DIRTY BLOND

by Mark Terry

“Age?”

  “Maybe early thirties. Could be a little younger, but I don’t think so. Maybe six-feet. Short black hair. Oh, and he said he’d been shot.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, well, when we saw him in the hallway, you know, he wasn’t wearing a shirt. And he had a bandage on his shoulder, kind of on his neck. And we teased him about it and he said, totally serious, he’d been shot. We figured he was kidding. Is he really a hired killer? I mean, we … never mind.”

  “Are you and your friend still here in the city?”

  “Yeah, one more night.”

  “What’s this guy’s name?”

  “He said Zo.”

  “Zee oh?”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you remember his room number?”

  “Well, it’s on the tenth floor. I don’t remember the exact number. We’re down the hall from him.”

  “Do not go near his room.”

  “Well, no, but are you sure? I mean, is he this guy?”

  “Maybe. And if he is, he’s very, very dangerous. My partner and I are coming to talk to you. We’ll be there in thirty minutes or less. My name is Lieutenant Beach.”

  “I really—“

  “Your friend’s name is Joanne?”

  “Jolene. But how—“

  “We would prefer not to meet you at your room. We’ll meet you at the American Kraft Kitchen. Know it?”

  “Yeah, but—“

  “Your number?”

  “But—“

  “Now.”

  She gave it. Hanging up the phone, Sandy said, “Come on, Orville. Let’s go. Keep up the good work guys. When extra hands show up, tell ‘em what to do. I’ll check in after we follow up on this.”

  47

  Derek

  After dropping Guy off at his apartment, Derek had swung by his hotel and dropped a magazine into his backup gun, a Sig Sauer P229 Combat, and attached the clip to his belt. Keeping an eye out far more attentively than before, thinking about Anne Sakura commenting on his operational awareness, he stopped at a deli and picked up a couple bottles of water and a corned beef on rye.

  He then returned to the Makatashi Building. Sliding into a parking spot at a diagonal from the main entrance, he climbed out of the car. Derek walked three times around the building, noting the entrances and visible security.

  Guy had asked him what he was going to do next, and he’d said, “Think.”

  The PI had smirked. Well, that was pretty much Guy’s default expression. “Don’t forget to wash your hands afterwards.”

  “Get out of the car, Guy.”

  “No, really. Thinking?”

  “You should try it sometime.”

  And that was exactly was he was going to do now. Think. If the Ronin had plans to kill Makatashi, he’d have done this exact thing, studying the building, the ways in and out, the obvious security. He would have wanted to get some sense of Makatashi’s habits, which Derek gathered would not make for an easy target. For an international executive, he lived a little bit like a monk.

  There weren’t many people going into the building because it was seven o’clock in the evening on a nice summer day. And he’d probably missed the period when most people left work. Unlike some cities he’d been in, the downtown Chicago area had an exodus at about five o’clock as everyone tried to catch the train. Then an hour or so later there would be another flood, then it seemed to settle down.

  A couple cars came up out of the underground parking garage. He wondered if they were visiting business people and rental cars, or employees who lived in the ‘burbs and wanted more flexible hours than the El might give them.

  His phone buzzed. Beach. Wanting to know where he was. He texted back that he was busy. He thought about how the Ronin had picked him up when he was going to the El train, and then again when he went to Plymouth.

  It seemed clear enough that the Ronin was trying to kill him and Beach. And twice he’d been lucky.

  He didn’t think he’d be lucky a third time.

  Frowning, he texted Sakura, but she didn’t text back. He tried calling and it went to voicemail. He said, “It’s Stillwater. Call me back. At the very least to let me know the Ronin didn’t get you.”

  A limousine pulled out of the parking garage. He thought, “Visiting executive.”

  As an expert on biological and chemical weapons and terrorism, Derek sort of admired the way the Ronin had improvised and taken advantage of the Chemist’s mass murders. If he’d been in the same situation, he might have done the same thing.

  Despite his areas of expertise, Derek had been a Green Beret, and if there was one thing Army Special Forces taught you about killing, it was to be direct and keep it simple.

  Botulin toxin had a certain elegance to it, but knocking on any of these victims’ front doors and putting a bullet in their heads would have been far easier and probably more reliable.

  There was very little evidence any of them would have expected someone wanted to murder them.

  The beauty of it had been that no one had suspected the motive for quite a long time.

  Taking another line of thought: once he and Beach started the case, whoever hired Ronin—and Ronin was hired help, what little Derek found in his file indicated he was a contract killer—had panicked and hired him to take out the two of them.

  Which was stupid.

  It was not the actions of a particularly rational person.

  Although you could argue that hiring an assassin wasn’t the most rational thing to do, or sane thing, anyway. But if someone was ponying up the money to manipulate a major business deal, they were thinking somewhat rationally.

  But going after two law enforcement agents, one local, one federal, wasn’t. Because their deaths would be investigated, and one of the first things that would be asked was: What were they working on?

