The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  She turned, ready to say no to a stranger. He said, ‘I saw you at the party. You know, in the Pearls’ house.’

  She hesitated and he could see that she was tempted. Even with her umbrella the girl’s white skirt was wet with rain. He reached over and pulled the handle, then pushed with his fingertips until the door opened. ‘Come on, you’re getting soaked.’

  She took down the umbrella and hopped in, then closed the door.

  ‘There, that’s better, isn’t it?’ he asked. She was even prettier up close, with unblemished skin the colour of light caramel, and those dark, wide-set eyes.

  She was silent as he put the car in gear and pulled away from the kerb. ‘Do you speak English?’ he asked after a moment. She nodded, but didn’t say anything.

  They drove for a minute in awkward silence, Nessheim beginning to regret his chivalrous gesture. ‘Are you from across the border?’ he finally asked.

  ‘I’m not from Iceland, if that’s what you’re wanting to know,’ she said in entirely unaccented English.

  Nessheim laughed and she gave a reluctant smile, adding, ‘But don’t tell Mrs Pearl that, please. She’s happier with help when ellas no comprenden Inglés.’

  ‘I won’t tell any of the Pearls,’ he said pointedly.

  The girl sighed. ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What was me?’

  ‘You know. In the pool house.’

  ‘None of my business,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

  She said quietly, ‘Just drop me at the bus stop if you don’t mind. It’s about a mile down the hill.’

  He nodded. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’

  ‘Anita. Why?’

  ‘No reason. But listen, I hope you’re not doing things you don’t want to do.’

  Her mouth puffed derisorily. ‘Doesn’t everybody? That’s what jobs are for.’

  He glanced over and saw that her uniform skirt was drying out – except for an oyster-coloured streak halfway down. He had seen for himself how that had got there. He said, ‘You could talk to Mr Pearl. You know, ask him to get the kid to lay off.’

  She turned and he could sense her eyes on his. ‘What are you, mister, my knight in shining armour?’

  Galahad, he wanted to say, but kept his mouth shut. She went on, ‘First of all, Mr Pearl thinks Junior’s so wonderful his poop don’t smell. Second of all, do you know the expression “like father like son”?’

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘You mean …?’

  ‘Pull over. There’s my stop.’

  He slowed down and stopped. She opened the door right away and got out quickly. ‘Thanks,’ she said, with the door half-open.

  ‘You got enough for the bus?’ he said feebly. He didn’t want her to leave angry.

  ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘You want to pay for that so you can fuck me too?’

  He drove home feeling faintly sick. He lay down in his bedroom, trying to lose the image of TD pumping away in the pool house, then of the disdain in Anita’s eyes when he’d offered her money for the bus fare.

  He thought about Annie’s letter, but tried to lose that thought and pictured his mother’s Sunday back in Bremen, Wisconsin: church, then maybe lunch with his Aunt Greta, then a quiet afternoon of the radio and her knitting. He wished he were there – no, that wasn’t true.

  He got up and went and sat in the backyard now that the rain had stopped, replaced by the mid-afternoon sun. The news was disheartening: Leningrad was still under siege and in a separate development German troops were moving towards Moscow. Hitler had declared that Russia was broken and would never rise again. Nessheim wasn’t so sure. He wished there were some way that both the Nazis and the Soviets could lose their war. He turned to the sports pages, but didn’t find his usual satisfaction there. Northwestern had lost again, but for once it seemed utterly unimportant.

  His surprise at what he’d seen in the cabana had been trumped by learning that Buddy Pearl was just as bad as his son. But what did he expect? Mo Dubin had been refreshing in his candour about their shared Cleveland past, and Ike’s presence suggested that it was something Pearl had not shaken off.

  If these guys were looking for Billy Osaka, Nessheim needed to find him before they did. He didn’t know why it mattered, but he was glad something did.

