The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘Elza!’ came another cry from the shore.

  ‘So far,’ she said enigmatically. Then her hand moved under the water and caressed him lightly on his stomach. ‘I would like to see you again. I need you to advise me.’

  Pushing off from the float she swam towards the shore in a slow, steady crawl, returning dutifully back to her husband. It was only a hundred yards or so and halfway there she was illuminated by the beam from Mikhail’s flash-light, which then followed her all the way in.

  Nessheim watched as she stood up in the shallows, then walked towards her husband. Enough light came from the house that Nessheim could see the two, and he could hear their voices as each spoke. The Russian words sounded harsh and loud. It was impossible to tell if they were arguing or merely talking volubly. He could have sworn he heard his name pronounced – ‘Nessheim’ – by Mikhail as Elizaveta stood beside him on the grass.

  Suddenly he saw Elizaveta move towards her husband and he watched as the tall figure fell backwards, landing with a splash in the water. Mikhail stood up, the water knee high, while Elizaveta gave a loud triumphant laugh. She turned and skipped towards the house like a jubilant schoolgirl, her white limbs slipping seal-like through the dark, while her husband emerged, cursing, from the pond. Nessheim waited until Mikhail had gone back into the house before he swam back to shore, hoping this time he could go to sleep.

  27

  HE HAD BEEN back for an hour on Sunday night when the phone rang. It was Annie Ryerson. Maybe she had changed her mind about Christmas, he thought. He said, ‘It’s nice to hear your voice.’

  ‘I’m not calling with good news, Jimmy. It’s Harry.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s been shot.’

  It took a second for it to sink in.

  ‘Is he dead?’ He didn’t trust himself to say anything more.

  ‘Not yet. They say they’ll know in twenty-four hours if he’s going to pull through. He’s at Walter Reed. He was shot twice – once in the back and once in the head. It’s the head wound they’re worried about, though they say he’s lucky – it missed the main part of the brain.’

  ‘When did it happen?’

  ‘Two days ago.’

  ‘But why – ?’

  He stopped himself. Now was not the time to complain that he hadn’t been told. He thought guiltily of his time with Elizaveta at the ranch, fooling around by the float.

  ‘Marie tried to reach you, but you haven’t been at the Bureau. I don’t think she had your home number. So I volunteered. I thought it might be easier coming from me. After all, the three of us have history together.’

  ‘Where did it happen?’

  ‘At his house. Isabel had been saying she’d seen a man in the backyard. Harry went out to investigate, and that’s when he was shot. Isabel was inside – she’d got worried and somehow managed to get to the back door, just in time to see Harry shot.’

  ‘Did she see the shooter?’

  ‘Not really – it was dark. They say the gunman used a silencer, so no one heard it.’

  ‘Who’s looking after Isabel?’ He was asking this dutifully, but knew Guttman’s first worries would have been for his wife.

  ‘I am. Don’t worry – she’s okay. Just worried and waiting. Like the rest of us.’

  ‘Do the police have any clue who did it?’

  ‘Not that I know of. There were Bureau people here all day – lots of men with brushes.’

  ‘That’s for fingerprints,’ he said dully, envisaging the scene. He doubted there would be any evidence left by the shooter. It sounded like a professional job; an amateur wouldn’t use a silencer.

  As Annie kept talking, Nessheim thought of his last phone conversation with Guttman just a few days before, when Nessheim had called him from home. They’d joked about whether Guttman would authorise the payment for his phone bill. Then Guttman had said, ‘Schultz is dead.’

  ‘Max Schultz?’ Herr Schultz as he had insisted on being called when Nessheim worked for him at one of the Bund’s youth camps in Vermont.

  ‘They found him in his cell in Sing Sing.’

  ‘Tears as big as horse apples are rolling down my cheeks.’

  Guttman laughed and Nessheim asked, ‘Do you think someone bumped him off?’

  ‘Nope. It was natural causes.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘That’s the good news. The bad news is that his car may have been used by whoever killed Thornton Palmer.’

  Nessheim said, ‘Do you think the Bund’s involved?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it’s making me nervous. I may have some news for you soon. Good news. Just be patient.’