  Was it possible that the Ronin was going after them for some other reason than the copycat investigation?

  Another limousine pulled out of the underground garage.

  Derek thought about the security he and Beach had passed through on their visit to Makatashi and how difficult it was to actually get into the building.

  He pulled out the phone and called Anne Sakura again. No answer. When it kicked over to voicemail, he said, “It’s Derek. I’ve got an idea. Call me.”

  48

  Sandy

  The hotel security officer was a Hispanic woman in her forties, olive skin, black hair pulled back into a no-nonsense bun, wire-rimmed glasses. I stood on the right side of the door, Orville on the left, guns drawn. Two uniformed officers stood off to the side. Jillian Juarez, the head of security, handed the master card key to me.

  I held up three fingers.

  After speaking with the two young ladies and getting positive identification, Orville and I talked to hotel security. After a brief phone call to Captain O’Day insisting she’d send some backup, we decided to go in.

  Two fingers.

  I slipped the key card in.

  The door clinked.

  One.

  The light turned green.

  I slammed the handle and dived low into the room, gun leading the way.

  Empty.

  Of course.

  After making sure the bathroom and sitting area was also empty, I dismissed the two plainclothes officers.

  “Taking photographs, Orville?”

  He was using his phone to shoot video. “Yes. Not that there’s anything to see.”

  No luggage. No clothes. Nothing. He’d bugged out.

  In the bathroom there were bloody bandages in the waste basket. “Well,” I said. “We can get DNA run, confirm he’s the same guy that tried to shoot Mom.”

  “Video’s running, Sandy,” Orville said.

  “Good. You see anything that warrants calling in the crime scene guys?”

 
; “Not yet.”

  “Kind of anticlimactic.”

  “He’s on the run, Sandy. That’s a good thing.”

  “True enough.”

  49

  Ronin

  Finally blocks from his abandoned rental car, the Ronin slowed his pace and blended into the pedestrian traffic. He needed to get back to his hotel. This had all gone to hell and he was pissed off about it.

  He had never had a project fall apart like this one.

  Mission creep, he thought.

  It had started out with a clean enough directive—kill Itsunori Sato, Bill Maeda, Bill Stonewell and Ichiro Makatashi.

  Kill them directly or indirectly, make it look like an accident. But don’t make it seem like they were connected.

  And then the Chemist started his mass murder spree and a copycat seemed like the easiest thing to pull off, which it was, except for Ichiro Makatashi.

  It had done the trick. Clearly, based on their communications, the client was delighted. Nobody was putting the deaths together. They were all just victims of coincidence and bad luck.

  His plan for Ichiro Makatashi was well on its way, would likely have been accomplished today, if the client hadn’t panicked and insisted he take Beach and Stillwater out of the game.

  He flagged down a cab, slipping into the back with his briefcase that held the sniper rifle and telling the driver he wanted to go to the Chicago History Museum. It was an oddly industrial-looking building, brick and glass. Once he was dropped off there, he headed for the entrance until the cab pulled away, then walked to the closest bus station and waited for a bus. He didn’t care which one, and he caught the first one that came. He got off three stops later, caught another bus back, then a cab to a block from his hotel.

  Being paranoid about anyone observing him, he took the elevator to the twelfth floor, then the stairs back to the tenth. The hallway was empty.

  Hand gripping his pistol, he let himself into the room. Packed his bags, quickly wiped the room down, and headed out. Caught a cab out to the airport where he used an alternate ID and credit card to check himself into a Quality Inn.

  He considered the sniper rifle. If he were caught with it, the case against him would be made. They would be able to get bullets from the walls of the Plymouth. The slugs might be too damaged for complete ballistics, but did he want to gamble on it?

  Too bad.

  Turning on the TV, he caught a local news report. After a short piece on—surprise!—political corruption in Chicago, they showed a piece on the public shooting at the Plymouth. There was blurry footage of the Ronin sprinting from the scene.

  Then there was an interview with Stillwater, followed by a reasonably clear photograph of Ronin, followed by a phone number to call if you’d seen him.

  Well shit.

  He wondered where Stillwater had gotten the photograph.

  It was time to consider abandoning the job.

  Something he’d only done once before, in the Philippines, when the government’s National Bureau of Investigation had gotten a tip they apparently received from Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst, who had his client, the head of an agrichemicals conglomerate, under surveillance.

  Pulling up his laptop, he logged into the message center. There were two forwarded queries about possible gigs. One in Japan, another in France. The Japan gig was by a former client who went by Eagle, but who he knew was a high-level Yakuza. He responded to that one indicating if it was time sensitive, he wasn’t available.

  The one from France was new and he would have to conduct some due diligence to try and identify the client to make sure it wasn’t some sort of set-up. He decided to ignore it for the time being.

  The other message was from the client who called himself “Client Services.”

  James Brewster, Jr.

  Brewster had originally contacted him via an anonymous Hotmail account, indicating that his friend in Japan, Michiko, had suggested he might be able to do business.

