The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  Guttman walked east to the corner of Lexington, the Daily News tower looming ahead of him on 42nd Street. He turned south. The Manhattan Savings Association was located a block away, just below the corner with 41st Street. It occupied the ground floor of a dark, square-set building of a dozen storeys. Built of solid masonry, its façade was unornamented, as if to say no frills – the bank didn’t want to waste your dough.

  Guttman had called the day before, posing as a prospective customer to make an appointment with Sedgwick. Now a receptionist phoned through news of his arrival and led him through a steel door next to the teller cages. In a large low-ceilinged room half a dozen secretaries sat typing and the receptionist walked him past the probing eyes of this female inspectorate. They were chicly dressed with made-up faces and hair that had been shaped and teased and put in place. Less demure than their D.C. counterparts, they had none of their Southern softness and looked hard as nails.

  The receptionist stopped at an office at the back of the building, knocked on the door and then opened it without waiting for a reply. Guttman walked through, as Roger Sedgwick stood up to greet him. He was a little man in an ill-fitting suit and a dull patterned tie. For a putative spy he seemed remarkably unprepossessing.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Guttman,’ said Sedgwick and they shook hands. He motioned Guttman to sit down across the desk from him. ‘Now, what kind of loan are you interested in?’

  ‘Actually, I’m not here for a loan. It’s about a money transfer.’

  Sedgwick looked surprised. He had straight blonde hair, which he pushed back impatiently with his hand. ‘Gosh, the gal must have got it wrong. You’ll need to see our currency officer, George Biederman. Let me give him a call and see if he’s free.’

  ‘It’s you I want to see, Mr Sedgwick. On official business.’ He placed his business card on the desk and turned it round so Sedgwick could read it. There was a grass stain near one of its corners and Guttman realised with dismay that it was the same card that Reilly had returned to him in Rock Creek Park.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Sedgwick was staring at the card and didn’t look up.

  ‘I’m interested in a transfer of funds from this bank to a Japanese bank in Los Angeles. It was done for the Russians.’

  ‘What Russians?’

  ‘I assume they’re with the consulate here. But you tell me; you did the transfer.’

  Sedgwick shook his head emphatically. ‘I’ve explained, Mr Guttman – I’m a loan officer. You’ve got the wrong guy.’

  ‘I don’t think so. My source was clear about that.’

  ‘Tell your source he’s got it wrong.’ Sedgwick was swallowing so hard that his Adam’s apple had swollen, as if he were feeding on too big a frog.

  Guttman said, ‘I wish I could, but you see, it was Thornton Palmer who told me.’

  Sedgwick stopped swallowing long enough to say, ‘I think I’ve heard the name.’

  ‘I’m not surprised: Palmer seemed to know you well enough. You two had a lot in common. You both went to Yale, you were both Whiffenpoofs and you both enjoyed the favours of a woman named Kristin Pichel in Vienna.’ He paused for a couple of beats, then added softly, ‘Though Palmer was never a member of the Communist Party.’

  ‘You’re saying I was?’ Sedgwick’s mouth stayed open, like a caught fish squeezed by a fisherman’s hands.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Palmer did. Not that he’s about to repeat the accusation – he was found shot dead in Rock Creek Park.’ When Sedgwick didn’t react to this, Guttman wasn’t surprised – Palmer’s death would have made the New York papers. ‘That doesn’t matter – you were already in our files.’ Since this was a lie, Guttman said it slowly to give it more weight.

  And it worked: Sedgwick sat motionless for a moment, then suddenly buried his face in his hands. When he lifted his head up again he seemed to have made a decision. ‘What do you want from me?’ he asked.

  ‘I want to know how often you’ve done errands for the Russians.’

  ‘This was the first time,’ he said so immediately that Guttman believed him. ‘Other than setting up the account, and that was perfectly above board. It’s not like the Germans or Japanese. The Government hasn’t stopped the Russians from conducting normal financial activity. They have a checking account with another bank to pay their bills, and a savings account with us.’

