Two of the men raced toward her, guns clamped in their gloved fists. Jill began backing away, but a pistol whipped out and caught her on the jaw, snapping her head around and knocking her to the floor. She was unconscious before her diamond pendant necklace settled in her cleavage.
The man who had struck her peeled off his black ski mask. It was Takahiro Ohnishi’s assistant, Kenji.
“Tie her,” he ordered.
He searched the house until he found the room Jill used as an office. Two walls were lined with expensive video equipment, the type used for high-quality editing work. More than likely her piece on Ohnishi was here. Kenji rifled the filing cabinet and desk with professional adroitness, but turned up nothing.
In disgust he went back out to the living room. On a small geometric lucite table near the front door rested a thick manila envelope. He tore it open and a videocassette slid into his hand. He returned to the office and slid the tape into a VCR.
Jill Tzu’s story ran for the first and only time. As Kenji had suspected, it documented his employer’s known violations of civil employment laws and Ohnishi’s support of Honolulu Mayor David Takamora’s gubernatorial election bid for the fall. Jill had also managed to slip in several references to the escalating violence surrounding the campaign and the possibility that Ohnishi was financing that as well. Popping the tape from the VCR, Kenji slid it into the inside pocket of his dark windbreaker.
He returned to the bedroom where Jill was laid across the bed, hands cuffed behind her and a gag stuffed into her lipsticked mouth. She was still unconscious.
Nevertheless, Kenji whispered into her ear, “An excellent piece of reporting, Miss Tzu. You are correct on all charges. Mr. Ohnishi is financing the violence in Honolulu. Though not for much longer, I assure you.” He turned to his henchmen. “Let’s go.”
They bundled Jill into the bedspread and carried her from her home as if she were a rolled-up carpet. The cicadas paused as the party ducked through the bushes toward their hidden vehicle.
Twenty miles away, thunderous applause swept across the Honolulu Convention Center as Mayor David Takamora took the stage, sending a palpable compression wave echoing through the cavernous hall. Twelve thousand people filled the room, many waving placards in support of Honolulu’s controversial mayor. The air was charged with the energy of the massed throng as their hero raised his arms over his head in recognition of the crowd’s adoration.
Under the glare of the television crew’s klieg lights, Takamora appeared much more handsome than he did in person. The lights and makeup hid the pocks of adolescent acne on his face and darkened the thin strands of silver that wove through his thick hair. He held his body erect and confident, showing off a lean stomach that was nothing more than a girdle and a continual holding of his breath. The effort would inevitably cause severe back pain after the speech.
Such small hoaxes can be forgiven in most men in their fifties if they did not go deeper than the surface. In Takamora’s case, it would take more than a little makeup to hide the flaws in his personality and morals.
Pathologically ambitious, Takamora had turned to the darker side of politics to gain his current office. From the very beginning of his career as a board member of the city’s building commission, he had made it clear to any developer who cared to listen that he would almost joyfully take bribes to help a project gain quick approval.
He amassed several hundred thousand dollars in just a few years and used that money as a war chest to battle for the mayor’s office. Some said that he cut so many deals to get on the ballot that he kept a knife on his desk rather than a pen. He waged one of the ugliest campaigns for mayor of any American city in history. His main opponent, a councilwoman of excellent standing, withdrew from the race when her daughter was brutally raped after leaving a Honolulu nightclub. Takamora didn’t know if the rape was coincidence or the act of an overzealous assistant.
Now he stood poised to go far beyond his own ambition. He was the last of the speakers at this pro-Referendum 324 rally, and the crowd was already roused to a fever pitch.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Takamora said, quieting the crowd with hand gestures. He spoke in Japanese. “Ladies and gentlemen, a little over a year ago you gave me a mandate when you elected me to help this city prosper, to create new jobs and security for our way of life. Since then I have done everything in my power to make this happen. But I’ve found myself limited by the very office with which you entrusted me.
“While we’ve been able to attract Japanese companies to our city, state and federal regulators have stalled our efforts. When Ohnishi Heavy Industries wanted to build a computer assembly plant in Honolulu, the government in Washington refused to allow import permits for the machinery needed to set up the plant. When I wanted to privatize our police force, with the blessing of you, the voters, the Supreme Court called that an unconstitutional act because it might be construed as a private militia.
“Now I want to see our tax dollars stay here on Hawaii rather than disappear into the federal cesspit, and I’m being called a secessionist. Referendum 324 does not equal secession, it means parity. Our state is now wholly self-sufficient. We trade more with Japan than we do with California, so why shouldn’t we be entitled to keep the tax revenue from our own labor? I no longer see any benefits from Washington, just inept meddling. I see us helping to prop up a system that has simply gotten away from itself, and I say: Don’t take us with you.
“While the mainland sinks into a bottomless pit of crime and drug abuse, where drive-by shootings no longer make the news, where teenage pregnancy accounts for thirty percent of the children born, where welfare assistance has turned into a crutch for those too lazy to work, we have prospered.
“Do you think it fair we should pay for their corruption?”
The frenzied crowd shouted a defiant, “No!”
“Is it right that we must pay for their excesses?”
Again, with one hate-filled voice the crowd screamed, “No!”
“Last night, the vice president of the United States branded me a secessionist.” The crowd was transmuting into a mindless mob, barely kept in check by Takamora’s voice. “I say, Don’t tempt me.”
Takamora’s last words were spoken in a low hiss, then he ducked from the stage, wearing the adulation of the crowd like a cloak. An aide handed him a bottle of beer and a towel. He took a quick swig and wiped the greasy makeup from his face.
“Listen to them,” he said to the assembled aides. “They’re ready for anything.”
As Takamora leaned into the sound of the crowd beyond the maroon curtain, an aide slid a ringing cellular phone from his pocket, listened for an instant, then handed it to Takamora.
“Yes.”
“Congratulations, David, a rousing speech.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ohnishi, I’m pleased you were able to hear it.” The microphones in the convention center had been wired into a transceiver and the signals sent to Ohnishi’s house. “Can you still hear the crowd, sir?”
“Yes, you are certainly the man of the hour.”
“Only with your help, Mr. Ohnishi,” Takamora replied honestly, acknowledging the massive support given to him by the aging industrialist.
“I think now is the time to step up our campaign, don’t you?” Ohnishi’s comment was not really a question, it was a command.
“I agree, sir,” Takamora replied, keeping the pretense of a free will. “What do you have in mind?”
“A few bombings, better arms for the youth gangs, and a little more selectivity to their targets. Our day is rapidly approaching, so we must be more organized. Kenji will contact you in the morning with all the particulars.”