The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘What are you doing?’

  It was a gruff voice, and turning around Nessheim faced a man with a moustache thick as a hairbrush. Five foot ten or so and built like a pulling guard. He wore a long white coat, like a hospital doctor, though there was too much blood spattered on its sleeves to make any patient feel comfortable.

  ‘My name’s Nessheim.’ He showed his badge. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Makovich. People call me Mac. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m looking for a fisherman, but didn’t have much luck out back.’

  ‘You wouldn’t even if the boats were back. Hardly any of the fishermen speak English.’

  ‘Issei?’

  ‘You’ve done your homework. The few that do speak our lingo wouldn’t want to talk with a stranger. It’s a bit clannish round these parts.’

  ‘But they work for you?’

  ‘Sure they do. They’ll take anybody’s money.’

  ‘The guy I want is named Akiro. I was told he fished for you.’

  ‘He used to. But he hasn’t been here for a while.’

  ‘Where’d he go?’

  ‘I don’t know. The boats come in, the boats go out – I don’t ask who’s on board. Somebody mentioned he’d left the island, but I couldn’t tell you when that was. Maybe he’s gone back to Japan – he was Kibei after all.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘He was educated in Japan. Lots of the Japs send their kids back to go to school there.’

  ‘I thought he was from Hawaii.’

  ‘He is. They have Kibei there too. It’s a way of keeping ties with the old country, I guess, especially if you don’t trust Western education. But why’s everyone so interested in Akiro anyway?’

  ‘Who’s everyone?’

  ‘You’re not the first guy looking for him.’

  ‘Who else was asking?’ He tried to sound matter of fact.

  ‘I wasn’t around. I think they spoke to his wife.’

  Nessheim hadn’t pictured Akiro as a family man. ‘Where would I find her?’

  ‘His wife works in this cannery.’

  ‘She does?’ He looked out at the factory floor.

  ‘She’s on the cutter out back. Once the fish get unloaded, the first thing we do is chop off the heads and tails. Akiro’s wife does that with the guillotine machine. She was off sick, but I think she’s back now. Let me send someone to get her.’

  He stepped towards the women closest to them, who were running small tins of tuna through a labelling machine. He barked a series of orders that sounded only half-English. One of the women hurried off towards the back of the vast room, then went through the door that led to the loading docks.

  Mac turned back to Nessheim, who asked, ‘Was that Japanese you were speaking?’

  Mac shook his head. ‘Nah. They talk a funny kind of dialect here – it’s half-Jap, half-English. I’ve picked up enough to communicate.’

  ‘So do you know this man Akiro?’

  ‘Not really. He was well-known among his people though. You might even say notorious.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Ah so?’ said Mac in a passable imitation of a Japanese houseboy, and he laughed. Then he said, ‘He liked to gamble and out here that’s frowned upon. So’s drinking and Akiro drank, down on the waterfront across the channel. I know some of the bar owners and they said he also liked to fight. Once he almost beat two ensigns half to death – the only reason he wasn’t arrested is because they started it.’ Mac looked at his watch. ‘Where’s that girl got to?’

  It was just as he said this that the scream cut through the low hum of the room. At the far end of the line a woman turned, gesturing frantically. Next to her a colleague put her hand over mouth, trying futilely to hold back the vomit spilling through her fingers. Someone hit a switch and the long continuous conveyor stopped with a jerk. The vast room went silent, the only sound that of the butchers at the big block tables, putting down their knives.

  Mac moved quickly, Nessheim just behind him. The two women were standing by the conveyor belt that was bringing out the decapitated and tailed fish from the back. The tuna sat in individual trays; spaced about a yard apart, massive tapered wedges, some must have weighed eighty pounds and were so wide that they lapped over the thin edges of their trays. They were still silver, but dulling rapidly from their exposure to the air.

  The woman who had gestured pointed at the belt behind her, where one of the trays on the belt held something different from the other trays. It was the size and shape of a spring leg of lamb, and much smaller than the hefty tuna on either side. Nessheim stared at the fawn-sized limb; brown as worn leather, it had stringy tendons and skin which looked dry from too much sun and too much heat, and he knew at once that it wasn’t any kind of fish. From the wider part of the thigh, blood oozed where the limb had been severed.

