The Mob Lawyer (part 6)

Hiroki was squaring away the data he had collected when Camen returned to the office with Mrs. Wallace in tow. Hiroki wasn’t sure where Camen had stashed her after the events of the other night, but she looked diminished outside of her palatial home, scared and insubstantial.

Camen let Hiroki do all the talking on this one. Hiroki appreciated it, well in his element working with numbers and data. This was one of the main reasons Camen had brought him on board, and he had the decency to know when to let him take the reigns. 

“Mrs. Wallace,” Hiroki said. “I assume Benjamin told you that we recovered some information from your husband’s office yesterday.” 

“Yes,” she said quietly. “You’re doing better than the police. They’re still having trouble getting a warrant.”

“Well, we beat them to the punch,” Camen said. “And we’re not exactly following proper procedure.”

"Anyway,” Hiroki said, “the data we found was pretty unimportant on the whole. However, of note is that your husband kept his personal budget and finances on that computer. And there were plenty of interesting things in there.”

Mrs. Wallace sat forward in her chair, her eyes wide. “Interesting how?”

“Well, to start with, you were aware that he was giving money to Victoria Falchi?”

“I … no.” She shook her head, her brow furrowing. “I mean, I figured he might. A man like Sam doesn’t keep a woman like that through personality alone. But he never told me the specifics.”

“Well, there’s money here that is earmarked for Miss Falchi. What’s more interesting, though, is that there’s another amount of the exact same amount that is going to someone else.”

“Someone else?”

Camen spoke up. “Are you aware of any other people that your husband might have been paying under the table? Blackmailer? Drug dealer? … another woman, maybe?”

“Another woman?" Mrs. Wallace looked bewildered. “Why would he keep another woman?”

“Two might not be enough,” Hiroki helpfully chimed in. Camen shot him a look, and he withered in his chair.

“We don’t know for sure what’s going on, but the only clue we’ve got is that he was paying someone a pretty decent amount for something.”  Camen moved closer to her, kneeling down by her chair. “Look, if you know something about what that might be, I need to know now. We’re getting to the point where the police are going to sweep in and all the clues are going to disappear.”

Mrs. Wallace’s eyes went wide, but she shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anything. He never mentioned paying that much to anybody else. I’m afraid I can’t be much help.”

Camen sighed but nodded. “All right. We’ll keep looking, but without some hint as to where your husband’s disappeared to or who this mysterious person is, we’re kind of stuck. We’ll keep you updated, but in the meantime I hope you’ll agree to stay out of sight.”

“Of course,” she said. “The last thing I want is to end up like poor Miss Falchi.”

Camen escorted her out, taking her home while he left Hiroki in the office. Hiroki was fine with that, with some more time to think and work he could potentially dig through the information they had gathered. There had to be a clue somewhere, there just had to be. Without some direction to who they were looking for, this whole case could end up a wash. A missing man, a dead body, and the police already starting to poke around. A recipe for disaster.

Hiroki was lost in his work when the door opened. He didn’t even look up, just kept digging. “She’s no help, Ben,” Hiroki said. “I think we might be at a dead end.”

“I certainly hope that isn’t the case,” an unknown voice said.

Hiroki looked up, eyes wide. In the doorway were three people. They were all dressed in nice suits but none of them particularly looked business-like. There were two in the back, a mountain of a man and a short, thin man, who looked dangerously thuggish. In front of them was the man who was obviously in charge.

“Can I … help you?” Hiroki eyed them nervously. Sometimes Camen had some shady characters show up, but these guys looked more serious than the usual person who came through that door.

“You’re Ben Camen’s tech boy, aren’t you?” The man in front stepped forward. “You can certainly help me, then. You see, I’m looking for information about where Samuel Wallace has got to, and I hear you might have some idea.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hiroki said. “But Mr. Camen will be here before too long, and he can sort this out.” Hiroki moved to stand up, suddenly wanting nothing more than to step outside and call Ben and get him there as soon as possible.

The two men who were standing at the door stepped forward. The big one shifted just a little, expertly flashing the holster under his suit jacket. “I’m sure you can help me,” the man said as he sat down in the chair across from the desk. “So sit tight, kid.”

Hiroki sat back down, staring at the two men. They were on either side of the chair, immobile but obviously standing in the way of Hiroki and the door. There was no easy way out of this one. He only hoped Benjamin came back quickly.

“That’s right,” the man said when Hiroki settled in, defeated, into his seat. “Now, you’re going to tell me everything you two have found out so far.”

“Or what?”

The man laughed. “Or what? Come on kid, this isn’t the movies. You’re going to tell us. We can just do it slow or you can just volunteer the information and save us all a whole lot of work. Now, why don’t you show us all that information on that computer of yours.”

Hiroki stared at the screen, the information they had stolen from Wallace’s computer right there on the screen. There wasn’t time to get rid of it before they’d stop him. There wasn’t room to run. Hiroki hesitated a moment, unsure.

The two men behind the chair advancing on Hiroki sitting at the desk.

