The Killing Hands

by P. D. Martin

  “Sure. J-U-N S-A-I-T-O.”

  “Don’t suppose you know if that’s a Japanese name?”

  “Now you’re testing me, honey.”

  I smile. “Okay, thanks again, Latoya.”

  “I’ll let you know when I hear something from Singapore, Japan or South Korea. I’ve already asked them to get back to me on both names—Jo Kume and Jun Saito.”

  “Thanks.” Once I’ve hung up, I switch my BlackBerry to Silent and try to slip as quietly as possible back into the meeting. Sandy Peters, the head of Counterintelligence, is talking when I enter. I take my seat and place my notebook back on the table.

  But the meeting’s disrupted again when Pasha Petrov suddenly says, “Does that say Jun Saito?” He points at the large letters scrawled diagonally across my notebook.

  Peters stops midsentence and everyone looks at Petrov and me.

  “Um, yeah,” I say hesitantly. “Turns out Interpol had a match on the fingerprints of our Little Tokyo victim, but under the name Jun Saito.”

  “Holy crap!”

  “What’s the problem, Petrov?” Brady asks.

  Petrov puts his face in his hands. “Are you sure this is your Little Tokyo victim? That this guy’s dead?”

  “It’s a computerized fingerprint match against Interpol’s database verified by a specialist. It must be right.”

  He rubs his hands in his face. “It’s going to be war.”

  “Spill it, Petrov,” Brady demands. “And so it makes sense for the rest of us.”

  Petrov drops his hands on the table and looks at Brady. “You’ve got to know your organized crime history.” He sighs. “If this is who I think it is…” He shakes his head. “Some idiot’s killed the son and only living male heir of Hisayuki Saito.”

  “We need a bit more enlightening, Petrov,” Brady says.

  “Hisayuki Saito was born in Korea in 1923, when it was occupied by the Japanese. He started off as a street hood, but he took advantage of the Japanese occupation and joined the Yakuza. Later he moved to Japan and became the first Korean Yakuza godfather. The guy only retired a few years ago, and died last year. Nowadays there’s a whole Korean subculture in the Yakuza, and Saito was the founding father. So, if the Jun Saito who’s lying in the morgue was the only remaining son of Hisayuki Saito, this is a big hit. Especially given Jun Saito’s been missing for fifteen years, presumed dead.”

  “Hit?” I say. Despite the staging elements, it hadn’t occurred to me that this could be a hit. I’m suddenly struck by the dispassion I felt from the killer. He got no real joy from it, it was a job. And no wonder he had the presence of mind to take out the light, and so easily. Besides, staging a crime scene to look like something it’s not is characteristic behavior of a contract killer. “You’re talking a professional hit man.”

  “Whoever did this would have wanted someone outside of their organization to execute Saito. So yeah, they would have called in a professional.”

  “He wasn’t shot,” I say, referring to the fact that most professional assassins shoot their victims, unless they’re trying to make the death look like an accident. “The coroner can’t work out what sort of weapon was used.” I voice these details, but immediately want to race back to my desk and enter the throat wound into ViCAP, on its own this time and with a cross-reference of organized crime.

  “We need to talk about the MO after this meeting. I may recognize it,” Petrov says.

  “Sure.”

  Petrov continues. “The most surprising thing about this murder is that by all accounts Jun Saito wasn’t active in the Yakuza anymore. He disappeared fifteen years ago. Some people said he rejected his family’s past and went straight, starting a new life. But most felt he was at the bottom of the Sea of Japan.”

  Back to my romanticized version of the vic’s past—he did straighten up. “Are there pictures of this guy on file? Have you seen him?”

  “Only a few shots. Mostly from fifteen to twenty years ago.” He shakes his head. “I guess I should have recognized him.”

  “People change a lot in fifteen years, Petrov,” Brady says.

  “Plus Grove said he’d had a nose job,” I add. “That’d alter his appearance, too.”

  Petrov shrugs, still taking it a little personally. “So you said yesterday that he was seen entering a suspected meth lab in Long Beach, run by the Asian Boyz?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What the heck’s he doing there? After all this time?” Petrov rubs his face again. “What a mess. I hate to think of the repercussions.”

