The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  She continued to look at him, long enough for it to start to seem peculiar. Then her face suddenly creased into a transforming smile and she laughed. ‘That’s honest of you,’ she said.

  It was his turn to laugh. ‘Honesty in Hollywood. Remember this moment.’

  ‘I will,’ she said, still smiling, and closed the door.

  Back to work. He took a form from the drawer and started to fill out his expenses, which putatively went through the LA office, where Hood had spotted them – and been flabbergasted. ‘Fifteen years in the Bureau,’ the SAC had complained, ‘and I’ve never had to complain that an agent’s expenses were too small.’ What Hood didn’t know was that any expense of consequence went through the Bureau’s office in Mexico City, then got rerouted for approval by Assistant Director Guttman back in D.C. It was just one more strange aspect of this odd posting.

  He pushed his expenses away, deciding he’d do them later, and wondered where next to look for Billy Osaka, and why Billy needed to see him.

  When Nessheim had arrived here eight months before, he’d been given a list of four paid contacts from the Japanese-American community, used mainly for translation. One had died, one had returned to Japan, and one had told Nessheim that he wasn’t interested in working for the FBI any more. This left Osaka, though Hood had not been encouraging: ‘He’s not even a real Jap,’ the SAC had complained. And now Billy had gone missing, even though with his mishmashed blood lines he stood out in LA like a split nail in a manicure bar.

  Nessheim thought he had better tell Guttman that he had a missing informant. He considered calling him; he’d had a phone installed, which collected dust on the window sill, since he rarely used it and it never rang. But calls through it went out through a switchboard, where it had been known for some nail-buffing bored operator to listen in.

  Nessheim got up and took his jacket and gun, then left the building. In Lolly’s office a crowd of writers had gathered round her desk, and she was laughing.

  He walked out past Eddie in his booth, who seemed surprised to find anyone leaving the lot on foot. Western Union was only half a mile away, an easy walk, despite the heat that had hung over from summer. But then it was always summer here, he thought irritably, his mood darkening as he started to sweat.

  He didn’t like LA.

  He didn’t like the fact that its most famous product, the movies, was a mirage, put together in a soulless town that pretended it was glamorous as well – like a snake-oil salesman claiming the magic of his elixir made him magic too. He didn’t like the low-lying smell of gasoline and hamburger grease the minute you took a drive downtown. Which was every minute if you wanted to get anywhere.

  He didn’t like the way that some mornings’ daylight was the colour of bone, some the colour of late corn, or that the city had hills in some parts and was as flat as a map in others. It was a jellyfish of a city, translucent in the middle because there wasn’t one. He didn’t like the trapped heat, held in by the minor mountains to the north and east, unrelieved by the ocean south and west of town, or how the clouds could hang low like a dropped ceiling. He felt hemmed in.

  He didn’t like the fact that the place had been settled by conmen and illusionists, and that its population was so heterogeneous and yet so unequal – he had a natural curiosity about the Mexicans and Orientals, but the bigotry of everybody else made his interest seem subversive. He didn’t like the place’s disconnect with the country he had grown up in; LA never felt to him like it belonged to the rest of the nation, and made him yearn for his native Midwest. He missed seasons, fresh water and trees that were made for snow – maples, birches, beech and oaks, the trees of Wisconsin. Here the trees seemed alien – juniper, pepper trees and eucalyptus, even the palms he’d always thought were confined to the South Sea Islands.

  And no one here seemed to know where Europe was, or what was going on there. No one seemed to understand or even sense the menace of Nazism, though as for Japan, California seemed to think the Pacific Ocean was an Oriental carpet the sons of Nippon were about to walk across.

  Finally, he didn’t like LA because he didn’t choose to be there – unlike other recent arrivals, who came West to leave a wounding world behind. Hopes had been crushed everywhere else for a decade, but here optimism spread like mint, a phoney optimism since people were merely buying time before being let down again. Unlike everyone else, Nessheim wasn’t fleeing anything or looking for something. He’d come here because he’d been pushed, but at some point he would push back.