  He’d heard that before – he’d stayed in San Francisco for over a year investigating fraud cases while Guttman told him to be patient.

  Guttman said, ‘And I want you to watch your back, okay?’

  ‘I was watching anyway.’

  ‘Watch it double-time then.’

  Now Nessheim contemplated the irony that it was Guttman who had needed to be extra careful. Could the Bund have shot him? It seemed improbable – the brotherhood was a spent force now, most of its leaders in jail, most of its followers fallen away. Even the Nazis had disavowed the home-grown American variety, preferring to try and put their own people in place in America and make their own Fifth Column.

  Though the Nazis would have wanted Guttman dead. As head of Investigations he had set snares that had caught a lot of Germans trying to operate in America. It didn’t help either that he was a Jew.

  Now Nessheim said to Annie, ‘Would you keep me posted, please?’

  ‘Of course I will. Are you all right, Jimmy?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said automatically. He felt awkward and oddly guilty as the image of Elizaveta in her bathing suit during their midnight swim came to mind. I didn’t do anything, he told himself, then wondered why that mattered. Annie didn’t want him.

  Then she said, ‘I’m sorry about Christmas.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Sure,’ he said finally. ‘Let me know how Harry gets on.’

  * * *

  Trauma had never filled Nessheim’s dreams, which were usually happy and uncomplicated. But this night he felt haunted as a succession of faces flitted in and out – Ike larger than life behind his eyrie’s desk at the casino, followed by the younger Pearl lifting the Hispanic maid, Anita, up in both arms. She was naked. Teitz appeared by the pool house at Pearl’s, laughing merrily, only to be replaced by a tall male figure who turned away to hide his face. In the dream Nessheim grew agitated as he decided this must be Osaka, and he raced around the swimming pool, desperate to find out for sure. But as he approached, the figure turned and he found himself staring into the face of Mikhail Mukasei.

  He woke up in the early dark hours – his clock said it was only four o’clock. He lay there, trying to sort out this confusion of images, and found to his consternation that he couldn’t for the life of him picture Osaka’s face. He could see the man walking along the street, flicking his straight black hair out of his eyes with a carefree hand. But the face eluded him. It was as if the mystery of Billy Osaka’s whereabouts extended, like the swipe of a chalkboard’s eraser, to Nessheim’s memories.

  Rafu Shimpo occupied a storefront on East 3rd Street in Little Tokyo, a few blocks from the Satake Bank. There was a Japanese girl at the counter and he explained what he had come for. She asked him to wait and went through a pair of swing doors to the rear. As they opened he could see the three editorial desks, covered with papers, and behind them a large printing press that looked like a Victorian piece of ironmongery.

  He stood waiting at the counter, which had a stack of the latest issue. He leafed through a copy’s English language section, noting that none of its bylines were Osaka’s. An editorial caught his eye. It urged readers – in a time of growing tension between America and Japan in the Pacific – to remain loyal to their new country. Nisei, in particular, it argued, could have no dual allegia
nce. Now was the time for all good Americans – of whatever descent – to stand up for their country.

  ‘I’m Togo Tanaka,’ said a man as he came through the swing doors. He looked in his mid-twenties and had a floppy fringe of black hair and crew-cut sides.

  Nessheim showed his badge. ‘I’ve been looking for Billy Osaka. I wondered if you had a photo of him – he had a press card, didn’t he?’

  ‘He did, just in case he had to get through a police cordon or chase a fire engine somewhere. Hang on a minute.’ He went back through the swing doors and returned a minute later with a small mugshot in his hand, which he gave to Nessheim.

  Nessheim peered at the small picture. Osaka had had a haircut and the shot made him look even younger than he was. He stared at the camera intensely, as if daring it to expose him.

  Tanaka said, ‘You can have that.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Nessheim, and he put the mugshot carefully into his inner breast pocket.

  ‘You phoned a while ago, didn’t you?’

  ‘That’s right. Any news of Billy?’

