Woman with a Blue Pencil (22 page)

“Thank you for the help,” the Orchid said, as she reached with one hand around the front of the woman. Jimmy hadn't noticed the Orchid's long fingernails until now. They were as sharp as razors. Literally. With a backhanded motion, fast as an adder, she slashed the fingernail of her middle finger across the throat of the fortune-teller, opening it wide. The shocked woman raised her own hand to the bleeding slash, attempting to hold the flesh together; she managed a short, anguished cry that went unheard in the din of the fireworks outside. But she could stem the tide only for a moment before the blood began gushing over her whitening hand. Her eyes widened as she realized she was coming to her end.

Jimmy tried to leap out of his chair to help.

But the Japs in black held him tight.

The fortune-teller fell face-first onto the café table, a pool of blood widening as it soaked into the velvet tablecloth.

There was nothing Jimmy could do for her.

He took a deep breath to calm himself.

He couldn't afford to panic, however gruesome the scene before him.

“She wasn't one of us,” the Orchid announced calmly.

“And I am?” Jimmy asked, daring to meet her eyes.

“We'll see,” she answered, wiping the blood from her middle fingernail onto the velvet tablecloth. “Your cliché-ridden philosophy leaves much to be desired. But your courage is commendable.”

Jimmy's breathing steadied. He was no beginner. He had a mission to complete.

And his dying before the Orchid died wasn't part of the plan.

“You've gone to a lot of trouble for me,” he said. “I'm flattered.”

“You should be,” she answered, smiling warmly, as if inches away there was no dead woman or widening puddle of blood.

“So?” he asked, feigning nonchalance. “Are we ever going to get down to business?”

She sighed, as if suddenly wearied from her activities. “Yes, but first I'm going to slip back through the trapdoor, returning to the catwalk beneath the pier. There it's private and quite lovely, the sheltering pier above, the rolling water alight with reflections of the moonlight below. You'll see it soon enough. We'll talk business there, Jimmy. You'll decide if you want to work with me. That is, if you want to win or lose. But first I need a moment of privacy for my meditation.”

“And what am I supposed to do here with your two goons?” Jimmy asked. “Play three-handed poker with the Gypsy's tarot cards?”

She laughed. “Before we meet beneath the pier, Jimmy, my ‘goons' are going to disarm you of whatever weapons you may be carrying, and then, in this little room, they will give you a taste of what happens to
anyone
who says no to me. A mere taste. Any more than that and you'd be a corpse, and what good would you be to me then?”

“Sounds fun,” Jimmy said.

“I need my meditation.” She looked at her henchmen. “Teach him humility. Take him to the very edge.”

She walked past Jimmy without another word.

He heard the trapdoor slam shut as she descended from the shack to meditate with the ocean. And to await Jimmy's softening up. The fireworks continued outside, eliminating any chance of Jimmy calling for help. But that wasn't his style anyway. He smiled up the Jap hoodlums.

Neither smiled back.

“So this is where we get to know each other, eh Shinji?” Jimmy asked the taller of the two.

“I'm Kento,” the thug replied, punching Jimmy in the face.

Jimmy saw stars.

He assessed his situation.

Being handcuffed wasn't going to make his task any easier. But they'd made the mistake of handcuffing his hands in front of his body. That meant at least one of these Japs was going to die with marks from the cuff's metal chain around his treacherous neck. As for the other . . . well, Jimmy was good at improvisation.

“You sure you wouldn't prefer we got to know each other a little better before we get . . . you know, physically involved?” Jimmy queried, unsure if the goons would get the joke.

They didn't answer.

At least, not with words.

This time, Shinji punched him in the face.

It was time Jimmy went to work.

Excerpt from a letter April 23, 1943:

. . . naturally supportive of any young man's involvement in our nation's critical military endeavors. However, I do not think it prudent that you enlist
immediately
, whatever the enthusiasm currently sweeping your internment camp. You are so close to finishing your novel! Why invite a distraction that is literally global in scope to interfere with your concentration? You have already overcome the challenges of internment, grief at the loss of your father, and the heartache of a breakup with your girlfriend, to complete 90 percent of your first book! Why voluntarily introduce yet another distraction when you're so close to completing your work and being a writer, which was your dream? I am emphatic on this point, Takumi, and I think by now you know that I
always
have your best interests in mind.

Look, this new 442nd Division can do without you for another month or two in a way that Jimmy Park and the other indelible characters you've created cannot. I know you understand that. By resisting your impulse to be among the
first wave
of volunteers for this new unit, you can give Jimmy and the Orchid a life for readers. What a gift! Not only to the readers and the nation (your book is, after all, inspirationally patriotic at this most critical of historical moments), but also to your deserving characters, whom I have quite come to love.

As for your having your cake and eating it too: I simply don't believe that you could continue writing while in basic training. Or that you would scrawl the conclusion and incorporate final revisions to your book on a troop carrier months from now crossing the Atlantic. Your moment as an author is now, Takumi. Your moment as an American soldier will come soon enough. Please finish what you started.
Then
enlist. Here's the truth: my marriage was permanently interrupted by war; don't allow this book, which I've come to think of as
ours
, to suffer the same fate. Get Jimmy out of that shack on the pier, bound as he is now by the two Japanese thugs with brutality on their evil minds. (Such a well written scene—the Orchid's deadly fingernail, what a touch!)

Your concerned partner,

Maxine

THE REVISED—CHAPTER EIGHT cont'd.