  ‘Who was your contact?’

  ‘A man named Milnikov. But listen, I’ve never taken a dime from any of them.’

  ‘You did it out of conviction?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Sedgwick said bitterly. My boss doesn’t know I was in the Party – I wouldn’t last five minutes if he found out. Milnikov said he’d tell him if I didn’t play ball. So I did.’ He looked defiantly at Guttman. ‘It’s not as if I was hurting anybody.’

  There was a whine now in his voice that Guttman figured was only going to get worse. ‘Tell me about this transfer.’

  ‘I handled it for them about two months ago. I told Palmer about it because I wasn’t happy doing it.’

  ‘How much money got transferred?’

  ‘Fifty thousand dollars.’

  ‘Why did they have you do it? You said yourself, you’re a loan officer.’

  ‘A sum that large would draw the attention of a transfer officer and then get reported to the Feds. Milnikov didn’t want that. By having me handle it, it could get buried.’

  ‘Who did it go to?’

  ‘A Japanese-American bank in LA.’ He reached for a pad. ‘I’ll write down the name for you.’

  Sedgwick scribbled for a moment, then tore off the sheet and handed it across the desk to Guttman. He asked, ‘I meant, to what individual? Can you look it up for me?’

  ‘I don’t need to. It was sent as a wire to a man named Lyakhov.’

  ‘Is he a Soviet official?’

  ‘I don’t know who he is. There was no reason for me to know.’

  ‘What about Milnikov? Has he been in touch since then?’

  ‘No – he’s gone back to Russia, thank God.’

  There wasn’t much else to ask about the money, Guttman decided. It was over to Nessheim now, to follow it up at his end. ‘So when exactly did you join the Party? Our records don’t say.’

  ‘September 1936. I didn’t stay in it for long. Less than a year.’

  ‘That was after you met this Kristin woman in Vienna. Why did she go after you in the first place? Had you been politically active?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Sedgwick shrugged.

  ‘What about members of your family?’

  ‘Not likely. My father farms potatoes in Maine. Not the fancy bit of Maine, either; our place is miles from the coast. I’m not a Massachusetts Sedgwick,’ he added, the whine returning to his voice. Guttman wanted to say that he wasn’t a Philadelphia Guttman either.

  ‘You see,’ added Sedgwick, looking slightly sheepish, ‘I was never a real believer.’

  ‘Then why did you join the Party?’

  ‘Kristin wanted me to,’ he said quietly.

  ‘And that was reason enough?’

  Sedgwick nodded sadly. ‘At the time it was.’

  The poor sap, thought Guttman. You’re neck deep in shit thanks to a golden-haired siren. Boy, did she take you for a ride, and Palmer too. But at least Sedgwick was still alive to contemplate his foolishness.

  Sedgwick was eyeing him warily. ‘Are you going to talk to my boss?’

  ‘Not yet, and maybe never. But if you hear from these Russians again – any Russian – I want you to call me right away.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Good.’ Guttman stood up, ready to go.

  Then he remembered there was still another question to ask. ‘One more thing, Mr Sedgwick. What do you think made the Russians put this Pichel woman on to Palmer? Our files don’t show any left-wing activity on his part.’

  ‘There wouldn’t have been. His background was standard stuff: Yale, prep school a
nd the Republican Party – he told me his old man was a banker, who hated Roosevelt with a passion. But the summer after his junior year he drove west across the country with a roommate from Yale.’

  ‘He mentioned that,’ said Guttman.

  ‘He and the roommate got stranded in Oklahoma and ended up hitchhiking to Hollywood, along with a million Okies heading for California. I don’t think Palmer had ever seen poverty first-hand before.

  ‘In Hollywood they stayed with a cousin of Palmer’s mother. This cousin was the black sheep of the family, and a Party member; he worked in one of the studios. Palmer had grown up knowing that bankers didn’t think much of writers, but it was a revelation to learn that writers don’t think much of bankers either. Palmer told me he’d been hoping to see Gloria Swanson or meet Louis B. Mayer, but instead he got lectures from his cousin on the virtues of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Some of it must have stuck, because after that Palmer was very left wing. He was obsessed about the rise of fascism.’