  “Payback?” Brady says.

  “I’d say so.” Petrov looks at me. “Saturday night wasn’t it?”

  “Early hours Sunday morning. The body was discovered just before five.”

  “And it’s Wednesday afternoon now. They usually retaliate fast, which means they either don’t know he’s dead yet or they haven’t identified who was responsible.”

  “By they you mean the Yakuza?”

  “That’s another problem. Who is a big question. Could be an internal hit. Someone from within the Yakuza. Or maybe the Japanese Yakuza is sending a message about Korean involvement in their organization.” He pauses. “Or it could be another group entirely, one of the Yakuza’s rivals, like one of the Chinese triads. Although I haven’t heard of any turf problems.” He shrugs. “Damn, it could even be the Russians.”

  “And how is the Yakuza tied to the Asian Boyz?” I ask.

  “Lots of organized crime operations use gangs and gang members for some of their work. The Yakuza has ties with a few Asian gangs, so it’s probably just a case of the Asian Boyz being right for the job. And they’ve got an arm down in Long Beach near the port.”

  “So the Yakuza could be the client and the Asian Boyz the freelancer.”

  “Exactly. And the Yakuza could be the buyer or distributor in Japan and other Asian countries if they are exporting.”

  After a few seconds, Brady’s voice cuts through the short silence. “Right.” He stands up, his voice commanding. “What do you need, Petrov? Who’s going to have jurisdiction?”

  Another interesting question…LAPD, the LASD, the DEA, the ATF and the FBI. Then there’s the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Gang Unit, which works with all agencies across the city to apprehend and prosecute gang criminals.

  “I’ll let L.A.’s gang law-enforcement personnel across all agencies and task forces know about this development immediately. Maybe one of our informants can point us in the right direction.” He stops, obviously considering his options. “I’d like to make sure this is interagency, so we should run it out of the Safe Streets program, and specifically the Los Angeles Gang Impact Team. We’ll consult with the City Attorney’s Gang Unit, but I definitely want federal charges, not felony.” Petrov rubs his jaw. “If we run it out of Safe Streets we’ll be taking the lead, but I’ll make sure all parties are in the loop.”

  Brady nods his approval. All the political t’s and i’s should be crossed and dotted with Petrov’s approach. “Don’t forget the CLEAR Program, too.”

  Petrov nods.

  The CLEAR Program, which stands for Community Law Enforcement and Recovery, is another interagency task force in L.A., another player. The US is a big country, with a correspondingly large number of different agencies and task forces, which can make life much more complicated than law enforcement in Australia. It was overwhelming at first, but I think I’m getting the hang of it now.

  Petrov looks at me. “We’ll need to all work together on this.”

  “Sure,” I reply. “What about the US Attorney’s Office?” Getting a federal prosecutor involved early will help ensure the case is as watertight as possible.

  “We have representatives from the US Attorney’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office on the Gang Impact Team.”

  “Great.” I remember Ramos. “What about Detective Ramos? Will he still be on this?”

  Petrov glances at Brady, who nods, before saying, “If his captain okay
s it he should stay put. Anderson, you’ll work with Petrov and Ramos on this—full-time. It’s a good opportunity for you to get a firsthand insight into L.A.’s gangs and organized crime.”

  I agree with Brady—it’s a great opportunity for professional development in an area I’ll clearly need in the future. Although it’s certainly throwing me in the deep end. While homicide isn’t that uncommon within the ranks of organized crime or gangs, targeting a high-level member, or in this case a significant figure in the history of the Yakuza, sends out warning signals to law enforcement. It’s not surprising that Petrov is worried about retaliation—this could turn into a bloodbath.

  Eight

  Petrov and I grab a small meeting room and I take him through the case file in detail, paying particular attention to last night’s developments.

  “Detective Ramos organized a team to process the hotel room and so far the biggest find was a laptop. A computer tech is looking at it today, having already found records of payments to a US bank account.”

  Petrov raises an eyebrow. “Any name on the account?”

