Woman with a Blue Pencil (5 page)

The streetcar started away without Sumida. He watched it go.

So he'd walk. Already drenched, he couldn't get any wetter. Maybe a cab would happen by . . .

It was after eleven when he finally walked up McDuff Street. He noticed that his house was all alight inside.

He didn't remember having turned on any lights before he left.

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

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

. . . Jimmy considered: The manager had likely been murdered only to inform the Feds that the assassin knew they were after him. Immediately, Jimmy thought of the welfare of his informant.

He rushed down the wooden stairs to the Rialto lobby.

All to no avail.

Within the hour, LAPD found the body of Jimmy's “eyes and ears,” José “Gypsy” Martinez, a skid-row regular who frequented the backstreets of nearby Little Tokyo, Jap Town. The corpse had been stuffed in six pieces (head, four limbs, and torso) into an orange crate in an alley off Seventh. The first officers on the scene, upon examining the body parts, indicated the weapon had likely been a long, sharp blade.

Samurai sword
, Jimmy thought.
Poor Gypsy
.

Written on the alley wall in the victim's blood, in the same steady hand, was another message, which translated

We are watching your eyes, even as they fail to see us.

Excerpt from a letter dated March 31, 1942:

. . . a good list, though I have to disagree on your proposed final choice. While I think Richard Barratt is a perfectly good name for a
character
, it's a little weak as a pen name. Sure, its respectability and Anglo-Saxon pedigree are impeccable. Perhaps you can give it to a high-level agent . . . But I believe your discarded choice, William Thorne, is actually much stronger for use as a pseudonym. Over my years in the business, I've noted that readers find characters who have long vowel sounds in their names to be stronger, and the long “o” in “Thorne” works just that way. Additionally, that “thorn” is a word makes the name easier for readers to remember. And
that
is important, as I can imagine this book spawning a whole series featuring Jimmy Park vs. evildoers.

As for your proposed changes to your new outline, which would condense all the action into a single, twenty-four-hour period, I'm quite enthused! I wish I'd thought of it myself. (What kind of sorry editor am I, anyway?) But seriously, for a first-time novelist like yourself, that kind of tight time chronology will surely serve to discipline your focus on continually moving the
story
forward. And that's what bestsellers are made of!!!

Sincerely,

Maxine Wakefield

Maxine Wakefield,

Associate Editor,
Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc.

P.S. I did not miss your fanciful questions regarding what I think becomes of characters who've been cut from never-to-be-written drafts (i.e. Sumida and the murderous Czernicek). I
do
agree that a well-drawn character achieves a kind of life that is ultimately independent of his author. You're right about Huck Finn being “alive” today in a way that Twain is not. Is that merely because the famous novel is still read? Or, instead, might the animating force be the result of the character's creation alone or even his author's initial conception of the character, regardless of ultimate readership? And, if that is so, then where
are
these characters that an author conceives, only later to cut? Good questions. I don't know. Nor can we ever know. Maybe such characters don't go anywhere, but remain where they've always been, relegated to unwitting background roles. Or maybe they just molder on a wadded sheet of typing paper in a trash can, soon incinerated with the rest of the garbage.

THE REVISED—CHAPTER TWO cont'd.

The rain had stopped and Sam Sumida stood for a moment on the sidewalk outside his house. Aside from the lights burning inside, everything looked as he had left it. He couldn't help thinking about Kyoko, who had picked out the bungalow from among those in Echo Park they could afford. The neighborhood was reasonably safe and centrally located, with a lovely urban park near enough that he and his wife planned to one day walk there hand-in-hand with their children. But there were no children and there never would be. There was no Kyoko.

Still, Sam couldn't help remembering.

They had held a housewarming party in the backyard just three years before. Friends and family had come. Dr. Shinoda, whose thriving Little Tokyo dental practice Kyoko managed, brought champagne and toothbrushes for everyone. The head of the art department at UCLA had brought, as a housewarming present, a print signed by Diego Rivera. It hung in the living room. Kyoko loved the print. She loved the house. She loved Sam too, at least for a while. But some bastard with a .22 ended all possibilities of their ever being happy again. Why? It had fallen to Sam to find out.

He took a deep breath.

This night had been confusing, disheartening, soaking wet. But it was just one night. His mind was playing tricks. A good sleep would change everything. He reminded himself that he had no pressing problems save one: finding Kyoko's killer. Nothing else mattered.

He started forward, then stopped.

Somehow, the house didn't feel the same.

