2 cobra 11

 

Chapter 11

 

Yes, I was in the wind, but I was also unarmed. This could be a teensy bit awkward as I had no ID prepared for the character I was being.

There’s more than one way to tool up, however.  And though I’m best with a gun, I can use more archaic weaponry too. And using more archaic weaponry is often quieter and less easily backtracked.

Sanji was living in Kenichi’s place, which I knew like the back of my hand. I should do, having lived there three weeks.  I may have behaved as a good, rule-abiding bodyguard, but I had established a habit of jogging in the mornings to keep fit. Several of the other bodyguards had joined me. I never did anything suspicious, but I looked hard, and I looked well. And I had satellite maps of how the property fitted in with the surroundings.

I did stop to buy a decent knife, in a gardening store, and some fine, smooth twine, some glue, and a gardening notebook. It wasn’t ideal, but I would need to act fast before news of my survival hit the trids. And yes, I put on the surgical gloves I had nicked from the hospital before I even touched them. I considered buying a burner-phone, but then I thought, hey, wouldn’t Jay Silverheels taunt someone who failed to kill him? So I didn’t bother.

At back of the Fukuhama property was another private property. But there was a dustbin run between them, not, I think, actually in use, but for a back way out pretty useful.   From here, I could easily get into the adjacent lot, owned by some reclusive geek whose garden was a wilderness. I was in more danger of lions and tigers and bears there than from anyone wanting to know what I was up to.  Well, actually, I was in more danger from things like poison ivy, but I was being careful.

I knew the weak places in the walls, and went over by swinging up into an overhanging branch from Wilderness Central, which had once had apple trees, and now had triffids. Oh, do keep up, it’s a reference to an old SF story about alien sentient invasive plants which made people blind. When not expecting trouble, his guards, if he had inherited the same bunch, were not assiduous about patrolling. I got in without trouble. And there was the bamboo grove where I had remembered it.

I expect most of you have made bows out of bamboo garden canes when you were young; and discovered that there’s a problem, in that they are too whippy and the thinner top than bottom causes problems. To make a decent bow, you have to apply science to it.

So, I cut down a bamboo stem which was a good two inches across; I carefully cut off the side branches, and then worked to slit it in half. I took one of the halves and slit it again. I had a fairly even strip about an inch wide, which I shaped to near points at each end, to make it bend more. I cleaned off the inside which was to be the outside, or back, of my bow. I put the outside shiny part of the bamboo in compression by putting on a twine string, secured through holes I drilled with the knife. Now you’re wondering why I did it that way round. Well, wood and its ilk are stronger in tension than compression, so I wanted the stronger side, the outer surface, as the belly of the bow, in compression. 

It would not take much without decent preparation, but it would do for one or two shots. I cut some smaller bamboo to be arrows, sharpening the business end, and fletching them with paper cut from the notebook. Not as good as feathers, but unless the Seattle seabirds suddenly became a lot more co-operative, I had what I had.

I tested my bow and found that it might not be tremendously accurate, but it had a reasonable pull to it. I unstrung it, and laminated the centre with the left over pieces of bamboo, thankful for fast drying glues. And oh boy did that make a difference. Added a good forty pounds of pull at an estimate. The higher the pull, the faster the arrows go; and therefore, the straighter. And therefore, of course, more accurate.

I moved closer to the house, always a risk with his guards about, but I wanted to get this over fast.

Sanji was at the back of the house, where the shoji were glass sliding doors.

I needed him to come out to me.

I phoned him, on callback. I would admit to it, if anyone asked me. I had my cover story for that.

“What?” he was rattled.

“Guess who-oo!” I said, in a singsong voice. I didn’t say any more; I didn’t want my conversation coming back to haunt me.

He did what I hoped and bolted for his workshop.

I took him in the thorax below the rib cage, and with a second arrow in the throat.

I’d been aiming for his eye, but I wasn’t going to quibble. I considered it very unlikely that he would survive either. I discarded my archery kit.

Actually, he might survive the first, but by the blood I’d been lucky to nick the hepatic portal vein, which means he should bleed out in seconds. And a hole in the throat wouldn’t help that any.

Now I had to get out. And the longer I took, the more likely it was for his body to be found.

I snuck round the side, and went to ring the front door bell.

It was opened by a polite maid servant.

“My name’s Jerry Jemson, I’m from the Seahawk Special,” I said. “I’d like to see Mr. Sanji Fukuhama and ask him if it is true that he had Jay Silverheels hit.”

“We don’t see reporters,” said the woman.

“I am sure I could change Mr. Fukuhama’s mind,” I said, trying to walk in the door.

The bouncer arrived.

“We don’t see no stinkin’ reporters,” he said.

With head held high and feet held higher, I was bodily removed down thirty feet of driveway and thrown onto the street to the jeers and catcalls of the bodyguards.