  ‘If that was the case, why didn’t he join the Party?’

  ‘Simple. Kristin Pichel told him not to.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. And that’s why you’ll find he never signed anti-Franco petitions or marched for the downtrodden or subscribed to the Daily Worker. He was instructed not to.’

  ‘By Kristin?’ Guttman was trying not to show how surprised he was.

  ‘Yes at first, and later it would have been Milnikov. Does it matter?’

  ‘No.’

  Sedgwick was smiling now for the first time. ‘It’s a killer, isn’t it? I’m told I have to join the Party when it’s the last thing I want to do. Palmer’s desperate to join but gets ordered not to. Ironic, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yeah, very,’ said Guttman, but his thoughts were already moving forward. ‘Tell me, when you saw Palmer did he tell you that the Russians had been in touch with him recently?’

  ‘Yes, and he wasn’t happy about it. They’d left him alone all the time he was in Argentina; I think he was hoping they wouldn’t ever come back. Fat chance.’

  ‘Did he say why they’d contacted him again?’

  ‘No, he just said that he didn’t want to help them in any way. I know he was sickened by the Moscow-Berlin pact.’

  ‘Did he happen to mention what he was working on at the State Department?’

  ‘Not really. He said he’d been moved to the Asian desk. He was supposed to specialise in Japan.’

  Ten minutes before, Guttman had been ready to return home to Washington. Roger Sedgwick was not a Captain of Espionage. However you looked at it, he had been little more than a clerk in his dealings with Milnikov and company. Which meant Guttman could safely have left the whole business alone, returned his attention to Nazi influence from Guadalajara to Santiago, and known he was doing what J. Edgar Hoover had told him to do.

  Then he’d gone and asked one more question, more out of mild curiosity than any pressing need to know. The answer had changed everything.

  Thornton Palmer had lied to him. Yes, the Russians had approached him several years before, but he hadn’t said no. Instead he’d followed their instructions and kept a low profile, never joining the Party – because ‘Kristin Pichel told him not to.’ It was only after the Berlin-Moscow pact that Palmer had turned against his Russian masters, and then come to Guttman for help when they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Guttman hesitated as he reached 42nd Street, heading towards Grand Central. He felt trapped in an impossible situation: he couldn’t turn the case over to Tamm without getting fired for having pursued it; but there wouldn’t have been a case to turn over if he hadn’t pursued it.

  He wasn’t scared for himself, but Isabel was a different matter. If he lost his job how would he pay to have her cared for properly? What else could he do to make a living? Join a private security company or a department store where his largest responsibility would be catching shoplifters?

  He kept walking, past Grand Central and then north on Madison Avenue, idly looking at the windows of Brooks Brothers. Isabel had bought him two shirts there years ago; he still had them both, lovingly cared for, their collars turned when they’d grown frayed. He wouldn’t be buying any more shirts there once Hoover got through with him.

  He crossed over to Fifth Avenue, onto its west side, for though his thoughts were churning, he knew where he was going. At the corner of 50th Street he stopped at a hot-dog cart, unmindful of the pedestrians who had to move around him. He bought one with the whole works, watching as the vendor forked steamed onions over the frankfurter and spooned on relish and mustard, before handing it over half-wrapped in a sheet of waxed paper. Guttman stood next to the trolley’s sun umbrella to eat it.

  If he was going to proceed, he needed an ally. Nessheim would be important to anything he did, since the only real lead they had was out west. But Guttman needed help closer to home, from someone powerful but independent, who would trust Guttman enough not to question why he was defying Hoover’s orders.

  He was still undecided enough to wish he could find guidance. For a stray moment he was even tempted to cross the street and enter St Patrick’s. Someone had said that in the last difficult decade any man worried by the state of the world either converted to Catholicism or joined the Communist Party, and Guttman had never been tempted by the latter. Strange how he, a lapsed Jew, had a latent religiosity that drew him to the cath-edral, whereas Isabel – raised by nuns – would not have dreamed of setting foot in the place.

