Flashback

The only problem with the Sasayaki-tonbo part of the theory was that Keigo Nakamura wasn’t the only resident of Wazee Street six years ago who had a hot tub bubbling away on the roof. Both the FBI and the plodding DPD led by Detective Sergeant Nick Bottom had found a certain James Oliver Jackson, who’d been in his rooftop Jacuzzi—along with four young female friends—during the time of the Keigo party and murder. Mr. Jackson’s hot tub was across the street and three buildings east and although that building was only two stories tall and had no view of Keigo’s patio area due to the doorway superstructure and patio fence on the Nakamura building, Jackson and his giggling guests stated that they certainly would have noticed a helicopter hovering over a building so close. James Oliver Jackson’s seat in the hot tub—Nick had checked—did have a perfect view of the airspace over the taller three-story Nakamura building, and Jackson and the co-eds had stated that there’d been a lot of uplight from the street that night, what with all the cars coming and going from Keigo’s party.

But one man, dressed in black, coming down one of those long rappel ropes from a black and silent stealth helicopter? wondered Nick. He had to smile when he imagined any district attorney presenting this James Bond/killer-ninja story to a jury.

He smiled again when he tried to picture the bull-chested mass of Hideki Sato, all dressed up in his ninja-suit and mask, rappelling down a two-hundred-foot-long rope in the night. It had damned well better be a sturdy helicopter.

“Bottom-san, do we await something?” asked Sato from his place just inside the library’s door.

Nick ignored him and ran his finger along the slightly fogged glass of the blastproof, bombproof, bulletproof window. He took the tactical glasses from his pocket and put them on. “You said you have the digital recordings for seven minutes after your Mr. Satoh broke down the door and rushed in to find Keigo’s body. Show me those minutes, please.”

“There were no cameras on this third floor…,” began Sato.

“I know that. I don’t want to be in the re-creation like down below. I just want to see it. Like any video. But I’m interested in a view from an external camera, one as close to this view”—Nick tapped the glass—“as possible.”

“One minute, please,” said Sato and tapped at his phone’s diskey.

Everything shifted again. Suddenly it was night and there was confusion on the dark street three floors below. The viewpoint wasn’t perfect—the camera must be up under the third-floor eaves on the outside of the building—and the effect it created in Nick’s inner ear was that he had instantly swooped up higher and to his right. The exterior cameras were in night-vision mode and things glowed greenly, turning passing headlights into blurred and streaking white-green blobs. Faces of people fleeing the party before the cops arrived were quite visible although the audio pickup would have to be filtered and cleaned up to pull individual voices from the distant babble.

Nick saw an older, bald Naropa Institute savant he recognized, looking cold in his thin cotton robe and rope sandals, running to a waiting van. Four or five of his acolytes, including the sandy-haired Derek Somebody, whom, Nick knew, Keigo had interviewed the day before his death, hurried to keep up.

Derek Dean, thought Nick. The guy’s name was Derek Dean. Shit, I wonder if my passport’s still good. I’ll need it if I go up to Boulder to reinterview him.

Sirens were wailing down Wazee Street now and the rush of people leaving the party became an undignified scramble.

There’s the ex-Israeli poet, Danny Oz, heading for a car with Delroy Nigger Brown. What on earth were those two doing together that night?

Remembering that Delroy was the major street vendor for drugs in this LoDo area, Nick figured that might answer his question. Patrol cars were arriving from opposite directions now and Nick recognized the white-blob faces of several patrolmen whose semi-intelligible reports were the first to be read in the giant pile that would become the K. Nakamura Murder Book. Nick had seen almost everything he’d wanted to see, but he kept the glasses on as the first ambulance arrived and EMTs boiled out of it in a totally unnecessary rush.

“Do I get my gun back?” asked Nick as he kept watching.

“Ah, so sorry,” said Sato. “The weapon you brought to the flashback cave is no longer available. But you have several at your shopping mall home, I trust.”

“What about the cash I had at Mickey’s?”