The operator said, "I'm sorry, there is no answer from the car."
"Okay," I said. "Do you have a forwarding number for Captain Connor?"
A pause. "He's not on our active roster."
"I know that. But did he leave a number?"
"I don't have anything, Lieutenant."
"I'm trying to find him."
"Wait a minute." She put me on hold. I swore.
Elaine stood in the front hallway. She was waiting to go.
The operator came back on. "Lieutenant? Captain Ellis says that Captain Connor has gone."
"Gone?"
"He was here a while ago, but he's gone now."
"You mean he was downtown?"
"Yes, but he's gone now. I don't have a number for him. I'm sorry."
I hung up. What the hell was Connor doing downtown?
Elaine was still standing in the front hallway. "Lieutenant?"
I said, "Just a minute, Elaine."
"Lieutenant, I have a— "
"I said, just a minute."
I started pacing. I didn't know what to do. I was suddenly overwhelmed with fear. They had killed Eddie for the tape. They wouldn't hesitate to kill anybody else. I looked at my daughter, watching television with her thumb in her mouth. I said to Elaine, "Where's your car?"
"In the garage."
"Okay. Look. I want you to take Michelle and I want you to go— "
The phone rang. I grabbed it, hoping it was Connor. "Hello."
"Moshi moshi. Connor-san desu ka?"
"He's not here," I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I cursed myself. But it was too late, the damage was done.
"Very good, Lieutenant," the voice said, heavily accented. "You have what we want, don't you?"
I said, "I don't know what you are talking about."
"I think you do, Lieutenant."
I could hear a faint hiss on the line. The call was coming from a car phone. They could be anywhere.
They could be right outside.
Damn!
I said, "Who is this?"
But I heard only a dial tone.
Elaine said, "What is it, Lieutenant?"
I was running to the window. I saw three cars double-parked in the street below. Five men getting out of them, dark silhouettes in the night.
☼
I tried to stay calm. "Elaine," I said. "I want you to take Michelle, and both of you go into my bedroom. Get under the bed. I want you to stay under there and be very quiet, no matter what happens. Do you understand?"
"No, Daddy!"
"Do it now, Elaine."
"No, Daddy! I want to watch Sleeping Beauty."
"You can watch it later." I had taken out my gun and was checking the clip. Elaine's eyes were wide.
She took Michelle. "Come on, honey."
Michelle squirmed in her arms, protesting. "No, Daddy!"
"Michelle."
She went silent, shocked at my tone. Elaine carried her into the bedroom. I loaded another clip, and put it in my jacket pocket.
I turned off the lights in the bedroom, and in Michelle's room. I looked at her crib, and the covers with little elephants sewn into it. I turned off the lights in the kitchen.
I went back into the living room. The TV was still playing. The wicked witch was instructing her raven to find Sleeping Beauty. "You are my last hope, my pet, do not fail me," she said to the bird. The bird flew away.
I stayed low. I moved toward the door. The phone rang again. I crawled back to answer it.
"Hello."
"Kōhai." It was Connor's voice. I heard the static hiss of the car phone.
I said, "Where are you?"
"You have the tape?"
"Yes, I have the tape. Where are you?"
"At the airport."
"Well, get here. Right away. And call for backup! Jesus!"
I heard a sound on the landing, outside my door. A soft sound, like footsteps.
I hung up the phone. I was sweating.
Christ.
If Connor was at the airport, he was twenty minutes away from me. Maybe more.
Maybe more.
I was going to have to handle this on my own.
I watched the door, listening intently. But I didn't hear anything else on the landing outside.
From the bedroom, I heard my daughter say, "I want Sleeping Beauty. I want Daddy," I heard Elaine whispering to her. Michelle whimpered.
Then it was quiet.
The phone rang again.
"Lieutenant," the heavily accented voice said, "there is no need for backups."
Christ, they were listening to the car phone.
"We want no harm, Lieutenant. We want only one thing. Will you be so kind, to bring the tape out to us?"
"I have the tape," I said.
"We know."
I said, "You can have it."
"Good. It will be better."
I knew I was on my own. I was thinking fast. My sole idea was: Get them away from here. Get them away from my daughter.
"But not here," I said.
There was a knock at the front door. Quick, insistent rapping.
Damn!
I could feel events closing in around me. Things were happening too fast. I was crouched down on the floor, with the phone pulled down from the table above. Trying to stay below the windows.
The knock came again.
I said into the phone, "You can have the tape. But first call off your boys."
"Say again, please?"
Christ, a fucking language problem!
"Call your men away. Get them out in the street. I want to see."
"Lieutenant, we must have tape!"
"I know that," I said. "I'll give it to you." While I talked, I kept my eyes on the door. I saw the knob turning. Someone was trying to open the front door. Slowly, quietly. Then the knob was released. Something white slid under the door.
A business card.
"Lieutenant, please cooperate."
I crawled forward and picked up the card. It said: Jonathan Connor, Captain, Los Angeles Police Department.
Then I heard a whisper from the other side.
"Kōhai."
