Having followed Yoshiaki’s plan, which involved tailing the man for a few days in Manhattan as he went from work to the A train, the hit had gone down perfectly, without anyone suspecting that it was even in process. At Yoshiaki’s suggestion, Susumu had purposefully waited until the A train had swept into the station to shoot Satoshi with the air gun hidden in the shaft of the umbrella that had been provided by Hideki Shimoda. The moment the trigger had been pulled, Yoshiaki had grabbed the man to keep him upright as his legs gave out. As the impatient passengers surged ahead to board the train, no one had noticed anything unusual as Susumu quickly relieved Satoshi of his athletic bag, his wallet, and his cell phone. The only minor surprise had been the seizure, but even that did not mar the hit. Having been warned that a short seizure was a possibility, Yoshiaki had just held Satoshi upright until his body went slack. At that point, when the last passengers were rushing for the train as the doors attempted to close, Yoshiaki merely laid the flaccid body down onto the cement platform, and he and Susumu walked calmly away.
Five minutes later the two Yakuza hit men mounted the final flight of stairs and emerged at the corner of Columbus Circle where they’d descended only a quarter-hour earlier. Both were pleased and proud that the event had gone down as well as it had. While Yoshiaki used his cell phone to call the men in the black SUV, Susumu unzipped the athletic bag and pulled out the thick licensing contract. After checking that there was nothing else of interest in the bag, he turned his attention to the document and quickly leafed through it, unsure what it was. His ability to read English was limited.
“No lab books?” Yoshiaki questioned as he waited for his call to go through. With his forefinger, he pulled open the athletic bag Susumu was still holding and looked into its depths. He was clearly disappointed that it was empty, save for a few magazines. What he was hoping to see were a couple of lab books, as their mission was both to assassinate Satoshi and to obtain the books. Yoshiaki, in particular, had become convinced the valuable lab books would be in the athletic bag because during the days they had been following Satoshi to plan the hit, Satoshi had been faithfully carrying the bag. “Just this bunch of papers,” Susumu said, holding up the multipage contract.
Yoshiaki put the phone in the crook of his neck and took the contract from 24
Susumu. While he was scanning the first page his call went through. “We’re out,”
he said simply in English. “We’re at the same subway entrance where you dropped us off.”
“We’re just across the circle. We’ll be there in a moment.”
“This is a legal contract,” Yoshiaki said, hanging up and switching back to Japanese. Even though both men had been in New York City for more than five years, their English was hardly fluent.
“Is it important?” Susumu questioned hopefully. If they weren’t going to be able to provide the lab books, Susumu wanted to supply something in their place. He was a man eager to please.
A black GMC Denali pulled over to the curb. Quickly Yoshiaki and Susumu piled into the rear seat, and as soon as the door was slammed, the vehicle angled out into the rush-hour traffic.
The man in the front passenger seat turned partially around. His name was Carlo Paparo. He was a big, muscular man with a shiny bald pate, large ears, and a pug nose. He was dressed in a black turtleneck, gray silk sport jacket, and black slacks. “Where is your researcher? Did you miss him?”
Susumu smiled. “We didn’t miss him.” Turning to Yoshiaki, he repeated his question in Japanese about the contract, but Yoshiaki shrugged his shoulders, indicating he didn’t know, as he stuffed it back into the athletic bag.
“What happened?” Carlo questioned. “It couldn’t have been much of a shakedown, as fast as you guys were.” Carlo’s orders had not been too specific.
After having been reminded how important the business relationship was between the Vaccarros and the Aizukotetsu-kai, all he had been told was to help two guys who worked for the Aizukotetsu-kai to make contact with a Japanese guy who’d recently fled Japan. The help was to drive them around the city wherever they wanted to go.
“He had a heart attack,” Yoshiaki said, wanting to end the conversation.
“Heart attack?” Carlo questioned with dubious surprise.
“That would be our guess,” Yoshiaki said as he tried to restrain Susumu’s burst of laughter. Susumu got the message and brought himself quickly under control.
Carlo glared at the two men in turn. “What the hell’s going on here? Are you guys pulling my chain or what?”
25
“What is ‘pulling my chain’?” Yoshiaki asked. He’d never heard the expression.