The Mob Lawyer (part 5)

Hiroki held open the heavy wooden door to the law offices of Barston & Chase for Camen, following behind him and trying to look as official and adult as he could. The two of them were woefully out of place in these stolid, somber surroundings. But Camen was an old hand at handling these situations, introducing himself with all the gruff competence of a beat cop.

The receptionist gave way to a suit, who approached them and shook Camen’s hand. He seemed rather embarrassed to have them there, looking around them to the door. “Good morning, gentlemen. If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to handle this privately,” the suit said as he motioned them down the hallway to the offices.

“I’d like to see Samuel Wallace’s office, if you don’t mind,” Camen said, not taking the invitation to go immediately.

“Um … yes, but first I’d like to talk to you in mine,” the suit said, glancing towards the door as if he expected someone to walk in at any moment. “Just follow me.” 

He led them into a big, imposing office, all big leather chairs and monolithic mahogany desks. “You’ll have to excuse my insistence on doing this in private,” the suit began. “Our clients are very protective of their privacy, and it wouldn’t do to have them see an investigator here. Bad for business.”

“Just what sort of business is that?” Camen asked.

“We deal with the legal and financial affairs of many of the most prominent citizens and corporations in Colston City. This law firm has been here since the 1800s, Barston and Chase were lawyers turned prospectors who rushed out here. Thankfully, when the rush turned out to be largely hot air, they had skills to fall back on and plenty of people who regularly got in trouble.”

“You sound pretty proud of that,” Camen pointed out, looking around the room now, obviously uninterested. Hiroki wondered how long they’d have to talk to this guy before they’d be allowed to search the room proper.

“It’s an impressive heritage, one we strive to live up to. People depend on us to be there. Unfortunately, when one of our own goes missing, it looks bad. We’ve been shouldering his load, claiming that Sam is laid low with an illness, but we want to know where he is as bad as you do.”

“So you have no idea?”

“I’m afraid not,” the man said. “We’ve made some inquiries on our own, informal and discreet of course, but so far there’s been nothing. But things have changed, and we have to act.”

“So now that there’s a dead body and Sam’s got police attention, you’re going to cooperate, is that what you’re saying?”

“More or less,” the suit admitted with a shrug. “Go ahead, Wallace’s offices are down the hall. I just beg you to be discreet.”

Camen nodded and the two of them exited the office and made their way down to the large door with Samuel Wallace’s name on it. When they entered, they were in an antechamber the size of the office they had just come from, this one brighter due to the wall of windows along one side.

“Hello, gentlemen,” the assistant, a woman in severe business attire said from behind the desk as she stood up. She seemed overly composed, a well-practiced neutral expression on her face. “I was told to expect you.”

“Benjamin Camen, ma’am,” he said, shaking her hand. “This is my assistant, Hiroki Sugoi. Don’t mind him, he’s mostly just here to observe. He’s in training.”

“My name is Brittany Hughes. What can I do for you today?” She seemed to ignore Hiroki entirely, writing him off as irrelevant. Hiroki didn’t go out of his way to change her mind.

“We’re investigating the disappearance of your boss, Samuel Wallace. We were hoping for the opportunity to search his office.”

She sighed and shook her head. “I’ve been told to give you as much access as I’m comfortable with, but I’m afraid I’m not very comfortable with you poking around in his office unsupervised. There are hundreds of files in his office, all of them privileged, and the last thing I want is finding out after you’re gone that while you were here you decided to indulge in some profitable espionage.”

Camen didn’t seem very surprised by this. He stood his ground and shrugged his shoulders. “I need to look for some idea of where Mr. Wallace went. A woman is dead. Either I come in and poke around or the police come in and do it. Your choice.”

Miss Hughes stared at Camen for a long moment and then nodded. “Very well. Come with me. I’ll let you look around, but I want you to do it under my strict supervision.”

The three of them walked passed her desk to the closed door, opening to another, larger room. This was as plush and richly furnished as the first office they were shown, but much bigger. Hiroki scanned the room. There were several large file cabinets in the corner, and along the wall opposite the window was a wall of case files and ledgers and books. Hiroki’s eyes were drawn to the computer, a dark screen sitting off to one side of the desk.

“Your assistant can sit at the desk,” Miss Hughes said by way of explanation. “Mr. Wallace’s computer is protected, and so far the systems guys haven’t been able to reset the password or anything like that, so I’m afraid it won’t be much help.” Hiroki noticed that she didn’t actually sound all that sad about that, but Camen nodded for him to sit in the large leather chair and Hiroki was glad to oblige.

As Camen began to head towards the wall of files and books, Hiroki discreetly pulled two pieces of equipment out of his bag. One was a small, low profile hard drive. The second was a small USB key. He kept them both under the table, where the watchful eye of Miss Hughes couldn’t see. Thankfully, Miss Hughes looked pretty occupied as Camen began to pull the ledgers and notebooks from the wall and flip through them.

“Mr. Camen, you can’t just start going through things like that. What if there’s sensitive information? I said I would help you, but you need to let me know what you want to see and then I’ll determine whether or not that’s an appropriate course of action.”

“I want to see all the things he wrote down. Not the case files, not yet anyway, but the books he kept. His home office was suspiciously devoid of information. If there’s any clue to where he’s gone or why, it has to be here.”