  The smell of vomit was now vying with the oily smell of fish. The girl Makovich had sent to look for Akiro’s wife came through the open door from the back. She stopped with a jerk when she saw the leg in its wire basket. She said, ‘I can’t find her anywhere, Mr Mac.’

  Mac tried without success to speak. Nessheim saw that he was in shock, so he answered the girl. ‘Thanks anyway, but I think we’ve found her.’

  It was almost sunset when he swung onto Mount Olympus Drive. He had spent the afternoon with the San Pedro police, answering their questions about what he’d been doing on Terminal Island, knowing it was only a matter of time before his presence at the cannery was reported back to Dickerson at the LAPD and then to Hood.

  The cops had been polite, then gradually deferential, and by three o’clock the questioning had become a conversation over coffee. The local police knew all about Akiro and were even able to show Nessheim a mugshot – Akiro had done thirty days in the local pokey a couple of times. Hanako had been right: it was a harsh-looking face, which stared at the camera with a coldness that knew no fear. The cops had plenty of theories about where Akiro might have gone, ranging from Japan (this more out of xenophobic principle than any knowledge) to a cement burial at the hands of Tokyo Club gangsters in LA.

  Then a desk sergeant walked into the room and announced, ‘I think we’ve found the rest of her.’

  At the eastern end of Terminal Island, a grade-school kid walking along the shore had stumbled upon the head and torso of a Japanese woman, soon identified by Makovich as Akiro’s wife. Her other leg was missing, apparently also severed by the same guillotine blade which the woman had operated in the cannery, topping and tailing hundreds of fish, some as big as she was. She would have bled to death, unless she’d drowned first.

  Now as Nessheim came up the hill on Mount Olympus Drive and took the bend, he saw a car parked in front of his house. A two-tone grey Chrysler, with whitewall tyres and hubcaps that gleamed in the dwindling rays of sun. There was no one sitting in the car.

  He pulled into the little drive in front of the garage and sat for a minute, hand inside his jacket on the butt of his gun, his eyes on his rear-view mirror for any movement behind him. As he got out he thought of going in the back door with his new key, but decided a burglar – or worse – wasn’t going to leave a car parked in front of their intended victim’s house.

  He got out and checked that his gun was loose and easily retrievable in its holster, then kept his jacket unbuttoned and walked carefully around the bib of box hedge that ran beneath the front windows and jutted out to form an L at the point where the garage met the house. As he came out in the open he saw two men in suits and hats standing on his front steps, a few feet above sidewalk level. One wore brown shoes and had a face like a pig – little eyes and a snout for a mouth. The other was dark, with skin the colour of mahogany and black slicked-back hair. Neither was very big, but if there was trouble Nessheim didn’t think either one would be using his fists.

  As he stepped further away from the house he saw a third man, sitting in the folding chair which Nessheim’s landlady kept stored in the garage.
It was Ike from the casino, dressed in a light houndstooth suit with a pale-blue shirt and a burnt-orange tie. One of the men standing next to him murmured something, and Ike turned his head and looked at Nessheim, then smiled benevolently, like a local patriarch watching the neighbourhood parade.

  As Nessheim drew near, one of the two henchmen started to put a hand inside his jacket. Nessheim stopped moving and did the same.

  ‘Jake,’ Ike said in a commanding voice, ‘keep your hands where our friend can see them.’

  Nessheim didn’t go any closer. He had also taken his hand out of his jacket, but he was ready to move it there again at speed. He said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Waiting for you,’ said Ike. In the dwindling light the birthmark on his cheek was darker, the colour of scorched cherries.

  ‘Hope you’re comfortable,’ said Nessheim, gesturing at the chair with his left hand.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t mind. I figured you might be a while.’

  ‘You should have got your friends a seat too.’

  Ike shrugged. ‘I don’t pay them to sit.’

