Ishiguro glowered. "I am extremely disappointed, Senator. It will not go well from this point." He was clearly furious.
"Hey," Morton said. "You know what? Tough shit."
"We had an arrangement," Ishiguro hissed.
"Yes, we did," Morton said. "But you didn't keep your end of it, did you?"
The senator came over to us and said, "I suppose you want me to make a statement. Let me get this makeup off; and we can go."
"All right," Connor said.
Morton walked away, toward the makeup room.
Ishiguro turned to Connor and said, "Totemo taihenna koto ni narimashita ne."
Connor said, "I agree. It is difficult."
Ishiguro hissed through his teeth. "Heads will roll."
"Yours first," Connor said. "So omowa nakai."
The senator was walking toward the stairway going up to the second floor. Woodson came over to him, leaned close, and whispered something. The senator threw his arm around his shoulder. They walked arm in arm a moment. Then the senator went upstairs.
Ishiguro said bleakly, "Konna hazuja nakatta no ni."
Connor shrugged. "I am afraid I have little sympathy. You attempted to break the laws of this country and now there is going to be big trouble. Eraikoto ni naruyo, Ishiguro-san."
"We will see, Captain."
Ishiguro turned and gave Eddie a frosty look. Eddie shrugged and said, "Hey, I got no problems! Know what I mean, compadre? You got all problems now." And he laughed.
The floor manager, a heavyset guy wearing a headset, came over. "Is one of you Lieutenant Smith?"
I said I was.
"A Miss Asakuma is calling you. You can take it over there." He pointed to a living-room set. Couch and easy chairs, against a morning city skyline. I saw a blinking telephone by one chair.
I walked over and sat in the chair and picked up the phone. "Lieutenant Smith."
"Hi, it's Theresa," she said. I liked the way she used her first name. "Listen, I've been looking at the last part of the tape. The very end. And I think there may be a problem."
"Oh? What kind of a problem?" I didn't tell her Morton had already confessed. I looked across the stage. The senator had already gone upstairs; he was out of sight. Woodson, his aide, was pacing back and forth at the foot of the stairs, a pale, stricken look on his face. Nervously, he fingered his belt, feeling it through his suit coat.
Then I heard Connor say, "Ah, shit!" and he broke into a run, sprinting across the studio toward the stairs. I stood up, surprised, dropped the phone, and followed him. As Connor passed Woodson, he said "You son of a bitch," and then he was taking the stairs two at a time, racing upward. I was right behind him. I heard Woodson say something like, "I hadto."
When we got to the second floor hallway Connor shouted "Senator!" That was when we heard the single, cracking report. It wasn't loud: it sounded like a chair falling over.
But I knew that it was a gunshot.
SECOND NIGHT
¤
The sun was setting on the sekitei. The shadows of the rocks rippled over the concentric circles of raked sand. I sat and stared at the patterns. Connor was somewhere inside, still watching television. I could faintly hear the newscast. Of course, a Zen temple would have a television set on the premises. I was starting to become accustomed to these contradictions.
But I didn't want to watch TV any more. I had seen enough, in the last hour, to know how the media was going to play it. Senator Morton had been under a great deal of stress lately. His family life was troubled; his teenage son had recently been arrested for drunk driving, after an accident in which another teenager had been seriously injured. The senator's daughter was rumored to have had an abortion. Mrs. Morton was not available for comment, although reporters were standing outside the family townhouse in Arlington.
The senator's staff all agreed that the senator had been under enormous pressure lately, trying to balance family life and his own impending candidacy. The senator had not been himself; he had been moody and withdrawn, and in the words of one staffer, "He seemed to have been troubled by something personal."
While no one questioned the senator's judgment, one colleague, Senator Dowling, said that Morton had "become a bit of a fanatic about Japan lately, perhaps an indication of the strain he was under. John didn't seem to think accommodation with Japan was possible anymore, and of course we all know that we have to make an accommodation. Our two nations are now too closely bound together. Unfortunately, none of us could have known the strain he was really under. John Morton was a private man."
I sat watching the rocks in the garden turn gold, then red. An American Zen monk named Bill Harris came out and asked me if I wanted tea, or perhaps a Coke. I said no. He went away. Looking back inside, I saw flickering blue light from the tube. I couldn't see Connor.
I looked back at the rocks in the garden.
The first gunshot had not killed Senator Morton. When we kicked open the bathroom door, he was bleeding from the neck, staggering to his feet. Connor shouted "Don't!" just as Morton put the gun in his mouth and fired again. The second shot was fatal. The gun kicked out of his hands and went spinning across the tile floor of the bathroom. It came to rest near my shoes. There was a lot of blood on the walls.
Then people started screaming. I had turned back and I saw the makeup girl in the doorway, holding her hands to her face and screaming at the top of her lungs. Eventually, when the paramedics came, they sedated her.
Connor and I had stayed until the division sent Bob Kaplan and Tony Marsh. They were the detectives in charge, and we were free to go. I told Bob we'd give statements whenever he wanted them, and we left. I noticed that Ishiguro had already gone. So had Eddie Sakamura.
That had bothered Connor. "That damn Eddie," he said. "Where is he?"
"Who cares?" I said.
"There's a problem with Eddie," Connor said.
"What problem?"
"Didn't you notice how he acted around Ishiguro? He was too confident," Connor said. "Muchtoo confident. He should have been frightened and he wasn't."
I shrugged. "You said it yourself, Eddie's crazy. Who knows why he does what he does." I was tired of the case, and tired of Connor's endless Japanese nuances. I said I thought Eddie had probably gone back to Japan. Or to Mexico, where he had said earlier that he wanted to go.
"I hope you're right," Connor said.
He led me toward the rear entrance to the station. Connor said he wanted to leave before the press arrived. We got into our car and left. He directed me to the Zen center. We had been there ever since. I had called Lauren but she was out of the office. I called Theresa at the lab but her line was busy. I called home, and Elaine said that Michelle was fine, and the reporters had all gone. She asked if I wanted her to stay and give Michelle dinner. I said yes, that I might be home late.
And then for the next hour, I watched television. Until I didn't want to watch any more.
It was almost dark. The sand was purple-gray. My body was stiff from sitting, and it was growing chilly. My beeper went off, I was getting a call from the division. Or perhaps it was Theresa. I got up and went inside.