Woman with a Blue Pencil (7 page)

“I said, ‘What do you want?'” the man repeated.

“I've come here to see my Uncle Yamato,” Sumida said cautiously.

“Who?”

“This is his home,” Sumida said, starting forward. “What are you doing here?”

But the stranger stopped him with an extended hand.

“Surely you know my Aunt Misaki,” Sam continued.

“We are Korean-Americans in this household, not Japs. I'm unfamiliar with the names you cite.”

“But my mother lives here too.”

“Are you mad? We've been here for six years and we've never shared our home with Japs,” the stranger said, slamming the door shut.

Sumida stood for a long time on the porch, not knowing what else to do. He saw the curtains at the front window stir. He was being watched. Who were these people? Likely they'd call the police if he didn't leave. So he returned to the stolen car. This was not the place to demand an explanation.

He drove back to Echo Park,
his
home.

He turned right off of Belleview Avenue onto Laveta Terrace—his street.

But as he rounded the corner, he saw the flashing red lights of three police squad cars in front of his bungalow, one parked in his driveway and the other two angled on his carefully tended front lawn.

He pulled over to the curb, six or seven houses down from his own, and shut off his lights and engine.

Neighbors in dressing gowns and robes stood on their front porches or gathered in small groups on the sidewalk, chattering, speculating.

Sumida settled low in his seat, watching.

A half-dozen motorcycle cops muscled wooden barricades to block off his property. After a moment, an ambulance turned the corner at the far end of the street, cruising slowly up to the curb space in front of the house. No urgency. No life to save. Instead, they calmly removed a gurney from the back of the vehicle and rolled it into the house.

Had Tony Fortuna's fall against the fireplace killed him?

Fall wasn't the right word. No, it had been Sumida's blow that had sent Tony sprawling.

He put his head in his hands.

After a few minutes, the ambulance attendants emerged from the house with the gurney. Loaded atop it was a body, covered head to foot by a white sheet that was stained red in its upper third.

The Asian man, who had been in the framed photo where once Sam's wedding picture had stood, emerged now with a uniformed officer and a short, barrel-chested man in a business suit, who displayed his detective's badge on his suit coat pocket.

They watched the gurney being loaded onto the ambulance.

Sumida started the stolen car without turning on the lights. He backed away along the curb and then cut backward into a neighbor's driveway, from which he pulled forward and down the street in the direction from which he'd come. He kept his eyes in the rearview mirror, expecting any minute to see flashing red lights trailing him. But no one followed.

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

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

Jimmy Park had been summoned more than once to police headquarters, the local FBI office, or the Department of War office to meet with high-level officials about difficult cases or even national threats. His talent for languages, unusual appearance, and knowledge of Oriental cultures (enabling him to infiltrate Chinese Tong or Japanese Yakuza operations) sometimes made him indispensable. However, he had never received a summons like the one he got the morning after the murder of his neighbor Tony, whose body had been stuffed so unceremoniously into the sofa.

Naturally, the LAPD had been first on the scene and so first to question Jimmy. Three blood-thirsty murders in one night. . . . Jimmy had many friends on the force, so the questioning went smoothly. (Naturally, he couldn't tell the police all he knew about the spy ring, as that was classified.) He also left out the part about Joe literally sleeping, drunk, atop the body. Joe himself didn't know that part, as Jimmy had dragged him into the bedroom to save him embarrassment before the police arrived. Joe was a proud man and Jimmy knew that to have been reported in such an embarrassing position would have broken his spirit, a true loss to the force.

Early the following morning, the FBI sent agents to question Jimmy; they focused more on the message written in blood, but otherwise asked many of the same questions that the LAPD had asked. Finally, Jimmy expected the Department of War to call, specifically Colonel Holloway, with whom he'd been working clandestinely these past weeks on the Japanese spy ring.

But that wasn't what happened.

Mere moments after the FBI agents left, a big, black Cadillac pulled into Jimmy's driveway. Jimmy had expected a US Army vehicle. He watched from his front window as two dark-suited men, wearing felt fedoras pulled so low that their eyes were barely visible, emerged from the car and knocked at Jimmy's door.

Jimmy answered, his .45 tucked into his waistband at the small of his back.

The men both looked like they'd played on the offensive line for Yale.

“Mr. Park, we'd like you to come with us,” one said.

Meanwhile, the other removed a business card:

Richard Barratt
United States Secret Service, Special Operations

“Need I bring anything?” Jimmy asked.

The agent shook his head. “You may bring the .45 you have tucked into the back of your pants, if it makes you feel better.”

Hmmm
, Jimmy thought.
These guys are good
.

“Otherwise,” the agent continued, “You need only bring your love of country.”

