Sins As Scarlet

by Nicolas Obregon

  All over this city the eye took in slogans and messages:

  COLLATERAL NOT NEEDED – WORLD-FAMOUS PASTRAMI – LIQUOR – EGGS ANY STYLE – FREE REFILLS – HELP WANTED – BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE – JESUS SAVES – END

  In the doorway of an abandoned psychic parlour a homeless woman had made a bed of newspapers. Beneath her, Donald Trump was smiling, his campaign announced, his catchphrase in white letters. The headlines were mocking him.

  And on Sunset Boulevard Kosuke Iwata was sitting at his desk. The new office was half the size of the old one, but it was cheaper and there was a coffee shop next door. When a breeze blew it carried the smell of roasting beans and snippets of conversation.

  Iwata had set up the Astrid Valentín Humanitarian Foundation a month ago, offering investigative services pro bono for the families of those missing while attempting to cross the southern deserts, for the families of missing trans persons, anyone unaccounted for, anyone lost. Nobody was turned away. Kate Floccari, partner in the charity, helped with the paperwork. There would be no more unfaithful spouses for Iwata.

  On his desk there were missing-persons files and thick textbooks on US immigration law. They were his daily bread now: the lost, the abused, the murdered in the borderlands, those swallowed by the dream of a better life.

  This, for many, was a mirage seen through America’s vast deserts – deserts that could kill with tremendous heat, hateful cold. But for the men and women who dragged themselves through the emptiness the dangers were not only those that occurred naturally – not all wolves walked on four legs.

  There were men who came to collect, men who came to rape, men who came to claim territory. Others came in search of blood, to make statements, to strike fear. And, like little ants over a chessboard, the migrants were clueless to the moving pieces around them, the stratagems that swirled above them. Iwata was not in the business of protecting them, but he tried to give them names, at least. To their families, some semblance of closure.

  Given a murder case with finite players, secure crime scenes and investigative resources, Iwata was a first-rate inspector. It wasn’t something that he thought much about, nor did he take much pride in it, it was merely as evident as the greys in his hair. But the desert had no interest in his abilities, the shrewdness of his lines of enquiry. In the desert there was no cooperation with any kind of force beyond death.

  Week after week Iwata would take on a case and head out in search of missing fathers, missing mothers, missing children. He was meticulous in his work, using all the tools and information available to him. He questioned those who could or would be, combed for clues. Sometimes Lily Trimble would even come with him. Earnell McCrae would help surreptitiously from his desk when he could.

  Yet almost always Iwata’s searching resulted only in empty plastic bottles, a torn jacket, the hint of a footprint. Perhaps a student ID card one time, perhaps a clavicle the next, a child’s pencil case, a cellphone – sad little tokens of lives relinquished.

  The local deputies all came to know Iwata. Some appreciated his work, others rolled their eyes at yet another John Doe, as though Iwata were a cat bringing dead mice to an owner. But that was what he did now, that was his function in this world. For hours and hours he would shout out names to the desert, names that had lost their owners, names echoing out over the scorched hillocks in absolute futility. And so Iwata’s days were spent in a stack of cases, forty-four missing persons in the desert. He lived in them like his own secret chamber in a tower of nameless bones.

  The hopelessness of it might have slowly poisoned a normal man. But Iwata knew little beyond existing in well-intentioned futility. His little patchwork of contradictions. The guilt of his cowardice. It followed him like a large black trunk, his own sneering memories an attentive porter who only coughed for tips at night. Bleakness would always pump through Iwata’s veins.

  And yet he looked forward to his evenings. The evenings meant Santi. The evenings meant peace.

  Not once since the desert had the boy asked about his mother. Iwata wondered what he would say when that day came. He wondered how Santi would grow up, how he would raise him. Santi was a US citizen now; Mingo Palacio’s contacts had seen to that. But would he become American, this country replacing the one in his blood, the one in his past? Iwata had no clue; he was sure only that he would love him. Somehow, the boy had become his anchor in the uncertain blue of life itself.

  The door opened now and a warm and mellow dusk seeped in. Somewhere not too far away Iwata could hear Arthur Russell’s ‘What It’s Like’. Charlotte Nichol walked in. She didn’t smile, she merely sat across from Iwata at his desk.

  ‘I got your report,’ she said flatly. ‘I came to thank you.’

  ‘Please, don’t thank me.’

  ‘It doesn’t make it any easier. But I do appreciate knowing who hurt Meredith.’

  ‘Well’ – Iwata managed to meet her eyes – ‘then I’m glad.’

  She nodded at his arm. ‘How’s it coming along?’

  ‘The physical therapy is slow but I’m getting there.’

  There was a long silence as Charlotte looked around the office. She noticed the photographs of Cleo and Nina on his desk. The photo of Nozomi. The photo of Santi on a pedalo in Echo Park.

  ‘Kosuke, what you’re doing here … It’s a good thing. Cleo would be proud.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Charlotte didn’t smile, but her mouth might have softened. ‘Well.’ She stood. ‘I should go.’