“Well, let’s start one at a time,” she said, taking down the first ledger, glancing at the first page where there was a quickly jotted inventory of what was inside. While she was looking, Hiroki plugged the hard drive and USB key into the computer as discreetly as possible.

Camen flipped through the notebook for a moment, and then handed it back to her. “No good. Give me another one.” As she looked through it, he turned to Hiroki. “I hope you brought something to keep yourself busy.”

Hiroki shrugged his shoulders. “I brought my computer. Thought that maybe I could do some school work. If that’s all right.”

“Miss Hughes, is that all right?” Camen said, pulling out the files on the wall halfway to look at what was written on them. Miss Hughes looked up and situated herself in between Camen and the files as she handed him another notebook.

“I guess that’s all right,” she said absently. “We don’t have wifi here, hopefully you’ll keep yourself busy without the internet.”

“It’s fine, I can use my phone to tether,” Hiroki said, pulling out his laptop and setting it up on the desk. As she was looking away to keep Camen from pulling down more files, he reached over and pressed the power button on both the laptop and the desktop at the same time. The sound of the powering computers was loud, but could easily be accounted for by Hiroki’s laptop looking a little too big to be all that quiet.

Hiroki pulled up the utility on the USB key, connecting to Wallace’s desktop. The program he had installed interrupted the boot sequence, loading a program of his own instead of the original OS. He worked quickly and efficiently, trying to be as unassuming as possible. Thankfully, that’s what he was good at. He quickly set up the program to clone the hard drive off of the desktop onto the one he brought with him.

Once that was set up and running, he tabbed over to the word processor and began to work on one of the papers he had to write for his finals. He didn’t really have to pay much attention to Camen anymore. He would make a lot of noise, maybe find something out despite Miss Hughes’ obvious smokescreen, but the real work was done. He felt proud of himself. Without him, Camen’s job would be a lot harder. It just proved to him how much the detective needed him in his life. 

He titled his paper with his name and with the class he was taking, and began to write. There was a murder to solve and a missing man to find, a mystery all around them, but for now all he could do was wait for the platters of data at his feet to spin and for Camen’s act to hold up.

Hiroki could think of worse jobs.

The Mob Lawyer (part 4)

Hiroki shifted uncomfortably in the heavy silence that had fallen over the study. Patricia Wallace was sitting in the massive leather chair behind the desk, her knees pulled up under her chin. She looked ill at easy, though he supposed that if he had lost a spouse and was potentially connected to a murder that he’d be upset, too. In the large chair she looked like a girl, awoken by a bad dream and taking comfort in a parent’s things. 

“So … what do we do now?” She asked the room.

Hiroki had no answer. He was still in the chair he had been shown to when they arrived, feeling completely unable to contribute to this situation. Camen was standing off to one side, smoking a cigarette, smoke rising in a cloud above him as he seemed to be browsing the leather bound books on the shelf. 

“The most likely thing,” Camen said, “is that the police will come and question you. It might be prudent to cut them off at the pass, go to them and tell them your husband is missing. They’ll question you about the murder, I’m sure, but I don’t doubt that you’ll quickly rise above suspicion.”

“You’re so sure of that?”  She looked over at Camen. “What if I, in a fit of passion, went over there and murdered her? Why wouldn’t they believe that?” 

“I can’t tell you the specifics of the case, otherwise they might believe that. I’m just going to say that I find it unlikely you’re that capable. It is more likely, though, that they’ll suspect your husband. Especially after you tell them that he’s missing.”

The horrified look on her face prompted Hiroki to speak up before she got really riled and made things difficult. “If they suspect your husband, they’re going to look for him. They have more resources than we do. It’s not a bad thing.”

“I told you I didn’t want this made public,” she said. 

“Right now, it won’t be,” Camen said. “The last thing they want to do is publicly name your husband if he’s not the killer. No sense going out and begging for a lawsuit. They’ll keep it quiet enough. And if he’s not guilty as I assume, then he has nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have much choice,” Camen said. “Your husband’s mistress turns up dead, there’s enough information to point them towards mob involvement. It wouldn’t take much searching to figure out that she was spending her free time with a lawyer with mob involvement. If you don’t go to them, they’re going to come to you. And they’ll be a lot less nicer about it at that point.”

There was a protracted moment of silence after that, as their client digested this new data. Hiroki shifted in his chair. It was late, he was going to be in trouble as it was, and now here they were telling someone to go see their biggest competitor. This wasn’t exactly the glamorous detective life he envisioned.

Camen finished his cigarette, putting it out in the small ashtray that Mrs. Wallace had given him. He turned around and began to speak. “If you like, we can take you down there ourselves, I can talk to the detective in charge. It’ll make things nice and smooth, they can question you and you can be back home in a few hours.”

“Right now?  It’s the middle of the night.”

“If we take her down there now, we’re going to be sitting around for hours,” Hiroki said. “Better to wait until morning.”

Camen shrugged. “If you insist. That’s not quite as pre-emptive as I would like, but I suppose it’ll-“

He was interrupted by the chime of the doorbell. There was a moment’s hesitation, the sound so foreign that nobody moved. Patricia was the first one to speak. “I … how did someone get past the gate?”