  He’d do that after Annie Ryerson came – she was due out at Christmas with her son Jeff. He hadn’t seen her since January, after he had gone to Washington and accepted Guttman’s offer of this cockamamie job. He had spent time then with Annie – good calm time. She wouldn’t sleep with him, which took some getting used to, yet it was kind of nice to wait; or so he told himself, wondering if he should put saltpetre in his cereal. He felt confident he was going to be with her, and confident that would get him out of LA.

  Western Union was in a squat, light-grey granite building with four tellers, older men wearing eyeshade caps like bookies, with pencil stubs by their side. He filled out a form at the counter, and paid his forty cents. His message was simple:

  OSAKA GONE AWOL. N

  He looked at his watch. It was 12.30. He retraced his steps, but at Vine he turned right and walked away from the studio for a block, until he came to Elsie’s Diner on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard. The studio didn’t run to a canteen; if you didn’t bring a packed lunch Elsie’s was the closest bet, if not a good one. It was already crowded and he headed for the one free stool at the counter, until a shout came from a corner booth.

  ‘G-Man!’

  It was Teitz, motioning him to join his party, even though from their empty plates it looked like they had finished lunch. Waverley was there, and Nessheim hesitated, but Teitz kept beckoning him. He went over and saw that Stuckey, a rewrite man, and Debts Grenebaum, who was fresh from another Broadway failure, were also sitting on the dark-brown leather banquettes.

  ‘Have a seat,’ Teitz said, moving over to make room. An ex-reporter, perky and full of the gossip he called news, he was a self-confessedly mediocre writer who had carved out a collaborative career – functioning as a junior partner with anyone he could hook up with; when he couldn’t find a partner he transferred to shorts, the little documentaries the theatres ran as trailers for their shorter pictures.

  ‘We were talking about the war,’ said Grenebaum. Like Teitz he was a studio veteran, though he returned to New York whenever he could get a play produced. His work was ‘progressive’ and often compared, usually unfavourably, with that of Clifford Odets. ‘Just drop the O from Odets and you’ve got our boy,’ Waverley had once declared, and after that Grenebaum was known as Debts.

  Waverley himself was sitting at the end of the table, against the window, dressed in a coal-coloured turtleneck and a fawn blazer. Teitz was wearing a madras jacket and his standard jaunty bow tie (this one was green) but none of the other writers ever dressed up – they either wore ties pulled down an inch or two or didn’t wear a tie at all. They liked to tease Nessheim for his G-Man uniform – the Bureau’s dress code set a high bar and, like the gun, the banker’s suit came with the job.

  ‘You got to hand it to the Brits,’ Stuckey was saying, as Nessheim sat down and picked up a menu. The special, chalked up on a board above the counter, was corned-beef hash, poached egg on top a nickel extra. ‘Everybody thought they’d cave in by now. But I don’t see how the Germans are going to invade. They’ve lost the air war, so if they try to cross the Channel the Royal Navy will make mincemeat of them.’

  Waverley dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘Frankly, if one fading colonial power is taken over by its fascist progeny, it doesn’t matter very much – except to the capitalists. But if the Soviets lose, that will be a disaster for everyone.’

  Nessheim looked up from the menu. ‘I’d have thought you’d be happy to h
ave anyone fight the Nazis. Even the fading colonial Brits.’

  Waverley looked at him as if he were a flea who had jumped the wrong way. ‘You think my enemy’s enemy is my friend? That’s absurd. Where were the British when the Republicans needed help in Spain? Where were they back in July when Nazi Germany invaded the Ukraine?’

  ‘Hang on a minute. Three months ago the Soviets were allies of the Nazis.’

  ‘What else could they do? The West wouldn’t lift a finger to help our comrades. The Russians had to protect themselves.’

  ‘Fat lot of good it did them,’ said Stuckey. He was tall and heavy set, but his black-rimmed glasses made him look more contemplative than tough. He had none of Teitz’s bounciness, but he carried himself with a calm modesty which Nessheim admired.

  Waverley shook his head impatiently. ‘Stalin knew who the enemy was. But with the rest of the world undermining him, he needed to buy time.’

  ‘By sleeping with the enemy, I suppose,’ said Stuckey. He took a toothpick and began working it between his two front teeth. Somehow he managed to do this gracefully.

