Hideo had wanted to search further through the police database last night but the need for sleep and the time zone change had caught up with him. He’d awakened late this morning fully refreshed and ready for the next step.
His target was anyone connected with Hugh Gerrish. First was to search for a list of “known associates,” but he could find no such list. Perhaps because Gerrish had never been a fugitive. He had served no jail time, so there was no cellmate Hideo could look up.
He went back to the crime itself and found the arrest record. His spirits lifted as he read through it: Gerrish had not been alone on the break and enter. He’d been captured along with a man named Alonzo Cooter.
Hideo searched the database for that name and found the mug shot. A beefy, surly black face stared back at him. Not a cooperative face. The belligerence in his eyes said he was not a man who would frighten easily.
But that was what the yakuza were for.
He called for Kenji, then hit the print button. While he was waiting, Hideo found Cooter’s last known address—he hoped it was good—and printed that screen too. Then he scanned through Kaze Group’s properties in the five boroughs. Cooter lived in the South Bronx. Kaze owned a boarded-up building awaiting demolition near Yankee Stadium. Cooter lived less than a mile away.
“Takita-san,” Kenji said with a quick bow upon arrival.
Hideo wrote the building’s address on one of the printouts, then handed him the sheets.
“Find this man. Bring him to this address. Then call me.”
Another quick bow and Kenji was gone.
Hideo nodded. Complications had been encountered and overcome. Soon he would be talking to Hugh Gerrish.
Now…if only he could find the ronin.
He called up the mystery man’s photo and stared at it, trying to devise a way to track him down.
And he would. Hideo was sure of it.