Compromised (26 page)

“Japan is half a day ahead of us, so it’s dawn there right now, but we should have an answer first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I hope so. Are you happy?” Gus asked.

“
Happi-er
. You’ve got to hand it to Shearson. She may be a pain in the ass at times, but she put so much pressure on the commish that he reached out to the mayor and the State Department. An official request for assistance was sent out by the White House.”

“That’s impressive. And to think, she used to bust your balls incessantly. She’s certainly changed.”

“I guess I’m not a threat to her any longer.”

“Guess not.”

“She was actually very nice to me.”

“Well, why not. You closed some very high-profile cases while you were under her command. She climbed to the top on your sweat and toil.”

“True dat. Let’s just hope those prints are on file over in the land of the rising sun. It’ll be a real letdown if this turns out to be a dead end. Especially now that Harry has dumped the trackable phone I gave him.”

“Lighten up,” Gus quipped. “He was probably using it to call all of his relatives in the South Pacific. Think of all the long-distance charges you’re going to save.”

“You’re a piece of work.”

“I aim to please. Speaking of which, any word from the doc? I mean, are your lady parts going to be off-limits forever?”

“Need a release, do you?”

He nodded eagerly.

“Tell you what, if I don’t hear from the doc by the weekend, we’ll improvise. There’s more than one way to choke a chicken.”

“
Harrumph.
Well, when you put it like that, it hardly sounds sexy.”

“Not to worry, lover, I’ll
make
it sexy. Don’t you worry your pretty little head, mama knows how to push daddy’s buttons.”

“Always nice to have something to look forward to. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go take yet another cold shower. Just the idea of having sex with a blonde . . .” He glanced over at the coffee table. “Hey, I think your phone is buzzing.” He leaned across the sofa and picked it up. He grinned. “It’s your new BFF, Shearson.” He handed it to me. “She’s awfully friendly. Are you sure she’s not a switch-hitter?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Neither would I.”

“Deputy Commissioner Shearson, I—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Chalice, just call me Pam. Listen, I’m having dinner with His Honor the mayor, but I stepped away for a moment because I just received a call from the State Department. The Japanese jumped on our request and came through PDQ.”

“Already? It’s not even six a.m. over there.”

“Well, apparently we struck a nerve, and those fingerprints were a match to a felon with multiple arrest warrants. Do you or the hunk have access to the department intranet?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, log on. A translated report should be in both of your inboxes, along with photos, arrest records, and background.”

“That’s unbelievable. Thank you so much, Pam.”

“You can thank me after this cop killer is behind bars. Now if there’s nothing else, I’m off to powder my cleavage so that I can continue flirting with Hizzoner. Christ, I wish I had your boobs, Chalice. I’d be in the White House by now. Good-bye!”

“You seem excited. What did she say?” Gus asked.

“She said that she wishes she had my boobs.”

“Yeah, no surprise there. But seriously . . .”

“Fire up the laptop. The Japanese got a hit on our prints.”

The report described Daichi Shiroo as a confident and ruthless killer, an emerging force poised to take over as the boss, what they called the
kumichō,
of the
Inagawa-kai, one of the largest yakuza families in Japan.

Gus was behind me, trying to read along as I skimmed the report the Japanese government had forwarded to us through the State Department. “Stop looking over my shoulder and sit down. I’ll read it to you.”

“Yes, teacher,” he groused.

The killing of Iori Kuba, a local detective, marked the beginning of a cold-blooded career in which Shiroo took responsibility for some of the yakuza’s most vicious killings, and enjoyed a degree of power in the criminal underworld surpassed only by his brother, Mirai Shiroo, the reigning
kumichō
of Inagawa-kai.

The fact that he liked to shoot his victims from a great distance, which broke one of the yakuza’s rules of good conduct, proved no obstacle to his rise. On one occasion, he shot a policeman lighting a cigarette, putting a bullet through his chest from a six-story apartment house window.

“Sounds like a great guy,” Gus said. “So he’s killed cops before.”

“Yes, and like Boris and Natasha, he’s a member of the Villains, Thieves, and Scoundrels Union. Now don’t interrupt me and let me read.” I scanned the next paragraph. “Get this, Gus.”