“It closed behind us when we came in,” Hiroki said. 

“Maybe it’s the police?” Patricia was already standing up, walking towards the door of the study. As she reached for the knob, Camen reached out and put a hand on her arm.

“You wait here. In case it isn’t the police. Stay here with Hiroki, I’ll go check it out.”  He reached into his coat and pulled out a small gun from the underarm holster that Hiroki knew he had. He turned towards Hiroki, nodding. “Watch her. If you hear anything go bad, get her out of here and get to the police.”

“You think it’s that serious?” Hiroki asked, heart pounding. He stood up, a sudden rush of energy making him jumpy, heading towards the door.

“I’m not planning on taking any chances,” he said, before he retreated down the darkened hallway towards the foyer, the bell still ringing. 

Hiroki closed the door after Camen had left, turning towards Patricia.  She was pale and nearly trembling. Hiroki motioned to the chair. “Come on, sit down. It’s fine. He’s paranoid because that’s part of the job. But he’s good at what he does. We’ll be just fine here.”

“But what if we’re not?” she asked. “What if it’s some sort of burglar?”

“Then they wouldn’t be ringing the bell, would they?” Hiroki said.  '”Like I said, just sit down and relax.”  Once she was sitting down, seemingly a little more under control, Hiroki made his way over to the door. There wasn’t any sound now, just the sound of the two of them breathing in this room.

“Mrs. Wallace, I’m going to turn off the lights. Don’t be alarmed.” Hiroki reached up and flipped the switch, plunging them into darkness. Then he cracked open the door and peered out into the darkness of the hall. The hallway was empty, and Hiroki couldn’t see any motion out in the small part of the foyer he could see from here. The house felt suddenly like a tomb, large and still and indifferent. 

Suddenly there was the sound of two heavy impacts, one accompanied with a low grunt. Hiroki was ready to bolt if need be, but in the gloom of the hallway he saw Camen coming down the hall. Of course, he was coming down the hall at a full run, his gun out.  “Hiroki, come on!”

Hiroki turned towards Patricia. “We need to go, now!” To her credit, she was up in a flash, the two of them both making their way out of the study and into the hall. Camen caught up with them, handing Hiroki the keys to the car. “What’s going on?” Hiroki asked.

“There’s someone here. I tackled them, but they’re still here. I don’t know if they’re armed or not.” The three of them raced out into the foyer, Camen at the lead, gun out and scanning the darkness for sign of the assailant. Hiroki led Patricia to the open door, Camen right behind. Out in the yard, they were nearly completely exposed if someone wanted to take a shot at them, but Hiroki knew the drill on safely getting to the car and ran at a half crouch to the vehicle.

He put Patricia in the back, telling her to get down and stay down. Then he made his way over to the driver’s side of the car, Camen right behind him, gun out and sweeping the yard. Out here it seemed much brighter than inside, but the shadows made it hard to tell what was trees moving in the wind and what was the intruder. 

Hiroki started the engine even as Camen was climbing into the passenger seat, peeling out of the parking lot and towards the gate. The headlights revealed that the gate was open, the sliding mechanism smoking faintly. Hiroki kept his eyes on the road, though, getting them out of the there.

“What happened?” Patricia asked.

Camen settled into his seat. “I opened the door but there wasn’t anybody out there. I felt like someone was watching me, though, and got out of the doorway so I wasn’t such an obvious target. Just in case this was the same person who killed Ms. Falchi.”

“I heard a struggle,” Hiroki said. 

“While I was hiding, someone rushed in through the door. I grabbed them, but they were ready for me and there was a fight. I ended up landing a punch that knocked them to the ground, though. Then I went to get you. I’m not sure where they went, but it seems we’ve lost them.”

“What do we do now?” Patricia asked. 

“Well, you can’t go back,” Camen said. “But apparently whoever killed Falchi is after you.”

“You’re sure they’re related.”

“No…” Camen shook his head, pausing. “We need to learn more about this case. And quickly. But until we get a grasp on what’s happening, we need to get you to safety.”

“What did you have in mind?” 

Camen shook his head. “I don’t know. I need time to think. Hiroki, I need to get you home. I’ll take over, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow afternoon.” 

Hiroki’s jaw tensed. The last thing he wanted was to be dropped off and sent back to the safety of his apartment and his mother right when things were getting interesting. This was an adventure! This was exactly the kind of thing he had signed up for when he insisted on being Camen’s assistant. But it was always ‘get Hiroki out of the way’ first and ‘have awesome experiences’ second.

***

Hiroki trudged into the apartment to find his mother sleeping in the recliner in the living room. He set down his bag and gently shook her awake. “Hey mom, I’m home.”

“Oh, Hiroki,” she said, yawning and stretching. “What time is it?”

“A little bit after three,” Hiroki said. “Sorry it took so long. Ben’s server was invaded, had to fight off the intruder and secure the data.”

His mother nodded, glazing over at the first mention of the technology he was ostensibly hired to do. She climbed to her feet and began to head towards bed. “I worry about you staying out so late. You can’t be running around at all hours at your age, it’s unnatural.”