I shook my fist, and limped away.

Why risk escaping when you can be thrown out with less pain and danger?

 

oOoOo

 

I got back to the hospital without trouble, having re-dyed my hair and eyebrows from my quick change kit and restored my face.

There was a bit of a hullaballoo as I – Jay Silverheels, that is – was missing. I slipped into the linen cupboard and curled up on the floor. I let myself fall asleep.

I was shaken rudely awake after about half an hour.

“Mr. Silverheels! Mr. Silverheels! What are you doing here?” scolded the nurse who had given me the sedative.

“Well, I’m not doing anything if you’ve got half an hour for a quickie,” I said.

She slapped me.

“There’s no need to be like that,” I said. “A ‘no’ would have sufficed.”

“You vanish and scare us all and then you... you damn trid stars!” she almost spat.

“But, honey, I woke up and I needed a leak,” I said. “And when I found the bathroom, I kinda forgot my way back.”

“You have an ensuite, you idiot,” she said.

“I have an ensuite?” I said, foolishly. “Oh!  I didn’t think to look. I was fuddled.”

She sighed. I can’t have been the only person under light sedation to wander off and get lost. I was delivered back to my room, made to sign waivers and promises of non-disclosure over my extracurricular peregrinations – grinning to myself over how far I had peregrinated – and was then discharged.

I went back to my hotel room. It was all repaired and hunky dory, Sanji was dead, and I had a watertight alibi. Made more watertight by the hospital’s desire not to let anyone know that they had, however briefly, mislaid me.

You mislay your spectacles and find them again. You mislay forms that have been filled in, and find where they had been mis-filed. You do not lose patients.

It’s bad for business.

 

Then, I got the cops swarming round like bees round a honey tree.

They wanted to know if I had any idea who had tried to kill me.

“It’s that damned show,” I said. “I’ve had someone out for me since the start. There were explosive charges on the spring in the qualifier, you know?  I got them off barely in time. I slung them as far as I could. It wasn’t a big charge, but it would have blocked up the water. Then there was that live bullet. Bit of a coincidence that the only one that hit me was a live round!   Someone was out for my death, I tell you!

“I understand you made a call back to Sanji Fukuhama?” said the cop.

“Who?” I said.

“Sanji Fukuhama.  You were phoned and told that you had killed his brother, Ichiro Fukuhama, in New York in the last task of ‘Extreme,’ he said.

“I don’t remember what the crazy idiot said; I don’t recall him giving a name,” I said.   “I was busy leaping out of the way when that minigun thing started whirring. I have fast reflexes.”

“Just as well, sir,” said the cop. “The sentry gun must have come very close.”

“I was deeply shocked,” I said. “But when I came round, I went to the loo, and I thought, someone thinks you’re dead, and I was so angry, I used dialback, and said “Guess who-oo” to him, so he’d be rattled. There’s no law against taunting the people who try to kill you, is there? I didn’t have a name. And how he might think I killed Ichiro, I have no idea. As far as I am aware, Ichiro was a good third of a circle away from my start point.  I didn’t hear about him being dead until his pursuer and drone operator came in. I was already at City Hall then.”

He nodded, and made notes.

“Just routine,” he said.

It probably was, too. If they seriously suspected Jay Silverheels of being a killer, they would be questioning me harder and with less of a softly-softly approach as reserved for celebrities.

As far as this cop was concerned, one of the Yak got out of line in making a false assumption because his brother had had a fatal accident, and paranoia had stepped in. So, I had no ‘what were you doing at three-twenty-seven this afternoon’ since I was, obviously, in the hospital, probably making myself as obnoxious as any celebrity, and only really of interest for having been really stupid to taunt a dangerous man. The cop said so.

“We appreciate that you were angry, Mr. Silverheels, but it was a very, very bad idea to ring up someone who had already tried to kill you in order to taunt him.”

I looked shamefaced.

“I... I suppose it was rather stupid, officer,” I said. “I was so mad, you know?  I suppose I hoped to scare him that I could identify his voice for you. But you already know who it was? Is he in custody? Do I have to come and listen to him talk to identify him?”

I was very earnest, and helpful.

“No, Mr. Silverheels, Sanji Fukuhama is dead.”

“Oh! He was alive when he answered my call... at least....” I tailed off. “Someone said ‘What? And I assumed it was him.  I couldn’t swear to it, though.”

“That’s all right, sir,” said the cop. “He was killed around the time you called; but though your call may have distracted him so that it was easier for whoever killed him, it may have had nothing to do with it, and you cannot be blamed at all.”

“Well, I sure am glad of that,” I said.

I was.

The Feds would have removed me from custody if any clever dick had thought I was responsible, but I preferred not to have to involve Tarquin.

I just wondered if he would have any other little jobs for me before my Big Freeze act.