It is believed he was responsible for a car bomb that killed an anti-yakuza judge, his wife, and three bodyguards on a motorway near Narita Airport. According to testimony, Shiroo personally stood guard with a British-made L115A3 AWM rifle while his men stuffed a storm drain beneath the road with more than 500 kilos of gelignite, TNT, and plastic explosive.

“Sound familiar?” I said.

“The shithead has a gun of choice. I guess he’s not smart enough to know that using the same weapon only helps our case against him.”

I peaked my eyebrows. “Or maybe he just doesn’t care.”

Shiroo’s rise to prominence was helped considerably by the slowness of the Japanese justice system and probably collusion with certain sectors of the state.

“I’m surprised the Japanese government admitted to that,” I said.

“Maybe they’re too honorable to employ spin doctors over there—wouldn’t that be a refreshing change of pace?”

“Maybe.”

He killed businessmen and politicians who opposed his family or showed preference to rival groups. He spent six years in prison during the 1990s for a rash of relatively minor offenses, but had to be released in 2000 because his period of preventive custody for bigger crimes had run out. For much of the 2000s he managed to move around with
virtual impunity
.

Policemen were powerless to intervene because, as in the past, no arrest warrant was forthcoming. When he was finally tracked down, the fact that he was unarmed and alone suggested that he did not feel particularly threatened. He was released for lack of evidence, and ultimately disappeared when his brother, the reigning
kumichō
,wasarrested and convicted on murder charges. His brother was sentenced to death and executed three years later.

There was evidence suggesting that Mirai Shiroo had been betrayed by a spy, someone inserted into the family by a rival faction, who undermined his authority and was planning to assassinate them both.

“No wonder he skipped town,” Gus said. “His brother was headed for the long good-bye, there was a spy in the ranks, and he had open murder warrants. He was lucky to be able to sneak into the States.”

“Yeah. No wonder. But why has he surfaced now, and why did he kill Yana?”

“I don’t know. What, do I have to figure out everything for you?” Gus asked with a grin. “What are you, useless? Do some sleuthing, for God’s sake. Christ, just what the department needs, another pretty face.”

“Easy, Bulldog Drummond. How about a foot massage to help free up some of my problem-solving energy?”

“How about you make
me
a sandwich?”

“A trademark artery-clogger like my mama makes?”

“Uh-huh.”

“All that cholesterol and fat is going to block the blood flow to your private parts.”

“My private parts are just fine. They’re primed and ready to go, and you’d better take advantage before the warranty runs out.”

“Yeah.” I giggled. “Well, I’m still waiting on the drilling permit.” Gus had really put up with a ton of crap from me. Aside from my being an overzealous cop who put work before everything and everyone else, the recent shooting and subsequent disappearance had really taken a toll on him. He certainly deserved an occasional gastronomic indulgence. “All right, one monster sub coming right up. Anything to wash it down?”

“Really?”

“Yes. Really. But while I’m gone, get those brain cells going and figure out how Harry fits into this mess and how we’re going to take down the shooter.”

“Ah, shoot. There’s always a catch.”

“That’s right, there’s always a catch, my love, and it’s called life.”

We had Daichi Shiroo’s photograph, his prints, his history, and his murder weapon.
Hell, we had everything we needed to build an airtight case against him, but finding a man with no official records in New York City was a tall order. There were no bank accounts under his name, nor were there credit cards or a driver’s license. Daichi Shiroo was a ghost, an entity we knew existed but couldn’t prove.

He was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. His photo and description were dispatched to the media. Rewards were offered. Hotlines were opened and had started to ring. As is normally the case, most of the phone leads were junk—Jesus sightings and the ramblings of fractured minds—but one of them seemed credible, credible enough to warrant checking into immediately.

Melvin DeNiro was a rat, an informant who’d cooperated with the police in exchange for dropped charges on a drug rap. His cooperation had sent a group of Dominican meth dealers to prison. He’d informed on other local dealers as well, and his information had always been reliable. He’d come forward now to score some of the reward money and had reached out to the narcotics detective he’d worked with in the past. A meeting was arranged at a bar in the Bronx.