“Mom, everyone my age is running around at all hours,” Hiroki said.  “The difference is that I’m getting paid for it and building up a resume. Don’t worry, I take care of myself. And Ben looks out for me.”

She scoffed. “That man doesn’t look like he can take care of himself, much less anyone else. I don’t trust him. He’s shifty.”

Hiroki rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say.” When his mother went to bed Hiroki sank into the living room couch. He sighed, turning on the TV for some noise and light but not really paying attention to it. At this rate, he wasn’t sure he would ever fall asleep, anxious about what Camen was doing right now, fleeing a would-be intruder—maybe a murderer!---and leaving him here to wait for information.

Thinking about the case, and the adventures that he could be going on if only he wasn’t stuck here, Hiroki fell asleep on the couch, accompanied by the muted light of the TV.

The Mob Lawyer (part 3)

“What the hell are you doing bringing the kid here?”

Camen looked up from the body that was laying in the entryway of the house, dropping the sheet back over her. He turned to face the detective who was coming over to them, a tired looking man in a disheveled looking suit.

“Sonny, you know he’s with me,” Camen said. “I can’t very well show up on the job without my assistant.”

“You’re not here on the job, Ben.”

“Detective Nolan,” Hiroki spoke up, “are you saying that Ben is a suspect?”

The detective rocked on his heels, thinking for a moment before he spoke. “Not seriously, no. But we found your card on her body, and so we had to make the call. It’s not like you just hand those out to everyone.”

“Well, I do hand them out to everyone, considering that it’s a good way to drum up business,” Camen said, “but in this case you’re right. We were here earlier this afternoon, when I assure you she was very much alive.”

"What were you doing here?”

“Investigating,” Camen said as he motioned towards the body. “I needed to question her on a case I’ve got, tracking down a guy stepping out on his wife. She was the other woman.”

Sonny’s eyes lit up. “Then we have a suspect!”

“Maybe,” Camen said. “Let me fill you in on what I’ve been up to. You mind if Sugoi here takes some crime scene photos?”

Sonny looked around the apartment. Most of the cops were already gone, just a few left milling around outside to keep the neighbors at bay and wait for the coroner to show up. “Yeah, I suppose he can. Don’t touch the body, kid, or I’ll make sure you never step foot on one of my crime scenes again.”

Hiroki hesitated, waiting until the two of them walked away, Benjamin talking rapidly while Sonny listened. Ben didn’t have any choice but to cooperate with the police, but Hiroki didn’t like it. The police were decidedly unadventurous about these sorts of things.

Hiroki lifted the sheet and pulled a small digital camera out of his bag. He had photographed bodies before for Ben, though never in an official capacity in front of the police. He felt decidedly unprofessional as he went about taking all the pictures he could of what used to be Victoria Falchi. It was decidedly messy for such a neat kill. Two round holes were stamped in the skin above her low-cut neckline, and another set right between her eyes.

He took his pictures and then returned to Ben, still talking to Sonny. When he approached, Camen gestured to Hiroki. “Sugoi has our conversation with Miss Falchi recorded, if you need to further substantiate our proof.”

“No,” Sonny said. “You’ve told me enough to work with for now. If I need it, I’ll give you a call. But you’re free to go.”

The two of them walked out of the townhome and into Ben’s car. Once they were inside, Ben held out his hand for the camera. Hiroki gave it to him, watching as he flipped through the images. “I can’t believe he didn’t take my recording of our interview,” Hiroki said, as a way to make conversation. He was still unnerved whenever he was confronted with a body like that.

Camen pulled out a cigarette and lit it, one-handed, as he rolled down the window and continued to flip through the pictures. “The thing you gotta remember about the cops, at least the good ones, is they know that if they push too hard I’ll stop volunteering information. So I volunteer, and they go easy. We’re in the same business, and if you do your job right when you’re negotiating your fees you’ll get paid whether the police do the work for you or not.”

“So … what now? Detective Nolan seemed to think that our missing man was the killer.”

“It certainly could be construed that way,” Ben said. He handed the camera back to Hiroki. “What do you see?”

“Two gunshots to the chest, one to the head. Looks like whoever it was shot her as she opened the door. Neighbors didn’t report gunshots, so there was some kind of suppressor being used.”

“Yes. There’s one problem with that, though.”

“Which is?”

“If someone shot her from the doorway where she was, there’d be some sort of burn left on the skin, even with a suppressor. She couldn’t have been shot point blank.”

“Are you saying she wasn’t shot there?”

“No, I’m pretty sure she was shot there. Too much blood for that to not be where she was standing,” Camen said as he started up the car. The engine wheezed to life and they took off. “But it means that the shooter was standing somewhere else. I don’t suppose you thought to look for where the bullets hit after they exited the body.”

Hiroki gaped for a moment, feeling incredibly shortsighted, before he shook his head.

“Don’t worry, I already did. The two bullets that hit her in the chest struck the back of the front door. You didn’t notice because it was covered until the forensics guy could get there. The third one is embedded in the floor under the body, probably.”

“A double tap to the chest and one between the eyes sounds a lot like a mob hit,” Hiroki said, trying to recover. “We’re looking for a mob guy, remember.”