  ‘I’d ask you in, but I got some hoodlums blocking my front door. So we’ll have to talk out here.’

  He figured if they got tough he’d rather be outside, giving him half a chance and maybe a witness or two. But it was hard to read: if they were here to take him out, they shouldn’t be sitting on his front steps.

  Ike said, ‘I hadn’t heard from you, so I wanted to see what was up.’

  ‘I didn’t think I was employed by you,’ Nessheim said flatly.

  ‘Take it easy. I just wondered if you were making progress.’

  ‘Looking for Osaka?’

  Ike nodded and Nessheim said, ‘None at all.’

  Ike didn’t seem disappointed; he looked relieved in fact. ‘That’s okay. I came to tell you our deal was off.’

  ‘What, no grand if I find him?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  Ike just shrugged, then said, ‘I thought it only polite to let you know that even if you find him there isn’t going to be a grand in it for you. Simple as that, fella.’

  ‘What if I keep looking?’

  ‘That’s up to you,’ said Ike, and he seemed indifferent. ‘But our deal’s off. Got it?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Ike rose and wiped his hands like a man at the beach getting rid of sand. He motioned to the other two and the pig-faced man started to reach for the chair.

  Nessheim called out, ‘Leave it.’

  Pig-face looked at Ike, who motioned him to leave the chair alone. Ike started down the stairs and his consorts followed him as he headed for the Chrysler.

  Nessheim wasn’t finished yet. He called out, ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘We can find anybody,’ Ike said without turning around. He didn’t sound boastful.

  ‘Anybody? What about Billy Osaka?’

  Ike had almost reached the car and the dark-haired henchman hurried ahead to open the back door for him. As he ducked down to get in, Ike stopped and turned his head to look at Nessheim. He said, ‘We’re not trying any more.’

  Part Six

  Washington, D.C. Early November 1941

  21

  GUTTMAN HAD THREE agents in Bogota who were trying to stop the Germans from sending platinum out of Colombia to their arms industries at home. A crooked local cop had arrested one of these agents and the US ambassador had proved feeble about getting him released. It had taken Guttman most of the weekend and an extraordinary phone call (he had never before told an ambassador how to do his job), but the agent had been sprung, the platinum shipments interdicted and relations with Colombian law officials smoothed over. The Brits had been involved at the beginning and he would need to tell Stephenson what had happened, but the Canadian was still away in London.

  Guttman had heard nothing from him since they’d met at his club in New York. A meeting with the double agent Popov had been scheduled in two days’ time, and Guttman had been asked to attend by Hoover. Guttman had plenty else on his plate, including the telegram that had arrived on Friday from the Coast. TWENTY-FIVE GRAND RECEIVED THIS END it began – and as if to pre-empt Guttman’s query, had gone on: REPEAT TWENTY-FIVE, NOT FIFTY.

  Marie came in, with a mug of coffee in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. She put down both on the desk. ‘Just one sugar, like the doctor ordered.’

  ‘Since when?’ asked Guttman irritably.

  ‘Since yesterday. That’s when your diet started.’

  ‘Like hell it did.’ He looked defiantly at the French Canadian divorcée he’d plucked out of the typing pool. He had never regretted it – except when she tried to mother him.

  ‘I meant to say that’s how long your diet’s lasted,’ she said tartly, looking at the Danish that lay on his desk. ‘At least it’s an easy vice to hide. Nobody ever went home at night stinking of sugar. The name you wanted is on that paper.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said grudgingly, but she was already out the door.

  He looked down at the slip and the name Marie had written on it – Ogden Pierce IV. Where do they get these guys? Guttman thought. Probably a Yale alum happy to give a fellow Yalie and fellow Yankee a hand up. The one good thing about a war, thought Guttman, would be that this kind of scratch-your-back social stuff would not be able to survive.

  He reached for his phone and got the switchboard, then gave a number to the operator and waited. When the call went through a woman answered, announcing he’d reached the office of the Loans Vice-President. Guttman said, ‘Is he there?’ When the woman said yes, he did his best to leave New York out of his voice, saying, ‘Tell him it’s Sam Peabody. We knew each other at Yale.’