We crossed the length of the establishment to where narcotics detective Josh Lax was seated next to DeNiro in a booth near the back of the bar. Lax was a bull of a man, with shaved sidewalls, broad sloping shoulders, and a neck as thick as a water main. He dwarfed DeNiro, a slight man who looked in dire need of elevator shoes. The men shook hands.

“Who’s the hot blonde twat?” DeNiro blurted as his eyes rolled over me head to toe.

Lax elbowed him in his side. “Manners, dirtbag. This is Detective Chalice, one of New York’s finest.”

“She certainly is.”

Lax elbowed him again as Gus and I slid into the booth opposite them.

DeNiro apologized. “Sorry. I couldn’t help myself—the lady is quite striking.”

“No harm, no foul. I’ve been called worse.”
Not much worse, mind you, but worse.
I glanced at Gus, who was having trouble holding back a snicker. “We understand that you have information on our cop killer.”

“Yeah. I know this guy you’re looking for . . . by reputation mostly. I mean, I’ve seen him in the flesh but never did any deals with him directly. But before I spill, I want to confirm the reward money.”

“Ten K if your information leads to an arrest,” Gus said, his expression stoic. “That work for you,
Melvin
?”

“Yeah. Ten K works. It works fine.”

“So what do you have?” I asked impatiently.

“They don’t call him Shiroo or Daichi or anything like that. I don’t know if I’m saying it right, but they call him Burakkuhāto or Buckaroo or something like that
.
I was told it’s Japanese for Blackheart.”

I knew better than to ask DeNiro to spell the name for me. I asked him to repeat it I and spelled it out phonetically in my notebook. “So what’s the deal with him, Melvin?”

“He used to work with this guy Ringo, but I heard Ringo bought the farm. They found him in a tattoo shop with a pencil stuck in his neck.”

I turned to Gus as that aha moment hit us both.

DeNiro continued. “He goes after midlevel dealers, robs them and resells their drugs. He’s killed a few of them, I hear. He’s into a lot of other shit too: grand theft auto, expensive jewelry . . . anything that pays big.”

“And you didn’t think it was worth telling me this before?” Lax spat. “It doesn’t matter to you that this Blackheart may be a cop killer?”

DeNiro frowned. “You bet your ass—not until the word reward was mentioned. Shit, Lax, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. I didn’t see anyone coming to my rescue when I got pinched. I had to turn informant just to stay out of the can, and now my name is dirt on the street.”

Lax snickered. “Your name is listed as Dirt on your birth certificate.”

I snorted.

DeNiro flipped Lax the bird and then it was back to business.

“No address or contact?” Gus asked.

DeNiro smirked. “Hey, Lax, this guy for real? An address? You’re kidding, right?”

Lax turned to him, the veins throbbing on his twenty-inch neck. “How about if I roll up the reward money and shove the bills up your ass one by one?”

DeNiro flipped his palms outward, a surrender gesture. “Hey, no reason to get hostile, my friend.”

Lax gritted his teeth. “I don’t need a reason.”

“All right, all right. Jeez, take it easy,” DeNiro said. “I’m trying to help.”

“Are you?” I asked. “I don’t see any reward money in this for you. No address. No phone number. How the hell is this supposed to be helping us?”

“Relax, Detective. I got it covered.” He turned to Lax. “You know Mikey Mike over on the Grand Concourse?”

“Yeah. I’ve heard of him,” Lax replied. “He’s a mid-level heroin dealer. Why?”

“Because he’s in Montefiore hospital with cracked ribs and internal bleeding, and just yesterday these started hitting the street.” He reached into his pocket and laid a glassine bag of heroin on the table. It was stamped with a black heart.

Gus turned the wheel and piloted our car away from the curb.

I pulled up the records of the victim we’d found in Tiru’s tattoo shop. “His name isn’t listed as Ringo on his driver’s license. It’s listed as Ryo Goda.”

“Close enough to support the nickname. Think he can play the drums?”

I smiled.

“Got an address?”

“Yup.” I read it out loud to Gus.

“I know Valentine, the detective who’s investigating Goda’s homicide,” Gus said. “I’ll give him a call so that we don’t lose time trying to figure out what he already knows.”