  Iwata accompanied her to the door and they stepped into the warm thrum of traffic. The sun was setting. The smell of coffee and hot concrete was strong in the air.

  They looked at each other for a moment, but neither of them could fathom the proper goodbye. Charlotte nodded once then headed for her waiting car.

  Iwata decided to call it a night. He locked up, then gave himself a few moments to watch Los Angeles play out. There were thousands of cases out there, endless questions to be answered, truths to be discovered. Iwata could feel them like mosquitos in the dark, hungry for his blood. There would always be murders. There would always be betrayals. And there would always be sins – of all colours.

  Iwata put his tea-shade sunglasses on and started home.

  The owner of the coffee shop next door waved. ‘Didn’t catch you today!’ she called.

  ‘I was pretty busy. Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ She smiled. ‘That’s what they say, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He returned the smile. ‘That’s what they say.’

  Looking up, Iwata saw the last of the sun setting over the boulevard, a sunset on Sunset, an infinite circle.

  Author’s Note

  Sunsets and Hummingbirds – The Story of the Story of Sins as Scarlet

  This book began life in death. Specifically, a dead hummingbird in the pocket of a dead man, his remains found near the US–Mexico border in 2009. A common indigenous symbol of safe passage, hummingbirds are considered a messenger between the living and the dead. I wondered if the man, presumably a Mexican or Central American migrant, had brought it for luck, to keep him safe during the crossing.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ll step back by moving forwards in time.

  In late spring of 2016 I was sitting in a café near the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Hyperion Avenue, nursing my jet lag and an over-conceptualized coffee. I had just moved to Los Angeles and was scratching my head, trying to decide what to do next. My first novel, Blue Light Yokohama, wasn’t even out yet, but here I was, trying to decide which direction to take Inspector Iwata in.

  Even in his earliest conception, he was always going to have more than one story to tell. Before I had shown anyone a single word, Iwata was already swamped in sequels and prequels and short-story ideas. But then I got an agent and, even more miraculously, a book deal for two Iwata novels. Somehow, I was now beginning work on what would become Sins as Scarlet.

  The only thing I was certain abou
t was that I wanted to take Iwata out of his ‘comfort zone’ – I had no interest in him riding the wave of his success, in having power, in commanding respect. Iwata would not be Iwata if doors opened for him.

  By moving him to Los Angeles, he’d be a nobody overnight. If I took away his badge, no doors would open for him; he’d have to blag or bribe his way in. Besides, the City of Angels had kindled my love of detective fiction. I grew up with my imagination submersed in its filthy kingdom of noir – the seediness, the scores, the snobbery. Through the eyes of everyone from Marlowe to Rick Deckard, I wolfed LA down, dreaming of one day writing about a detective stalking through her streets, doffing his cap to the ghosts of his predecessors as he went. Now I had my chance.

  Thematically, I knew I wanted to explore two things in Sins as Scarlet: the past and identity. Iwata’s mother, Nozomi, appears briefly in Blue Light Yokohama but, after so many drafts, her voice fell largely silent. Now I could burrow into who she was, where she came from, what led her to abandon her son. And by delving into her past, we would also understand Iwata more thoroughly.

  Iwata is bicultural, with a talent for languages. Like me, he’s from two places and no places all at once. These were all things alluded to in Blue Light Yokohama. Now I wanted to dive into them headfirst. His upbringing has straddled two countries, two cultures, two languages. On the one hand, he is Japanese; on the other, he grew up in the United States. How would that affect him now, approaching forty, living alone in Los Angeles? Who would he be?

  Of course, I’d mapped out Iwata’s backstory long before I got a book deal. I’d told myself then that, if I ever made it this far, my second Iwata book would take him back to Los Angeles and, in the undertones beneath the framework of a crime-fiction book, it would attempt to explore biculturality, alienation, generational gaps. After all, following on from the events of Blue Light Yokohama, it was logical that Iwata would want to leave Japan behind, certainly the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Moving him to LA would bring him closer to his mother, while turning him into a private investigator would also drag him down the rabbit hole again.

  As a crime writer, I see setting as its own character. I believe the landscape dictates the mood of a story just as much as its events or the characters that drive it. Like Tokyo, there is an idea of Los Angeles, fed by a million movies. People believe that Angelenos live in either Bel Air mansions or in South Central gang territory. Angelenos are either the über-wealthy drinking Mai Tais up in the Hollywood Hills, or they’re far below, pimps and hustlers squabbling behind squalid motels on the Strip.

  Indubitably, I wanted to attempt to bring these contrasts to the page. But at the same time, this city’s profound disparity constitutes just a single mask: Los Angeles wears many.

  While I wanted my detective to navigate the upper crust and delve into the underworld, I also wanted him to pass through the Every Day of this city: open-air markets, the industrial landscapes, people going to work, people having coffee, sitting in traffic.

  In trying to find a way into Sins as Scarlet, I scoured newspapers, a list of John and Jane Does, and the LA County Coroner’s unclaimed-persons page. That’s when I came across the website for the Colibrí Centerfn1 and read the story of the man with the hummingbird in his pocket.

