“You heard me correctly, Senator. Lives ruined. But today I am here to end the lies.”
The doors opened in the back of the room and Jake walked in with Wei Ling on his arm. Senator Day took one look at the girl he had spent the night with in a threesome and stood from his seat. Then he came unglued. With high shrills and screams that bordered on unintelligible, the senator commanded the officer on duty to stop the intruders.
Al grabbed the microphone off the testimony table and spoke over the senator in a booming voice that echoed through the PA system. “Ladies and gentlemen, the woman you see entering the room works in a sweatshop in Saipan. And she is pregnant with Senator Day’s child.”
The audience collectively inhaled, gasping, falling silent for a spilt second before the decorum of the room officially shifted to the hysteria of an animal outbreak at the zoo.
“Holy shit,” Wallace said to Nguyen, whose mouth opened wide enough to catch a tennis ball served at full speed.
Senator Day banged his gavel and screamed orders like Judge Judy with PMS. “Officer. I want these men arrested. This committee meeting is in recess. I want this man’s testimony erased from public record.” Then Senator Day pointed his finger directly at Peter Winthrop. “You son of a bitch. You and your goddamn son.”
Peter looked over at his son and Wei Ling. He shook his head, opened his mouth, and for the first time in his adult life, was speechless. Jake looked over at his father, the first contact with him since going to the FBI. His father stared back with blood-pumping hatred.
The room turned into a sea of questions, waves of accusations crashing down every direction. The rookie reporters began yelling, cell phones in their ears, calling in the biggest story of their lives.
“What the hell just happened?” Nguyen asked.
“I don’t know, but I think we found Peter Winthrop’s son.”
Senator Day climbed down the stairs from his noble perch and pushed his way through the rising crowd. Peter exited the back of the chamber from the far door. Al rounded up Jake and Wei Ling and pulled them out of the storm. Reporters and senators poured from the chamber behind them, a mass of commotion in their wake.
“Let’s go,” Wallace said to Nguyen. “Time to get the answers to our questions.”
Chapter 48
The long main hall of the Russell Senate Building felt like a tunnel, tightening with every step. The walls breathed. Senator Day couldn’t. His life was slipping through his hands. He picked up the already breakneck pace as if jogging away from the committee chamber was going to put distance between himself and his freefall from grace.
Senator Day needed air. He turned right towards the main entrance and descended down the marble stairs to the foyer, past the security booth on the left. The four guards on duty stopped their search-and-question routine and stared at the senator with disdain and disbelief. Good gossip traveled fast.
Senator Day pushed on the wooden doors, hoping to leave the madness behind him. He needed time to regroup, time to think. He needed air. With a single stride forward, the senator stepped from controlled unpleasantness into mass chaos.
The senator froze on the top stair of the Russell Senate Building and looked down into a hornet’s nest. Hundreds of protestors, signs waving and bullhorns screaming, assaulted the senator’s senses as he stumbled to the side of the granite staircase. The AWARE group’s numbers had tripled overnight, their presence buoyed by over two hundred reinforcements from the city’s finest homeless establishments. Standing at the bottom of the staircase, waving a large sign with one hand and yelling into a bullhorn with the other, was Kazu Ito’s father. A look of fury on his face, he cheered the crowd on, screaming in the memory of his dead son and looking for an apology.
The noon sun combined forces with the multitude of lights from the news crews who were there en masse in response to an anonymous tip. A sea of microphones were shoved into the senator’s personal space, and he stepped back, one hand covering his eyes, the other hand helplessly trying to protect his body from intrusion. Behind him, the audience from the Senate subcommittee squeezed through the doors onto the packed staircase.
The questions came in a flood of babble, a dozen at a time, and the senator tried to push forward past the first wave of cameras and lights. He reached the first landing of the stairs, his path blocked, bodies everywhere. “Shit,” was the first comment caught on tape.
The crowd filled the street, reaching thirty yards in either direction. The AWARE group, led by Kazu Ito’s father and joined in delirious celebration by several hundred of Al’s closest friends, was extending their cause to support their suppressed Asian sisters toiling away in sweatshops around the world.
Stuck like a herd of cattle in a slaughter chute, Senator Day knew silence wasn’t the answer. It didn’t matter what he said, but he knew he had to say something. He had lied on far less appropriate occasions than this. He shoved his way to the granite walls that encased the massive stairs of the Russell Building, pushed his way up two steps and floundered for his footing. He waved his hands to hush the media and the growing rebellion below.
Peter came out the door as Senator Day tried to quiet the crowd. Al stepped from the building next, Wei Ling sandwiched safely between himself and Jake, who brought up the rear. Detectives Wallace and Nguyen were in pursuit, flashing their badges at anything that moved as they forced their way to the exit. Through the door, Wallace pointed down the stairs at Jake and Wei Ling. Nguyen moved in.
The crowd quieted slowly, Senator Day’s hands waving up and down, begging for silence. His lips moved first, his mouth opened in slow motion, and then he doubled over as blood sprayed from two new holes in his chest.
The echo of three rapid-fire gunshots was the start to a full scale riot. The media scattered, cameras rolling in every direction. Trees, the sun, stairs, and legs caught in shaky frames on film. Senator Day’s body tumbled down half a flight of stairs before coming to rest on his right side, shoulder and head below his feet. The AWARE group and their homeless friends lost their urge to protest, bodies running in every direction. Among the madness, running with a pronounced limp, was a six-four Asian in a business suit.
Nguyen caught Jake from behind and pulled him to the side as Wallace pushed through. “Get inside,” Wallace said, pulling Jake and Wei Ling by the arms as the Capitol Police poured from the Russell Building.
Al looked at Jake, who had Wei Ling in his grasp, and nodded. “You got her?”
“Yeah, Al. I got her.”
Al jumped over two crouching reporters and joined the Capitol Police at the senator’s side. Blood stained the white marble, a trail moving down the staircase like a broken Slinky.
The screams for 911 mixed with the overall hysteria in the air. Twenty seconds after the gunshots, the 911 emergency switchboard lit up like the Vegas Strip. ***
Chow Ying got on the Metro at Union Station and rode until New Carrollton, Maryland. He got off the train and took the pedestrian bridge over the subway tracks. He waited ten minutes and boarded the northbound Amtrak Metroliner. He found a seat in the back row next to the toilets and bought a ticket from the conductor as the train picked up speed leaving the station. He peeked inside his jacket pocket to check on his passport and his money. New York City was next on his list. After that, it was anyone’s guess. Maybe San Francisco. Chow Ying pulled the phone from his pocket and checked for messages. Six in the last half hour. Chow Ying knew he was dead already. He had known it for weeks. When the gentle Mr. Wu had asked for his passport in New York, Chow Ying knew his time was short. He knew too much. C.F. Chang would never let him live. And if he wasn’t going to live, then he was going to his grave knowing that he had taken away the one thing that C.F. Chang wanted. C.F. Chang had made the kill easy. Instructions, timeline, transportation, identity cover. All the authorities had to do now was find the car.
Chapter 49
Jake squinted as he came out of FBI headquarters. He rubbed his temples and the bridge of his nose before