  He stayed on his side of the street, however, and walked towards the dozen buildings that formed the newly completed Rockefeller Center. Efforts had been made to soften the stark modernity of the skyscrapers: crab apples had been planted around the plaza and in the small gardens of the lower-level buildings, and beds full of red and yellow chrysanthemums were still in bloom. But unlike the brand-new colleges of Yale, which sedulously aped the historical features of their ancient counterparts across the Atlantic, here the buildings themselves, sleek and improbably tall, made no concession to the past.

  Guttman crossed the little sunken plaza that doubled as a skating rink in winter. He could make out the gilded bronze statue of Prometheus at the near end. As he neared 30 Rockefeller Plaza, half a block in from Fifth Avenue, he craned his neck and looked up at its series of recessed mount backs, then brought his eyes down to ground level, where along the outer walls there ran a rich and dignified ribbon of granite. The buildings had reputedly cost $250 million to build – more than two bucks a head for every American, and all paid for by one man, who Guttman figured was entitled to name the place for himself.

  He went through one of the revolving doors of the RCA Building and crossed the marble floor to the elevator banks, positioned in the centre of the lobby. They were unmanned, but he hesitated, then turned away. He walked around the ground floor for almost a quarter of an hour, barely taking in the lavish artwork on the walls, made notorious ever since the Diego Rivera murals, with their defiant head of Lenin, had been taken down and destroyed on the orders of young Nelson Rockefeller. They’d been replaced by a series of bafflingly abstract murals, full of inchoate messages about peace and progress and the importance of manufacturing to humanity in the twentieth century.

  He found no comfort in this secular cathedral and wished he’d gone into St Patrick’s instead. But he knew no parable existed to tell him what to do. If he was going to go after Palmer’s killers, it wasn’t going to be in defence of a religion, not even the religion of capital.

  And when he weighed the odds of what he was pretty sure he was going to try and do, he found them wanting. If his New Haven junket were discovered, he could probably get away with it – he had only received Hoover’s memo after he’d gone to Yale and he could claim that he had misunderstood Tolson’s instructions. He might only get his knuckles rapped. This New York junket was trickier, but even there he could insist he had actually visited his mother, and had simply checked in at the Manhattan Savings As
sociation to keep the appointment he’d made to see the Sedgwick man a week before. Thinner ice, but survivable.

  But now he was at the point of no return, from which, if it were discovered, there would be no way back. He was risking his career, and for what? To avenge a dead man? No. He didn’t give a damn for Thornton Palmer, now that he knew Palmer had lied to him. But he did care about the truth.

  Guttman had always wanted to catch the bad guys – that was his mission, pure and simple. He knew that if he faltered now he would become a different kind of man. He was going to do this because he felt he owed it to the part of himself he wanted to admire.

  11

  THE DOOR ON Suite 3606, on the 36th floor of the International Building, had frosted glass with embossed black letters that said British Passport Control Office. Guttman would not have advised any applicant to use this office, for its title was a misleading but benign cover for the British Security Coordination force, known as the BSC. The American authorities (technically neutral but with a partisan President’s okay) turned a blind eye to the BSC’s activities, which were a mix of overt political lobbying, press propaganda and the much more furtive practice of espionage.

  Guttman pressed the bell and a moment later the door buzzed and he went in. A pretty girl was sitting behind the receptionist’s desk.

  ‘I was hoping to see Bill Stephenson,’ Guttman said.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’ she asked. Her accent was faintly Southern.

  ‘I don’t, Katie. But if you could tell your uncle Harry Guttman is here, I think he might let me in.’

  The girl was blushing as she stood up. ‘I’ll just go and check.’

  He sat down and looked idly at the magazines on a little low table next to his chair. Punch, the Spectator, a week-old copy of The Times.