  “Not yet. Ramos was hoping to either get a name from the computer today, or organize a warrant for the bank to release the account holder’s name to us.” I look at my watch. “I’m surprised I haven’t heard back from him yet.”

  “You wanna call him now?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t had a chance to tell him our vic’s real name yet, either.” I feel bad about sitting on this knowledge for twenty minutes without updating Ramos, but since I found out, it’s been a whirlwind of revelations. I dial Ramos’s number on the meeting-room phone and he picks up after one ring.

  “I’ve got news…big news,” I say.

  “Shoot.”

  “Turns out Jo Kume is an alias for Jun Saito.”

  Before I get to follow the ID up with the even bigger news, he says, “Alias?”

  “Yup. I’ve got Special Agent Pasha Petrov with me and I’ve started taking him through the case notes in detail.” I press the speakerphone button. “You’re on speakerphone now. It turns out Jun Saito was high up in the Tokyo Yakuza fifteen years ago, but then disappeared.”

  Ramos whistles down the phone. “And I thought it was big with drugs, the DEA and the Asian Boyz involved. This is huge.”

  “You better believe it,” Petrov says and then introduces himself.

  “I was just taking Agent Petrov through what we’ve got so far from the hotel room. Any updates?”

  “You got my message?”

  “No.” But a glance at my BlackBerry tells me I’ve had one missed call—it’s still on Silent.

  “We’ve got a name for that bank account. Monthly payments of two thousand dollars were being paid to a Mee Kim.”

  “Going back how far?”

  “Just over a year.”

  “You got anything on this Mee Kim yet, Detective Ramos?” Petrov asks.

  “Uh-huh. And guess where she lives, Anderson?”

  “Monterey Park.” I fill in the blank. That’s the reason Saito chose a hotel there. “Maybe he was trying to find his blackmailer, put a stop to it.”

  “Perhaps he did find the blackmailer.” Petrov taps his notebook with his pen.

  “I gotta say, Mee Kim doesn’t read like the blackmailing type,” Ramos says. “Although maybe the Bureau’s database will bring back more info on Mee Kim than ours.”

  “What have you found so far?” I flick the ring on my little finger, wondering what Saito could have been blackmailed over.

  “Mee Kim is a twenty-six-year-old high-school teacher. No criminal record and a spotless driving record, too.” Ramos pauses. “And she looks kinda sweet to me.”

  Ramos has the benefit of looking at a driver’s license photo.

  “We’ll see what we can find on her this end, get a full file together.” Petrov takes charge. “In the meantime, I think we should pay Mee Kim a visit.”

  “You read my mind,” Ramos says.

  Petrov glances at his watch. “Let’s meet at her home at five-thirty. What’s the address, Ramos?”

  “Twenty forty-one Bleakwood Avenue, Monterey Park.”

  Petrov and I both write the address down. When Petrov’s finished he looks up and leans toward the phone. “We’ll need to present all this information to the L.A. Gang Impact Team ASAP. I’ll set it up for 8:00 a.m. tomorrow and let you guys brief the team. Ramos, we’d like to keep you and Anderson on the case full-time, but we’ve got other specialized resources available if your captain wants to reassign you or anyone else from your team.”

  “I want in. But I don’t know about the others. You think this could be a long-running case?”

  “There are going to be lots of layers, so yeah, it’s possible. Maybe even probable.”

  Ramos sighs. “I’ll see what I can do. My boss might give me four weeks, but probably no one else. LAPD’s got specialized officers for this.” He seems disappointed by the prospect of having to hand the case over. “So where’s this 8:00 a.m. meeting?”

  “We’ll hold it here, at the L.A. Gang Impact Team headquarters on level fifteen.”

  “You guys won’t have far to walk.” He gives a little chuckle.

  “No.” I use a small pause in the conversation to hit Ramos up. “So, you wanna do the briefing, Ramos?” Generally I brief on an offender profile, so given I don’t have a profile yet, handballing the job to Ramos isn’t out of order.

  “Sure.”