  ‘We haven’t heard from him in weeks.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  Tanaka smiled. ‘I got him his job. We were both political science majors at UCLA.’

  ‘Is Billy a good reporter?’

  ‘When he bothers to file.’ He spoke with an air of fond chastisement.

  ‘I read the latest editorial,’ Nessheim said, pointing to the paper he’d just skimmed through. ‘Was that Billy’s view too?’

  Tanaka hesitated. ‘Pretty much,’ he said, then pursed his lips as if to ensure they stayed shut.

  ‘How was it different?’ He realised he had spoken in the past tense.

  ‘I’m not saying it was. But he knows a lot of people who are siding with Japan.’

  ‘Do you think he may have gone back to the Islands?’

  Tanaka said, ‘I doubt it. His folks are dead, and he doesn’t have a lot of friends in Hawaii. He never did.’

  ‘Not even from high school?’

  ‘Billy didn’t go to high school in Hawaii.’ Tanaka looked at him quizzically. ‘He’s Kibei. Someone who goes back to Japan for their schooling.’

  ‘I know that.’ Nessheim added with a hint of suspicion, ‘Are you Kibei too?’

  ‘Jeez no. I can’t think of anything worse.’

  ‘Why did Billy go back, though?’

  Tanaka thought for a moment. ‘I guess his mother wanted him to. Funny, since she wasn’t Japanese herself. She probably thought he should know his roots.’

  ‘Would that explain why he knew so many nationalists?’

  He was guessing now, but Tanaka nodded slowly. ‘Partly, I guess. Though when it came down to it, Billy’s always wanted to be a hundred per cent American.’ He hesitated, then said reluctantly, ‘Look, the thing about Billy is that he’s kind of wild.’

  ‘So I’ve gathered,’ Nessheim said. ‘Was he in trouble when he disappeared?’

  Tanaka gave him a look. ‘Tell me when he isn’t in trouble.’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘It’s always money or women or both.’

  ‘Whatever it is, I need to find him – and before some other people, if you catch my drift.’

  Tanaka considered this, then shrugged. ‘He came to me early in the summer. He said he was desperate. I’d heard it before, but this time I believed him – he had some gambling debts and he was going to get his legs broken if he didn’t pay up. This was a new one for Billy – usually it’s nickel-and-dime stuff he owes. If I gave him a sawbuck that would take care of things. But this time he needed a lot of money. I’d have had to mortgage my folks’ house to raise it. So I had to say no.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh it got paid, just not by me.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘The beginning of August – I know for sure because my birthday’s August 2nd.’ He gestured towards the printing room. ‘We had cake in the back and Billy came in – he was filing stories again. He pretended that he’d known it was my birthday. When I asked if he was okay he said the problem had been taken care of.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘Billy’s got this girl. She’s head over heels for him.’

  ‘You mean Hanako?’

  ‘The very one.’

  ‘But she doesn’t have that kind of dough,’ Nessheim protested.

  ‘Maybe she mortgaged her parents’ house.’

  Under Hoover, most of the Special Agents were either CPAs or had passed the Bar, and the qualification often (though not always) steered the kind of work they did – if someone had been passing bum cheques in seven different states it was usually an agent with accountancy credentials who took on the investigation.

  In the LA Field Office there was also one accountant agent, a little dark-eyebrowed man named Gordon, who did the internal bookkeeping – he sat in a windowless room with an assistant who so resembled his boss that Nessheim found it hard to tell them apart. Both were in the office when he knocked on their door, and both were happy to answer his questions. He realised that just because they sat day after day, shut in with only numbers for company – everything from payroll to expenses – it didn’t mean they didn’t yearn for a glimpse of the external world.

  He walked back to Little Tokyo feeling better equipped for another visit to the Satake Bank. But at the bank he discovered to his consternation that Hanako had not only resigned from the bank, but had left town altogether.

  ‘She went to Chicago,’ announced one of the Nisei grocery girls who spoke fluent English.

  ‘Do you have an address?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘She said she’d write once they were settled.’

  In Hanako’s absence Mr Satake had not miraculously acquired any English. Nessheim asked the girl to help.

