Flashback

boy?”

Nick looked at the old man’s tanned, smooth, hairless face. Other than a slight residual impression of pleasantness, there was no expression there at all. None. Yet somehow Nick knew that everything teetered in the balance depending upon how he answered this question.

“No, sir,” Nick said firmly. “There’s no sign that Val shot the other boy to protect you or anyone else. Coyne was shot too far from the drain opening, for one thing.”

“Why, then?” asked Omura.

Nick shrugged. “Something between the two of them is my hunch. What I want to believe is that Billy Coyne, who had quite a history of violence—including the rape of children—came after Val for some reason, perhaps because Val had run from the ambush scene, and my son had to shoot to protect himself. But that’s only a father’s wish, sir.”

Omura nodded. “Then the issue is closed. I’ve already directed my security people and the Los Angeles Police Department to cease their search for your son. And right now there are much more important things for you and me to discuss.”

Nick could only blink. More important things? He blurted out, “Do you have any idea where my son is, Omura-sama?”

The Advisor set down his glass and opened his palms as if to show he had nothing to hide. “I do not know his whereabouts, nor do I have any clue, Nick. If I did, I would tell you. If my security people had tracked your son down and… executed him… I would tell you the truth even about that.”

And you’d die here and now, by my bare hands, thought Nick. And as he looked at Daichi Omura, he knew that the old man was aware of that fact. No security guard could break into the room and kill Nick before Nick had snapped Omura’s neck.

“Shall we speak of the more important matters?” said Omura. He picked up his glass of Scotch again.

“Sure,” said Nick, his throat still tight. “What are they?”

“First, your involvement in this struggle between me and Hiroshi Nakamura and Don Khozh-Ahmed Noukhaev and many others. Are you beginning to feel like a pawn on a chess board, Nick?”

Nick laughed. It was probably the easiest, most relaxed laugh that had escaped him in weeks. “I feel more like a piece of lint that’s blown onto a chess board, Omura-sama.”

“So you feel powerless,” said the old man, studying him. “And as if you have no moves left.”

“A few moves, maybe,” admitted Nick. “But they don’t get me anywhere. It’s like when the king’s under check and can only shuffle back and forth in the same squares.”

“That results in a stalemate,” said Omura.

“Well, I don’t see how to force anything as grand and bold as a stalemate,” said Nick.

Omura smiled. “A minute ago you were a piece of lint blown onto the chess board by mistake. Now you are a king under check. Which metaphor is it, Nick?”

“I was always piss-poor at metaphors, Omura-sama. And, as must be obvious, I know dick-all about chess.”

It was Omura’s turn to laugh.

“One thing,” said Nick. “In Santa Fe, Don Noukhaev was blathering something about me—for a short time before I died, at least—being in the position to affect the lives of millions of people. I assumed it was just more Noukhaev bullshit. But is there any sense or truth to what he was saying?”

“Yes, Nick, there is,” Omura said softly. He did not explain further. After a minute he said, “By tomorrow evening, my spies tell me, Hiroshi Nakamura will have returned to his aerie above Denver and will demand that you tell him exactly who murdered his son. Are you able to do that, Nick?”

Nick paused again, this time not to consider dissembling but just to sort out the truth of what he thought. “Not yet, Omura-sama,” said Nick. “But perhaps by this time tomorrow night.”

The elderly Advisor smiled again. “And perhaps the horse will learn to talk, eh, Nick?”

Nick, who’d heard the folktale from Dara, also had to smile. “Yeah, something like that.”

This is where Omura said, “If you go back to Denver, Bottom-san, you will die,” and had warned Nick that “Colonel” Sato would be waiting that night at the John Wayne Airport. It made Nick physically shiver.

“If I admit that I haven’t really figured out who Keigo Nakamura’s killer was, Advisor Nakamura will have me killed,” said Nick.

“Yes.” The syllable ended in a sort of hiss from Omura.

“If I do find the final evidence I need to finger the killer by tomorrow night, Nakamura will still order me killed,” said Nick.

“Yes.”

“Why?” said Nick. “Why kill me if I’ve done what he hired me to do? Why not just pay me—or don’t pay me? I guess I screwed the pay-me option when I took a tiny advance against that payment to get my ass out here to L.A., but why not just let me go back to my little flashback-riddled life?”

Omura looked at him in silence for a long moment. “I believe you know the answer to that already, Nick.”

Nick did, and knowing it brought him nothing but nausea. “I know too much,” he said at last. “I’ll be a danger to Nakamura and his plans to become Shogun.”

“Hai,” agreed the old man.

“What can I do?” asked Nick and immediately despised the desperate whiny undertone in his own voice. He’d always hated perps, witnesses, or even victims who whined like that. The pathetic squeak of a rat in a trap.

“You can stay in Los Angeles,” said Omura, still watching him carefully. “Under my protection.”

“Nakamura would send assassins—like Sato—until I was finally killed.”

“Yes,” said Omura. “You could flee—New or Old Mexico. South America. Canada.”

“Someone like Sato would find me within months. Weeks.”

“Yes.”

“And I can’t leave Val and his grandfather behind… to the mercy of… whomever.”

“But you have no assurance your son and father-in-law are even alive, Nick.”

“No, but… still…,” said Nick. Everything he said sounded pathetic to him.

Both men had finished their Scotch. Advisor Omura did not offer to refill the glasses. Outside the amazing window wall, the sun moved lower toward the Pacific Ocean and a late-September sunset.

Nick felt no rush to leave since Dale Ambrose had promised to get him to the John Wayne Airport in time. Nick had already dumped the Nissan Menlo Park, leaving it at the curb in South Central L.A. with the keys in the ignition. It had been a racist move and the best one. The interview with the California–Oregon–Washington Advisor must be over, Nick knew, but between the Scotch and his exhaustion—and the comfortable room with its beautiful view—Nick decided he’d get up only when Omura reminded him that the interview was over.

“Did you know, Nick,” said Omura at last, “that Hideki Sato had, for years, an American-born mistress… no, mistress is not the right word. Consort or concubine is closer to the meaning of our word sobame.”

“Oh?” said Nick. Why is the old man telling me this?

“By all accounts he loved her very much. His own wife of many years, Sato sees only twice a year upon formal family occasions.”

“Yes?”

Omura said nothing else. Nick felt the way he had in junior high school when he’d attempted a conversation with a pretty girl and simply ran out of things to say.

“You said Sato had a concubine… a relationship with her… for many years, Omura-sama. Had, past tense. It’s over?” Nick tried to imagine Sato feeling and showing love for anyone or anything. He failed.

“Hai,” Omura said with Japanese harshness on the syllable, slashing it like a blade. “She died some years ago.”

“Died… violently?” asked Nick, trying to find a handle on this line of discussion.

“Oh, no. Of leukemia. It was said that Sato-san was devastated. His own two sons, by his wife, both died in battle in the last decade, died as military advisors early in the Chinese civil war. It is said that Sato mourned his