The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  Now his side of the exchange was going kaput as well, though he decided not to tell her about Mexico. The bad news could wait, until he had some good news to balance it. Like what? A department store post as Head of Security?

  He told her, elliptically, about the Russians instead. No mention of Sedgwick, none of Palmer’s fate – why burden her with the violence of that? Instead he explained his own view that the Russians, far from being allies, were actively spying in the United States, and he wondered to himself when he would hear from this latest confessor, Braddock Larrabee.

  When he’d finished, she smiled knowingly. ‘You were never very practical, Harry.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘The Russians aren’t our enemy right now – no wonder Mr Hoover can’t get worked up about all this. Does anyone else agree with you at work?’

  He shook his head regretfully. ‘Tamm doesn’t seem to care. They’re all busy chasing Nazis. Nothing wrong with that. I’m doing it myself in Latin America.’

  ‘But you’re really after the Reds instead. It’s a good thing we got married or you’d be hunting me down.’ Her breathing was forced.

  ‘That’s not fair, Isabel. In your heart, you were always on the right side,’ he said. She’d never had any illusions about Stalin. He thought she was dreaming when she claimed that Trotsky would have been a more democratic leader, but at least she hadn’t ever fallen for the avalanche of propaganda coming out of the Soviet Union during the Thirties. The Popular Front in the US had fallen apart when the CP had refused to criticise the Soviets’ treaty with the Nazis in 1939, and Isabel had been able to say I told you so. Not that there had been anyone but Guttman to tell, confined as she was.

  She said, ‘I think you mean I was on the right part of the wrong side.’

  Guttman pretended to growl, then said, ‘I just don’t like what Moscow seems to be up to. They must think we’re all naive – and dupes. Maybe they’re right: nobody else at the Bureau seems to see it.’

  She laughed now. He was pleased.

  ‘Harry, Harry,’ she said, ‘it’s how you’ve always been. You never bother to get anyone on your side when you’re sure you’re right.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry about that,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Don’t get shirty. I wouldn’t have you any other way.’ She stared at Guttman’s tie. ‘Though that’s got to go to the cleaners – you’ve put a stain there while you were cooking.’

  ‘So how was your day?’ he asked, not wanting to talk about work any more.

  ‘Fine, Harry. Nothing unusual, but nothing bad either. I saw the man in the yard again.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. She had been making perfect sense until now. ‘What time was that?’

  ‘A little before you got home. Mrs Davis had already left or I would have called her.’

  ‘What did this man look like?’ Better to humour her, he thought.

  ‘Tall. He was over at the side of the fence. I don’t think he saw me looking out.’ She seemed proud of this, though equally she sounded unalarmed.

  ‘I’ll have a look after supper,’ he said and got up to check the stew.

  After their meal he helped Isabel to the living room to listen to the radio while he washed the dishes, then picked up the big paper bag of trash from under the sink. Collection was the following day, and he’d lug the garbage cans in the garage out to the front sidewalk so he wouldn’t have to do it in the morning.

  But when he opened the back door and stepped onto the flat unbalustraded porch, he set the bag down. Was Isabel imagining this man she’d now seen twice? She must be, he thought, since what would he be doing there, snooping around? No burglar he knew of cased a place so obviously. If this man were not a phantom – Guttman remain convinced he was – then wouldn’t he come to the front door, ring the bell and state his business?

  He decided to play it carefully nonetheless. He walked slowly to the fence at the end of his backyard. Lights were on in the house behind, casting a faint luminescent line across the boundary. When he turned back he realised his own house threw out even less light, and he vowed again to install an outdoor bulb by the kitchen back door.

  He had moved past the small circle of turf where he had planted the ill-fated maple, when he heard something moving by the back of the garage. He stopped, listening hard. There it was again – a rustling, scratching sound. He wished he had his gun, but he’d taken off his jacket and in shirtsleeves would have had to go outside with a weapon in his hand.

  ‘Someone there?’ he called out, trying to sound resolute. He waited as the faint echo of his words receded, but heard nothing.

  He took a few steps closer to the garage. ‘Who’s there?’ he demanded, half-convinced that no one was.