  ‘Tell Mr Satake I’m asking about money coming from New York again.’

  She translated and Mr Satake gave his reflexive smile, though Nessheim detected a hint of weariness behind the grin.

  ‘Ask him where the telex machine is, please – you know, the teletype.’

  This time Mr Satake looked embarrassed. At last he mumbled something.

  ‘He says we don’t have one,’ said the girl.

  ‘Ah. Then ask him if he uses the one around the corner.’

  Once translated, this had Mr Satake nodding eagerly. Nessheim laughed, glad at least one of his hunches had paid off. ‘Tell him I am most grateful and I won’t need to bother him again. Though if anyone hears from Hanako, please inform me at once at the headquarters of the FBI.’

  Hearing this, Mr Satake beamed. Nessheim sensed he would have agreed to anything to get this ganja out of his private office.

  The Yokohama Speccie was unambiguously a bank, uncluttered by its near-neighbour’s array of fresh vege-tables and bottled soy sauce. It was a squat building, two storeys high but without a second floor – you walked into a large space made larger by a cavernous dome on the ceiling and by ridged pillars that went up to the roof. Nessheim was reminded of the Midwest, where even in the Depression the grandest buildings in small towns were their banks.

  A young vice-president named Kinemi, in a banker’s black suit, white shirt and sombre tie, saw Nessheim at once. He spoke perfect English. His office had a glass wall that let him watch the customers in line at the tellers. Nessheim explained his mission and the man nodded.

  ‘Fifty thousand – I remember that. We have some well-heeled customers, but that’s still a most impressive amount.’

  ‘Is there any chance the fifty would have been split up? I mean in transmission.’

  ‘Not only a chance – it definitely would have been split up. You see, twenty-five is the limit for our bank receiving money, so it would have come in in two lots.’

  ‘Could you tell me how it was split?’

  ‘Give me a minute,’ said Kinemi, and went out of the office. When he came back he was holding a paper in his hand. ‘Here we go,’ he said, han
ding it to Nessheim.

  The mess of codes meant nothing to him. ‘I’m sorry but can you help me make sense of this?’

  ‘That’s easy enough,’ said the young banker, reverting to his professional persona. ‘There are two sets of codes, see, for two separate tranches of money. One was going to the account of a Mr Lyakhov at the Satake Bank.’

  ‘I’ve got that one. It’s the other tranche I’m trying to find.’

  ‘It’s not that different. Just a cashier’s cheque this time.’

  ‘Also for Lyakhov?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kinemi casually. ‘It would have to be – the money was wired for Lyakhov.’

  ‘But then why would they treat the two payments differently?’

  Kinemi looked bemused. ‘Because the Satake Bank – his bank – asked us to.’

  ‘Miss Waganaba?’

  ‘Who?’ Kinemi looked puzzled.

  ‘The chief teller of the Satake Bank.’

  He was still puzzled. ‘It was Miss Yukuri who handled it.’

  ‘Hanako Yukuri?’

  ‘Yeah. But what’s the problem?’

  ‘Could she have cashed the cashier’s cheque?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Anyone could have. That’s how a cashier’s cheque works.’ He looked questioningly at Nessheim.

  ‘Just one more thing. What was the date of this transaction?’

  Kinemi looked flustered for the first time, but it was an innocent reaction, Nessheim realised, as the Japanese banker pointed to the sheet still held in his hand.

  ‘It should tell you right there,’ he said.

  Nessheim looked down and saw the bank’s stamp:

  Aug 18 ’41.

  Sixteen days after Tanaka’s birthday party. So why had Hanako diverted $25,000 when Billy had told Tanaka his problem had been dealt with?

  28

  HE DROVE BACK to the studio on Wilshire because he liked the boulevard’s adolescent palm trees and the sense he got, looking at the new stores, that the city was spreading like spilt milk outside the confines of its dense downtown. When he got to the studio, feeling guilty about his frequent absences, he relaxed when saw that little filming seemed to be going on. As he was waved through by Ernie, the usual traffic of grips, cameramen, extras and make-up artists was nowhere to be seen outside Studio One.