Woman with a Blue Pencil (26 page)

Excerpt from the final chapter of
The Orchid and the Secret Agent
, a novel by William Thorne

Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1945

Jimmy Park and Mr. Barratt pressed through the bathrobe-attired hotel guests who'd recklessly begun milling in the fifth-floor hallway just a few moments after the sound of the gunshot. Being the first authorities on the scene, Barratt and Park ordered the guests back to their rooms. (The two had been in the lobby at the time of the shot and had sprinted up the five flights.) Now, Mr. Barratt prepared to kick down the door to the corner room, registered to a Henry Czernicek. Jimmy stood at his side, the handgun drawn and ready.

“Try the knob,” Jimmy whispered. “Maybe it's unlocked.”

“I kind of like kicking in doors,” Mr. Barratt whispered in return.

“Then have at it, sir,” Jimmy said.

Mr. Barratt kicked the door in.

Jimmy rushed inside, the gun held before him. “Federal agents, nobody move!” he shouted.

But nobody was going to be moving in that room.

Mr. Barratt checked the bathroom. “Clear,” he said.

Jimmy put the gun away and indicated with a nod of his head the body of an Oriental man, bloodied down his entire left side, slumped in a chair. A handgun rested on the rug beside him, beneath where his right hand dangled. “That's him,” Jimmy said. “The one I shot under the pier—the Phantom.”

Mr. Barratt nodded, then turned. “So who's this one?”

Handcuffed to the radiator in a seated position was a tall Caucasian man who leaned against the wall, lifeless, his eyes wide. There was a small black hole in the center of his chest and a large splash of blood on the wall at his back and in a pool on the rug around him.

Jimmy turned back toward the Phantom. “What's the connection between these two?”

Mr. Barratt had no answer.

“Was the white guy an enemy of the Phantom or a co-conspirator who'd failed some kind of assignment?” Jimmy mused aloud. “And why did the Phantom come straight here instead of getting medical attention? What was so pressing that he'd sacrifice his own life to take this guy out?”

Again, Mr. Barratt merely shook his head. “The cops will be here any minute.” He removed two fingerprint kits from his suit-coat pocket and tossed one to Jimmy. “We need prints before the LAPD arrives and starts in with their usual messy bullying.”

Jimmy knelt beside the Phantom, who looked as ordinary as the Jap clerk at his local bakery. He opened the inkpad and removed the card stock sheet, which was divided into ten squares for each of the fingers. Next, taking the dead man's cold hand, he pressed the thumb into the ink and then moved the thumb over to the card—to his surprise, where a fingerprint ought to have been was a black sphere, no distinctive lines at all. He tried it again with the index finger. Same result. Confused, he looked at the Phantom's hand. There were no swirling prints on any of the fingers. And the same was true for the left hand as well. “What the heck?” he muttered.

Mr. Barratt looked at Jimmy with the same confused expression.

The Caucasian likewise had no fingerprints.

“Who are these guys?” Jimmy inquired.

“I don't like it,” Mr. Barratt said.

“Is it possible to have your fingerprints shaved or burned clean off?” Jimmy asked.

“These Jap agents will do anything,” Mr. Barratt answered. “That's what makes them so dangerous.”

“Hardly human without a fingerprint,” Jimmy mused.

“That's not the only way these enemies are inhuman,” Mr. Barratt said. “Every breath they take is different from us.”

Jimmy wanted to agree, but dead bodies, even those of one's enemies, always looked human. As if death restored to them what their corrupt lives seemed to have taken forever. Jimmy wanted to feel good about the accomplishments of the past hours: the killing of the Phantom and, perhaps of equal importance, the discovery of this dead Caucasian, whose absent fingerprints suggested dark, co-conspiratorial involvement with the Jap spies. Sure, the Orchid had escaped, but now she was on the run. Her capture or killing was only a matter of time, Jimmy believed. Yet there was something about these bodies that shook him in ways that even far more grotesque murder scenes had not. He caught himself; he couldn't afford to go soft now. Not with America at stake.

“This is just the beginning, Jimmy,” Mr. Barratt said.

Jimmy nodded. “I'm in for the duration,” he answered. “You can count on that, sir.”

Mr. Barratt smiled. “I know that, Jimmy.”

Six LAPD cops busted into the room like a battalion of circus clowns. What they'd make of the missing fingerprints was anybody's guess. Jimmy and Mr. Barratt wouldn't be around to observe. Showing the police their IDs they departed the room, crossed the hallway to the elevator, and made their way to the ground floor.

