The District Office of the 35th Congressional District
5th Floor, Room 500.
Now she knew where the man in the black BMW had gone and it wasn’t to any private investigator on the third floor.
The elevator on the right started to move. She looked to the numbers above it. It was coming down from the fifth floor. She stood transfixed as it descended to the fourth floor, then the third. Any second it was going to open and she was going to be caught. She cast her eyes around the lobby, saw the reception desk and ran toward it.
She heard a bell tingle as she dove behind the desk. The floor was cold and hard. She took baby breaths that sounded jack-hammer loud to her ears, but she knew nobody else could hear.
A whoosh of sound hit her as the doors opened. Not loud, she told herself, not really.
“Everything is on track, except for your loose end.” It was a radio voice, smooth and cultured.
“I’m gonna take care of it.” A hard voice. Maggie wished she could see their faces, but no way was she going to risk popping her head up for a quick look.
“Soon, I trust.” The radio voice again. Maggie shivered, because all of a sudden she recognized it, knew who it belonged to.
“You can count on me-” The hard voice was swallowed up with the sound of the front doors opening and a car passing by outside.
The doors closed, a sonic boom to her heart, then silence. She breathed a sigh of relief, cut it short when she heard someone charging down the stairwell behind her. Horrified, she reached behind herself for the gun. It wasn’t there. She’d left it in the car and any second someone was going to come bursting out of the stairwell and she’d be the first thing he saw, because although she’d been hidden from the elevators, she was in clear sight of the stairwell.
Nowhere to go. No time.
The door burst open.
He stopped, breathing hard, caught her with a hard glare.
“What are you doing here?” It was Gordon.
“I was worried?” Maggie pushed herself to her feet.
“You should have stayed in the car.”
“You took so long.”
“I was waiting outside that PI’s office. After a few minutes I figured out I made a mistake.”
“A few minutes, more like fifteen.” Maggie was whispering, but frantic.
“Not so loud. I heard the elevator, thought I could catch them,” Gordon said. Then, “Did you get a look at them?”
“No.”
“Damn!” Now Gordon was loud.
“But I know who it was, not the guy in the BMW, but the one he came to see.”
“How?” Gordon said.
“Fifth floor.” Maggie pointed up at the legend.
“What?” Gordon followed her finger. “The Congressional Office?”
“Yeah,” Maggie said, “the Congressional Office. You know, where the Honorable J.L. Nishikawa works when he’s in the district.”
“Johnny Nishikawa got the medal of honor in Vietnam,” Gordon said. “ He’s honest to a fault, beyond reproach. You’ve gotta be mistaken, that can’t be where the BMW guy went.”
“He was talking to someone when he went out. I heard his voice. It was him, I know, I’ve heard him enough times on television.”
“The only thing that proves is the congressman was in his office tonight. The guy in the BMW could still be up there.”
“No, the other guy sounded like the man who followed me into the liquor store.”
“You sure?”
“I bet the Beemer’s gone,” Maggie said.
“Let’s see.” Gordon crossed the lobby, pushed his way through the double doors, looked down the street. The BMW was gone.
“I forgot to tell you something.” Maggie passed him, got in his Ford.
He got in after her, slid behind the wheel. “What?”
She told him about Ichiro Yamamoto who used to work for Congressman Nishikawa and who went to the police with a story about conflict diamonds and weapons. She told him about the man Striker, who used to be Nishikawa’s administrative assistant and now worked for Nakano Construction, which used Yakuza money. And she told him that Ichiro Yamamoto was in that convenience store when Frankie Fujimori was shot to death.
“That was a lot to leave out,” he said when she’d finished.
Chapter Sixteen
Jesus wept, he’d been shot. His head was ringing. Horace couldn’t hear. He forced himself out of the fetal position, struggled to sit, back against the wall. He had to move, any second the place was gonna to be crawling with cops. Pain wracked his side. He put a hand inside his jacket, pulled it out. Wet, sticky. Blood.
Using the wall as support, he fought his way to his feet. Standing, he took a few breaths. The breathing hurt, but he didn’t taste blood, didn’t think he’d been lung shot. He moved along the wall to the kitchen. The room was spinning. The pain was intense. He left a bloody trail across the carpet from the bathroom to the dining room, then across the white kitchen tile.
Bloody prints on the knob as he opened the back door. More prints on the rail. Thank God for the gloves. Blood on the stairs as he stumbled down the steps. Blood on the side of the garage as he scooted around it. Blood on the wall. Blood on the driveway. So much blood.
He climbed into the van, expecting any second to be bathed in light, covered in guns as hands wrested him to the ground. But it didn’t happen. Lights came on. But they were lighting up the front of the house. No one out back. He fumbled the key into the ignition.
He was barely conscious as he drove down Lakewood Boulevard toward the motel. Blood ran down his face, getting in his eyes. He couldn’t understand that, he’d been shot in the side. He pulled off the surgical gloves, ran a hand against the wet on his forehead. It came back sticky.
A head wound and it was throwing blood like a squall does rain. He’d been shot twice. How could he have been so dumb? The house felt alive because it was. He’d never even considered the bathroom. And that woman had been there all along, with that gun, waiting. Was she clairvoyant or something?
He passed the turn to the airport, turned into the motel parking lot, parked in front of his room, grateful the place was doing lousy business. In the room, he hustled to the bath, stood before the mirror. He bit his lip to keep from passing out. He looked like he’d lost a fight with a Rottweiler or something worse, an alligator. He ran water in the sink, wetted a washcloth and went to work.
He’d heard head wounds bleed worse than they are. Now he knew it was true. It was only a graze, but it took the better part of an hour to clean up and stop the flow of blood. He should have stitches, but hospitals and doctors had to report gunshot wounds to the cops. He’d suffer enough for ten men before he’d allow that. He’d been busted before, barely escaped jail. That’s all he wanted of that. The thought of it sent cold blades knifing up his spine.
He still had the wound in his side to worry about. He should get the bomber jacket off and give it a look, but it would have to wait. Besides, it didn’t hurt too much now. He left the bathroom, started toward the phone, took two steps, got light-headed, the room started spinning. He turned, grabbed onto the door jamb, held himself up. The nausea passed in a few seconds. He took slow steps to the bed, sat and eased his way to the phone on the nightstand.
He punched nine, then Striker’s number.
No answer.
Horace clenched his teeth, stood and went back to the bathroom, where he pulled off the jacket. He didn’t want to get blood all over the motel room, too. The bloody shirt came after the jacket. He tossed it in the wastebasket. Then he took the still damp washcloth and dabbed at the wound. The bleeding had stopped. Another graze, but it hurt like hell.
His lucky night.
“Not,” he grumbled. He’d been shot, no luck there. But it could have been so much worse. Maybe he was lucky after all. Lucky the broad was such a lousy shot.
Convinced he didn’t have to go to the hospital, he picked up the bomber jacket from the floor, turned it inside out and scrubbed as much of the blood off the lining as he could with hand soap and the washcloth. Then he hung it over the shower railing. He loved that jacket.