Woman with a Blue Pencil (2 page)

Then the black-and-white scene skidded and slipped sideways on the movie screen. For a moment, the sprockets on the film stock became visible, sliding up and off the screen with the last of the black and white images.

The screen became blindingly white. The rat-a-tat-a-tat of the spinning reels in the projectionist's booth replaced the soundtrack.

The film had broken.

The projectionist shut the machine down, casting the theater into darkness.

Excerpt from a letter dated December 10, 1941:

. . . so, in light of last Sunday's tragic events at Pearl Harbor, we must return your book proposal and opening chapters. Despite my initial enthusiasm, its publication is now impossible. While this is doubtless disappointing, I feel you cannot be much surprised. The world has changed. Even Marquand's successful Mr. Moto series is bound to come to a screeching halt. Nonetheless, we believe you are a talented writer and we encourage you to further develop your craft.

Our accounting department will anticipate your immediate return of the $350 advance we sent with our most recent correspondence.

Sincerely,

Maxine Wakefield

Maxine Wakefield,

Associate Editor,
Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc.

P.S.
If
you were to consider revising your work to avoid the obvious issues, which would include cutting and replacing not only your Japanese hero Sumida but also the Caucasian villain, I would be willing to take a second look. Of course, I understand that this amounts to your writing a different book. But since you've completed only three chapters to date, your investment of time and effort have been relatively small and so re-envisioning may be a viable option for you, Mr. Sato.

Thinking aloud . . . Perhaps you could still employ an Oriental as your protagonist, a Korean or Chinese. I don't mean to offend by suggesting that Oriental races are in any way interchangeable, but, frankly, what most fascinated me in your initial submission was the groundbreaking challenge of pulling off an Oriental protagonist in a popular genre. After all, as you likely already know, Earl Der Biggers's Charlie Chan books do not actually feature Chan as the protagonist, and the same is true of Marquand's Mr. Moto novels. These books remain Caucasian-centric, even if the crimes are ultimately “solved” by the secondary characters, Chan and Moto. So you may still have the opportunity to break new ground!

Now, even if you were to change your protagonist's nationality, I believe current events dictate that your new Korean or Chinese hero be far more American/Apple pie than your discarded character, the grieving Nisei academic, Sumida. Actually, you might even position your new Oriental hero
against
Japanese Fifth Columnists. Yes! Patriotism will sell in the coming period. A spy novel . . . Just musing here, you understand. These are
your
decisions. I would never tell an author what to write, particularly a young and talented one just starting to make his way. However, I want you to know that if you chose to write something along the lines I've outlined above, I'd be delighted to see it and just possibly we'd be able to work together after all.

Whatever you decide, best of luck.

P.P.S. One last thought is that you'd need to set the book firmly in our current, post-Pearl Harbor world to give more immediate context to your new protagonist's challenges.

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

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

. . . Jimmy Park slipped his .45 into one pocket of his raincoat, though he suspected his Taekwondo fighting skills would render use of the weapon unnecessary. Besides, the modus operandi of Jap agents here in Los Angeles tended more toward sneaking and plotting than man-to-man confrontation. They were generally too weak to settle things physically, unlike real Americans. And even when they did put their inferior Karate techniques to use, it still remained all about deception and unruly kicking. Jimmy Park was of Korean ancestry but, having been raised in Glendale, California, among whites, he was as American as they came—with one exception: he had learned Taekwondo at a tiny
dojang
on Brand Boulevard from a
kwan jang nim
, or grandmaster, of Korean fighting. Like Jimmy and his parents, the grandmaster had arrived on these shores before the Oriental Exclusion Act of 1924. Now, Jimmy was nearly a Taekwondo Master himself. Nonetheless, his heroes were American boxers: Jack Dempsey was his favorite. And the Negro Joe Louis also inspired him, as Jimmy was not prejudiced. In any case, his own lightning fast hands and feet had proven more than sufficient on many occasions.

Still, these sneaky Fifth Columnists, who smiled one moment and then stabbed you in the heart the next,
were
dangerous, in the manner of night-crawling scorpions. Their brutal, decades-long occupation of Park's ancestral Korean peninsula was bad enough. But Pearl Harbor truly indicated the Jap nature. A surprise attack . . . Jimmy grieved for all those sailors' bodies entombed in the sunken USS
Arizona
. He wasn't ever going to forget. Or forgive.

He reached for his hat but was interrupted by a familiar rap at the front door of his comfortable Echo Park bungalow. It was Sergeant Joe Lucas of the LAPD, who often stopped by Jimmy's house on his way home from work to share a snort of his Korean pal's good Templeton rye.

Jimmy Park opened the door.

“What'ya got your coat on for?” the youthful, blue-eyed Lucas asked, stepping past his friend and straight into the house. “You can't go out in this rain now that I'm here for company.”

“You're dripping everywhere,” Jimmy observed.