They still had much to do to make the country safe.

THE END

Maxine Wakefield
Associate Editor
Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc.
243 W. 54th St.
New York, N.Y.

August 23, 1944

Mrs. Ayako Sato
Manzanar War Relocation Ctr.
Block 14-1-3
Manzanar, Cal.

My dear Mrs. Sato,

First, allow me to express my heartfelt sympathies for the recent loss of your brilliant son Takumi. I had the pleasure of working closely with him in the year and a half before he volunteered for the US Army, where he truly distinguished himself above and beyond the call of duty. The posthumous awarding of the Silver Star for his actions in Cecina, Italy, attests to his courage and willingness for self-sacrifice. You must be so proud of your son.

As you know, the novel that Takumi completed in draft before his induction,
The Orchid and the Secret Agent
, is now due for publication in February of next year. Paper shortages and severe understaffing in our production department delayed the book's original release date. However, that delay may serve the book's interests. Since your son's recent military honors we've concluded that, even though the contract calls for publication to be under the pen name of William Thorne, the novel now may carry more weight in the marketplace coming from a Nisei war hero. I know how hard Takumi worked on this book and that he'd come to consider it very seriously. (In one of his last letters to me, written on a troop ship crossing the Atlantic, he indicated that he was writing a kind of companion piece that he said might not be to my taste but was of the utmost importance to him—what clearer sign that
The Orchid and the Secret Agent
was close to his heart?)

As his heir, any changes to the contracted publication of the book (the author's name, specifically) must be approved by you, Mrs. Sato. I will need you to sign and return the enclosed release form. You needn't have it notarized, but can merely sign it and pop it in the enclosed stamped envelope to get it right back to us. Many thanks for your support!

Speaking personally, I have until now been spared the loss of anyone close to me in this war, having always been single and somewhat married to my work, and, so, losing Takumi early last month felt to me like losing family. I believe we honor his memory by putting his name on his work and, if the book sells well, perhaps we can hire ghostwriters to continue the saga of secret agent Jimmy Park, perpetuating in subsequent exciting titles (that pesky Orchid is still out there) the name of author Takumi Sato!

Once more, thank you in advance for your quick action regarding the enclosed legal document. And please accept my compassionate prayers at this tragic time.

Yours,

Maxine Wakefield

Maxine Wakefield,

Associate Editor,
Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc.

Post Script

Among the collected papers of the pioneering female mystery book editor Maxine Wakefield, who retired from publishing in 1971 and died of an aneurism in 1981, is a page torn from what appears to have been a school composition book. The page is filed along with marketing correspondence, reviews, and press clippings related to
The Orchid and the Secret Agent.
The lined sheet bears just two sentences, in careful handwriting, “My son made his feelings clear to me in his letters home these past months. Therefore, my answer to your request, Miss Wakefield, is no.” The sheet is signed and dated, “Ayako Sato, August 31, 1944.”

The Orchid and the Secret Agent
by William Thorne was published in February 1945. It sold well, but never spawned a sequel, likely due to Mrs. Sato's belief that her son had already written the only “sequel” he would ever have cared to provide,
The Revised
, which had been delivered from Italy to the Manzanar Relocation Camp along with the rest of Pfc. Sato's modest soldier's belongings. Sato seems to have structured the story to wrap through and around
The Orchid and the Secret Agent
like a snake navigating a trellis. Owing to its occasional use of what was then considered “profane” language, the handwritten manuscript was likely not intended for publication and, apparently, was never forwarded to Miss Wakefield or any other publishers.

The family of Takumi Sato had his remains interred in the Japanese section of the Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles, beside his father's grave. The location is not far from where Takumi's most accomplished (if heretofore unpublished) character, Satoki Samuel Sumida, failed to find his wife's final resting place.

About the Author

Gordon McAlpine is the author of the critically acclaimed novel,
Hammett Unwritten
. He is also the author of three previous novels and has been described by
Publisher's Weekly
as “a gifted stylist, with clean, clear and muscular prose.” Additionally, he has co-written a nonfiction book called
The Way of Baseball: Finding Stillness at 95 MPH
and is the author of a popular trilogy of novels for middle-grade readers, The Misadventures of Edgar and Allan Poe. He has published fiction and book reviews in journals and anthologies both in the United States and abroad. He lives with his wife, Julie, in southern California.