Woman with a Blue Pencil (18 page)

“Are you listening to me, Jimmy?” Mr. Barratt asked from the driver's seat.

It was just the two of them in the car.

“I heard what you said,” Jimmy replied. “I was just thinking about jazz.”

“Jazz? Why?”

Mr. Barratt had rendezvoused with Jimmy at eight o'clock a few miles north of this neighborhood in a pay parking lot near, of all places, the Little Tokyo enclave. Before that, Mr. Barratt had said over the telephone that there'd been a “minor change of plans,” which he'd explain to Jimmy on their drive down to the Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach. Jimmy had imagined that Mr. Barratt would employ a driver and perhaps a bodyguard. He'd been surprised the two of them were alone. Now, he understood why.

“Jazz is an American art form,” Jimmy answered. “It's one of a thousand things that this country can do unlike any other country in the world. One of a thousand reasons that a man should not hesitate to give his life for the USA.”

Mr. Barratt kept his eyes fixed, concentrating on the barely sufficient glow cast by the car's masked headlights on the avenue ahead. “I didn't ask you to die for your country but to kill for it.”

“I understand,” Jimmy said, though he suspected that he stood little chance of surviving the new mission.

“Do you, Jimmy?”

“I understand that it's my place to follow orders.”

“That's not true, Jimmy,” Mr. Barratt answered, still staring straight ahead. “Orders are for the military. You're a civilian. This is a democracy. You have the right to say no. What you've been doing for your government and country has been especially appreciated because you never had to do any of it. And that's true of this mission as well. Doubly so. Just say the word and I'll turn this car around.”

“You know I'll never say that word.”

“Yes, I do know that,” Mr. Barratt admitted. “But it's important to me that you understand
why
your mission's changed. Look, after your dispatching of those bullying hooligans in the alley outside that diner . . . well, owing to the number of witnesses, even
we
couldn't keep it out of the press.”

“But I'm not a Jap,” Jimmy protested.

“Yeah, tell that to the newspapers,” Mr. Barratt replied. “Have you seen the late edition?”

Jimmy shook his head.

“‘Mysterious Jap Spy Bests America's Youth,'” Mr. Barratt quoted. “Six unconscious college boys, four of whom play offensive line for UCLA . . . All this right in downtown LA. . . . If this city wasn't on the verge of panic before, it is now. Our citizens need reassurance. Just imagine if word had leaked about the three bloody murders! That's why there was little or no opposition among the leadership, who gathered again at my office in just the last hour, to changing your mission from one of infiltration to assassination. The truth is, I don't think our Military Intelligence colleagues realized quite how proficient you are at . . . well, violence. And so it was decided that stopping this Orchid right now, before she kills again, is more important than your infiltrating her organization to play the long game.”

Jimmy looked out his side window. The wood-frame houses along Central Avenue spilled soft yellow light. Families inside . . .
Assassination is different than giving a beating
, he thought. But he didn't say it. He thought of the Tennyson poem. His was not to question why . . . “I understand the mission, sir.”

Mr. Barratt said nothing, but waited to hear more.

“I'm sure you considered sending military into the Pike tonight to get her,” Jimmy said.

“Sure, we considered it. But the use of massive force poses problems. First, we don't know that the Orchid will actually be at the fortune-teller booth. That location could just be a contact point for a subsequent location, so our showing up in force might only result in the arrest of a minor underling while serving to tip off the Orchid to our pursuit. No, we need you to play along as necessary to get close to the Orchid.”

“To kill her,” Jimmy muttered.

“Yes.”

Jimmy understood.

“It's possible, even probable, that they'll search and disarm you when you enter her presence,” Mr. Barratt said. “But among the many reasons we chose you for this operation is your capacity to put your
Taekwondo
to swift and deadly purpose.”

Yes, that was something Jimmy could do, but he stayed silent.

“You're disturbed,” Mr. Barratt observed, sympathetically.

“It's just new to me,” Jimmy admitted. “I'm a PI, and I've gone undercover plenty against the Yakuza and the Tong. I've defended myself when I was called to do so. Yeah, I've killed bad guys before. Quite a few. But assassination? That just takes me a minute or two to get used to.”

“I understand,” Mr. Barratt said.

“Thank you.”

“Look, we've still got a ways to go before we get to Long Beach, right? If you're not comfortable with this reassignment by then, we'll call it off.”

Jimmy didn't even dignify the offer with an answer. Of course he wouldn't be comfortable with the
idea
of assassination by the time they got to Long Beach. But neither would he say no to his country, especially when the threat against its citizens was so real, so vile. Everything Mr. Barratt had said about the Orchid was true. She had to be stopped, now. What difference did his state-of-mind make? Not a hill of beans. So he reached for the radio, clicking it on. “Let's find some jazz,” he said to Mr. Barratt.

“You choose the station, Jimmy.”

Excerpt from a letter March 1, 1943:

. . . appreciate his thoughtful moments. But having Jimmy visit his family in Glendale, after leaving the diner in downtown LA, to wrestle with his conscience over his new assignment to assassinate the Orchid, slows the action considerably. Your reader is going to be quite anxious by this point to get to the amusement park, so I think it neither advisable nor necessary that we visit Jimmy's boyhood home or meet his father, however wise the old man's counsel.