“Yeah, but he’s a lawyer, not a hit man. So far as my research pulled up, he didn’t even own a gun, let alone know how to use it enough to do something like that.”

“So … what then?”

“I don’t know,” Camen answered. “We just continue the investigation. Though the odds of it being a coincidence that she was killed shortly after we asked her about our missing man seem pretty high.”

“So someone’s killing the people related to this case?”

“If' that’s true,” Camen said, “then we need to be careful, meddling around and asking questions. And we need to talk to our client. The last thing we need is to wake up tomorrow and find that our employer ate a bullet.”

“We’re going to be out late, then?”

"Camen looked over at Hiroki and shrugged. “If you need me to take you home, let me know now. I can always come get you next time you’re free.”

“There’s a job to do,” Hiroki answered, reaching for his phone. “I’m not going to miss this.”

Camen nodded and floored the accelerator. Hiroki dialed his mother’s number, a ready lie as to what he would be doing forming in his mind.

The Mob Lawyer (part 2)

The beat up old station wagon pulled up to the posh townhome, swinging into a parking spot that seemed impossibly small for such a large car. From inside the car stepped two men, one a large man, bearded and staring up at the townhome through his sunglasses. The other was a young teenager, Asian, slender and looking awkward as he flipped through some pieces of paper he was holding.

“Pretty nice place,” Camen, the larger man, said around his cigarette. “You think our missing person helped set her up here? This doesn’t look like it’s in a cafeteria lady’s budget.”

“Miss Falchi isn’t a cafeteria lady,” Hiroki said. “She’s a caterer. A pretty well known one. She owns her own business.”

“Whatever,” Camen said with a shrug. “Food’s food.”

“I think you just like to piss me off,” Hiroki said. “You can’t actually pay as little attention to the facts as you let on and still be as successful as you are.”

“Never underestimate the power of underestimation,” Camen said as he threw his cigarette down and stomped it. The two of them climbed the stairs to the door of the townhome, Benjamin ringing the bell. There was a moment’s hesitation before a woman opened the door a few inches, peering out from behind a chain.

“Victoria Falchi?" Camen asked her.

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Benjamin Camen, private investigator,” Camen answered, flashing her his credentials. “We’re here on behalf of Mrs. Patricia Wallace. Concerning her husband, Sam.”

“Oh,” the woman said. She pulled off the chain and opened the door. She was a tall woman, statuesque and olive-skinned. Hiroki tried hard not to stare. “Please, come in.”

They were ushered into a posh, modern-looking living space. She set them in the living room, sitting in a large black leather chair while Camen settled into the love seat, his big form and the bright colors of his shirt looking wildly out of place here. Hiroki did his best to look inconspicuous as he set up his laptop.

“My assistant here will be taking your statement, if you don’t mind,” Camen said.

Ms. Falchi crossed her legs and settled back in her chair. “No, I don’t mind, Detective. I assume this is about Sammy’s disappearance?”

“Yes, it is.” He leaned forward in his chair. “You know about his disappearance?”

“Of course,” she said. “I talked to Sammy every day, I knew when he was gone. Even if I didn’t, though, his hausfrau called me up and accused me of bringing some sort of harm to him. She’s a ridiculous woman.”

“Which means that you don’t know what happened to him?”

“I certainly had nothing to do with it,” she said. “I had a lot of fun with Sam. He was a good man, overworked and henpecked but he knew how to treat a woman. I wouldn’t have harmed him.”

Camen nodded, settling back into the loveseat. Hiroki, taking the extended silence as an invitation, spoke up. “Um … excuse me, Ms. Falchi, but … Mrs. Wallace said that the day before he disappeared, Mr. Wallace took several phone calls from you. Unusual calls that agitated him.”

“If he took any calls that day at home, they were not from me. I was willing to play the game. My calls were always at the office or on his cell when I knew he was out. It would have been inappropriate to call his home.”

“We could pull phone records to verify that,” Hiroki said quickly. Camen shot him a warning look. Threatening suspects was no way to get a job done. Hiroki seemed to realize what he had said the moment it was out of his mouth, and hesitated, gaping. “I mean … I just … there’s no reason to hide the truth.”

She looked at him, raising one elegant eyebrow in response. “No there isn’t. Which is why I have hid nothing.” She continued to glare at Hiroki as he tried to sink into his chair and disappear.

Camen spoke up, much to Hiroki’s relief. “You have a nice place here. Very nice. I can’t imagine what a place like this must cost.”

“Interested in real estate, Detective?”

“Just thinking aloud,” he said. “This really is a nice place.”

“Well, thank you. Was there anything else?”

Camen thought for a moment, shrugging his shoulders. “You have any idea what could have happened to him?”

“He was a powerful man, such a man makes plenty of enemies just by the nature of what he does,” she said. “Or perhaps the woman at home was tired of being treated like the other woman. I couldn’t really say.”

“You think Mrs. Wallace could have done something?” Hiroki asked.