  There was no reply. It was probably nothing, he thought, or else just rats or a raccoon. But he was sufficiently on edge that he decided to go back into the house and get his gun before taking the garbage out. It seemed ridiculous, but he didn’t care – he was scared.

  ‘Harry, where are you?’

  It was Isabel at the back door. How on earth had she managed to get there?

  ‘Just coming,’ he said, worried she had somehow stood up and now would fall. Then he heard the scratching again. As he started to turn around to look back at the garage something hit him from behind. Like a hard punch, Guttman thought as he stumbled forward, his shoulder feeling leaden and heavy. The impact coincided with a dull flat crack that was like – like what? Silencer, he suddenly thought just as he heard the flat noise again.

  The side of his head felt on fire. This time he didn’t merely stumble, but fell forward, just as Isabel shouted again from the back door. She’s still got lungs, thought Guttman proudly, as he landed on the grass, breaking his fall with his arm. His last thought was to wonder if the shooter was going to come closer and finish him off.

  Part Seven

  Santa Barbara and Los Angeles Mid-November 1941

  26

  IT TOOK ALL morning to reach the ranch. When Nessheim had started from home it had already been humid and warm, but the coastal highway was much cooler. It wriggled along the edge of the Pacific, so close that spray from the waves splattered his windshield. The road was a remarkable feat of engineering, he realised, since it rarely climbed or twisted through the adjacent hills, but stuck like a limpet against their base, just above the incoming tide.

  He stopped halfway at a lay-by of landfill pushed out like a pie which the diggers had excavated from the hillside. He got out of the car to stare at the ocean, where the waves were throwing enormous white-topped curls against the shoreline rocks, like a glamorous woman tossing her hair.

  In Santa Barbara he stopped again, filling up with gas and checking his oil and water. He’d skipped breakfast at home after discovering the milk had gone off and he’d run out of bread, so now he ambled over to a neighbouring roadside stand next door where a Mexican sold him a tortilla filled with chopped hamburger meat, chillies and onions. Tacos, the Mexicans in LA called them, and Nessheim wolfed his down, taking pains not to stain his suit. He’d brought a clean shirt for dinner and a hat – a panama he’d got in San Francisco, but he didn’t like to wear it when he was driving.

  He moved east now, on a new highway called 154, climbing sharply almost as soon as he left town. In the lower parts he passed groves of shaggy avocado trees, the long thin leaves flecked with crimson. There were pastures, yellowed from a summer of sun and dotted with cattle and horses. Then the road steepened; he followed directions and turned off on to El Cielo, then drove onto on a track of packed, dusty sand that gently traversed the mountain, back and forth in an almost imperceptible ascent. The terrain up here was more barren and the mix of trees that lined the meadows below – conifers and peeling red madrone and bay laurel – gave way to standalone specimens, mainly oaks. The papers said more people were migrating to California than the rest of the states of the Union combined, but out here Nessheim could only think there was plenty of room. Esp
ecially if most of the migrants were hell bent on Hollywood and dreams of a movie career.

  The track itself suddenly climbed sharply and, as he came to the top of a ninety-degree bend, dipped down into a small valley which sat like the folded underbelly of the mountain. There were trees here, too, including a large stand of jack pine the track cut through, and as he emerged out of its cooling shade into the glare of a now overhead sun, he could just make out a collection of low-level buildings a quarter mile ahead. As he drove closer he saw that one of them was larger than the rest, and must be the ranch house; the others were a mix of low hay barns and sheds, without the shade that a little copse of taller oaks provided the main residence. At one side a pond not much bigger than a football field sat like a spilt pool of black ink, glittering in the sun.

  There were two cars parked in the shade by the house, and he drew up next to them. He got out, wondering if the other guests had yet to arrive and wondering why he had been asked. At the front door of the long, adobe-faced house he raised its heavy brass knocker and banged it hard against the dark panels of the door. He waited but no one came and he looked around. From one of the sheds a door opened and someone came out. He was a short Chinese man, wearing black trousers and a short-sleeved white shirt. Nessheim reckoned it was ninety degrees in the shade, and even this high there was no breeze.

