Morita stood at the same third-story office window he’d been standing at when Tsurimi had brought him word of the Davenport assassination fiasco at LeMastre Park. At the time, he had been proud of how his long-awaited assignment to undermine the Miyamiji-kai from the inside had been progressing, and looking forward to finally returning to his true home.
But then that flying burglar had broken in at just the wrong moment, now the police were ignoring the obvious target, and his time in the leadership of the Miyamiji-kai was growing short — it would not be all that long before someone else in this building had an attack of intelligence and wondered if perhaps their gurentai hand-grenaded at the hospital hadn’t been a loyal Miyamiji-kai member who received his marching orders from someone he was expected to obey. Once that happened, it wouldn’t be hard to follow the trail back to him. And then, his choice would be to stand a failure, or flee to his true home a failure — either way, the result would most likely be fatal.
Behind him he heard the rattle of his current woman cleaning up the remnants of his breakfast. Turning to look at the naked blonde carrying the dirty dishes to the dumbwaiter, he carefully kept a frown off his face, as he considered another ongoing failure. Outwardly, she was as meek as he could ask for, and the aging bruises covering her body showed how much he had enjoyed training her for her new station. But this time, the pain and humiliation he had inflicted had failed to break her spirit. He could feel it — however submissive she acted, she yet resisted. And with her devotion to the training and apparent acceptance of her place as both maid and bedwarmer, he was running out of reasons to inflict yet more punishment. Not even his description of what awaited her in Japan had shaken her morale. We’ll just have to see if that holds when we actually get you to Tokyo....
A knock at his door let him know that the men he had summoned had arrived. Deborah looked up at the knock as she closed the dsumbwaiter’s door, then silently over at her new master for instructions. She had taken to heart the lesson of her first day (and first bruises) to stay silent unless spoken to. Morita pointed to a well-lit spot, and without hesitation or any sign of dismay she walked over and turned to face the room, taking the stance he had shown her to put herself on display. Still no reason to punish her.
“Enter!” Morita called out in English, and the door opened to admit the gang of gurentai that had kidnapped his slave from her home and killed her police guards in the process. He watched Deborah out of the corner of his eye — not so much as a flinch. He was beginning to be a little concerned about her composure, and not just frustrated; it certainly didn’t fit what the photographer had reported of her behavior at LeMastre Park when her boyfriend was killed, then she’d been as hysterical as any other arrogant pampered American socialite. Now ...
Focusing back on gurentai, outwardly calm, he accepted their bows. Noticing their appreciative glances at the display of the slave they’d briefly had in their power, he considered lending Deborah to them for awhile to see what that would do to her resistance, but reluctantly discarded the idea. There simply wasn’t time right now, and by the time they returned (if they returned), he and his slave would be gone.
“You did well earlier, when you chose to acquire my slave,” he began without preamble, continuing in English so that Deborah could understand. “However, there is yet an individual that was involved at the park that has so far escaped us.”
The gurentai exchanged worried glances. “We are still searching for the boy —” one started, only to break off when Morita shook his head.
“No, not the boy in the photograph,” he said, and handed the gurentai that had spoken up a photo of a small redheaded Japanese girl dressed in jeans, a blouse and windbreaker, the statue of Poseidon from City Center Plaza behind her. “While none of our people that were at the park have mentioned her, she was found there by the police. She claims to be the daughter of the man that was killed when he interfered with the executions.” He handed over another photograph of the girl dressed much the same, this time walking hand in hand with another girl less than half her age with light brown hair in a winter coat, the two smiling. “She has spent the last few afternoons at LeMastre Park at the playground between the zoo and the sports fields with this child. They may be there now. Go, and if you find them kill them both.”
The gurentai bowed and left on their new mission. Morita watched them go, then sat down in front of his computer. That should do it—even if the girl wasn’t as skilled as her father and brother and they actually killed her, there would be plenty of spectators with cell phone cameras if nothing else. The police would almost certainly be able to identify who they were, and which Yakuza clan they belonged to. But whether they did or not, now that he was leaving, and he needed to clean out his files of anything that might be useful to those that thought they commanded his loyalty.
