the illusion magnified by repeatedly checking the minute hand of his watch as they hit one obstacle, then another. He could feel his heart beating anxiously in the center of his chest: making any hope of catching the flight impossible at their present rate of non-progress. Forty-seven minutes until the 747 shut its doors. Fucking Seoul rush-hour traffic . . . No way. But, he assured himself, there was always another flight out. He’d take anything. How soon before Park notified the airlines? And what would the airlines do if he tried to board a flight?

They hit a red light.

And waited.

Just as the light changed to green the flatbed truck directly in front stalled. The truck driver goosed the engine but flooded it. Next came the sound of the truck’s starter grinding away without the engine catching. Horns honked. Angry shouts. The cabby shot a glance over his left shoulder, yelled something Korean to the truck driver, cranked the wheel left, peeled rubber into the oncoming lane, blew through the intersection just as the light was going red again.

In spite of himself, Jon checked his watch. Forty-five minutes to go and still not clear of the downtown core of congestion. No way in hell they’d make it now. He called United once more and asked for the next flight, found one to Denver departing one hour after the San Francisco flight. The next one after that was his Seattle flight, as if it made any difference. Right now he just wanted to be airborne before airport security closed the door to him. If they hadn’t already.

Finally, they hit the six-lane east/west highway, but the three lanes out of Seoul clotted into one mass of bumper-to-bumper steel, exhaust fumes, and frayed tempers. Engine idling, they waited for traffic to start again.

And waited.

Forty minutes until the Denver flight.

Jon prayed to the god of air travel.

T
HE TAXI BRUSHED
the curb in front of the international terminal ten minutes before the flight’s scheduled Denver departure. Jon threw enough
won
into the front seat to cover the trip plus tip, bailed, and started running for the door.

A large display in the main departure lobby showed the flight on schedule, the words BOARDING NOW flashing next to a gate number. Five minutes to make it. He decided to shortcut the ticket counter for the departure gate, hoping somehow to get through the security check-points without a boarding pass and buy a ticket at the gate.

Ahead, an impossibly long line of travelers were clearing the security body scanners one by one. He cut into the front of the line and spewed profuse apologies to the irate businessman he bumped. But instead of waving him into the scanner, the security cop, a dour-faced airport cop, stepped in front of the entrance and raised his hand. “Passport.”

Jon glanced around as if the officer was addressing someone else, which was ridiculous, because the cop was staring right at him. Jon swallowed. “I lost it. Look, here’s my picture ID and driver’s license.” He handed items to him.

The cop held up a hand. “No good. Passport please.”

Jon grappled frantically for a convincing story to allow him through security. “Officer, please. This is an emergency. My flight’s leaving. I can’t afford to miss it. Here, check out my ID.” Once more offering it.

The stern faced cop motioned him to move away from blocking other passengers. “Step away from the line.”

Jon didn’t move. “Please, listen to me.” And glanced through the scanner at the people streaming toward the departure gates and, for one insane moment, considered making a break of it. Could he become just one more traveler in the crowd?

“Step away,” the officer repeated, this time harsher.

Fifty feet down the hall, an unmarked door in the wall flew open and two police with Kevlar body armor materialized, heading straight toward him. One put a handheld radio to his lips as the other popped the strap on his sidearm.

“Step away from the line!”

Jon took off running the way he’d come.

34

M
ETAL SQUEALED AGAINST
metal along with the hiss of escaping gas as the packed commuter train decelerated to a stop in a brightly lit subway station, one Jon hoped was in, or near, Yeonhee’s neighborhood. He’d never seen her apartment, nor knew its location, but for some vague reason believed it was either in or near the business district. With another belch of gas the doors slid open and he was swept out of the train in a crush of passengers, allowing them to stream around him and across the platform to two banks of up escalators. He sidestepped, freeing himself from the crowd momentum, moved next to the white tile wall for a look at the schematic map of the subway system and downtown Seoul. The long platform reeked of stale body odor, stale urine, and grease. The map consisted entirely of Korean characters, so it was of absolutely no help.

The flux of commuters quickly petered out, the slower ones finally vanished up the escalators, leaving a heavy echoing silence in their wake. Except for two passengers on the platform across the tracks, this level of the station was deserted, making him feel completely alone and helpless in spite of narrowly escaping the airport police.

After one final unsuccessful glance at the map for a hint of his location he looked at the escalators at each end of the platform, trying to decide which way to go, but even the small green exit signs were in Korean. At least he could read the digits on the clock suspended from the ceiling. It was now almost an hour since the flight departed for San Francisco. God, he wished he were on it. His hatred for Park grew darker. But he couldn’t dwell on that now, so he headed for the escalator to his right.

The first flight dumped him into a cavernous station of white tile walls, maps, and ticket machines, with determined commuters hurrying toward various escalators and stairs. This had to be the main level for this stop. With nothing to guide him, he randomly chose one of several exits and started up and was soon deposited outside on a sidewalk of a major street. He moved away from heavy pedestrian traffic to the front window of what looked like a bank, checked his cell’s bar graph, and was ecstatic to see full strength. He dialed Wayne.

“Where are you?”

Having Wayne’s voice so loud and clear was comforting, almost as if he had his friend there with him. “Oh man, am I glad to hear your voice. I’m in deep shit and need help.”

“Are you on the flight or what?”

“No, that’s the point, I’m still in Seoul.” He quickly summarized the arrest and Park’s insistence he sign a confession. Then explained how he escaped from the police station—something which in retrospect seemed too easy. And that, in itself, made him suspicious Park had set it up.

“I don’t get it,” Wayne said. “Why would he do that?”

“I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think he had enough evidence to nail me for the murders. But now, he certainly has enough evidence to get me on escaping custody, or whatever the charge would be. There’s no question I did that.”

“Jesus, Jon, get out of there.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do?” He realized he forgot to include the part about Park confiscating his passport, so he explained that too.

Wayne asked, “What about Fisher, can he do anything to help with this?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t talked to him yet.”

“Well, hell, what are you calling me for? Do it now. He’s going to be more help than I can.”

Jon checked the battery icon on the Droid. Only about half a charge remained. “Don’t worry, got his cell on speed dial. But before we hang up, I need you to do something for me.”

“Absolutely. What?”

“Call around, find the best criminal defense lawyer in town, and contact him.”

“I assume you’re talking Seattle, not Seoul, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m on it. But just so I’m clear about what I’m doing, what good’s a lawyer going to do you from here?”