Of course, the place had become something different eleven months before. His aunt and uncle had suggested he sell, that sleeping in the room he had shared with Kyoko couldn't be healthy.
Sugitaru wa nao oyobazaru ga gotoshi.
“Let what is past flow away downstream,” his aunt said, being aggravatingly fond of maxims. But he didn't
want
to let go, to move forward. The only movement he wanted was backward, and that was impossible. So he hadn't sold the place, even when his aunt further pressed him, reminding him of Kyoko's unfaithfulness:
Akusai wa hyaku-non no fusaku
. “A bad wife spells a hundred years of bad harvest.” But Sam didn't see Kyoko that way, whatever turn their marriage had taken. He stayed in the house. Nonetheless, it had recently begun to feel like “his” instead of “theirs”—perhaps an inevitable consequence of time.

Now, irrationally, it didn't even feel like his anymore either.

Regaining his sense of the present, he noticed a 1939 Chrysler Royal parked in the driveway.

Whose car?

At the front door, he reached into his pocket for his keys. But he'd left them with the parking attendant downtown at
some
point in the past. So he knelt and reached beside the garden hose for the rock beneath which hid his spare house key. Nothing there. “Shit,” he muttered.

He tried the door.

Fortunately, and unexpectedly, it was unlocked.

When he walked into his house, the first thing he noticed was a tall, white man in slacks, blue dress shirt, and suspenders, lying sprawled face up, snoring, on the sofa, an empty bottle of rye on the floor beside him.

“Hey, what are you doing in my house?” Sumida asked, kicking at the white man sleeping on the sofa.

The big man didn't budge, but merely snored more loudly.

Sumida turned.

That's when he noticed that the Diego Rivera print had been replaced on the wall by a quartet of framed, hand-embroidered samplers, all bearing clichéd sayings like, “Home Sweet Home” and “God Bless America.” Who'd moved the picture? Then he noticed something even more disturbing. Where were his wedding photos? And, on the mantelpiece, where were the half-dozen antique Japanese wood and ivory carvings,
netsuke
, which had been Kyoko's sole inheritance when her parents were killed in an automobile accident? The furniture and curtains were different too, ugly and obviously chosen without a woman's eye, without Kyoko's eye. Propped informally against the radio was a snapshot of an unfamiliar, romantically entwined Asian couple. He picked it up. In ink, the woman had inscribed, “To Jimmy, with much love, Sun.” Who? Cigar butts crowded ash trays. When had Sumida's home become a bachelor pad? It made no sense.

Sam moved through the house.

To his shock and dismay, he found no sign of his living here—nor of Kyoko. But there was plenty of evidence of some other man. In a framed photograph on the dresser in the master bedroom stood an unfamiliar Asian man dressed in a t-shirt and chino pants in front of
this
house, Sam's house, removing a “For Sale” sign with a wide grin on his face and a '37 Dodge Coupe in the background.

That's when he heard the toilet flush in the bathroom.

He turned.

The door opened and Tony Fortuna emerged, his face red from drinking.

“Tony!” Sam said, pleased to see his friend's familiar mug.

Tony narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”

“It's me, Sam.”

“Who? I don't know no Sam.”

“Come on, Tony. It's
me
, Sam Sumida.”

“You called me a couple hours back?”

“I can see you've been drinking, Tony.”

Tony shrugged. “Maybe I've had a few, but not so many as to be confused about Japs.” Showing surprising dexterity for a drunk, he slipped past Sam and into the living room. “Hey, Joe, wake up!” he called.

Sam followed him.

Tony knelt beside the big man and was now shaking him by the lapels. “Wake
up
!”

The man on the couch opened his eyes momentarily. His pupils were rolled halfway back into his head.

“Look, what's going on?” Sam pressed. “Who's this big guy? In
my
house.”

Tony turned. “
Your
house?”

Sam nodded.

“Look, what do you want, Sumida?” Tony asked, as if addressing a threatening stranger. “Did you come here looking for Jimmy? Or is he looking for you? I know he's been doing some kind of ‘special' work. Whose side are you on?”

“Who's Jimmy?”

Tony fumbled inside the unconscious man's jacket, his jittery hand emerging with a .38 Special, which he turned on Sumida.

“Look, Tony . . .”

“Shut up.” Tony stood. “If I pull this trigger it'll blow your brains clean out the back of your head. So put your hands up.”

Sumida raised his hands. “You've been drinking, Tony. So maybe you don't recognize me.”

“I'm not as drunk as all that. Now, sit down in that chair and keep your hands where I can see them.”

Hadn't Sam just seen Humphrey Bogart knock the gun from the hand of Peter Lorre? But Tony was too far to reach. Besides, real life felt different than movies, even if Tony swayed where he stood, more drunk than he was willing to admit.

“I said,
sit
,” Tony repeated, as if talking to a dog.

Had there been some object Sumida could grab he'd have hurled it at him and then taken away the gun. But there was nothing within reach. So he'd have to bide his time, wait for his moment. Good PIs did that too, sometimes.

He sat.

Tony took a deep breath, uncertain what to do next, and then belched.