Tranquility Denied

by A. C. Frieden

  Ninety minutes later, Jimmy took the short walk from his apartment to the office. He looked out at the brown haze hovering over downtown Los Angeles in the distance. It was a sight for sore eyes. As he turned onto Fourth Street he spotted two uniformed officers planted at the front entrance to his office building. Pigeon pulled a business card from his wallet and he quickened his pace. One of the young patrolmen stopped Jimmy at the door.

  “Can I help you, sir,” he asked.

  “Just trying to get to work,” Jimmy said, carefully offering the officer his card.

  “Please wait here, sir,” the officer said. He turned and carried the card into the building.

  “Something happen?” Jimmy asked the second uniform.

  “Officer Sutton will be right back, sir,” the cop said and then nervously added, only for something to say, “there was a high pollution warning this morning.”

  “Love it,” Jimmy said, taking in a deep breath for the first time in nearly a week.

  The uniform returned his attention to the street.

  A few minutes later, Sutton was back.

  “Would you please come with me, Mr. Pigeon,” he said.

  Jimmy followed Sutton into the building and up to the second floor.

  The building superintendent stood in the hall, pale as a ghost. He looked at Jimmy and then turned his eyes away. At the office door, Jimmy immediately noticed the crack in the opaque glass pane which ran diagonally across the hand painted words. Archer and Pigeon, Private Investigation.

  Sutton pushed the door open. Jimmy’s eyes went to the floor. Lenny Archer, his face nearly unrecognizable, lying in what seemed an ocean of blood.

  Pigeon sadly looked away and surveyed the room. It had been turned upside down. File cabinet drawers open, papers scattered everywhere. Two men in white lab coats dusting for prints. Two plain clothed detectives staring back at him. The older of the two starting toward him.

  “Are you okay, Mr. Pigeon,” the detective said. “You don’t look very well.”

  Allergies, Jimmy thought to say, aversion to violent death.

  “When did this happen?” Jimmy asked.

  “I can’t say. The call came in a few hours ago. The medical examiner is on his way. We’ll know more after he takes a look. Do you feel up to a few questions?”

  “Give me a moment,” Jimmy said. “I need some air. Can we talk outside?”

  “Sure. We’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  Jimmy walked back down and out of the building. He passed Sutton and the other uniform at the door. They had nothing to say. He walked twenty feet from the entrance, leaned against the building and lit a cigarette.

  Jesus Christ, Lenny, what the fuck was it about?

  Jimmy was crushing the cigarette under his shoe a few minutes later as the two detectives approached him.

  “Go ahead, ask,” Jimmy said before either could speak.

  The older of the two took charge. The other detective took notes.

  “When was the last time you saw your partner?”

  “Monday evening, a week ago today. I left town early Tuesday morning, got back in late last night.”

  “Did you speak with Mr. Archer while you were gone?”

  “No. I imagined Lenny could stay out of trouble for six days.”

  “Do you have any idea about why this happened?”

  “None.”

  “Whoever it was seemed to be searching for something.”

  “No idea,” said Jimmy.

  “A case you were working on? Something particularly sensitive or dangerous?”

  “Nothing I was involved in,” Jimmy said. “Nothing Lenny told me anything about.”

  “Did you usually work separate cases?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “So, you can’t really help us on this.”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I learn anything.”

  “Mr. Pigeon, it would be much better for all concerned if you left this to us.”

  Not much better for Lenny.

  “I didn’t get your names,” Jimmy said. “I thought I knew all of the Santa Monica homicide detectives.”

  “I’m Detective Raft and my partner is Detective Tully. We’re LASD,” said Raft, handing Jimmy a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department business card.

  “Oh?” said Jimmy.

  “We were handy,” Raft said. “Can you tell us anything about Mr. Archer’s next-of-kin?”

  “He had none,” said Jimmy.

  “Here’s the ME,” said Tully. “I’ll take him up.”

  Tully started toward the Ford that had pulled up in front of the building. An ambulance turned onto Fourth Street. Tully led the Santa Monica Medical Examiner into the building. Solomon Meyers, a familiar face.

  “When can I get back into the office?” Jimmy asked.

  “Hopefully by early this evening. Is there somewhere I can reach you before then?” Raft asked.

  “I’m not sure where I’ll be. You have my card. You can reach me at the office number, hopefully by early this evening. Can I go now?”

  “Sure,” said Raft. “I think that’s all for the time being. You have my card, if there’s anything we can do.”

  “Thanks, I’ll let you know,” Jimmy said and he quietly walked away.

  Raft returned to the office. The medical examiner was studying the corpse, the ambulance drivers were waiting for the ME to release the body, the crime scene investigators were dusting, collecting, shooting photographs. Detective Raft called Detective Tully out into the hall.

  “Do you think Pigeon knows anything?” asked Tully.

  “I don’t believe so,” said Raft. “Archer and Richards both said no. But Pigeon is a snoop and from what I hear a very good one. And he has a poor fucking attitude. We’ll need to keep a close eye on him.”

  “Do you think they’ve found Richards yet?”