  The waitress came with a pitcher of ice tea. As she refilled glasses, Nessheim ordered the corned-beef hash without the egg and Teitz used the interruption to change the subject – he was keener on people than politics. ‘So tell us, G-Man, what’s new in the world of interstate crime? Have you found another Lindbergh baby?’

  Nessheim said, ‘Taste, Teitz, taste.’

  Grenebaum, normally silent, spoke up. ‘Too late,’ he said glumly. ‘Taste is a Teitz-free zone.’

  Even Waverley laughed at this. Nessheim said, ‘I’ll leave Lindbergh to Hoover. I’m looking for somebody else.’

  ‘Who’s that, some Red?’ asked Teitz, and Waverley gave a derisory snort.

  Nessheim said, ‘A kid named Osaka.’

  ‘Billy Osaka,’ said Teitz, his face lighting up. ‘Everybody knows Billy.’

  ‘Sounds like a Jap to me,’ said Waverley sourly.

  ‘Can’t a Jap be a comrade too? I thought you were a democrat at heart,’ said Nessheim.

  ‘I am. Unlike the Japs.’

  When Nessheim’s food came the others paid and left for the studio. Except for Stuckey, who stayed behind and ordered a cup of coffee. When it came he lit a Camel and looked at Nessheim.

  ‘So what are you working on now?’

  ‘The Red Herring,’ he said.

  Stuckey gave a small smile. ‘It’s art of course, not “proper-gander”. With the added bonus of letting the public know all that you FBI guys are doing on its behalf.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nessheim said without enthusiasm.

  ‘Don’t let the Count fool you. He’s a peasant from Puglia, even if he quotes Vorkapich and Eisenstein.’

  ‘But I thought he was an Italian nobleman.’

  ‘I think you’d find on close inspection that the title was acquired the day he got off the Super Chief and arrived in Hollywood.’ He took a final drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in the table’s ashtray. ‘But what else are you up to, Nessheim?’

  ‘Oh, you know, helping out with this and that. Mainly that.’

  ‘Do you see much of Buddy Pearl?’

  ‘Very little,’ said Nessheim.

  ‘He’s a Jew of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ Nessheim said, though he had never given it much thought. He hadn’t mistaken Pearl for a Mayflower descendant, but for Nessheim, growing up in rural Wisconsin, the only important distinction had been between Lutherans and Catholics.

  ‘A Jew, but of the tough rather than sweet rabbinical kind. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t anything against them – those guys are my pals.’ Stuckey gestured at the seats Teitz and Grenebaum had just vacated, then took another toothpick from the little cup that held them and twirled it lightly between his fingers. ‘In my experience, the Jews are good to work with – all bluster at first, then perfectly reasonable when you stand your ground. But I imagine Pearl is different: it can’t be easy to do business with him.’

  ‘I’m not doing business with Pearl,’ Nessheim said firmly.

  Stuckey nodded. ‘I know – the Bureau’s your boss. But I still don’t envy you.’

  ‘He’s invited me to lunch.’

  ‘That means he wants something. I’d watch your back.

  What Buddy wants he usually gets, though I think he’s finding the movie business a little tough to crack. I mean, who starts a studio in the middle of the Depression?’

  The Count was on loan from Warners, which was thought to be a coup by AMP executives, since he shot fast and didn’t use a lot of film. His Italian accent grew stronger when he was stressed, but today he was not only perfectly intelligible, he was actually friendly to Nessheim. Normally he ignored him. ‘Art,’ he had declared when Nessheim had first appeared, ‘I make Art, not proper-gander.’

  Nessheim had repeated this to the residents of the Ink Well, who’d all laughed. Teitz had said they should call the Count ‘Goose’. Grenebaum had broken his standard silence and been more scornful. ‘This guy doesn’t make art or propaganda. He’s no Leni Riefenstahl, that’s for sure. This guy makes junk.’

  They were in the final three days of the eighteen-day shoot of The Red Herring, the fourth in a series of Bureau-endorsed movies featuring Special Agent Edward Parker – played by a tall, lantern-jawed actor named Harry Dedway, who had begun his acting career as a horse-riding extra in cowboy movies. There had been bigger FBI-loving pictures made by bigger studios, but these were some years back. Hoover, who had not been pleased by James Cagney’s playful portrayal of a Special Agent in G-Men, was now on a mission. He was determined to show the FBI as a team of crime-busters, a force of integrity, relying on the clinical science of forensics, which was why, in the interests of ‘accuracy’, Nessheim was here. AMP’s FBI pictures were all B-movies, using two cameras at most, but they had made good if not spectacular money so far, largely because they were cheap to make – the budget for this one was sixty grand, Nessheim had overheard one of the Count’s assistants say, and they were bang on target and a day ahead of time.

