Petrov and I grab a small meeting room and I take him through the case file in detail, paying particular attention to last night’s developments.
“Detective Ramos organized a team to process the hotel room and so far the biggest find was a laptop. A computer tech is looking at it today, having already found records of payments to a US bank account.”
Petrov raises an eyebrow. “Any name on the account?”
“Not yet. Ramos was hoping to either get a name from the computer today, or organize a warrant for the bank to release the account holder’s name to us.” I look at my watch. “I’m surprised I haven’t heard back from him yet.”
“You wanna call him now?”
“Yeah. I haven’t had a chance to tell him our vic’s real name yet, either.” I feel bad about sitting on this knowledge for twenty minutes without updating Ramos, but since I found out, it’s been a whirlwind of revelations. I dial Ramos’s number on the meeting-room phone and he picks up after one ring.
“I’ve got news…big news,” I say.
“Shoot.”
“Turns out Jo Kume is an alias for Jun Saito.”
Before I get to follow the ID up with the even bigger news, he says, “Alias?”
“Yup. I’ve got Special Agent Pasha Petrov with me and I’ve started taking him through the case notes in detail.” I press the speakerphone button. “You’re on speakerphone now. It turns out Jun Saito was high up in the Tokyo Yakuza fifteen years ago, but then disappeared.”
Ramos whistles down the phone. “And I thought it was big with drugs, the DEA and the Asian Boyz involved. This is huge.”
“You better believe it,” Petrov says and then introduces himself.
“I was just taking Agent Petrov through what we’ve got so far from the hotel room. Any updates?”
“You got my message?”
“No.” But a glance at my BlackBerry tells me I’ve had one missed call—it’s still on Silent.
“We’ve got a name for that bank account. Monthly payments of two thousand dollars were being paid to a Mee Kim.”
“Going back how far?”
“Just over a year.”
“You got anything on this Mee Kim yet, Detective Ramos?” Petrov asks.
“Uh-huh. And guess where she lives, Anderson?”
“Monterey Park.” I fill in the blank. That’s the reason Saito chose a hotel there. “Maybe he was trying to find his blackmailer, put a stop to it.”
“Perhaps he did find the blackmailer.” Petrov taps his notebook with his pen.
“I gotta say, Mee Kim doesn’t read like the blackmailing type,” Ramos says. “Although maybe the Bureau’s database will bring back more info on Mee Kim than ours.”
“What have you found so far?” I flick the ring on my little finger, wondering what Saito could have been blackmailed over.
“Mee Kim is a twenty-six-year-old high-school teacher. No criminal record and a spotless driving record, too.” Ramos pauses. “And she looks kinda sweet to me.”
Ramos has the benefit of looking at a driver’s license photo.
“We’ll see what we can find on her this end, get a full file together.” Petrov takes charge. “In the meantime, I think we should pay Mee Kim a visit.”
“You read my mind,” Ramos says.
Petrov glances at his watch. “Let’s meet at her home at five-thirty. What’s the address, Ramos?”
“Twenty forty-one Bleakwood Avenue, Monterey Park.”
Petrov and I both write the address down. When Petrov’s finished he looks up and leans toward the phone. “We’ll need to present all this information to the L.A. Gang Impact Team ASAP. I’ll set it up for 8:00 a.m. tomorrow and let you guys brief the team. Ramos, we’d like to keep you and Anderson on the case full-time, but we’ve got other specialized resources available if your captain wants to reassign you or anyone else from your team.”
“I want in. But I don’t know about the others. You think this could be a long-running case?”
“There are going to be lots of layers, so yeah, it’s possible. Maybe even probable.”
Ramos sighs. “I’ll see what I can do. My boss might give me four weeks, but probably no one else. LAPD’s got specialized officers for this.” He seems disappointed by the prospect of having to hand the case over. “So where’s this 8:00 a.m. meeting?”
“We’ll hold it here, at the L.A. Gang Impact Team headquarters on level fifteen.”
“You guys won’t have far to walk.” He gives a little chuckle.
“No.” I use a small pause in the conversation to hit Ramos up. “So, you wanna do the briefing, Ramos?” Generally I brief on an offender profile, so given I don’t have a profile yet, handballing the job to Ramos isn’t out of order.
“Sure.”
“We’ve still gotta figure out why Saito came to L.A.,” Petrov says. “Has he been secretly involved in the Yakuza all this time and needed to come to the States to sort out his L.A. enterprise? Or was it a one-off deal? Or is blackmail the reason behind his visit? Did someone force him out of hiding?”
