Woman with a Blue Pencil (14 page)

“Too bad we're not playing baseball,” one of the code-breakers commented.

Jimmy said nothing but wrote the word, “Pike” above the quote that read, “And so it begins for you, white devils.”

He moved to the second chalkboard and wrote the word, “Gypsy” above the quote that read, “We are watching your eyes, even as they fail to see us.”

At the third chalkboard he wrote, “Fortuna” above the words “Accept your friend's life as a personal gift.”

“The victims,” Mr. Barratt observed.

Jimmy turned. “The messages in blood mean nothing. They were merely intended to tie the crimes together and maybe to give a little poke with that ‘horse's ass' business. And their translations are equally useless. All that really matters is the names of the victims.”

“Pike . . .”

“Gypsy . . .”

“Fortuna . . .” muttered the three code-breakers.

“Isn't it obvious?” Jimmy inquired.

Mr. Barratt broke into a wide grin. He had it.

“A Gypsy fortune-teller named Pike?” one of the code-breakers ventured.

“Almost,” Jimmy said. “Have any of you heard of ‘The Pike,' an amusement park in Long Beach?”

“With the big roller coaster?” asked another of the code-breakers.

Jimmy nodded. “The Gypsy fortune-teller
at
the Pike.”

The three young men from Cal Tech threw their arms open. “How could we have missed it?”

“Because it was too simple,” Jimmy said, humbly. “You boys are purebred racing greyhounds and I'm just a dog with a nose for the obvious.”

They looked at him with new respect.

“So the three victims died just because, together, their names constituted this message,” Mr. Barratt mused.

“Nobody said we were going up against choirboys,” Jimmy reminded his spy handler.

“I think you're going to do all right,” Mr. Barratt said.

“Thanks,” Jimmy answered, though he knew this was just the beginning.

Mr. Barratt picked up a telephone in the corner of the room. “Get me a secure line with all the men who were in my office this past hour.” He paused, listening to the voice at the other end. “No, I don't want you to call me back, I'll hold,” he snapped. “I need that call now!”

Jimmy and the code breakers remained silent as Mr. Barratt waited to be put through.

After a moment, Mr. Barratt turned and whispered to Jimmy, his protégé, “I guess we can call off some of our dogs in Jap town.”

Jimmy nodded, though he didn't know about any specific agents working for Barratt in Jap Town.

Still holding, the spy-handler turned and spoke loudly enough for the cryptologists from Cal Tech to hear too. “It's funny, boys, but we thought for a while that a wretched old fortune-teller on Alameda, a real crone, whose place we searched and roughed up a bit, might be involved with the Orchid's syndicate. A Jap instead of a Gypsy, but still . . .
fortune-teller
, what a coincidence!” He adjusted the receiver against his ear. “Then again, we've also been doing surveillance on a Jap Town dentist named Shinoda and some doctors' offices too. So there goes the coincidence. I guess you just file it all under the category of ‘leaving no stone unturned.' In any case, Jimmy's breakthrough here today changes everything!” Suddenly, he returned his attention to the phone. After a moment of listening, he shouted into the receiver: “I don't care if the senator is in transit! Tell them to pull the darned train over, if necessary!”

Excerpt from a letter dated November 22, 1942:

. . . lovely, but I think you can do better, even if the fortune-teller in Little Tokyo is
real
. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate and value the details of the actual downtown LA that you pepper throughout your book. Further, that you've personally visited this old soothsayer lends verisimilitude to the scene; however, it comes as no great surprise to the reader if the Orchid's nefarious organization proves to be headquartered in Little Tokyo. For that reason, I suggest you choose another location for the evil soothsayer—something unexpected and rich with dramatic possibility. Perhaps an amusement park. (We have Coney Island here in New York; what is the Los Angeles equivalent?) And perhaps the fortune-teller should be a Gypsy rather than Japanese, adding a layer between your hero and the Orchid herself. Of course, I understand that this will require your going back to revise the “clues” contained in the three murders. But the name “Fortuna” still works. So you really only have to figure out two new names that serve as clues.

Look, this soothsayer business ultimately leads to the climactic confrontation, and so why not set it in a more chaotic place? Crowds, roller coaster, calliope, house of mirrors . . . Indulge. Just give us excitement! And the unexpected! These are the hallmarks of a good thriller. As for your portrayal of the actual Japanese soothsayer in Little Tokyo . . . it's quite evocative, but I suggest you save it for your memoirs of life in LA before the war or some such thing.

I love the little, real touches, but don't ever let reality limit you!

Warmest,

Maxine Wakefield

Maxine Wakefield,

Associate Editor,
Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc.