  “I’m sure they have,” Raft said. “I imagine that’s why the Santa Monica PD was too busy to take this one.”

  Pigeon spent the remainder of the day alone. He sat for hours at the Santa Monica Pier, watching the ocean. He dropped into a few bars along Third Street, nursing more than one drink in each saloon. A toast to Lenny Archer. At a table in the rear of Murphy’s Saloon four men in military uniform, all in their late sixties or early seventies, sang patriotic songs and tipped drinks in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the allied invasion of Normandy. It was too much celebration for Jimmy to handle. He left the bar and treated himself to a steak dinner before returning to his office.

  Someone had tried valiantly to scrub the floor, most likely the building superintendent, but a large faint stain remained. The strong scent of bleach had taken the place of the hideous smell of fresh blood. The office was still in shambles. He knew he would need to call someone in to pick up, to fix the glass pane on the door, maybe drop an area rug down. He knew he wasn’t up to it himself.

  Jimmy went over to Lenny Archer’s desk and opened the top drawer. In the top center drawer of each of their desks sat a small ceramic change bowl filled with coins and paper clips. Imbedded into the bottom of each bowl was a remote switch, a small button which started the tape machine that recorded sound through a microphone hidden in the ceiling light fixture. The tape recorder was hidden in the wall behind a metal vent cover. Jimmy emptied the bowl in Lenny’s drawer.

  The record button was depressed.

  Jimmy went over to his own desk for a screwdriver. He detached the metal grill and he pulled out the machine. He carried it back to his desk and rewound the tape. He lit a cigarette and pressed the play button.

  Pigeon could not identify the voices but he could tell there had been two men in the office with Lenny. The dialogue was audible, as were the background noises. The first gunshot followed by a close second. The awful sounds of the beating Lenny had taken. The brutal interrogation, a name mentioned more than once. Richards.

  Ed Richards.

  Something to go on.

  T
hey had found what they came looking for; Lenny had been of no use to them.

  And then the final fatal gunshot.

  Pigeon replaced the tape recorder and switched on the small portable TV hoping to catch the late local news. He pulled the pint of bourbon from his desk and drank from the bottle. Jimmy caught the lead story, a Santa Monica author and journalist found shot to death in his beach house. The place had been ransacked. The Santa Monica police suspected a robbery turned felony homicide.

  The name of the victim was Edward Richards.

  Jimmy turned off the TV, slipped the bottle into his jacket pocket and left the office. He stopped at the front entrance to check the mail. He unlocked the box and found two bills and a postcard. The card had been addressed to Jimmy at his sister’s place in South Carolina, but the street address had been transcribed incorrectly and the postcard was stamped Return to Sender. On the front of the card was a photo of the Santa Monica City Hall Building and on the back side of the card was an eight word message to Pigeon.

  Chasing Charlie Chan.

  Wish you were here.

  Lenny.

  Back to TOC

  Here’s a sample from Tom Crowley’s Viper’s Tail.

  Foreshadows

  1944—Singapore—Kempeitai Headquarters

  Lieutenant Colonel Masayuki Oishi walked out of his office in the YMCA building on Stamford Road and entered the car taking him to the Kempeitai jail in Outram. The Kempeitai were the police of the Imperial Japanese military forces but also had a political function and power similar to the German Gestapo. Oishi had a requisition for able-bodied prisoners to fulfill. The chief of construction on the Thailand section of the Burma railway had asked for one hundred prisoners to take the places of those who had died during the railway construction through Kanchanaburi and beyond. Shortly after receiving that message, Oishi had received a message from Colonel Suzuki Keiji who supervised the Kempeitai in Southeast Asia. Suzuki had ordered him to add another twenty able-bodied prisoners to the list. These were to be separated at the port in Bangkok and sent to Unit 809, the secret medical research unit in Northern Thailand. Oishi knew what the fate of the prisoners would be but that didn’t bother him. They were to be used for the good of the Emperor and the benefit of the Empire. That was all that mattered.

  1945—Northern Burma/Thailand Border

  The cold air rushing through the fuselage of the C-47 felt good for a change. Captain Chris Chance had been afraid the months spent in the enervating heat of Ceylon and then in Northern India training and preparing for this mission had drained him of all real energy. The plane bucked to one side and banked back over as the pilot tried to compensate for the updrafts coming off the Tasserine mountain range of Northern Burma and Thailand. They were flying to the East and North of Chiang Mai to avoid the Japanese airbase though there was no expectation that at midnight there would be any night fighters up and about. In fact, they had been briefed that there was little Japanese air opposition left at all, but best to be careful.

  The insertion was to be a parachute drop. Four men were on the team: Chris, an American Army officer seconded to the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, Sergeant Sam Banks, an American army explosives expert and two Thai agents or Seri Thai—Free Thai—recruited from colleges in the U.S. and given special warfare training by the OSS.