  Michiko was, for the most part, Ronin’s agent in Japan, a division head in the Public Security Intelligence Agency. From time to time Michiko hired Ronin for work at the behest of the Japanese government. Occasionally he referred work to him.

  Through a series of cutouts, Ronin had contacted Michiko, who had finally revealed the identity of this potential client: the son of a successful business leader.

  The money had appeared in his offshore accounts and he had gone to work.

  Now “Client Services” was back.

  Need to meet. In Chicago. Need to discuss project.

  Ronin stared at the nine words.

  This was very rare and extremely undesirable.

  A face-to-face meeting would put both of them at extremely high risk.

  He responded with: Project proceeding. Expect completion tomorrow.

  Meanwhile, he started dismantling the sniper rifle.

  Only fifteen minutes later: I insist.

  Ronin smiled.

  He gave a time and location and logged off.

  With various parts of the rifle cleaned, he went out for a walk, tossing individual parts into various Dumpsters at the nearby motels and restaurants.

  Then he entered the Hertz office to arrange for a rental car.

  50

  Derek

  He saw Sakura appear in the entrance to the Makatashi Building. She’d changed clothes, now wearing a navy blue suit, knee-length skirt, white blouse, running shoes. Every inch the Chicago businesswoman ready for a fast walk to the L station. Right down to the brown leather laptop bag over her shoulder.

  She scanned the street, cut across traffic, walking quickly toward him, slipping into the passenger seat.

  “What?” she said.

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Watching you. You’re on our security cameras.”

  “That’s all?” Derek asked.

  “No. I’ve been briefing Mr. Makatashi.”

  They sat in silence for a moment. Derek said, “Do you think the Ronin got away unscathed?”

  “Looked like he was running just fine. What happened to Guy? He okay?”

  “Cops took his Howitzer away for a while. Mine too.”

  “You have a backup?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. What do you want?”

  “When you saw Ronin push me in front of a train, who were you following?”

  “Ronin.”

  “How’d you pick him up?”

  “The same way we saw you sitting out here. The building has a very good surveillance system and I also tapped into a couple of the adjoining security cameras. I was monitoring them. This Asian guy was sitting in a car in various spots around the building, or walking the perimeter of the building, way too often. So I followed him.”

  “Seems sloppy.”

  “If I hadn’t expanded the security profile and been looking for something, I don’t think I would have seen him. But I was, and I did.”

  Derek mulled that over.

  “You said you thought you knew how he’ll get into the building.”

  Derek told her.

  She thought that over. “We’ve got security there, cameras. It’s not that easy.”

  “It’s inside the first perimeter. Short of parachuting onto the top of the building or landing a helicopter up there, it’s the best and easiest way to get inside the actual structure.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll double up security. And by the way, there’s a helicopter pad up there, so if he wanted to charter a chopper and have someone drop him off, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. Or even parachute down, if he had the skill. But I still think he wouldn’t choose either of those. Too elaborate. Too high risk.”

  “I want to be inside the building.”

  She looked at him steadily, expressionless. “Mr. Makatashi already has security.”


  “Yeah, you. I’d prefer to be in the parking garage.”

  “I’ll talk to him about it.”

  “Sooner than later.”

  She let herself out of the car. “Don’t go away.”

  51

  Sandy

  Orville and Jillian Juarez, the hotel’s head of security, and I were in the hotel’s security office, going over security footage. We’d started about thirty minutes after the shooting at the Plymouth and picked up the Ronin leaving the hotel about forty-five minutes later through the front entrance.

  “How much coverage outside?” I asked.

  Juarez played with the keyboard and brought up two camera angles. We followed Ronin. He definitely left the hotel and took a right out of the main entrance. He didn’t pick up a cab at the cab stand.

  “Any further?”

  “One more,” Juarez said, and we watched Ronin walk down North Stetson Avenue and disappear from sight.

  We thanked her and walked out to stand in front of the entrance.

  “That smells good,” Orville said. Across the street was Stetsons Modern Steak & Sushi.

  “We need more manpower,” I said. It did smell good, though.

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Hitting the security cameras at every business here to see if we can track where he went.”

  Orville puffed up his cheeks, exhaling noisily. “Better call the captain.”

  “Let’s try these first couple businesses first.”

  “I’ll start on the other side of the service drive,” Orville said.

  “Don’t stop and eat dinner, Orv.”

  Waddling across the street, he waved a hand. “I know, I know.”

  A long and tiring hour later, I was about ready to give up. I’d had no luck and neither had Orville. Then Orv texted me: Got him.

  It was a security video for a florist, of all things. And Orville brought up the video of the Ronin hailing a cab. It was a Yellow Cab and Orville had caught the license plate.

  “Go for it,” I said.

  While Orville talked to the dispatcher at Yellow, I called Stillwater. To my surprise, he picked up.

  “What have you been doing?” I demanded.