  6

  HE STARTED OUT at six and made it to Little Tokyo half an hour later, slowed down by the traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard, full of trippers back from Sunday jaunts to the ocean. For an hour he cruised the streets, ignoring the irritated honks from cars forced to a snail’s pace as he checked out the storefronts for restaurants. Eventually he parked on Third Street and walked the main body of Little Tokyo methodically, like a man searching a large patch of grass where he’d dropped his keys.

  It was a different world, as if a construction crane had swung its boom across the Pacific, lifted part of Japan and plonked it down a few streets over from LA’s City Hall. For blocks at a time his was the only white face – Sunday evening seemed no time for outsiders. The old, the young (separately and as families) seemed to be out for a stroll. They were neatly dressed: the older men wore ties, the women skirts and dresses, with sweaters against the growing chill of the evening. The stores were all closed, but the residents seemed to have gone out in order to see each other, not to window shop. He was noticed but not stared at, although on one corner a bunch of small boys giggled as one of them pointed a finger at Nessheim and said Bang. Nessheim laughed, then realised he must look like a plain-clothes cop, since why else would a well-dressed white man in a sharp-brimmed hat be walking the streets of Little Tokyo so industriously?

  He felt out of place, but not disliked or feared. Yet the Japanese provoked those feelings in everyone else. Were they feared because they were hated or hated because they were feared? The Chinese weren’t much liked either, but they were usually merely mocked by white Americans; the Japanese possessed a pride that made them impossible to deride. No one could doubt their accomplishments – which may have been part of the problem. It was said they controlled the agricultural production of Southern California and most of its markets, as if the two were a tandem tap that they could turn off at will – despite the fact they weren’t allowed to own the land they worked. It was taken for granted they had no loyalty to their new country and would rise up if war broke out, helping the invading warriors of Japan to create a new Nippon of the Pacific states, from Tijuana to Tacoma.

  By eight o’clock it was dark and he had covered every street of the square mile. There had been plenty of restaurants and once he’d spied a window box, but when he went inside to ask, a waitress in the restaurant told him a young couple lived upstairs.

  He returned at last to his car, ready to head home. Maybe the farm worker at Billy’s house had got it wrong; or maybe he’d decided to send Nessheim on a wild goose chase. Either way it had proved a waste of time. The failure nagged at him and he pulled over, this time on San Pedro Street, under the yellow light of a street lamp. He reached for the glove compartment and took out a road map for the city, almost his first acquisition when he’d arrived in LA. He got outside and spread the map on the hood. He checked that he had covered all the streets of the neighbourhood, then looked for alleyways he might have missed. Nothing.

  Starting up again, he noticed that the needle on his gas gauge was close to empty, then remembered he’d passed a gas station further east on Fourth. When he drove there an old Japanese man in overalls came out. Nessheim held up one finger. ‘Give me a dollar’s worth.’

  The old man slowly put gas in the car, then walked up to the driver’s side. ‘Check oil,’ he said brightly. ‘Waw-tuh?’

  Nessheim shook his head and handed over a dollar bill. A sudden impulse made him ask, ‘Is there a restaurant near here?’

  The man looked at him uncomprehendingly. Nessheim mimed someone eating and repeated his question.

  The man nodded this time and pointed down Hewitt Street. Nessheim drove slowly al
ong the street, but it didn’t look promising: an empty lot, a row of houses with badly kept front porches; in the distance a warehouse with security lamps lighting up its forecourt.

  And then he saw it. To his left as he drove past the warehouse towards some factory buildings that stretched south to Palmetto. It was a small restaurant, little bigger than a coffee shop, with lettering in Japanese above its one big window. It sat in the middle of half a dozen storefronts, housed in three-storey brick buildings that must have been built at the turn of the century. Above the restaurant’s sign, on the second floor, two sash windows fronted on to the street; light came through one of them. Each window ledge held a wooden box full of waxy red flowers. Begonias, Nessheim thought, as he pulled over to the curb and turned off the engine.

  As he got out a Japanese couple emerged from the restaurant. The man gave an appreciative belch and his wife tittered. He waited for the couple to turn the corner, then peered through the restaurant’s window. It was empty now, except for a solitary waiter brushing off a tablecloth. Next door there was a hardware store and between the two shop fronts there was a single doorway with a buzzer.