  Chris felt the plane descending a bit and then leveling off. The crew chief walked back and yelled, “Five minutes to jump,” at the same time holding up five fingers. Chris nodded and gave him a thumbs up sign trying to appear calm and in control. He turned to his team to relay the message even though he knew they understood. The English spoken by the Thai men was as good as his if not better. They had been attending Ivy League schools when the war broke out and had plenty of chances to practice military slang in the two years they had been training for this mission. They were eager since this was a homecoming to them. They were hungry for the chance to show the world that the Seri Thai were not quietly accepting Japanese occupation and rule.

  Their primary mission was simple in concept yet Chris was sure it would be complicated in the execution. They were to parachute into the hill tribe’s area Northeast of Chiang Mai and organize the hill tribe’s people to carry out guerilla resistance against the Japanese forces in Northern Thailand. They were to prepare the ground forces for the arrival of allied troops who were planning to cross the Salween River and drive towards occupation of Chiang Mai. The plan was to use the air base, which would serve as an advance fighter and logistics base for a subsequent drive on the port city of Bangkok.

  An additional mission for Chris and one of the Seri Thai was to travel to the East to the Mekong River area along the border with Laos. They were to provide intelligence on the Japanese transportation routes along the river and investigate a reported allied POW camp in the area.

  That was all in the future. Chris’s concern now was to have the team hit the drop zone and have no injuries to hold them back. The crew chief turned and held up one finger and yelled, “Stand up, checkup.”

  Chris stood up, as the stick leader, and turned his back so the number two, Saichon, nicknamed Ton, could check his chute. At the back number four yelled, “Number 4 ready,” echoed by number three and two and then Chris yelled to the crew chief, “All ready.” Chris shuffled to the open door and looked out into the darkness. He saw a gleam of light reflected from the half-moon on the river as it flashed by eight hundred feet below. They were seconds away. Then the green light came on and the crew chief yelled, “Go, go, go.”

  Chris jumped. The air stream hit him hard and he swung up and then swung back down. Too fast, he thought. The pilot had been too scared to slow down to drop speed. As Chris swung back down, the chute popped above him. He twisted under his parachute, looking for the fire that was meant to mark the landing zone. He saw it to his left. He frantically worked the canopy lines, dipping his parachute to his left and turning towards the fires. He would be short of the landing zone, and that wasn’t good. It meant he would hit the trees, not the soft open rice paddy where he wanted to land. He pushed his feet and legs together not wanting to straddle a tree branch and pulled his arms in tight. Then he felt the upper branches pulling at him, knocking him sideways and then slowing his fall until he felt a strong jerk on the canopy and he came to a stop. Hell, he thought, all this training just to get stuck in a tree.

  As his bouncing in the parachute harness slowed and he started to get his breath back, he saw it wasn’t as bad as he had first feared. The ground was only ten feet below. His equipment bag on a ten foot line from his harness was already touching the ground. He released the catch to the chute and grasping the line to the equipment bag, lowered himself to the ground. As he was unpacking the equipment bag, he heard a branch break in the forest behind him and dropped to the ground. Then he heard the metal cricket click. For security reasons, his team had adopted the use of a child’s toy, a metal cricket, previously used by American airborne soldiers in night drops in Europe. He answered with a snap of his metal cricket and then called, “Come on up.” It was Ton. He said the rest of the team had gathered on the flat below with the Shan tribesmen who were to guide them. The team had suffered no injuries. They were collecting the explosives, arms and communications equipment dropped in three separate containers. Ton helped Chris secure his equipment bag and parachute and they moved down to join the rest of the team.

  The next two weeks went by quickly. The Japanese had no garrisons in the area. This was largely forest away from the main roads. They were able to travel openly in the day and meet with other villages and secure support. Chris felt he could leave Sam Banks and one of the Seri Thai to carry on with the organization of the attack groups in the area. He and Ton could then move on to his second objective: locate a rumored prison camp and Japanese army complex in the forest adjacent to the Mekong River North of Chiang Rai.

  One possible scenario for future operations called for Nationalist Chinese troops to come down from Yunna
n province in China, no more than a hundred miles away, and move against the Japanese in Northern Thailand. Headquarters wanted a report on the extent of Japanese troop activity. There were also reports of a POW camp in the area. It was important to confirm this, if possible.

  Japanese army camp—nearly twenty miles north of Chiang Rai

  Captain Chris Chance shifted his weight, lying on the ground and leaning forward a bit more into his elbows to steady his grip on the binoculars he was using to study the scene below. They were in the forest rim on the top of a ridgeline that fell away to a clearing about one hundred fifty feet below them. From the clearing the ground sloped down gradually towards the river two hundred feet further on. Both he and Ton were sweating from the heat and grateful for the chance to be still and feel the small breeze running along the top of the ridgeline.

  The camp in the clearing consisted of several small outbuildings which looked to be lodging for the troops and the few prisoners he had sighted. The construction was simple wood planks and bamboo with large open areas to let the air flow through. There was a larger, more enclosed central building as well. That building was the center of activity as the work crew carried boxes from the building down to two boats pulled up at a short pier at the edge of the river. There was no breeze along the river and a Japanese flag hung limply from the flagpole in the center of the camp.