Carlo waved the two men off and turned back around in his seat. As he did so he shared a quick glance with his partner, Brennan Monaghan. Both Brennan and Carlo were assistants to Louie Barbera and frequently operated as a team. Louie Barbera was running the Vaccarro family operation in Queens while Paulie Cerino was still doing time at Rikers Island. Brennan was driving Carlo’s car because Carlo hated to drive in traffic. He was too impatient and always ended up in some degree of road rage to the peril of everyone, including himself.
After having picked up the two Japanese men, Brennan had turned right onto Central Park West, heading north with the intent of getting to the East Side by cutting across the park. But it wasn’t going to be fast, because the driving was stop-and-go, and more stop than go.
“All right, you two,” Carlo said suddenly, while turning back around. It was clear he had become frustrated with the situation even though he wasn’t driving. “Are we finished with your doings or what?”
Yoshiaki held up his hand: “We’re trying to decide. Give us a moment!”
“Oh, for shit’s sake!” Carlo murmured, and turned back around. He actually thought about getting the hell out of the car and walking, letting Brennan pick him up when he caught up to him. He again turned back to his two wards. “You bozos are going to have to make up your minds. Otherwise I’m just going to dump your asses here and let you find a taxi. I got things to do myself.”
“Where is Fort Lee, New Jersey?” Susumu asked. He was holding a card. On his lap was Satoshi’s open wallet.
“It’s across the river,” Carlo responded with some hesitation. With the traffic as bad as it was, one of the last places he wanted to go was Fort Lee, New Jersey, which required crossing the George Washington Bridge. At that time of day, what would normally take twenty minutes or so would probably take well over an hour, maybe as much as two, and only if they were lucky and there were no accidents.
Susumu looked at his partner and said in Japanese, “Since we have the address, we should go and see if we can find the books. The saiko-komon said he wanted the lab books for sure. After we take the books we can take all identification. No one will know.”
“We don’t know if the books will be there.”
26
“We don’t know if they’ll not be there.”
For a moment Yoshiaki stared ahead, pondering the pluses and minuses. “Okay,”
he finally said in English. “We go to Fort Lee!”
Carlo exhaled loudly and spun back around to look out the windshield. Ahead all he could see was a sea of stationary cars in both directions, even though there was a string of green lights stretched out into the distance. “I guess we go to New Jersey,” he said in a tired voice.
As Carlo had feared, it did take two hours to get to Fort Lee, and then another twenty minutes to find the appropriate street. It was short and alley-like, with several deserted redbrick one-story commercial buildings covered with graffiti, as well as a number of tiny run-down houses clad in old-fashioned off-white asbestos shingles. The sun had nearly set, and with the cloudy sky, Brennan had to turn on his headlights. The lights in the small house that matched the address in Satoshi’s wallet were also on, in contrast to those of the immediate neighbors’, which were dark and looked deserted.
“Here it is,” Brennan said. “What a palace! What’s the plan?” He was looking out his window at the overgrown yard filled with all manner of rubbish, including a rusting tricycle, a broken swing set, several bald tires, and a collection of empty beer cans. “What do you want us to do?”
Susumu opened one of the rear doors, and he and Yoshiaki slid out. Yoshiaki leaned back in. “We’ll be quick. Maybe it would be best if you turn off the headlights.”
Brennan did as he was told. The scene retreated into a misty gloom, which at least eliminated most of the trash and junk strewn about all the yards. At the same time it emphasized the dead-looking, skeletonized trees silhouetted against the pale, turbulent sky. “This place gives me the creeps,” he said.
“Ditto,” Carlo said.
The two hoodlums watched as the Japanese men hastily mounted the rickety steps leading up to a small covered porch. At that point they were mere dark silhouettes against the muted incandescent light emanating through the glazed front door. Pausing, both pulled out handguns from shoulder holsters.
“Holy shit!” Brennan voiced. “What the hell are they going to do?”
The next instant one of the intruders used the butt of his gun to smash the glass 27
in the front door, reached in, and then opened the door. In a blink of the eye, both disappeared inside with the door left swinging silently on its hinges.
Brennan turned to Carlo. “I don’t like this! This is potentially turning into something that’s a lot more than I expected. Worst case, I thought these clowns were going to beat someone up.”