  He went to it and looked at two handwritten labels taped to the side of the doorframe. They were in Japanese and English, and the two words he could make out were Kikuchi and Oka. He stood for a moment, wondering which could be Billy’s grandmother, then tried the door. It wasn’t locked and he opened it wide, revealing a thin dimly lit hallway with a narrow staircase of steep steps. He entered the hall, closed the door quietly behind him, then stood and listened. All he heard was the thump of a carpet cleaner next door, banging against table legs in the restaurant.

  Nessheim went up the stairs slowly, one step at a time. At the second floor a gallery doubled back, leading to the next flight; halfway along there was a door. He stopped outside it and looked at his watch. It was 8.30. An odd time for a stranger to be visiting an old lady, especially on a Sunday night.

  He tapped on the door and waited. There was no sound from inside the apartment. He knocked again, louder – rat-tat-tat, like a quick triple smack on a drum. No response.

  He tried the door knob and the old brass handle, darkened by years of use, turned easily. Little Tokyo was famously safe – full of one tribe looking after its own – but he was still surprised that the old lady didn’t lock her door at night.

  He went in cautiously and found himself in a small hallway. Light came from the front of the apartment – the same light he had seen from the sidewalk. Straight ahead he saw the kitchen, lit by an overhead light with no shade, and he stepped onto its scuffed linoleum floor. Now he heard music from a gramophone or radio upstairs. ‘Hello,’ he said softly, not wanting to scare the old woman. No one replied.

  He went back to the hall and into the sitting room. An oiled paper blind, yellowed with age and half pulled down, shed just enough light for Nessheim to make out the room’s spare furnishings: a tatami mat on the wood floor, a small teakwood table against the wall and a snub-armed easy chair, covered in scarlet velvet darkened by wear. In a corner sat a miniature carved altar with a tiny statue of Buddha. Next to it there was a half-closed door. He walked across and stopped just short of it.

  ‘Hello,’ he said again and realised his hand was moving towards the holstered gun inside his jacket. He gave a solid knock to the door, then pushed it open. Looking through the doorway he saw a bed which had been stripped down to its mattress and a chest of drawers. This must have been Billy’s room. No wonder he had moved out – Nessheim could smell the evening’s cooking from the restaurant below.

  Hearing the faint thud of a step upstairs he walked back quietly through the living room and into the kitchen again. He noticed another door in the corner, which must lead to the old woman’s bedroom.

  It did. He slowly turned the door knob and looked in, but the room was pitch black. Suddenly he was assailed by a terrible smell and he gagged. Holding his breath, he reached for the light switch just inside the door and flicked it on.

  The old woman lay in the middle of the bed, covered by a single sheet, her nightgown visible only at her shoulders. She was lying on her back, her head slightly raised on a white pillow, dark thinning hair flowing on each side of her face. Her lips were pursed and tight, and her expression strained. The tendons of her neck looked as taut as the strings of a violin.

  He moved closer to the bed, trying to ignore the powerful stench. The old woman seemed to be wearing a single-strand necklace the colour of tarnished silver, but he saw that the filament strand wasn’t jewellery at all but a piece of wire, tied taut around her neck. It encircled her throat and ran back in a single silver thread to the headboard, where it had been looped around an upright post and tied in a slip knot.

  Any movement would have tightened the encircling ‘necklace’; if the woman had tried to lift her head even slightly she would have succeeded only in reducing her air supply. And if she had panicked and thrashed around, she would have strangled herself quite quickly.

  Nessheim slowly pulled back the covering sheet, revealing a white cotton nightgown that extended almost to the woman’s brown and wrinkled feet – the toenails were long and yellowing. Her arms extended down her sides, but her hands were tucked under her bottom. Nessheim put his hand around one of her forearms, no thicker than his wrist, and tried to move it out from under her. He couldn’t and he realised her hands had been bound together behind her back, so she couldn’t untie the bracelet of wire around her neck.

