Woman with a Blue Pencil (10 page)

He climbed the steps of the Hall of Records, passed through a nine-foot-tall revolving door, and crossed to the information desk at the center of a crowded, marble lobby.

“Death records?” he asked.

A woman answered without looking up. “Birth and death, second floor,” she said, doubtless for the ten-thousandth time.

Sumida was glad she hadn't looked up, glad she hadn't asked his name, glad she hadn't given him what would likely have been the same long, angry glare he'd seen more often these past twelve hours than in all the previous years of his life. However, he wasn't so lucky on the second floor, where, after passing through a pair of swinging glass doors, he arrived at a tall counter that divided Sumida from what seemed a city block filled with rows of shelves and filing cabinets. There, he was greeted by a scowling man in his fifties: “What do you want?”

“Death records,” Sumida answered, placing his driver's license on the counter.

“Why, you kill somebody?” the grey-haired man asked as he read the name on the license.

Sumida grinned at the distasteful joke.

“Well?” the clerk pressed, scowling. “Did you? Kill somebody?”

“I just want to look into some records.”

“Okay, I guess since you're not currently on one of the islands killing American Marines, maybe you haven't killed anybody, lately . . . 'course, if you
were
out there in the Pacific we both know which side you'd be fighting for, right?” He didn't wait for an answer. “Oh yeah, you'd be blasting away at the brave sons of this country, fueled by your rations of one goddamn bowl of rice per day, dug into your hole like the vermin you people are . . .”

Sumida picked up his license and started away.

“And yet you've got the gall to walk into a United States government building,” the man continued, almost shouting after him. “Looking for assistance from real Americans, white, employed Americans, who are here now instead of in the Pacific only because we're all either women or old men like me, and you ask us to do you a clerical service just because you got yourself a goddamn California driver's license or whatever it is you think you got that can prove you belong here . . .”

The man at the desk kept talking, even after Sumida turned a corner and was out of sight.

Ten minutes later, after calming his anger and gathering his resolve by splashing cold water on his face in a deserted men's room down the hall, Sumida returned to the desk.

The grey-haired man was gone, perhaps someplace among the stacks of records. Sumida approached a woman whose platinum blonde hair and shapeless dress seemed ten years behind the times. He asked her the same question.

“Death records?”

This time, it went better.

Until, that is, she returned a few minutes later and said, “Sorry, but we don't have what you're looking for.”

“You must.”

“I checked twice.”

“Look, did that grey-haired man tell you to . . .” he started.

“No,” she interrupted. “I'm sorry about him, too. I heard how he spoke to you. But his son was killed last week on the Bataan Peninsula. This is Mr. Wilson's first day back. Obviously, he's not ready. So he's in the break room now, composing himself. You won't see him again. And no . . . he offered no interference to my record search. I was thorough.”

“But you found nothing.”

“That's right.”

“That's impossible.”

“It's the truth.”

There were no records of Kyoko Sumida's death on January 11, 1941? No record of her death at all, anytime? Momentarily, this filled Sumida with the same irrational exuberance he'd experienced at the cemetery when it had occurred to him (despite his having
personally
identified her body in the LA Coroner's Office) that perhaps Kyoko wasn't actually dead. But there were also no records of her birth in Santa Monica on June 8, 1911. And no record of their marriage at the LA City Hall, just up the street, in 1934.

“Look Miss, what about a Satoki Samuel Sumida?”

“Can you spell that?”

He did.

“What kind of record?” she asked.

“Birth certificate.”

“Satoki Samuel Sumida is you?”

He nodded and showed her his driver's license.

She jotted down information on a notepad. “And you were born in this county?”

“LA County General. You need the date?”

“No, I noted your birthday here off your license.”

She turned and again disappeared among the shelves and tall cabinets.

He put his license away. As the minutes passed, he grew increasingly certain of what she was going to say to him, even though it would make no more sense than anything else she'd said.

“I'm afraid we have no record for your birth in this county,” she said. “Are you sure you were born here?”

“Of course.”

She looked at him.

He observed the expression on her face change. A subtle widening of the eyes, a slight inhalation of breath, a false pursing of her lips in order to try to pull it all back together. “Perhaps I should get my supervisor,” she managed to say, waiting for no response before turning and walking with self-conscious ease toward the back.

Sumida considered what it must look like to her: a Japanese man claiming to be Nisei with no record of local birth. . . . He suspected it was at least as likely that she was dialing the police right now as that she was seeking out her supervisor.

With no rational explanation to offer to authorities, he knew better than to wait.

He turned and exited through the glass double doors, descending the staircase to the marble foyer, through which he continued outside. On the crowded sidewalk, he wondered: Would there have been a death certificate for his father? Or his sister, who'd died in this country as a child? Maybe he should have stayed and asked.

But he felt he already knew the answer—though he'd no clue, beyond the possibility of his own insanity, to the
why
of it all.

Still, he was determined not to give up.

The library was a fifteen-minute walk. There, he'd request a copy of the newspaper from January 12, 1941, which had featured a story on page eight of the News section about the discovery of his wife's body in the San Pedro Harbor. From the library, the
LA
Times
building was a mere Ben Hogan tee shot away; Sumida would contact the reporter who wrote the story (whose name eluded him now). Perhaps the newspaperman, sensing a good story, might partner with Sumida to help unravel the confusions of the last few hours. With neither a home, nor a car, nor, apparently, an identity recognizable to
anyone
, he was beginning to think he needed the help of a stranger.