I flash back to my vision of Saito in his car—presumably in Singapore. Someone called him and whatever they told him made him take action, made him get on a plane to L.A. But his reactions fit both possibilities; he could have found out something was going wrong in L.A. in terms of the drug business, something he felt he had to handle personally, or he could have been told something that required him to reacquaint himself with his old life. Maybe the blackmailer was upping the ante and Saito decided he’d had enough.
“Hopefully Mee Kim can give us some answers,” I say.
“Yes.” Petrov changes the topic. “What airline did he come in on?”
“Singapore Airlines.”
Petrov scribbles in his notebook. “Let’s call the airline and see when Saito booked that flight. It might be useful down the track to know when he organized the trip.”
“I’ll do that.” I write the task down on my new to-do list, underneath searching ViCAP for homicides with similar MOs. “I can give them a quick call before we head off to see Mee Kim. See if they’ll give us flight information without a warrant. Although I also want to do a ViCAP search—maybe our hit man’s struck in the US before.”
“I don’t recognize the MO or cause of death from any of the organized crime files, but that’s not to say you won’t find something in another state, or something going back before my time.”
“True.” This case is different from most homicides, in which most of our focus is on who committed the crime. This time we have to work out how the Yakuza and Asian Boyz are involved, to see if Saito’s murder is about more than the death of one individual. The possibilities are endless.
“Okay,” says Petrov, “let’s get this moving. I’ll come by your desk to collect you in ten minutes.” He nods to me. “And we’ll meet you at Mee Kim’s address, Detective Ramos.”
“Sure thing.”
“That’ll only give me time for the call to the airline or the ViCAP search.” I’m not complaining, just making sure Petrov realizes the repercussions.
“I’ll get one of my people to call Singapore Airlines,” Ramos offers. “May as well make them work for their lousy pay grade today, given it’ll probably be their last day on the case once I speak to Captain Booth.”
“Great, thanks, Ramos.” The day’s disappearing, and fast. Any help is appreciated.
When Petrov and I pull up at 2041 Bleakwood Avenue, Ramos’s car is already parked out front. One side of Bleakwood Avenue is single-fronted homes, and the other side is a baseball field, part of the East Los Angeles College.
Ramos gets out of his car and walks toward us and I notice his holster is unclipped. He’s ready for anything. “Any luck with ViCAP?” he asks as I’m opening my car door.
“I need more time, but on the surface nothing like our vic’s throat wound came up. I’m going to do a couple more searches tomorrow, using other variables.”
“Such as?”
“Hit man, Asian victim, organized crime…” With several search terms, hopefully the results won’t be too unwieldy.
Ramos nods, then looks at the house, which is a white-brick single-fronted number, with a perfectly manicured but small garden. “No movement, but I’ve only been here for five minutes.”
The grass is cut extremely short, and a few shrubs, pruned into perfect globes or rectangles, line a garden bed that runs along the front of the house. A narrow concrete entrance path divides the lawn in two, and ends at the one small step that leads onto the house’s tiny porch. A small palm plant, the only unpruned plant in sight, fans from the left-hand side of the path onto the porch.
Petrov joins me and Ramos on the curb, and takes his gun out. “It’s not a known Yakuza or other organized crime residence. Or gang, for that matter.”
I look at him, curious as to how he knows this.
“While you were doing your ViCAP search I was checking out this address.” He nods toward the house. “I got our IT people to check it in their databases. Nothing sinister…that we know of.”
Despite the lack of a known criminal element, Petrov does have his gun out. At this stage, Kim’s a big unknown. She could be the mistress of a key figure in organized crime who has somehow stayed off the radar until today.
I draw my weapon, too, but both Petrov and I hold our guns loosely at our sides. Ramos leaves his gun in its holster, but rests his right hand on its butt as we climb the one step to the porch. We ring the doorbell.
Petrov whispers. “Montebello High School is her current employer. They did the standard criminal record and Live Scan check five years ago when they hired her.”
In California, all public school employees have to undergo a criminal check, including a fingerprint search, as part of their job application. It’s a small but essential step in protecting children. If Mee Kim is still working as a schoolteacher, there’s a chance she’ll be home already. But when no one answers after a few minutes and another two rings, we decide to sit in Petrov’s car and wait it out.
“You updated Joe?” Petrov asks.
Ramos and I both shake our heads.
“May as well fill him in now.” Petrov fishes out his cell phone and hits two buttons before putting the phone up to his ear. Obviously De Luca rates a speed dial.
The phone call is brief, with Petrov summarizing the recent developments before suggesting De Luca goes home early to see his kids. Again, even though the call is short, the reference to De Luca’s home life makes me think he and Petrov are close.
Petrov flips his phone shut. “Done.” He looks at his watch. “So who wants to get the coffee?”
Ramos and I both look at him uncertainly.
“I’m joking.” He smiles. “We’ll wait until at least six-thirty before we go for a caffeine fix.”