“Why not?” Victoria stood up, looking down at Hiroki. “She was the one who threw the blame in my direction. Good cover, for a killer, to have a mistress that she can paint in jealous terms. I was not jealous of her role. I’m happy being my own woman.” She looked over at Camen. “If there’s nothing else, you’ll have to excuse me.”

“Of course,” Camen said, standing up. He pulled out a business card, handing it over to her. “If you think of anything else, let me know.”

“I’m sure that there’s nothing else I could tell you, but feel free to call on me if there are any more questions you have.”

***

Hiroki sank into the seat as the car pulled away from the town home, trying to disappear. Not that there was anywhere to go. It was just him and Camen and the soft wheeze of the old car's engine. They were quiet for a long moment, Hiroki waiting for some sort of chastisement from Camen for his outburst.

Finally, he could take it no longer. "Ben, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have--"

Camen looked over at Hiroki, silencing him with a glare. They fell into silence for a while longer. Hiroki waited for Camen to break the silence, which he finally did after they had made their way back to the apartment where Hiroki lived with his mother.

"Look," Camen began. "I told you when you started that if you were going to do this job, you had to sit there and shut up and do what I told you. I was very clear on this, was I not?"

"Yes, but--"

"No buts. This isn't us running around playing Scooby-Doo. This is my life. If you can't follow the rules, then I don't need you there. I don't need an assistant that badly." He reached over Hiroki and pushed open the car door. "Now get out."

"Ben, I--"

"No, get out. I have real work to do. When you can act like an adult, you let me know." Hiroki got out and grabbed his laptop bag. He shut the door behind him and watched as Camen sped off.

Then, shouldering his bag, he trudged up the five flights of stairs to his home. His mother, as usual, was out working. Hiroki set the bag down on his desk and climbed onto his bed with a defeated sigh. He stared up at his ceiling, berating himself for being so childish. Camen depended on him to act like he was worthy of his job. He had fought so hard to have Camen show him the ropes and bring him around. And he had blown it by being too hot-headed when it wasn't even called for.

If he failed now, how would he ever become a private detective himself?

Dreaming of the future, of how he'd get back on Camen's good side and how great it would be when he finally was on his own, calling the shots, Hiroki fell into the deep sleep of the mentally overworked.

***

"Hiroki!"

Hiroki's eyes opened to darkness. The room was warm, the air heavy and still. He wasn't sure what time it was, but he lurched out of bed at the sound of his mother's voice. He was still dressed. He glanced at the clock--eight--and realized it was night and he had been sleeping for several hours.

Stumbling to his feet, sweaty and slow from the lengthy nap, he staggered out into the living room. "Yeah?"

"Phone call," his mother said, holding out the phone for him.

"Who would be calling the house?" he asked, picking up the receiver.

"It's your employer," she said. She didn't exactly approve of Camen, and she certainly didn't know everything that he and Hiroki were up to, but the checks were good and as far as she knew, Hiroki was getting great experience running a client database for a small company.

"Ben?" Hiroki spoke quickly into the phone. If he called the house, it had to have been important. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, seeing that there was a missed call from 20 minutes ago.

"You weren't picking up, I had to call the house."

"Yeah, I fell asleep," Hiroki said.

"Well, I hope you're rested. I'll be there in five minutes. I need you to be ready."

"What?" Hiroki was suddenly alert, his eyes wide. Camen was conscious of the fact that his assistant lived at home and was still technically in school. Sudden nighttime excursions were nearly unheard of.

"I told your mother that my server melted down or something. She seemed to buy it."

"Yeah, that'd be bad. So what can you tell me?"

Camen paused. Hiroki wondered how much he'd tell him over the phone. He had to act natural, whatever it was. His mother was still lingering, half watching TV and half eavesdropping on his conversation. Even know that, it was hard to control himself when Camen finally spoke. In four short words, Hiroki felt his mouth dry up and his stomach tighten.

"Victoria Falchi is dead," Camen said.

Hiroki was already on his way to grab his bag and meet Camen outside.

The Mob Lawyer (part 1)

The sun was rising bright and early in Colston City when the beat up old station wagon pulled out of the parking garage and onto the street. The sun was still struggling to get up over the horizon. Inside the car, Hiroki was struggling to keep awake.

“I can’t believe you got me out of bed on a Saturday. You know I need a day off sometime.”

“This is your day off,” Benjamin Camen said from behind the wheel. He didn’t seem phased by the hour. In fact, he looked fiercer than usual. “You have days off from school, because it’s exhausting. This job doesn’t have time off, because it’s empowering. When work comes, we do it. Or did you want to go back home?”

“No,” Hiroki said. Camen had called his bluff. He wouldn’t give this up for anything. How many teenagers got to be the assistant and protégé of Colston City’s most notorious detective.

“Good,” Camen said, and reached back into the back seat of the station wagon. He tossed a foil-wrapped package at Hiroki. “Cereal bar. Eat it.”

“I’m not hungry,” Hiroki said.

“Eat it anyway. I don’t want you fidgeting when we meet with our new client because you suddenly woke up enough to realize you were hungry.”

Hiroki took the cereal bar and opened it, picking it into pieces and eating them slowly as he looked out the window. The city was much more empty than he usually saw it. With Camen, he saw all sorts of sides of this city that he didn’t otherwise know.