  There hadn’t been much for Nessheim to do during filming – they’d shot on location in the Valley the week before, where he had driven out just in time to point out that no one could fire a tommy-gun with one hand. Now they were filming the movie’s climax – the arrest by Special Agent Parker of a young woman who had murdered her fiancé, embezzled $20,000 from a bank and done her unsuccessful best to seduce the FBI man. Presumably her crimes involved crossing state lines, as otherwise young Parker would not have been called in to solve the case. But this was the kind of nit-picking (neet-pecking as the Count called it) which Nessheim had learned – if only for the sake of an easy life – to forgo.

  The Count sat throughout the afternoon on a dolly, right behind the cameraman, who drove it up and down for trucking shots, while a second but static camera focused on the femme fatale and Agent Parker as they had their final showdown. Periodically, the Count would call Nessheim over and ask if the scene was realistic, especially when Parker disarmed the suspect. Nessheim, wanting to justify his presence, demonstrated how this would be done and the Count filmed the scene three times.

  At last Nessheim managed to escape back to his office, where he finished his expenses while the writers wound down for the day – the sound of popping corks and loud laughter replacing the erratic clack-clack of typewriter keys. He waited around until six o’clock in case Guttman replied to his telegram, but nothing arrived. It didn’t seem to matter very much; he was used to waiting around these days.

  Part Two

  Washington, D.C. Late September 1941

  2

  IT WAS ONLY a matter of time, Harry Guttman told himself as he turned onto the slip road into Rock Creek Park. The Nazis were halfway across Russia, the Japanese were bullying most of Asia. At some point, America would enter the war, and as far as Guttman was concerned the sooner the better. And this sense of imminent conflict – worldwide for a c
ountry that never liked to look beyond its borders – made the evening’s rendezvous seem a waste of time.

  What did Thornton Palmer want?

  Guttman parked his car with a sigh, then wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of one hand. He realised that, despite ten years working there, he would never get used to the Washington heat. Even in September, as dusk neared he felt he was sitting in a breezeless bath of hot air. Under his shirt he felt a tiny rivulet of sweat trailing down across his gut. It tickled.

  The only other car in the rough gravel lot was a maroon Chevrolet, parked underneath two beech trees on the far side of the log boundary. Enough daylight remained to see the couple necking on its front seat. This remote corner of Rock Creek Park was a natural Lovers’ Lane, so it seemed normal enough to Guttman. But the car had New York plates, which didn’t. Guttman fumbled for a pencil in his jacket, then wrote down the numbers on a scrap of paper just in case.

  I should have been a cop, he thought – an ordinary cop, that is. Kevin Reilly in the D.C. force had said so often enough. Years before Guttman had tried to join the NYPD, halfway through his education at CCNY. He withdrew his application when the woman clerk downtown had told him, not unkindly, that they weren’t taking any more Chosen People that year. Funny, then, that he should end up with the Bureau, since everybody knew that Hoover didn’t like the Jews.

  Guttman got out and locked the door of his ageing Buick – he would be going home next, so he hadn’t brought a Bureau car. Glancing at his watch, he hoped this wouldn’t take long. It had been difficult enough to get the helper to stay and look after his wife Isabel. If he were very late, the woman might say no next time.

  He walked across the lot onto a timbarked trail that ran through the woods. Trees towered above him. He wished he knew more of their names. That’s an oak, he thought, passing an angled trunk with bark ridged like a grill-steak pan, though maybe it was a willow, sitting as it did by a runaway split of the park’s eponymous creek. He wasn’t sure, he realised, and felt irritation at his ignorance. He was a city boy by origin, who’d made it out of town, but never seemed to have time to get to know his new surroundings. Two springs before he’d planted a maple in the backyard of his Virginia house, but the maple had died by August. He told himself it would all be different when he retired. Less than twenty years to go.