Actually, I suspect some of Jimmy's soul searching in his “homecoming” chapters is far more reflective of
your
character, my sensitive friend, than his. For example, when he says, “I set out to do good things, to speak for the quiet, little man whose voice is otherwise nothing more than the mere droning of a gnat in the face of the powers-that-be,” I can't help but think of the reservations you've expressed to me about the direction your book has taken since the outbreak of the war, your yearning to write the unpublishable Sumida story instead of what is commercially and politically viable. And I also know that with the recent passing of your own father, God rest his soul, you may have indulged in some understandable role-playing, allowing Jimmy to voice concerns with
his
father that you'd like to voice with yours. All very understandable.

Well, I don't presume to know what your father would tell you about whatever reservations persist for you. But, as your editor, I must remind you that the integrity of your character, Jimmy Park, is seriously threatened whenever you put your own words into his mouth at the expense of
his
own words and thoughts. That's right,
his own
. After all, as you've speculated in a previous note, properly conceived characters achieve a kind of independent Life, which the author must honor rather than merely presume to create. So, in this light, are you allowing Jimmy his life?

Additionally, and somewhat less esoterically, your professionalism should insure that you provide pace sufficient to your “spy novel” that readers will want to keep turning the pages. This is a basic requirement. If, instead, you allow self-doubt and moral confusion (despite my numerous assurances to you about the inherently good-hearted nature of our project) to interfere with the basic requirements of good storytelling—coherent character and compellingly paced plot—then you are failing as a writer and that leaves you . . . where? Nowhere, Takumi.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Jimmy need be callous about things. Perhaps you can condense the two chapters you've currently set in Glendale into one conversation with Mr. Barratt in the car while traveling
toward
the amusement park? I'm not asking that Jimmy be cardboard. Sure, give him feelings. Just be quite certain that they're his and not yours.

Forgive my vehemence on this, please. It's just that your project and your well-being in general have come to mean so much to me these past months. How could they not? In our personal lives we've each suffered incalculable losses (yes, my husband remains MIA). But you and I are bound together as comrades by a game fellow named Jimmy Park. You created him. Now, he's his own man. So grab some of his reckless enthusiasm when you need it. And share it with me, please.

Cut the stuff in Glendale. Let's get to the shoot 'em up.

Affectionately,

Maxine

THE REVISED—CHAPTER SEVEN

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths . . .

—William Shakespeare

It was just past eight when Sumida entered the lobby of the Barclay Hotel on Fourth and Main. In the initial hours after his inquiries at the dentist's office and with the soothsayer in Little Tokyo, he'd wandered the downtown, considering what to do when he met Czernicek. His various plans all ended the same—his gaining satisfaction. But he needed proof. He needed a confession. He settled on a plan. Nonetheless, in the early evening, with time left to kill, other questions persisted. So he had returned to the library, this time to the metaphysics section, 110 by Dewey Decimal reckoning, which seemed one place he might find an explanation for the strange dislocation of the past day. The soothsayer had told him seeking such answers was strictly for fools. Well, he
was
a fool.

How else could he have arrived in these circumstances?

Besides, haunting the library shelves was better than wandering the street. It felt familiar. He was an academic, after all. And he needed something to take his mind off the coming confrontation with Czernicek. (If he was a drinker this would have involved a bar, if he was a womanizer a brothel, but he was neither.)

Unfortunately, his library research turned up only the concept of the
doppelganger
, a German word for an apparition who is an exact double of a living person. There were reputed examples from history. The poet Shelley claimed that on an Italian shore he had once met his doppelganger, who silently pointed toward the Mediterranean. Not long after, Shelley drowned in the same sea. The French author de Maupassant claimed to have been aided by his doppelganger, who came to him late in his life to dictate a story. Shortly before her death, Queen Elizabeth I of England saw her doppelganger lying portentously on the royal bed. The poet John Donne met his wife's doppelganger while he was in Paris and she was giving birth in England. Being of a bookish sensibility, Sumida absorbed the superstitious accounts with interest, attempting to connect the phenomenon with his own experience. Might
he
be a doppelganger? No, his friend Tony Fortuna would have recognized him, as being recognizable was the defining characteristic of a doppelganger. Besides, if Sumida were a doppelganger then it should have been his “authentic” self, rather than a stranger, who lived in his Echo Park bungalow. It all came to nothing.

He was no more a doppelganger than he was a ghost or an urban sprite.

Sumida left the library with no more understanding than he'd had when he entered it. His research skills were worthless to him now. He didn't know what he was, except flesh and blood.

The soothsayer was right.

But he would be a fool no longer. Instead, he would do what he was called upon to do by his own small, still voice, leaving the desire for understanding to the babbling, drunken prophets who lived in their own filth on Fifth Street, the infamous Nickel. Still, he couldn't help considering how dire a man's situation was when he discovered himself disappointed to realize that he was not an apparition but that he and the world he inhabited were both real, if unfathomable.

The walk from the library to the Barclay Hotel was short.

By the time he passed through the revolving door, he'd moved on from Shelley, de Maupassant, Queen Elizabeth I, and John Donne. Instead, he considered Hamlet, who, like Sumida, suffered from sometimes wanting to know
too much
. Now Sumida thought that “To be or not to be” mightn't be the essential question. There need be no questions at all. Instead, the Dane may have gotten it right simply with this:
Oh, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth
.

He approached the front desk clerk, a bespectacled man who stood at least six and a half feet tall but couldn't have weighed much more than Sumida himself. “I have an appointment with one of your guests, Henry Czernicek,” Sumida said.