  It was such a striking image, omen-like, a dead man with a dead bird, without a name, lost in the desert. Immediately I knew I wanted Iwata to be investigating a case similar to this, to be investigating a world of nameless migrants, rackets and trespasses. I wanted him to be on the case of a man found dead in the desert with a hummingbird in his pocket.

  And like a tap turning on, the heart of the book gushed out. Sins as Scarlet would be a world of the vulnerable, the abused, the homeless, the addicted, the marginalized, the transgender, the undocumented, those dying in the street. I walled myself in with books about Los Angeles, the Borderlands, Mexico, the narco war. I spent days traipsing around Skid Row. I spoke to people living in tents under flyovers. I walked hundreds and hundreds of miles through the streets of LA. I visited Mexico and researched the migrant crossings into America. I made friendships with migrants who had started new lives in East LA and we spoke at length about being far away from home, starting again in America. I spoke with transgender women about their lives, their experiences. I did research on postpartum psychosis. I read California’s Private Investigator Act and interviewed private investigators, asked them about the reality of a gumshoe’s day-to-day. As my research developed, Sins as Scarlet began to take shape. I also began to learn about the reality facing migrants crossing into this country,fn2 the homeless population of Los Angelesfn3 and transgender women of America.fn4 The data was fragmented, the true picture buried beneath, somewhere in those lost: the shamed, the misgendered, the transient, the decomposing. Sins as Scarlet is a work of fiction but, ultimately, I wanted it to be driven by the stark realities facing the vulnerable, the abused, the oppressed.

  As for the dead hummingbird, it never did make it into the novel. Originally, I wanted it to be the great denouement for Inspector Iwata, a moment of chilling epiphany at death’s door. (I even toyed with the idea of including ‘hummingbird’ in the title somehow.) They say good writers borrow and great writers steal, but I just couldn’t bring myself to take it out of that dead man’s pocket. So I leave it there, beyond the greedy gaze of my imagination, and pray (if it can be called praying) for his positive identification one day. That’s what Iwata now spends his days doing.

  I’m writing this on Sunset Boulevard, drinking another over-conceptualized coffee at the same café where I first started plotting Sins as Scarlet two years ago – just a few blocks away from where we bid farewell to Iwata at the end of the book.

  It’s a beautiful afternoon, the sky triumphantly blue. I sent my final draft to my editor a few days ago. I’m both overjoyed and heartbroken for it to be over, at once hopeful and hopeless, drunk on its absence. Above me there are street signs, Sunset intersecting with Hyperion – the father of the dawn and sunset, the death of each day.

  I’ve always been an over-thinker, and my imagination runs away with me, but in this moment, writing the final words for the very end of this book, it feels like there’s a supertemporal circularity to things, as though years have passed and no time at all.

  But like Kosuke Iwata, I know it’s time to put on my sunglasses and walk out of this joint. After all, tomorrow is another day, another case.

  Nicolás Obregón

  Los Angeles

  April 2018

  Acknowledgements

  As ever, to my parents and family; however far I am from you today, I keep you close inside and think of you each day. Y como no, para Lela, hasta el cielo de la calle. To my love, Camille, the coolest person I’ve ever known. Without you, I wouldn’t be where I am now, in more ways than one. To Moira, my unofficial PR guru, whose home is my own corner of England here in California, I will always be grateful. To my Los Angeles friends Aliyah and Jay, thank you for helping to make this strange city feel like something akin to home.

  To Saoirse, without whom this book would not have come to be. Never have I known someone so lion-heartedly open so quickly. I’ll always be indebted to you for your truths and insights. The meaning of your name is freedom and nobody deserves it more – may you have it all of your days.

  Para mi compañero, Stewart, the Geoff Horsfield of undiscovered storytelling genius: Inspector Iwata will never not owe you a cheeky pint. And to my brothers in Team KR: all your mums. To my friend cut from the same cloth, the council flat Gorky: Chris, thank you for your letters, in every sense of the word.

  Professionally, it’s an honour to once again pay grateful tribute to my editorial dream team: Maxine Hitchcock, Eve Hall and Rebecca Hilsdon—Michael Joseph for ever. Thanks also to Penguin legends George Foster, Gaby Young and Isabelle Everington. (Is this a good point to say any errors in this book are absolutely my own?) And to my agent and numero uno, Gordon Wise. With each day that passes, my understanding an
d appreciation of your support only grows.

  To all the booksellers, reviewers and book folk who helped my novel along; there are no words I know to sufficiently convey my esteem. And of course, to the readers themselves, you are the very lifeblood of this dreamworld you let me live in. I thank you from my nethermost.

  And finally, to all the nameless people who died in the US Borderlands in search of a better tomorrow. This book is beneath every single one of them, but it is both for them, and of them. May the dream they died for live on for ever.

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  First published 2018

  Copyright © Nicolás Obregón, 2018

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Cover image © Petyr Campos/Arcangel Images

  AMEXICA: WAR ALONG THE BORDERLINE by Ed Vulliamy. Copyright © 2010, Ed Vulliamy, used by permission of The Wylie Agency (UK) Limited