  He moved back from the bed and this time he did pull his Smith & Wesson from its holster. He would phone the police, though he hadn’t seen a phone in the apartment. He would ask in the restaurant downstairs, but first looked around for anything he wanted to find by himself. In the corner of the room there was a heavy pine dresser with a half-mirror on top that had an envelope tucked under one corner. He picked it up and saw that someone had written on the front in Japanese:

  The envelope was unsealed and held a small wad of bills, which Nessheim took out and counted. There were ten fifty-dollar bills. He rolled them up and put them in his trouser pocket, then separately stuffed the envelope into his jacket’s side pocket.

  Downstairs the waiter didn’t want to open up, shaking his head when Nessheim stood at the glass-fronted door. He changed his mind when Nessheim held up his badge, and he called over his shoulder. The owner came out from the kitchen and unlocked the door. He was stocky, with fat cheeks and a mastodon jaw. ‘What you want?’ he demanded when Nessheim showed him his badge.

  ‘I need to use your phone. The old lady upstairs is dead.’ Not sure if he’d been understood, he pointed to the ceiling. ‘The old lady,’ and he drew a finger across his throat in a universal language.

  The owner’s eyes widened in surprise and he led Nessheim back to the kitchen and an old-fashioned two-piece phone on the wall. ‘Thanks,’ said Nessheim. He was about to dial, then remembered the envelope in his pocket. ‘Hey, look at something for me, will you?’

  He handed the envelope to the owner and pointed to the ideogram on its front. ‘What does that mean?’

  The owner looked at it for a moment. ‘It’s in Kanji,’ he said.

  ‘Great, but what does it say?’

  ‘Grandmother.’

  The patrol car was there in five minutes; the homicide detective took half an hour. His name was Dickerson and if his suit was his Sunday best then he didn’t go to church, though it suggested he was honest – a cop on the take would dress better than that. Nessheim waited in the hallway while the cops took Dickerson through the apartment. When Dickerson came out, he told one of the patrolmen to call the coroner. ‘I don’t want the old lady moved until he’s seen her. Got it?’

  He turned to Nessheim. ‘The beat cop said you’re with the FBI. Mind explaining what you were doing here?’

  ‘I’m looking for the grandson. He used to live here, then he moved to Boyle Heights. I came round to see if he’d come back to the bosom of his family.’

  Dic
kerson gave a tight smile. ‘I thought R.B. didn’t like jokes.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s why he’s the boss and I’m in a stiff’s apartment on Sunday night.’

  ‘Tell me about this grandson. What’s his name?’

  ‘Osaka.’

  The beat cop interrupted. ‘Billy?’

  ‘Yeah. You know him?’ Nessheim asked.

  ‘Everybody knows Billy in Little Tokyo.’

  Nessheim said, ‘The old lady was called Oka – don’t ask me why it was different.’

  Dickerson said, ‘Maybe she was his maternal grandmother, huh?’

  ‘His mother was Irish, so I don’t think so.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the beat cop. ‘He’s only half-Jap.’

  ‘Why are you looking for him anyway?’ asked Dickerson.

  ‘I was supposed to meet up with him last week – at his request. He said he had something important to tell me, then he didn’t show. No one else has seen him either.’

  ‘Did he have any money troubles?’

  ‘You know anyone who doesn’t?’

  Dickerson fingered his tie, which had a large grease spot near the bottom. ‘So where do you think this kid is? It looks to me like we want to find him, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t make him for this one, detective. She was his grandmother.’

  ‘Sure. But who knows why people do what they do? This ain’t a burglary gone wrong – not the way that old woman died.’ He shook his head. ‘The killer knew her, well enough to get in without any fuss.’

  ‘I found this.’ Nessheim handed Dickerson the wad of bills. ‘It’s five hundred dollars.’

  ‘Why did you touch anything?’ asked Dickerson, sounding peeved.

  Nessheim stared at him. ‘No point tempting anybody was there?’