  He didn’t have long to wait. ‘Hello,’ said a male voice uncertainly.

  ‘Mr Sedgwick, it’s Harry Guttman from the FBI. Sorry for the subterfuge, but I didn’t think you’d want the world to know I was calling. Here’s the thing: you told me fifty thousand dollars got sent to this Japanese-American bank in LA. But we checked it out and the people there swear only twenty-five grand was received.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, twenty-five. Can you explain the discrepancy?’

  ‘No I can’t, and I don’t understand why you’re bothering me again. I’ve told you everything I know. I cooperated. Now leave me alone.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Sedgwick, but I can’t do that until we’ve cleared up this business of a missing twenty-five thousand dollars.’

  ‘Why?’ It was a rhetorical question, since Sedgwick wasn’t waiting for an answer. ‘What do you care if it’s twenty-five grand? Or fifty? Or three hundred and ten? What does it matter? It wasn’t your money. I wired it for the Russian Mission – I admitted that, and it was fifty thousand dollars. I don’t care what your Jap friends out there say. I know because I did it myself.’

  ‘I need you to confirm the telex trace, Mr Sedgwick. Then I’d like you to phone me with the confirmation code. Okay?’

  ‘And then will you leave me alone?’

  Guttman hesitated. There was no point misleading the man; it would only make things more difficult later on. ‘That depends. Have you heard from our Russian friends again?’

  There was a slight pause. ‘No.’

  Guttman knew he was lying. ‘I’d like another conversation, face to face. I’ll come up to New York next week – you tell me when’s convenient. Don’t worry, we don’t have to meet in your office.’

  ‘What’s there to talk about?’

  ‘I’d like to talk some more about Thornton Palmer. You may know more than you realise. And also we need to agree what you should do if you hear from Milnikov again.’

  ‘If I see you, what’s to keep you from insisting on another meeting after that? And another?’ There was a heavy pause. ‘I won’t do it.’

  Again, Guttman weighed which way to go. He decided soft cop would lead to a greater sense of betrayal if he needed Sedgwick i
n future. So he said tersely, ‘You’ve got no alternative.’ He picked up the slip Marie had given him. ‘Otherwise, I’ll call Murray Hill 347.’

  ‘Who’s that? The police?’ Sedgwick sounded oddly defiant.

  ‘It’s the home number of your bank’s president, Ogden Pierce. Excuse me,’ he added, unable to resist, ‘Ogden Pierce the Fourth.’

  There was a momentary silence at the other end of the line. ‘Go ahead and call him, you bastard.’ And Sedgwick slammed down the phone.

  Guttman had been called worse, but he was still surprised. When they’d met in New York, Sedgwick had seemed terrified that his boss would learn about his former membership of the CP. What had changed? Had the Russians scared him more than Guttman had?

  That night Nessheim telephoned just before nine. Guttman was listening to Jack Benny with Isabel, having cooked supper and washed and dried the dishes. The half-hour programme was his one chance to relax before the end of evening chores: when he would help Isabel to the bedroom, then help her undress and dress for the night; when he’d help her go to the bathroom and help her brush her teeth, then help her get into bed and tuck her in (for safety’s sake, as well as comfort). Finally – it would be almost ten o’clock – he’d go through whatever papers he’d brought home from work before he locked up the house and went to bed himself.

  On the phone the younger agent sounded agitated, which was a little alarming, for although Nessheim was not unflappable, he was never melodramatic. It had to be important, thought Guttman, and his irritation at having his evening interrupted dissolved.

  Nessheim said, ‘I need to go to Hawaii.’

  You and me both, thought Guttman. He could almost taste the cool punch sipped out of hollowed-out pineapples as he lay in a hammock underneath a pair of palm trees. When he looked towards the backyard and saw only the kitchen window’s reflection of a tired-looking, heavy-set man talking on the telephone, he found it impossible not to laugh. ‘You taking someone with you?’ he joked.