“That, gentlemen, I bring with me everywhere,” Jimmy answered, glancing back at the Japanese characters painted on his wall before stepping outside, double locking the door behind him, and starting with the two agents toward the big, black car. “Where, exactly, are we going, Agent Barratt?”

“Oh, I'm not Barratt,” the agent answered, grinning. “He's the boss, and you'll be meeting him shortly.”

“Then what's your name?” Jimmy asked.

“Not important,” the agent said, opening the back door of the car and indicating for Jimmy to get in.

The other agent went around to the driver's side.

“What now, you going to blindfold me?” Jimmy asked, kiddingly.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” the agent whose name was not Barratt answered, removing a blindfold from his inside jacket pocket. “For your own protection.”

“Say, what kind of special ops is this?” Jimmy inquired.

Excerpt from a letter June 23, 1942:

. . . and on another note, I'm delighted to report that at last week's editorial meeting, the publisher asked about our project and inquired as to who this William Thorne, the author, is. I didn't tell him that Thorne is a nom de plume for you, dear boy, but reported that the name is a pseudonym for an actual police detective in the LAPD currently assigned to the anti-espionage unit of the force. The idea came to me in a blaze of inspiration. Everyone at the table loved it. (One or two among my colleagues know the truth, but I've convinced them to remain mum on Thorne's “backstory,” even if doing so pushes the boundaries of what's commonly considered “respectable publishing.”) So, in a sense, I think there is another character for you to create. Who is William Thorne? When it comes time to promote the book, perhaps we can use the “biographical” material to our advantage, particularly as Thorne's supposed expertise will add credence to the authenticity of the Japanese threat in our homeland. He should be a real hard-boiled type. So start thinking about this Thorne fellow, your shadow persona. Have fun with it. And send me a brief draft of his author bio, which we'll have plenty of time to play with before the pub date. (In other words, don't let it distract you from your most important work at hand,
The Orchid and the Secret Agent
!)

Sincerely,

Maxine Wakefield

Maxine Wakefield,

Associate Editor,
Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc.

THE REVISED—CHAPTER THREE cont'd.

Sumida managed to fall asleep in the backseat of the car.

He'd driven to a truck stop thirty minutes northeast of downtown, parking between tractor-trailers where he was less likely to be spotted by cops on the lookout for a stolen '39 Chrysler Royal. He could have driven to the house of an associate from one or another of the colleges where he'd taught, but he wouldn't know how to explain why he was calling so late, or even what was happening to him. How, for example, his house had ceased to be
his
house. Or how it had become January when the last thing he remembered was early December. It was late, and he was exhausted from the long, soaked walk from the movie house on Broadway to his home in Echo Park and then by the shock and physical confrontation that had awaited him there, the additional disorientation at what
had
been the home of his aunt and uncle in South Gate, and, finally, by the possibility that he had inadvertently killed his delirious friend Tony Fortuna. The night had started like any other. How had it become like this? So he'd decided the best course of action was the one he yearned for most: sleep. Perhaps by closing his eyes he'd accomplish more than just rest. Perhaps sleep would set things right and he'd awaken, either in his own car or, better still, in his own bed, and the mysterious discrepancies of the past hours would be wiped away by the light of an ordinary morning.

He dreamed of his wife, Kyoko.

In the dream, they walked together, hand-in-hand, on the rutted dirt road that cut through her father's strawberry field in Garden Grove. She was talking about a bluebird nest she'd found in a tree near her bedroom window. He was so happy to be with her. In the dream, he told her that the nest reminded him of how they'd met in Long Beach at the Bluebird Café. (Actually, they'd met at White's Point Resort in San Pedro, at a chaste summer dance party for Nisei students from junior high schools all over southern California, but such are dreams that actual histories don't much matter.) Continuing hand-in-hand across the strawberry field, he confessed to her that he didn't know his way back to the place from which they'd commenced their walk (wide-open and easily navigable as strawberry fields
actually
are), and she had answered with one of her stoic mother's favorite sayings:
shikata ga nai
, this cannot be helped.

Shikata ga nai
, he thought, awakening.

Opening his eyes, he noted that the sun had not yet risen. And, worse, he was still in the backseat of the '39 Chrysler Royal, dressed in the still-damp clothes he'd worn to the movie house the night before. Nonetheless, he clambered from the backseat over to the front seat.

He needed to understand more before he moved about in daylight.

So he slipped the key into the ignition, turning it half-way to engage the battery without starting the engine, and, still prone and out of sight on the bench seat, he reached to the dashboard and switched on the radio. He knew that even a faint glow posed a risk of giving away his presence. But he needed to hear a human voice. Besides, there'd be little movement among the truckers until sunrise. He planned to pull away before then. After a few seconds, the radio warmed up and he turned the dial to KFI, where he found the news.