I knew it was a trick. Connor said he was at the airport, so it had to be a trick—
"Perhaps I can be of assistance, kōhai."
Those were the words he had used before, at the start of the case. I was confused to hear them.
"Open the fucking door, kōhai."
It was Connor. I reached up and opened the door. He slipped into the room, bent over. He was dragging something blue: a Kevlar vest. I said, "I thought you were— "
He shook his head, and whispered, "Knew they must be here. Had to be. I've been waiting in the car in the alley behind the house. How many are there in front?"
"I think, five. Maybe more."
He nodded.
The accented voice on the phone said, "Lieutenant? You are there? Lieutenant?"
I held the receiver away from my ear so Connor could listen while I talked. "I'm here," I said.
On the TV, there was a loud witch's cackle.
"Lieutenant, I hear something with you."
"It's just Sleeping Beauty," I said.
"What? Sreeping Booty?" the voice said, puzzled. "What is this?"
"Television," I said. "It's the television."
Now I heard whispers at the other end of the line. The rush of a car going by on the street. It reminded me that the men were in an exposed position outside. Standing there on a residential street lined with apartment buildings on both sides. Lots of windows. People that might look out at any time. Or people walking by. The men would have to move quickly.
Perhaps they already were.
Connor was tugging at my jacket. Signaling me to undress. I slid out of my coat as I spoke into the phone.
"All right," I said. "What do you want me to do?"
"You bring tape to us."
I looked at Connor. He nodded. Yes.
"All right," I said. "But first get your people back."
"I am sorry?"
Connor made a fist. His face turned to a snarl. He wanted me to be angry. He covered the phone and whispered in my ear. A Japanese phrase.
"Pay attention!" I said. "Yoku kike!"
At the other end, there was a grunt. Surprise.
"Wakatta. The men come away. And now, you come, Lieutenant."
"Okay," I said. "I'm coming."
I hung up the phone.
Connor whispered, "Thirty seconds," and disappeared out the front door. I was still buttoning up my shirt around the vest. Kevlar is bulky and hot. Immediately I started to sweat.
I waited thirty seconds, staring at the face of my watch. Watching the hand go around. And then I went outside.
Someone had turned the lights out in the hallway. I tripped over a body. I got to my feet, and looked at a slender Asian face. It was just a kid, surprisingly young. A teenager. He was unconscious, breathing shallowly.
I moved slowly down the stairs.
There wasn't anybody on the second-floor landing. I kept going down. I heard canned laughter from a television, behind one of the doors on the second floor. A voice said, "So tell us, where did you go on this first date?"
I continued down to the ground floor. The front door of the apartment building was glass. I looked out and saw only parked cars, and a hedge. A short section of lawn in front of the building. The men and the cars were somewhere off to the left.
I waited. I took a breath. My heart was pounding. I didn't want to go out there, but all I could think was to get them away from my daughter. To move the action away from my—
I stepped out into the night.
The air was cold on my sweating face and neck.
I took two steps forward.
Now I could see the men. They stood about ten meters away, beside their cars. I counted four men. One of them waved to me, beckoning me over. I hesitated.
Where were the others?
I couldn't see anybody except the men by the cars. They waved again, beckoning me. I started toward them when suddenly a heavy thumping blow from behind knocked me flat onto my face on the wet grass.
It was a moment before I realized what had happened.
I had been shot in the back.
And then the gunfire erupted all around me. Automatic weapons. The street was lit up like lightning from the gunfire. The sound echoed off the apartment buildings on both sides of the street. Glass was shattering. I heard people shouting all around me. More gunfire. I heard the sound of ignitions, cars roaring down the street past me. Almost immediately there was the sound of police sirens and tires squealing, and the glare of searchlights. I stayed where I was, face down on the grass. I felt like I was there for about an hour. Then I realized that the shouts now were all in English.
Finally someone came and crouched over me and said, "Don't move, Lieutenant. Let me look first." I recognized Connor's voice. His hand touched my back, probing. Then he said, "Can you turn over, Lieutenant?"
I turned over.
Standing in the harsh light of the searchlights, Connor looked down at me. "They didn't penetrate," he said. "But you're going to have a hell of a sore back tomorrow."
He helped me to my feet.
I looked back to see the man who had shot me. But there was nobody there: just a few shell casings, glinting dull yellow in the green grass, by the front door.
THIRD DAY
☼
The headline read VIETNAMESE GANG VIOLENCE ERUPTS ON WESTSIDE. The story reported that Peter Smith, an L.A.P.D. Special Services officer, was the target of a vicious grudge attack by an Orange County gang known as the Bitch Killers. Lieutenant Smith had been shot twice before backup police units arrived on the scene to disperse the attacking youths. None of the suspects had been apprehended alive. But two had been killed in the shooting.
I read the papers in the bathtub, soaking my aching back. I had two large, ugly bruises on either side of my spine. It hurt to breathe.
I had sent Michelle to stay with my mother in San Diego for the weekend, until things were sorted out. Elaine had driven her down, late last night.
I continued reading.