  As the Chinese man approached, Nessheim said, ‘I’m looking for Mrs Mukasei.’

  ‘You are who?’ the man asked.

  ‘Nessheim.’

  ‘The others gone to town. But Mrs M say you come join her.’ The Chinese man pointed down past the sheds and Nessheim could see a row of whitewashed stables and a dirt-packed corral.

  ‘Mrs M say you riding. You better give me jacket.’

  Thankfully he hadn’t brought his holster and .38. Nessheim took his suit jacket and handed it over. As the Chinese servant headed back to the house, Nessheim set off towards the barn, trying to think when he had last ridden a horse. It had to be fifteen years, he reckoned, when the Karlbergs, his parents’ nearest neighbours, had briefly kept two mares.

  He found Mrs Mukasei inside the barn, dressed in Western jeans, a man’s shirt she had tucked into her pants, and no make-up as far as he could see. It didn’t matter: he found her face attractive precisely because it was so frankly unadorned. It wasn’t a hardened set of features – those were for Hollywood’s aspirant actresses, once they’d learned that advancement had less to do with talent than with the casting couch – but you felt nonetheless that this woman had seen a lot.

  She was saddling the second of two horses, an Appaloosa. The other was a grey. ‘Agent Nessheim!’ she exclaimed when she heard his footfall. ‘You have made it.’

  ‘I hope I’m not late. And I hope you won’t keep calling me Agent Nessheim.’

  ‘You are Chimmy then?’ Her face was handsome rather than pretty, but Nessheim found her attractive.

  ‘Most people just call me Nessheim.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, but everyone has gone to lunch in Santa Ynez. It’s that way,’ she said, pointing north. ‘We can join them if you wish, but I thought you might enjoy a ride.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ he said. It would not have been his first choice on such a hot day, but she’d saddled the horses already. ‘I’m a little rusty.’

  ‘So am I. I did not learn to ride with a saddle. You had better take the grey. The Appaloosa seems to be in love with me.’

  They rode out slowly, heading north through the little valley where the ranch was situated, then up a trail that climbed gently through a stand of tanbark oaks and pines. Elizaveta sat easy in the saddle and had a natural seat; Nessheim, used to his Wisconsin neighbour’s ancient mare, found the grey tricky, fighting the bit each time he pulled the reins.

  When they emerged from the trees side by side they faced a stretch of meadow grass before the terrain climbed to a high ridge. It looked like rich grazing land, but didn’t hold a hint of green. Most grasslands in California were yellow eleven months of the year, but after the lush greenness of Wisconsin it was still a start-ling sight.

  Elizaveta looked at Nessheim. ‘I will race you,’ she said, and slapped the Appaloosa’s mane with the doubled-up reins. He watched as her horse took off, then he broke the grey into a canter which with a bit of urging turned into a steady gallop. But the Appaloosa wasn’t going to be caught, and when he reached the bottom of the trail on the far side of the meadow, breathing hard, Elizaveta was waiting, looking triumphant and cool. She grinned at him. ‘For a rusty rider you are doing well.’

  They climbed the ridge single file, working back and forth against its steep side. The trail was narrow and rocky, and Nessheim paid attention, since to stumble here would be no joke. As they rose, the grassland gave way to sage scrub and the dry mix of chaparral. The odd madrone tree grew out of the sandy soil, and twice the path meandered around sandstone boulders that must have been too big to move.

  Just as Nessheim was wondering when the climb would end, they turned a last bend and reached the top of the ridge. Elizaveta pointed behind them. He turned and saw the Pacific in the distance, sky blue in the blistering sun. Down below, nestled between the shore and the first sharp rise of hill, lay dotted little dice-like cubes he recognised as houses. ‘Santa Barbara,’ said Elizaveta.

  She turned her horse and he did likewise. To the north, a long wide valley stretched for miles below them, punctuated by small rises and dotted by large stands of trees. Far away an even higher mountain range ran at an angle, its peaks like jagged teeth.

  They sat for a moment just looking. ‘So tell me about yourself, Jimmy.’ She said it matter-of-factly, as if the time for small talk was over and they had to get down to business. Inwardly he groaned.