Their client was in the Terrace Heights part of town, secluded houses tucked away from the main road dotting the mountainside. There was money here, and you could feel it in the insistence on space and privacy in a city as big as this. Camen buzzed in at the gate, a female voice coming in over the intercom.

When they parked at the house, Hiroki was paying a lot more attention. This was a nice place and he suddenly felt very out of place standing in the driveway in a beat up old car and Camen ambling up to the door like he owned the place.

A woman answered when he rang the bell. She was small in both size and bearing, looking up at Camen with hesitation. He had that effect on people. His presence was intimidating all by itself, but his size didn’t help. “Mr. Camen?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said with an easy smile, extending his hand. She shook it, her own hand disappearing in his. “I’m Benjamin Camen. You can just call me Ben if that’d make you feel better.” He gestured over to Hiroki. “This is my assistant, Sugoi. He’ll be taking your statement and helping out on the case, if you don’t mind.”

She led them into a well-furnished parlor, decked out in dark woods and hundreds of thick leather books. It had a masculine feel that was at odds with the delicate looking woman before them. “Please, sit,” she said, and Camen collapsed heavily into the nearest chair while Hiroki took the one closest to that, reaching into his bag and pulling out his laptop.

“So, to begin with, why don’t you tell me your name and why you called today?” Camen said.

“Well, my name is Patricia Wallace. My husband’s name is Samuel Wallace. Sam’s … well, Sam’s gone missing.”

“If he’s missing, you should go to the police,” Camen said.

“I thought about that, but I don’t want this spread all over town as gossip. My husband is a junior partner at Barston & Chase. He has a reputation to uphold. And I think that he might have gone missing because of another woman.”

“You believe your husband was having an affair?”

“I know he was having an affair,” she said with a shrug. “Men like my husband always want something more than they can get at home.”

“You knew about this and did nothing?”

“What was I going to do, get mad?” She shook her head. “He would have done it anyway, and I love my husband despite his faults. Accepting it made it easier to keep him at home, he wasn’t feeling pressured to live a double life and sneak away.”

“Until now, of course,” Camen said.

“I know it has something to do with that woman. She’s been calling more frequently, sometimes four or five times a day. Every time my husband answered, he seemed agitated. Yesterday he didn’t come home from work. His secretary says he left for a long lunch.”

“Why suspect the other woman, then?”

“Where does a man go when he has a long lunch scheduled but nobody written in to meet with? It’s not like this was the first time he wandered off for a mid-day liaison.”

“So you suspect…?”

“That this woman wanted something else from him. Something that made him upset. And he went to see her and something happened. Either they ran off together or she … hurt him.” Patricia Wallace looked ill at ease, sitting there in her missing husband’s study. She picked at the hem of her shirt. “I just need to know what happened. I don’t suspect that Sam would run off without saying something. He’s not that type of man.”

Later, when the terms had been decided and the details given, Hiroki and Camen stood on the deck of this beautiful house. Camen had asked to be excused to smoke, and here they stood overlooking the forest that surrounded them.

“What do you think?” Camen asked.

“She might have killed him herself,” Hiroki answered, trying to draw conclusions for himself. Camen always asked him what he thought, a training exercise to sharpen his skills.

Camen puffed on his cigarette, smoke wreathing around him. “She did it? She doesn’t look like the murdering type to me. She seems resigned to the way her life was. Besides, why call us?”

“Makes it look like she’s trying to find her husband when a body floats up in the bay next week or next month or whenever it does. The police will buy the argument that she wanted to be discreet. It’s not like you aren’t dragged into secret investigations all the time.”

“Clever, but I still don’t think she did it. And if she did, we should probably still check out the mistress and his office. You need to do your usual digging on Mr. Wallace, see what you come up with.”

“Of course,” Hiroki said. “Don’t I always?”

“Be careful,” Camen said. “There’s something she didn’t mention that’s worth paying attention to.”

“Which is?” Hiroki said, trying not to look annoyed that Camen suggested he wouldn’t otherwise be careful.

“Barston & Chase are mob lawyers. Their money isn’t exactly clean or safe. So for all we know, this might have nothing to do with the mistress and everything to do with business. There’s more reasons to step out on meetings that don’t get put on a calendar than a woman on the side.”

Camen put out his cigarette on the wood of the railing, then flicked the butt into the forest. Hiroki watched it tumble end of end before it disappeared into the trees. “You shouldn’t do that. Hits some dry foliage, you could burn down this entire place.”

“This isn’t California, it’s too wet for that. Besides, I put it out first. And besides again, its not your place to question my methods. I let you come along only so long as you agreed you’d be a good boy scout and do as I said.”

“Yeah, well, you said I could speak up in private.”

“Sure, kid. But last and most certainly not least,” Camen said as he turned away from the railing to head back into the house and continue digging into Samuel Wallace’s personal files, “is I never claimed I didn’t want to see this all burn straight down. Don’t act like it’d be such a tragedy.”

Hiroki paused for a moment, looking down at the forest below them, then headed in after Camen. There was investigating to do. He could worry about the mental stability of his boss on his own time.