“Well, that's what happens when it's raining outside,” Joe replied, smiling. “But I figure by about the fourth snort of your good stuff I should be pretty well dried out.”

“Yeah, ‘drying out' is what you need,” Jimmy said. “And I'm not talking about your wet clothes.”

“Oh great, now you're sounding like my wife,” Joe said.

Jimmy held up his hands. “Hey, I'm not one to lecture you about drinking, pal.”

“You got that right,” Joe replied.

“But your police skills haven't failed you, Joe,” Jimmy retorted, putting his hat on. “I got my coat and hat for a reason.”

“You can't go out on a night like this. Besides, it's January 22, 1942. A national holiday.”

Jimmy looked at his friend, suspicious. “What holiday?”

Joe widened his eyes as if shocked that Jimmy could be so ignorant. “It's ‘Jimmy Stays Home to Drink with his Buddy Joe Night'! Good lord, even the late shifts at the war plants take tonight off to celebrate our good drinking here in your fine home.”

Jimmy grinned and pointed to the shelf with the rye and the shot glasses. “You stay, Joe. Have one or two on me.
Mi casa es tu casa
.”

“I don't speak Mexican,” Joe replied.

“Just lock up after yourself,” Jimmy said.

Joe squinted in confusion. “Wait. What's so pressing that you can't even have one?”

“We got a tip that a Jap agent we've been on the lookout for will be at the Rialto Movie House. When the picture's over, I'll be waiting for him.”

“Why don't you just call headquarters?” Joe asked. “Let them throw a dragnet around the place. Or call the Feds.”

Jimmy shrugged. “We don't exactly have any evidence on this guy. Not yet. So I'm supposed to make his acquaintance and see if I can get him to give us some.”

“The hard way or the soft way?” Joe inquired.

Jimmy Park was valuable to law enforcement agencies not only because of his expertise as a PI but also because of his facility with Oriental languages. Additionally, mild facial scaring and subtle skin discolorations suffered years before in a fire allowed him to pass for either Chinese or Japanese (while barely diminishing his unusually handsome Asian face). Resultantly, he had infiltrated more than one espionage ring even before the events of December 7, 1941, and, since then, he had proven invaluable to the American cause.

But this new case was the most challenging he had faced.

“We'll start with the ‘soft' way,” he said to his friend. “I'll cozy up to him like I'm just another Jap. But if that doesn't work . . .” He shrugged and patted the raincoat pocket with the .45.

“What can you tell me?”

“Tell you, a lowly sergeant?”

“Ah, go drown yourself in the rain, Jimmy.”

Jimmy laughed and patted Joe on the shoulder. “LAPD found a Jap farmer eviscerated in his own bean field out near Carson,” he explained.

Joe shrugged as he started for the rye. “So what makes it a Federal case? Couldn't it'a just been a neighbor who'd had his fill of the sneaky bastards? Not that I approve, of course . . .”

“A source I can't name believes the farmer may have been involved with a Jap spy ring that stretches from south of the Mexican border all the way up to Seattle.”

“So who knocked him off?” Joe asked, taking hold of the bottle. “One of ours?”

Jimmy shook his head. “The spy ring employs a formidable assassin, who, as yet, we've been unable to identify. A Jap, of course. Reputedly possessed of ‘ninja' skills. Vicious people . . .”

“Why would they knock him off?”

“We don't know. But there's reason to believe he was unwilling to go along with the organization's nefarious plans to strike against America. In the end, he must have had a conscience. Not all Japs are bad.”

Joe poured the rye into a shot glass. “And the agent at the Rialto tonight . . . Is he there to make a hit?”

“We don't know that either.”

“You need a better inside man,” Joe observed, throwing back the first shot of rye.

“Yeah, that's what the Feds think too,” Jimmy answered. “That's why . . .” He stopped.

Joe looked at his friend. “You, Jimmy?”

“Can't comment on that, pal.”

Joe grinned and patted Jimmy on the shoulder. “So, how'll you pick this assassin out of the exiting crowd, since he ain't going to be wearing no ninja costume?”

“How many Japs do you think are going to the movies these days?”

“Then get your backside out of here, Jimmy,” Joe said, toasting him farewell. “And don't worry. I'll turn out the lights and lock up after myself. And I'll leave a nip in the bottle for you.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Jimmy answered with a grin as he closed the front door, racing in the rain across his small lawn to his car, a '37 Dodge Coupe.

THE REVISED—CHAPTER ONE cont'd.

Sumida sighed and settled back in his seat in the darkened Rialto Movie House, expecting the house lights to rise for a minute or two before Bogart and the others reappeared in the dangerous mire of Hammett's adventure—just a minute or two, as the projectionist rethreaded his machine. That would be long enough for the Saturday night crowd to turn to one another with quips or questions or observations about the last time they'd been cast so suddenly from the world of a movie back into the humdrum of a mere theater seat.