In the dimness, among the countless small flashlights—one of which Sumida had bought for two bits at a concession stand—it took longer than he'd hoped to find the establishment of “Madame Belinsky—Authentic Gypsy Fortune-Teller,” which was not actually on the midway but was located in a small, wooden shack halfway along the pier. A few minutes earlier, when he was still searching the midway, a fireworks display had begun without warning over the Pike—as if the dimly lit place was not already surreal. But the fireworks confused him. In black-out conditions, what could serve as a more obvious marker to enemy aircraft than such a colorful display? At first, he could hardly believe it. Who could be behind it? But the crowd milling about the Pike responded to the impressive display almost as they would on an ordinary Fourth of July—rapt attention, oohs and ahs, and applause when a particularly big and colorful explosion rained down light over the otherwise-dimmed coast. Sure, with the first loud
boom
there'd been nervous confusion (a bomb?). But when the glorious rockets flowered red, white, and blue, people reacted to it as a rebellious display of patriotism. Perhaps that's what it was. Nonetheless, Sumida worried he might be at the center of a target for an aerial attack. No matter. He wasn't going to run away now. Didn't the government dossier that Czernicek had lifted indicate the fortune-teller's was to be the rendezvous point for a meeting between an unnamed Federal agent and the Orchid? If he was going to be bombed to oblivion trying to reach it, then so be it.

He'd seen the photograph. It was his Kyoko.

He didn't have to understand the fireworks.

And he didn't have to understand this “Orchid” business, which portrayed Kyoko as mastermind of a spy ring working to lay the groundwork for the invasion of America's West Coast by forces of the Imperial Japanese Army. Ridiculous! Kyoko was a gentle woman with little interest in politics. And anti-American espionage? She'd been valedictorian of their class at Long Beach Wilson High School, delivering a graduation speech on the blessings offered to immigrants by the American way of life. Yet the report acknowledged no such past—no past at all. Instead, it depicted her as being of unknown birthplace and upbringing, seeming to have burst into life fully realized as a femme fatale who was feared even by other brutal Japanese operatives. Sumida couldn't help but recall the Dragon Lady characters from a handful of movies he and Kyoko had walked out of because of the wearisome Oriental stereotypes. And the government report did not stop with mere insults. Seeming to take seriously the virtually impossible portrait of evil on its pages—including the absurdity of Kyoko's having committed three brutal murders (including one decapitation and dismemberment) in just the past twenty-four hours!—the report called for her assassination, to be carried out by the unnamed operative whose meeting with her had been arranged under the guise of his going over to her side.

Kyoko returned from the dead for this?

Still, Sumida was aware that since the Rialto last night nothing had remained what it had been before. His home in Echo Park was now occupied by another man. His aunt and uncle's house in South Gate was likewise occupied by strangers. His friend Tony Fortuna (now dead, apparently by Sam's own hand) hadn't recognized him. Then there was the gravesite, the newspapers, the public records. . . . So far, the only thing unchanged from what, increasingly, seemed a whole
other life
, was Czernicek, who'd confessed to being Kyoko's murderer.

The woman who was now somewhere nearby, alive.

None of it made sense. But Sumida didn't have to understand how things worked to know what he had to do.

Save his wife.

As he had failed to do before. . . .

And now he stood before the sign that read, “Madame Belinsky—Authentic Gypsy Fortune-Teller.” The attraction was located in a wooden shack on the pier between a blueberry pie stand (closed for the night) and a small storefront that sold sea shells. The fireworks show continued. Sumida tried the doorknob to the tiny enterprise. It turned, unlocked. But when he pushed open the door, it jammed after just a few inches against something on the floor of the interior. He pushed harder. Still, something weighty resisted his efforts. At last, he put his shoulder to the door, leaning into it like it was a tackling sled from his freshman year of football at Wilson High. Had the crowd not been distracted by the firework show's grand finale, he surely would have had hard questions to answer and dark suspicions to assuage. (“A Jap breaking into a legitimate fortune-telling business?!”) The door edged open an inch at a time as he slowly moved whatever heavy sack of potatoes blocked the entrance inside. As the last of the fireworks exploded, followed by a hearty round of applause from the revelers on the pier and along the midway, Sumida managed to create an opening in the doorway that was just wide enough for him to squeeze through. Once inside, he closed the door so no one could follow.

Now it was pitch dark.

He illuminated the space with his pen-sized flashlight.

It had been no sack of potatoes blocking his entrance, but the bodies of two Asian men, dressed in black, like burglars, who had been piled one atop the other. Sumida gasped for breath. What had he walked into? He knelt beside the men for a closer look. Their faces were battered and bruised. Upon closer examination, not so easy in the dim glow, he noted that their necks bore marks suggesting a narrow-gauge length of chain had been used to strangle both. And the room smelled of blood. Lots of it. More than the dead men's knocked-out teeth and facial lacerations might explain. A stockyard smell. . . . Standing, Sumida turned and wielded his light before him. That's when he saw the Gypsy woman face down on a small velvet-covered table. The velvet was soaked through with gore. “Madame Belinsky?” he whispered, though he knew she wouldn't answer. He forced himself to go to her. Gently, he lifted her head with one hand, holding the light close. Her throat had been slit with something as sharp as a scalpel. The wound was horrid, and he couldn't help dropping her poor head back to the table, where it thumped on the gooey velvet.