When he walked by the alley where he'd left the Chrysler, he spied a cop surveying the car.

Well, there's no percentage to driving around in the stolen car of an LAPD sergeant, anyway
, Sam thought, continuing past the alley like any passerby and toward the city's main library. He was glad he'd taken the .38 Special out of the car with him.

Twenty minutes later, in the periodicals room, he handed over his library card and drummed his fingers on the desk while he waited for the particular back issue of the
Times
to be retrieved. January 12, 1941 . . . A woman with a gold comb in her hair, like Linda Darnell wore in
The Mark of Zorro
, returned from a back room with the newspaper.

She gave it to him.

He was tempted to tip her simply for having made no derogatory comments about his race. But a library was no place for tips. And, as he had only $6.34 in his possession, he was in no position to give anything away.

He took the paper to a chair near a high window that gave good light.

The front page looked as he remembered it.

But there was nothing about Kyoko's murder on page eight. Instead, stories about a local beauty contest, charges of tax fraud against the Riverside city manager, and ads for a car dealership and a bedding store.

There was nothing about Kyoko on page nine or ten or any other page.

Sumida returned the newspaper to the woman with the Linda Darnell comb.

“Thank you,” she said, handing back his library card in exchange. “It's funny. But another gentleman asked to see that same edition just a few minutes ago.”

“January 12th?”

She nodded. “A tall man in a nicely cut suit,” she continued. “He returned the edition and asked for other dates.” She looked away, as if remarking to herself. “Quite a handsome man, actually.”

“Is he in this room?” Sumida asked, looking around.

“I assume he is.” She looked around, too. “After all, one's not allowed to take periodicals from here.”

Four or five men and a trio of women were scattered about the seating area, hidden behind open newspapers.

Then one of the men closed and folded his paper.

After doing so, his eyes went straight to Sumida's.

It was Lieutenant Henry Czernicek, who had headed the LAPD investigation of Kyoko's murder. The one who'd done so little to solve the crime . . .

“Yes, he's the one who asked for January 12th,” the woman said.

Sumida held Czernicek's gaze.

At last, the detective stood. “Sumida?” he called across the room.

“You recognize me?” Sam asked, starting toward Czernicek.

“Of course, and you . . . you recognize
me
?” the police detective asked, his manner uncharacteristically diffident.

There weren't many men outside of the movies who looked like Czernicek, whose strong chin, piercing blue eyes, and ramrod straight posture set him apart from every other plainclothesman in the squad room (though the good looks and hardboiled manner belied, at best, a merely ordinary intelligence, Sumida believed). “Czernicek,” Sumida answered.

They met in the middle of the room but didn't shake hands.

“What are you doing here?” Sumida asked.

“Research. You?”

“Same.”

“What are you researching, Sumida?”

“My past.”

“Yeah, why?”

How to answer without sounding mad? But there was little point in just letting Czernicek walk away. He alone had recognized Sumida. That was no small thing. “Strange things have been happening to me since last night,” Sumida said, lowering his voice. “Or maybe the strange things have been happening to the world, I don't know which. I know
I
haven't changed, right? You can see that for yourself. But . . .” He hesitated. In Sumida's view, the taciturn Czernicek had failed in his investigation of Kyoko's murder in part because of an innate lack of imagination (to say nothing of his lack of motivation). So what would the plainclothesman make now of Sumida's irrational tale of the last eighteen hours? He'd probably put Sumida away in Camarillo. “Anyway, despite our disagreements in the past, I'm relieved to see you here.”

Czernicek nodded. “Me too.”

Sumida couldn't leave it at that. “At the risk of sounding a note of ‘strangeness,'” he said, “I'm relieved that you, well . . . recognize me.” He expected to be asked to elaborate.

But that's not what Czernicek did.

“Yeah, the feeling's kind of mutual,” the plainclothesman said. “Something funny's been going on.”

“Since last night?” Sumida asked.

Czernicek nodded. “I've taken a hotel room not too far from here.”

“Hotel room?”

Czernicek lowered his voice to a whisper. “Yeah, it turns out my apartment is occupied by someone who claims he's been there for years. And my landlord backs him up. In fact, the landlord says he
never
rented to me, never even saw me before. Of course, he's lying. Got to be. . . . Though for the life of me I can't figure the scam. Except . . .”

“What?” Sumida pressed.

“Well, until now,
no one
has seemed to recognize me,” Czernicek answered, fiddling with the knot of his tie. “Not even at the precinct, where all the guys . . .”

He was interrupted by the librarian with the Linda Darnell comb, who'd come out from behind her desk. “I'm sorry, gentlemen. But this is no place for a conversation. Quiet is the rule around here.”

Both men nodded apologies.

“Follow me, Sumida,” Czernicek said. “Maybe we can figure this out together.”

Czernicek may have failed to solve Kyoko's murder months before, and he'd never been among Sam's favorite people, but he might yet prove useful.

Besides, it felt good to be called by name—better yet not to be alone.

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

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

. . . Mr. Barratt interrupted the three-star Army general, Walter Stark, who sat across from him at the far end of the conference table in Barratt's secret office, bunkered in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.