“I don’t like it either,” Carlo admitted. “I don’t like being any part of this.” He glanced at his watch. “Five minutes, then we’re outta here. They can find their own way back to the city.”
Both men fidgeted, keeping their eyes on the ostensibly peaceful little house. A few minutes later there was the muted sound of a gunshot followed quickly by several others. Both men jumped at each of the reports, guessing what each meant: a person was being killed in cold blood, and they, Brennan and Carlo, were accomplices.
During the next minute there were three more shots, for a total of six, causing Brennan and Carlo’s fears and anxieties to skyrocket. The problem was that neither knew what they should do, meaning exactly what would their boss, Louie Barbera, want them to do. Would he want them to stay and risk getting caught and charged as accomplices, or should they get the hell away from there to avoid putting the whole Vaccarro organization in jeopardy? Since there was no way of knowing the answer to this question, they stayed frozen in place until Carlo suddenly had the idea of putting in an emergency call to Barbera.
With the sudden movement of getting out his phone, Carlo caused Brennan to start anew. “Jesus!” Brennan complained. “Give me some warning!”
“Sorry,” Carlo said. “I’ve got to talk to Louie. He has to know what’s going down here. This is crazy.” Intent on dialing, Carlo didn’t even feel Brennan tapping on his shoulder until Brennan increased the force to a near punch.
“They’re coming out!” Brennan said anxiously, pointing out his side window.
Carlo looked. Both Susumu and Yoshiaki were charging down the porch steps and running toward the idling Denali, carrying loaded pillowcases over their shoulders. Carlo flipped his phone shut just as the men reached the vehicle and piled into the backseat. Without anyone speaking, Brennan put the SUV into gear and pulled away. He waited almost a block to turn on the headlights.
Brennan and Carlo didn’t speak for about ten minutes, whereas the two Japanese men had been carrying on a progressively animated conversation in Japanese. It was obvious they were not pleased with their accomplishments inside the house. By the time they reached the George Washington Bridge, Carlo 28
had relaxed enough to talk.
“Did something go wrong?” Carlo questioned. He made it a point to sound disinterested.
“We were looking for some lab books, which we didn’t find,” Yoshiaki said.
“I’m sorry,” Carlo responded. “We heard what sounded like a number of gunshots. Were they?”
“Yes. There were six people in the house, more than we expected.”
Carlo and Brennan exchanged worried glances. Their intuitions told them that Louie was going to be surprised, and it wasn’t going to be in a good way.
1
MARCH 25, 2010
THURSDAY, 5:25 a.m.
L
aurie Montgomery rolled over onto her side to look at her alarm clock. It wasn’t quite five-thirty in the morning, and the alarm wouldn’t go off for almost another half-hour. Under normal circumstances she would have been pleased to be able to roll over and go back to sleep. All her life she’d been an incurable night person who couldn’t fall asleep and had even more difficulty waking up in the morning.
But this was not going to be a normal day. It was going to be the first day back to work after an unexpectedly long maternity leave of nearly twenty months.
After glancing briefly at her husband, Jack Stapleton, who was sound asleep, Laurie gently slid her legs out from beneath the down comforter and placed her bare feet on the ice-cold wood floor. She thought briefly about changing her mind and climbing back under the warm covers. But she resisted and instead clutched Jack’s T-shirt more tightly around her midsection and ran silently into the bathroom. The problem was that there was no way she’d be able to go back to sleep, as her mind was already going a mile a minute. She felt great turmoil stemming from her ambivalence about going back to work. Her main worry was for her just-over-one-and-a-half-year-old son, John Junior, and whether it was appropriate to leave him with a nanny for what would often be long days. But there was also a personal issue concerning a real fear of competence after such an unexpectedly long break: Would she still be able to handle her job as a medical examiner at what she thought was the most prestigious ME office in the country, if not the world?
29
Laurie had been working at OCME, or Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, in the city of New York for almost two decades. Self-confidence had always been an issue with her, going back to her teenage years. When she’d first started work at OCME, she’d worried about her competence at such an extremely challenging and demanding position, and she’d not overcome the concern for years, far past the time that her colleagues had dealt with similar fears. Forensic pathology was a field where book learning was not enough. Intuition played a major role in being good at practicing it, and intuition came from constant experience. Every day a good forensic pathologist was confronted with something he or she had never seen before.