  ‘You know what I do for a living,’ he said hesitantly.

  She flapped a dismissive hand. ‘I don’t mean your work. I mean you – the person. How did you get here?’

  He knew she wasn’t asking if he’d come by Highway 154 or Route One, but he was uncomfortable with anything more. Yet her manner was such a mix of insistence and seemingly authentic interest that he felt obliged to try. So he started, awkwardly, explaining that he’d grown up on a farm.

  ‘Your own?’ She seemed surprised.

  ‘Well my father’s, though he rented some of it out. He also owned a store in town. He lost them both.’

  ‘Ah, were they seized by the Government?’

  Nessheim shook his head. ‘No – they just went bust. The bank took them, not the Government.’

  ‘Did it happen to other farms where you lived?’

  ‘Lots.’

  ‘Did the owners starve?’

  ‘Starve? No, I don’t know anybody that actually starved.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she challenged.

  ‘I’m sure. Why?’

  ‘One heard tales of hunger,’ she said.

  ‘That was true enough. But not starvation.’

  ‘I thought perhaps it was your form of propaganda. In the Soviet Union sometimes the papers were allowed to say of a place, “people have been hungry”. That meant corpses were stacked like firewood in the fields.’ She laughed bitterly and looked at Nessheim intently. ‘I think I have still a lot to learn about your country. But I like it, even though there are so many lies. “Buy a Packard and be happy,”’ she said, lifting her voice to a radio ad’s pitch. ‘Such nonsense. But at least you don’t have to believe it. No one goes to prison if they don’t. I like that. Though no true Communist could like Los Angeles.’

  ‘And you do?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ She put a finger to her lips to indicate it was a secret, then laughed. ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Not much.’ He thought of his beautiful drive that morning, thought too of San Francisco, where he had lived very happily if impatiently (he had been waiting for a special assignment) for two years. ‘I do like California.’

  ‘So we are not so far apart.’

  ‘What about you? Are you a farm
girl?’

  She shook her head. ‘City girl. But very poor. We had to move to Tashkent in order not to starve.’ She laughed at the thought. ‘If you knew Tashkent, you would know how bad off we were – no one would go there out of choice. But come, I have something to show you.’

  They rode along the ridge for half a mile or so, then followed a trail down the north side, trotting now, down and up until they came through a stand of pine and there, in front of them, were the ruins of a colossal house. More than one house – Nessheim counted seven buildings, or what had once been buildings since all that remained were foundations and a few half-walls made of sandstone, charred black by fire.

  ‘What was it?’ asked Nessheim.

  ‘A rich man’s mansion. Then a nice lady bought it for her friend, only it burned down five weeks later. Very sad,’ she said, for the first time with a false note. ‘Her friend was a woman friend,’ she added meaningfully. ‘She is an opera singer – have you heard of Lotte Lehmann?’

  ‘I’ve even heard her sing.’

  ‘You are a lover of opera?’

  ‘Can’t bear it,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘So why have you heard this woman sing?’

  ‘A girlfriend took me.’ Stacey Madison’s rich parents had a box at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago. Nessheim had gone once; he’d had to rent a penguin suit and make polite conversation with Stacey’s mother, who seemed happy to discover that her daughter had at least one friend who wasn’t a Communist. At intermission Mr Madison had bought him a weak highball and admitted that he couldn’t stand opera either.

  ‘You must have been in love,’ Elizaveta said teasingly. ‘Or was it lust?’

  ‘A bit of both,’ he admitted.

  ‘I think you are something of a lady’s man, Agent Nessheim.’ And she looked delighted when he blushed.

  They dismounted and she took off a large saddle bag while he tied up her horse to a thick bay laurel. They walked over to the ruin of the big house. Enough of the ground-floor walls remained to indicate the different rooms. It had been a big place and the largest room – which must have been the living room – was a good forty feet long. It sat in the north-west corner of the site and had the best view of the Santa Ynez Valley to the north. Elizaveta sat down on the low remaining part of the outer wall and took out parcels wrapped in brown paper, two tin plates and two tin mugs, and a bottle of California wine. ‘I hope you are hungry.’