He watched his slave out of the corner of his eye, but she remained in place, unmoving in the display stance, eyes fixed on the opposite wall, silent. Too bad, yet another opportunity lost. “Get a robe,” he ordered curtly. “We’ll be leaving soon.” Deborah turned and headed for the door to the sleeping quarters, and Morita smiled at the sudden tension that gripped her. That had finally done it, at least a little. Dismissing thoughts of plans for her once they got to Japan, he turned back to the computer. His time was short.
B.P. (the Barstool Prophet, as he was known at the hudsoncity-answers.org website, the Answerman that handled questions on sports trivia, local events such as weather, road repairs, ongoing construction, and Hudson City urban legends — and questions involving organized crime for the Answer when his cases tended that way) sighed as he glanced around at the monitors scattered haphazardly about the room on tables and filing cabinets, each displaying a driveway or the inside of a garage, before returning his attention to the monitor in front of him full of graphs and scrolling text. When the Answer had approached him with his request to help the neophyte vigilante in his quest for (nonlethal) justice, he had had visions of exciting adventures — at a remove, of course, he was more the “watch what’s happening on a computer monitor and give advice” type. And while there had been those moments, in retrospect he should have remembered what his ex-cop father had had to say about the daily grind of police work along with all the details that had sparked his interest in the working of organized crime in Hudson City.
In this case, that “daily grind” was monitoring the spy cameras Bluejay, DarkAngel and Cherub (snicker) had planted. Thankfully, he had bleeding edge pattern recognition software to handle actually “watching” the monitors so he was able to focus on his day job as a day trader, but it had been days since he’d left —
The scream of an alarm almost bounced him out of his chair, and he whirled to frantically look around at monitors, searching for ... there, monitor twenty, the one with the flashing red border showing the inside of a garage, a man in a stylish business suit and a woman wearing a house robe walking toward a sports car with tinted windows, the woman outlined by blinking white, numbers beside her reporting a 98% match. At last, Deborah Manning had emerged from the black hole she’d dropped into.
Hastily turning back to his desktop computer, he cleared his screen and with a few keystrokes had the same view from monitor twenty before him, just in time to see Deborah climb into the passenger seat. B.P. typed in a command, waited until the man locked in her seatbelt (thinking grimly that he doubted that belt would unlock without a key) and walked around to get into the driver’s seat. As soon as the driver’s side door closed B.P. hit the Return key, and within the tiny camera lens that Bluejay had sneaked in and planted several nights before the feature they hadn’t mentioned to the burglar swiveled and soundlessly spat a tiny dart at the car right above the back bumper. Within seconds, a new screen opened up on his monitor showing a city street map, with a blinking dot even now in motion. A couple of keystrokes activated another preprogrammed command, and a line quickly drew itself from the dot along the street through a couple of turns until it disappeared offscreen — a line that the dot was clearly not following; it was actually moving the opposite direction.
Slumping slightly in relief, B.P. picked up a phone and hit speed dial as he kept an eye on the street map twisting across the monitor with the blinking dot staying in the center. “Hi, Sandra!” ... “Wrong number? Oops, sorry.” ... “Yeah, you have a great day, too.”
Message delivered, he hung up, then typed in another speed dial. “Hey, Bluejay, we got a hit, one of the ones you planted.” ... “Yeah, 98% match, wearing a house robe and getting into a sports car. It’s her, and it doesn’t look like they’re headed for the airport, you’re in the clear for now.” ... “Yeah, that could change, I’m keeping an eye on it. But unless the route changes drastically, you’re going to spend tonight providing top cover instead of chasing a private plane across the country.” ... “Yeah, I’ll keep you posted. Till later.”
Hanging up again, he leaned back in his ultra-expensive office chair and rubbed at weary eyes, limp with relief. It looked like this one was going to have something approximating a happy ending.
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(Posted Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:48)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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