P.S. I've enclosed with this letter my blue-penciled revisions to your proposed “bio” of the pseudonymous William Thorne. You'll see that I've made some changes and additions, as I think we were a bit cautious or conservative in some of our original concepts. This is, after all, for distribution by the publicity department. So why not allow your reader to be nearly as fascinated by the author Thorne as he/she is by your fictional characters? Aren't we justified in bending a few publishing rules in light of the unusual and unfair commercial problems that your real name poses these days? So I've retained your idea that due to his sensitive police/government work Thorne is not the author's real name (you're right that we don't want anybody thinking they can look him up for a magazine profile etc.) But rather than describing him as a mere veteran of the Great War I've made him a Congressional Medal of Honor winner. Why not? If a journalist should attempt to contact actual honorees to determine the “real” identity of the author, the reporter will, naturally, be met only by denials. And yet isn't that exactly what the “real” William Thorne would do? Deny. Isn't this fun, Takumi! Also, rather than being a mere LAPD detective, I've made Thorne a Fed with a distinguished history of bringing to justice Yakuza gangsters who, for decades, have attempted to infiltrate and corrupt American cities by distributing heroin and other illicit substances to our youth. Now a “consultant” with the LAPD, Thorne has written the novel not strictly for literary purposes but to warn the American public about the real threat of Fifth Column activities in our own communities. Oh, and I made him a father of four, married to his high school sweetheart for almost two decades. If you think that's putting it on a little thick, let me know. We don't want to get called out for our little publishing misdemeanor.

THE REVISED—CHAPTER SIX

Write the characters in dust . . .

—Sir Walter Scott

Sumida watched Czernicek approach the square from the direction of the diner, a toothpick angled in his mouth. The big detective walked like he owned the city, even though he seemed to be as mysteriously cut off from its inhabitants as Sumida. Drawing near, he tossed his toothpick into some bushes. He didn't sit on the bench but loomed over Sumida. His voice was full of derision. “So now I suggest you get your ass off this bench and go back to the periodicals room to catch up on the events of the last couple months. It's information. Maybe you'll find something in it. That's what detectives do, Sumida.
Real
detectives. Actually, I'd have thought the same was true of college instructors, like you, but who knows how your type operates? What kind of teacher were you anyway? I've forgotten.”

“Oriental art history,” Sumida answered.

“Figures . . . that's a limp dick subject.”

“So what's your list of virile subjects, Mr. Academia?”

Czernicek shrugged. “Law. Medicine. Engineering. But you'd be no good at any of those things.”

For a time in his late teens, Sumida had studied engineering. But he wasn't going to defend himself, wasn't going to engage Czernicek in his asinine assertions.

“Oh, you people are good at some things,” Czernicek continued, burying his hands in his coat pocket. “I'll give you that. Good gardeners, for example. And I've seen plenty of small-time fishermen down in San Pedro who seemed to know what they were doing. Even a little modest farming in Paramount and down in Orange County. Oh, and cut-rate dentistry over in Jap town. Damn near pain-free. I gave up Caucasian dentists long ago. I think it's your people's squinty eyes and little hands. And your older women make good crafts, like the ladies that turn sheets of paper into swans or grasshoppers. And your younger women . . . well, do you want me to elaborate on their most outstanding attributes?”

“That's enough, Czernicek,” Sumida answered.

Czernicek laughed. “I'm just trying to be honest and companionable.”

“You're an asshole.”

“Yeah. Anyway, meet me tonight at my hotel,” Czernicek said, turning away.

Sumida watched him stride across the plaza, eventually disappearing into a crowd.

Only then did Sumida gather himself up.

He wasn't going back to the periodicals room. He already knew that the catastrophe at Pearl Harbor had changed the world for millions (including every Nisei, like himself, trying to peaceably make his or her way in this city and, doubtless, in every city on the West Coast). And he already knew that there had been no report of Kyoko's murder in the edition of the
LA Times
where, the previous year, there had been a two-column story with a picture.

He had another plan.

Sumida knew of a woman in Little Tokyo who practiced traditional forms of fortune-telling. Being an academic, he'd never put much faith in such practices. And he surely knew better than to mention such a thing to Czernicek. But the last hours had demonstrated that perhaps Shakespeare had gotten it right when he wrote that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in your philosophy. If a skilled old woman could discern the future by reading the cracks on a heated tortoise shell (
kiboku
), or interpreting the cries of passing birds (
toriura
), or the words of passersby (
tsujiura
), or by the tossing and reading of a large number of bamboo sticks called
zeichiku
, then might she also be able to discern some explanation for Sam's predicament? Anything at all would put him ahead of where he stood now, which was nowhere.

The ten bucks ought to do the trick.

The challenge, however, would be returning to that neighborhood. Since Kyoko's death, he had set foot there only when his investigation had required it. For example, he'd interviewed her former employer, Dr. Shinoda, and talked with all of her working acquaintances—none of whom had even been contacted in the LAPD's initial, farcical investigation. But it had come to nothing. And each time Sumida had entered the sixteen square blocks that constituted Little Tokyo, he suffered the weight of Kyoko's loss all over again. It was not only her place of work, it had been their place for fun. Early in their marriage, they'd dined at her favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant near Temple and Alameda and window-shopped and drank sake and joked in a playful mix of English and Japanese with other Nisei. So now no place was more painful for him. Her presence remained everywhere he looked in the neighborhood.

He knew he would still feel her there.

Yet he suspected that when he spoke her name in Shinoda's dental office he'd be met only with empty expressions. As if she'd never been. Still, he had to try. And if his questions came to nothing, then he'd continue on to the fortune-teller, who might tell him what he was (a figment of his own imagination?), or why he was here, or, at least, how he was supposed to find a way to keep going.