According to the story, the Bitch Killers was thought to be the same gang that had walked up to a black two-year-old boy, Rodney Howard, and shot the child in the head while he was playing on his tricycle in the front yard of his Inglewood home a week earlier. That incident was rumored to be an initiation into the gang, and the viciousness of it had touched off a furor about whether the L.A.P.D. was able to handle gang violence in southern California.
There were a lot of reporters outside my door again, but I wasn't talking to any of them. The phone rang constantly, but I let the answering machine take it. I just sat in the tub, and tried to decide what to do.
In the middle of the morning I called Ken Shubik at the Times.
"I wondered when you'd check in," he said. "You must be pleased."
"About what?"
"About being alive," Ken said. "These kids are murder."
"You mean the Vietnamese kids last night?" I said. "They spoke Japanese."
"No."
"Yes, Ken."
"We didn't get that story right?"
"Not really."
"That explains it," he said.
"Explains what?"
"That was the Weasel's story. And the Weasel is in bad odor today. There's even talk of firing him. Nobody can figure it out, but something's happening around here," he said. "Somebody high in editorial all of a sudden has a bug up his ass about Japan. Anyway, we're starting a series investigating Japanese corporations in America."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Of course you'd never know it from today's paper. You see the business section?"
"No, why?"
"Darley-Higgins announced the sale of MicroCon to Akai. It's on page four of the business section. Two-centimeter story."
"That's it?"
"Not worth any more, I guess. Just another American company sold to the Japanese. I checked. Since 1987, there have been a hundred and eighty American high-tech and electronics companies bought by the Japanese. It's not news any more."
"But the paper is starting to investigate?"
"That's the word. It won't be easy, because all the emotional indicators are down. The balance of payments with Japan is dropping. Of course it only looks better because they don't export so many cars to us now. They make them here. And they've farmed out production to the little dragons, so the deficits appear in their columns, not Japan's. They've stepped up purchases of oranges and timber, to make things look better. Basically, they treat us as an under-developed country. They import our raw materials. But they don't buy our finished goods. They say we don't make anything they want."
"Maybe we don't, Ken."
"Tell it to the judge." He sighed. "But I don't know if the public gives a damn. That's the question. Even about the taxes."
I was feeling a little dull. "Taxes?"
"We're doing a big series on taxes. The government is finally noticing that Japanese corporations do a lot of business here, but they don't pay much tax in America. Some of them pay none, which is ridiculous. They control their profits by overpricing the Japanese subcomponents that their American assembly plants import. It's outrageous, but of course, the American government has never been too swift about penalizing Japan before. And the Japanese spend half a billion a year in Washington, to keep everybody calmed down."
"But you're going to do a tax story?"
"Yeah. And we're looking at Nakamoto. My sources keep telling me Nakamoto's going to get hit with a price-fixing suit. Price-fixing is the name of the game for Japanese companies. I pulled a list of who's settled lawsuits. Nintendo in 1991, price-fixing games. Mitsubishi that year, price-fixing TVs. Panasonic in 1989. Minolta in 1987. And you know that's just the tip of the iceberg."
"Then it's good you're doing the story," I said.
He co
ughed. "You want to go on record? About the Vietnamese who speak Japanese?"
"No," I said.
"We're all in this together," he said.
"I don't think it would do any good," I said.
I had lunch with Connor at a sushi bar in Culver City. As we were pulling up, someone was placing a CLOSED sign in the window. He saw Connor, and flipped it to say OPEN.
"They know me here," Connor said.
"You mean they like you?"
"It's hard to know about that."
"They want your business?"
"No," Connor said. "Probably Hiroshi would prefer to close. It won't be profitable for him to keep his people on, just for two gaijin customers. But I come here often. He is honoring the relationship. It doesn't really have to do with business or liking."
We got out of the car.
"Americans don't understand," he said. "Because the Japanese system is fundamentally different."
"Yeah, well, I think they're starting to understand," I said. I told him Ken Shubik's story about price-fixing.
Connor sighed. "It's a cheap shot to say the Japanese are dishonest. They're not — but they play by different rules. Americans just don't get it."
"That's fine," I said. "But price-fixing is illegal."
"In America," he said. "Yes. But it's normal procedure in Japan. Remember, kōhai: fundamentally different. Collusive agreements are the way things are done. The Nomura stock scandal showed that. Americans get moralistic about collusion, instead of just seeing it as a different way of doing business. Which is all it is."
We went into the sushi bar. There was a lot of bowing and greeting. Connor spoke Japanese and we sat at the bar. We didn't order.
I said, "Aren't we going to order?"
"No," Connor said. "It would be offensive. Hiroshi will decide for us what we would like."
So we sat at the bar and Hiroshi brought us dishes. I watched him cutting fish.
The phone rang. From the far end of the sushi bar, a man said, "Connor-san, onna no hito ga matteru to ittemashita yo."
"Dōmo," Connor said, nodding. He turned to me, and pushed back from the bar. "Guess we won't eat, after all. Time for us to go to our next appointment. You brought the tape with you?"
Michael Crichton - Rising Sun Page 32
