Flashback

“One hour, twenty-nine minutes,” said Sato.

“And it’ll end when the bodies are discovered and everyone stampedes?”

“Plus seven minutes after young Mr. Nakamura’s body—and the lady’s—are discovered, yes.”

Nick’s jaw sagged. “You didn’t have cameras up…”

“No.”

It had been a stupid question and idea. If there had been cameras on the third floor, in Master Keigo’s bedroom, there’d be no mystery.

Unless a certain security chief had destroyed the recordings. Right now, Hideki Sato was former homicide detective Nicholas Bottom’s number-one suspect.

In front of the locked door that led to the staircase to the third floor was the digital Exhibit A in any prosecution of Sato for murder.

The broad-shouldered Japanese man wearing tactical glasses and standing with his hands folded over his crotch as he guarded the door might have been Sato’s twin brother, even allowing for some age difference.

Through his headache and nausea, Nick racked his ravaged memory. “Takahishi Satoh,” he said softly. “With an ‘h.’ Any relation to you, Hideki-san?”

“No.”

“I remember him now. He was a little taller than you, but he could have been your double.”

“Yes.”

“He was in charge of security, is what he told us.”

“Not quite, Bottom-san. He told you that his title was commander of security and that he was in charge of the five security men on Keigo Nakamura’s U.S. security detail. This was true.”

“But he didn’t tell us that he took orders from you. That you were the real security chief.”

“None of you asked Satoh-san if he had a superior… other than Mr. Nakamura Senior, I mean,” said Sato.

“So when witnesses like Oz and the others described the big sumo-wrestler security chief with Keigo, it could have been you or could have been your pal here. They said ‘Mr. Satoh.’ Just too fucking cute for words, Hideki- san.”

Sato said nothing.

“You realize, of course,” spat Nick, “that this opens you up to charges of obstructing justice and lying under oath.”

“I never lied under oath, Bottom-san.”

“No, you didn’t, because we didn’t know you fucking existed,” Nick said, turning from the projection of Satoh in his glasses to look at Sato wearing his glasses.

“Still…,” began Sato. Stirr. “… if you examine the testimony of the five security men you and your officers interviewed six years ago, you will find that none of them lied to you.”

“They damned well lied by omission,” shouted Nick. He ran his hands through his hair. Shouting hurt his head. “They obstructed justice!”

Sato unlocked the door and opened it but Nick wasn’t ready to go upstairs yet.

“Was this fake security chief’s name even Satoh?”

“Of course it was.”

“How long did it take you to find a look-alike security guy with a name that sounded just like yours, Hideki- san?”

Sato stood there holding the door open and waiting.

“Were you ever by Keigo’s side in public during the months you were guarding him here?” asked Nick.

“A few times. Very rarely.”

“Where’d you watch this party from, Hideki-san? From inside a van parked outside somewhere? A van full of screens? From a helicopter? From orbit?”

Sato waited.

Nick was not finished on the second floor yet. Or perhaps he just wasn’t ready to see what was waiting for him upstairs.

“Where are the cameras?” he demanded.

Sato released the doorknob and took his phone out of his suit pocket. A laser pointer stabbed at least nine locations in the ceiling and walls and light fixtures.

“And at least four cameras in each bedroom and bathroom,” said Sato. “There were a total of sixty-six cameras on this floor. Two hundred and thirty in the building.”

Nick walked over to one of the walls.

“Show me again.”

The laser dot winked on again.

“The lens is tiny or invisible,” said Nick. “But, of course, you removed all the cameras after the murder.”

“Of course,” said Sato. “But you are looking at the wall through your glasses, so you see it as it was the night of the murder. The video pickups are… ah… very discreet.”

Nick laughed at this, although whether it was the idea of two hundred and thirty video cameras in a flashcave-cum-drugpad-cum-whorehouse being discreet or just at how stupid he was this morning, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care.

He swung back to the real Sato and his digital Doppelganger and said, “All right. Let’s go upstairs.”

Sato turned off the noise and movement of the party behind him as they climbed up the wide, steep staircase.

The four rooms on the third floor had not been tidied up as had the first two floors of the building. They were still as they had looked on the night of the murder almost six years earlier. Nick and Sato both removed their tactical glasses before coming through the door at the top of the stairs and they kept them off as Nick led the way.

They emerged into a formal foyer with an open door to the small kitchen leading off this west end to their left—the DPD investigators had found the kitchen serviceable but almost unused, the fridge holding only a few bottles of beer and champagne—and on the south wall to their right, another high-tech door that opened onto a staircase to the rooftop.

One glance showed Nick that the kitchen looked untouched, but the foyer itself was still littered with the inevitable paper and plastic needle-cover detritus of the EMTs. Why they’d attempted resuscitation on an obvious corpse—other than the fact that the corpse and its father were worth billions of dollars—Nick had no idea. But they had, and some of the mess had spilled out of the bedroom through the living room and into this foyer. The expensive tiles in the foyer and frame of the wide door to the double stairway—there was no elevator, so all the furniture, kitchen appliances, and other large stuff on this floor had been carried up these stairs—were streaked and cracked where the paramedics’ and then the coroner office’s gurneys and equipment had left tracks and gouges. Some slob had stubbed out a cigarette on the tiles.

The foyer narrowed into a short hallway festooned with expensive art. The wide glass-paned doors in the hall led left to the library and straight ahead into the living area and through there into the bedroom.

“Does Bottom-san wish to see any room before we go into the bedroom?” asked Sato.

“Anyone murdered in any of the rooms besides the bedroom?”

“No.”

“Then let’s start with the bedroom,” said Nick.

Sato removed his shoes and left them in the tiled foyer. Nick left his shoes on. He was a cop… had been a cop, at least… not a guest for some fucking Tea Ceremony. Besides, Keigo Nakamura was beyond being offended by some gai-jin barbarian keeping his shoes on in his personal living space. (But Nick was counting on it offending the hell out of Hideki Sato.)

Nick saw that the living room was as large and littered as it had been six years ago. The double bedroom doors were wide open. The trail of paramedic debris seemed to lead to it rather than away from it.