  “We’ve still gotta figure out why Saito came to L.A.,” Petrov says. “Has he been secretly involved in the Yakuza all this time and needed to come to the States to sort out his L.A. enterprise? Or was it a one-off deal? Or is blackmail the reason behind his visit? Did someone force him out of hiding?”

  I flash back to my vision of Saito in his car—presumably in Singapore. Someone called him and whatever they told him made him take action, made him get on a plane to L.A. But his reactions fit both possibilities; he could have found out something was going wrong in L.A. in terms of the drug business, something he felt he had to handle personally, or he could have been told something that required him to reacquaint himself with his old life. Maybe the blackmailer was upping the ante and Saito decided he’d had enough.

  “Hopefully Mee Kim can give us some answers,” I say.

  “Yes.” Petrov changes the topic. “What airline did he come in on?”

  “Singapore Airlines.”

  Petrov scribbles in his notebook. “Let’s call the airline and see when Saito booked that flight. It might be useful down the track to know when he organized the trip.”

  “I’ll do that.” I write the task down on my new to-do list, underneath searching ViCAP for homicides with similar MOs. “I can give them a quick call before we head off to see Mee Kim. See if they’ll give us flight information without a warrant. Although I also want to do a ViCAP search—maybe our hit man’s struck in the US before.”

  “I don’t recognize the MO or cause of death from any of the organized crime files, but that’s not to say you won’t find something in another state, or something going back before my time.”

  “True.” This case is different from most homicides, in which most of our focus is on who committed the crime. This time we have to work out how the Yakuza and Asian Boyz are involved, to see if Saito’s murder is about more than the death of one individual. The possibilities are endless.

  “Okay,” says Petrov, “let’s get this moving. I’ll come by your desk to collect you in ten minutes.” He nods to me. “And we’ll meet you at Mee Kim’s address, Detective Ramos.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “That’ll only give me time for the call to the airline or the ViCAP search.” I’m not complaining, just making sure Petrov realizes the repercussions.

  “I’ll get one of my people to call Singapore Airlines,” Ramos offers. “May as well make them work for their lousy pay grade today, given it’ll probably be their last day on the case once I speak to Captain Booth.”

&nbs
p; “Great, thanks, Ramos.” The day’s disappearing, and fast. Any help is appreciated.

  When Petrov and I pull up at 2041 Bleakwood Avenue, Ramos’s car is already parked out front. One side of Bleakwood Avenue is single-fronted homes, and the other side is a baseball field, part of the East Los Angeles College.

  Ramos gets out of his car and walks toward us and I notice his holster is unclipped. He’s ready for anything. “Any luck with ViCAP?” he asks as I’m opening my car door.

  “I need more time, but on the surface nothing like our vic’s throat wound came up. I’m going to do a couple more searches tomorrow, using other variables.”

  “Such as?”

  “Hit man, Asian victim, organized crime…” With several search terms, hopefully the results won’t be too unwieldy.

  Ramos nods, then looks at the house, which is a white-brick single-fronted number, with a perfectly manicured but small garden. “No movement, but I’ve only been here for five minutes.”

  The grass is cut extremely short, and a few shrubs, pruned into perfect globes or rectangles, line a garden bed that runs along the front of the house. A narrow concrete entrance path divides the lawn in two, and ends at the one small step that leads onto the house’s tiny porch. A small palm plant, the only unpruned plant in sight, fans from the left-hand side of the path onto the porch.

  Petrov joins me and Ramos on the curb, and takes his gun out. “It’s not a known Yakuza or other organized crime residence. Or gang, for that matter.”

  I look at him, curious as to how he knows this.

  “While you were doing your ViCAP search I was checking out this address.” He nods toward the house. “I got our IT people to check it in their databases. Nothing sinister…that we know of.”

  Despite the lack of a known criminal element, Petrov does have his gun out. At this stage, Kim’s a big unknown. She could be the mistress of a key figure in organized crime who has somehow stayed off the radar until today.

  I draw my weapon, too, but both Petrov and I hold our guns loosely at our sides. Ramos leaves his gun in its holster, but rests his right hand on its butt as we climb the one step to the porch. We ring the doorbell.