The Manuscript (17 page)

“For now, let me just call you again in a few hours to confirm he’s okay. I’m working on getting a new phone. My old one’s on the blink,” Michael said, feeling lame even as the words left his mouth.

“I should know something by one o’clock on Koshi. Call me then at this number – or better yet, on my cell,” Ken instructed before giving Michael the number.

“Will do. Thanks, man, I owe you a big one. And I can guarantee Jim isn’t a jumper. This is the second murder in this string,” Michael emphasized.

“If you’re right, I have a feeling he won’t be the last. Watch your back. I’ll talk to you in a few,” Ken said, and hung up.

This was far worse than anything Michael could have predicted. Jim was just hired hands who knew absolutely nothing about anything. If someone was taking out even the peripheral players, they were going scorched earth and it was a one hundred percent certainty Michael and Koshi were targets. He just hoped Ken could reach him in time or that Koshi was asleep at his cousin’s after a late night drinking session with the family.

Somehow, Michael found that unlikely. It would be nice, but so would winning the lottery. Hope was a poor investment strategy and an even poorer survival tactic. And Michael wasn’t feeling particularly lucky at the moment.

So what to do? People were dying, so his decision to go to ground had been a sound one, but what now? He couldn’t stay holed up in his friend’s condo indefinitely. Michael suddenly had an overwhelming urge to move, to get out. He long ago had learned to go with these impulses so he began assembling his gear for departure. But where was he going? Where could you run when the entire machine was looking for you?

New Jersey seemed like as good a place as any to start. That way, if Koshi was still in one piece, they could hook up and formulate a strategy. If he wasn’t, then he was further from New York, which was where the search was localized at this point. They had no reason to believe he had left town so the natural play was to stake out his apartment and known haunts – and wait. Because targets inevitably made mistakes.

But they hadn’t banked on Michael being their quarry. That slim edge would disappear soon enough, but he needed to use every advantage in his grasp while he could. And right now, he had first-mover advantage.

He was going to need it.

Chapter 10

Sid’s day had started out badly and continued downhill from there. He was now getting flack from up the clandestine ladder; from several members of sub-committees that were critical in funding, as well as in looking the other way and not asking too many questions. These were politicians he really couldn’t afford to piss off too royally, and whose careers couldn’t take exposure of any truly dirty laundry.

About the only thing they knew for certain at this point was that Michael Derrigan was likely at least somewhat in the loop – skilled, and hence dangerous. He was a civilian but, after studying his file, Sid understood that he was no ordinary civilian. The SEALs were as elite as the military’s special forces got and you had to be the best of the best to even make it into the training program, much less spend years operating as one. And Michael had been a SEAL for five years before deciding on moving into the private sector, assigned on a number of sensitive and violent excursions into enemy territory. He’d never taken a bullet but had fired his fair share. He’d been discharged with honors.

Obviously, he’d figured out that there was a considerable danger element involved with the surveillance of the literary agent but they now knew nothing more than that he suspected clandestine agency involvement in the bugging, and that he had warned his computer technician to leave town. They also knew that he’d chosen to disappear, but had no idea where, or for how long. And worst of all, they had no inkling of how much he knew, or whether he’d ever even seen the manuscript, let alone read the contents or taken possession of it. The interrogation of Koshi had yielded that he was alarmed and knew there was foul play involved in Abe’s demise. He’d been tipped off by his eavesdropping technician that the hardware was military grade, and that the agent had told him that the manuscript was dangerous to important interests, some of which were governmental in nature. Beyond that, they were no closer to closing the leak than they had been forty-eight hours ago, which was becoming a serious problem.

Sid sipped a cup of hot tea and went over their options yet again. They’d have to continue an active search for Michael, but barring a slip-up or a miracle, it could be days or weeks before he surfaced. He’d be sanctioned whenever that was, because even if he only knew what Abe had told him that was still too much. But what if he managed to avoid detection and simply disappeared? People did that every day. Would it really be so bad if he just evaporated into the great cosmic ocean and was never heard from again?

He contemplated the bookshelf in his dark-wood study, taking quiet satisfaction in the number of rare tomes he’d collected over a lifetime of indulging his passion for books. Sid had a trove of first editions and signed copies, including multiple presidential biographies signed by the great men themselves. Dickens, Poe, Steinbeck, Keats, if there was a notable figure in literature from the last two hundred years, he’d acquired their most precious work.

At this point, he couldn’t see any alternative but to continue on the course they’d begun and wait for a break. It was frustrating, but the truth was that if one man decided to make himself scarce, and knew the right steps to take, it was a big world out there into which he could disappear.

A large part of Sid hoped he’d never hear the name Michael Derrigan again. He suspected that Derrigan was probably wishing for much the same thing, at least if he had any sense at all. Better to live with secrets than die fighting to expose them.

********

The uniformed officers double parked outside Koshi’s building and leaned on his buzzer. The front door was locked, so there wasn’t a lot they could do but knock and ring the doorbell. A window slid open on the second floor, ten yards to the right of the door. A grizzled face peered out over the fire escape.

“Whadda you guys want? What's the big emergency?” he called down to them, obviously annoyed at the sound from them pounding on the glass entrance door.

“You Koshi Yamaguchi?” one of the cops asked, wiping his face with a cloth handkerchief.

“What, do I look like a Yamaguchi? What are you smoking?” The old man cackled himself into a phlegmy coughing fit.

“Awright, buddy, so can ya help us out here? Maybe open tha door for us?” the other cop asked.

“Fer New York’s finest? You betcha. I’ll buzz you in, an then what happens from there’s your business,” the old man said.

The window slid shut. A minute went by, and then the jarring sound of the electric door opener sounded, allowing the two policemen to enter the small dilapidated foyer.

“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.