The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘Maybe he sold a bad premium.’

  ‘I read that book too. But this Jimmy Lapides didn’t sell insurance; he was a clerk in the payroll department.’

  Nessheim glanced over at the barber shop and the sheet-covered corpse. ‘Have you talked to Mrs Lapides?’

  ‘Not yet. But if Albert’s got it right, she’s not exactly femme fatale material.’

  The beat cop spoke up, without looking at Nessheim. ‘One of the other barbers said the killer asked if the guy was “Jimmy”.’

  ‘That was Lapides’s first name,’ said Nessheim. He didn’t like where this was heading.

  ‘The barber said he was called Jimmy One.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Nessheim.

  He was about to explain when Dickerson interrupted, ‘I’m wondering if the killers screwed up. If Lapides was Jimmy One, then I’d like to find Jimmy Two. I’d put a dollar on a dime it was him they were looking to ice.’

  Part Eight

  Oahu and Molokai Late November 1941

  31

  ‘I HOPE YOUR trip’s been worthwhile,’ said Robert Shivers.

  ‘It has,’ said Nessheim. He put down his bag. ‘Thanks. And thanks for showing me the ropes.’

  ‘You better get a move on. You don’t want to miss this flight – the next one’s a week from now.’

  They shook hands and Nessheim picked up his pea-green duffel bag. He walked out of the terminal into the curiously flat sunshine. It seemed to fall from the Hawaiian sky like a daily coat of paint. There was a light sea breeze, which exuded a mild perfume of palm and salt air.

  He ambled towards the dock where the Pan Am Clipper waited. He walked down the steps of the ramp slowly, towards the open door behind the Boeing 314’s cockpit, where a stewardess was waiting. He didn’t know if Shivers was one of those flying buffs who liked to watch planes take off, but turning round at the bottom of the ramp he was relieved to be out of sight of the terminal.

  ‘Welcome aboard, sir,’ said the stewardess. She had bright white teeth that filled her smile and was wearing a grey-blue, naval-style jacket and skirt. Nessheim wouldn’t have minded spending eighteen hours travelling in her company.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, miss, but I won’t be flying after all.’

  She looked taken aback. ‘Is there a problem, sir?’

  ‘Family illness. I’ve just been paged in the terminal – it looks like I’d better stick around.’ He lifted his duffel bag. ‘This is my baggage – nothing to unload.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. I’d never forgive myself if my mother died before I could get back here. Don’t worry – I’ll sort out my ticket at the desk inside.’

  Concern had replaced her surprise. ‘I’m so sorry. I hope your mom gets better soon.’

  He stayed on the dock for a good five minutes after the Clipper took off to the west in Pearl Harbor, watching as the great double-decker bird dipped its heavy wings and, slowly turning, lumbered towards California. Then he walked back to the terminal.

  There was no sign of Shivers. Nessheim found the men’s room and went into one of its stalls. There he stripped down, replacing his suit and tie with cotton trousers and a light coat which had deep side pockets – in one of them he put a taped roll of spare ammunition for his .38. He left his wallet in his suit jacket and swapped his polished Florsheims for a pair of ankle-high canvas shoes. He kept the gun and holster on and exited the stall with his bag, checking for any telltale bulge in the mirrors above the row of basins. Satisfied, he left the men’s room and walked over to the lockers in the terminal. Opening one, he crammed in his duffel bag and slotted a dime into its lock, then pocketed the key.

  Outside he hailed a cab from the waiting line and told the Hawaiian driver to take him down to the fishing docks. The driver sighed, since the commercial harbour was virtually next door. They passed the edge of the naval base, then moved slowly along the fishing marina, its jetties thrusting out in neat lines from the raised embankment of the shore. At the seventh dock he had the cab pull over, paid the driver, tipping him well, and waited until the taxi had driven off. Then he went back to the first dock off the quay.

  Here a fishing boat named Moana Two was idling, a solitary rope wrapped around a stanchion on the dock all that kept it tied to the shore. In the boat’s open cabin a broad-shouldered Hawaiian with long black hair stood at the wheel. He nodded once, and Nessheim undid the rope and tossed it into the well, pushed the bow away from the dock, then made a quick jump into the boat. Seconds later the pilot throttled down and they surged out towards open water, as Nessheim perched on a flat bench on one side of the hold in the middle of the open deck. There was a faint, slightly sickening smell of dead fish and diesel fumes.

  They moved into the water of Mamala Bay, then a few miles out turned south-east and ran parallel to the shoreline of Oahu. To their left Honolulu sat in a cluster of low buildings, mainly houses, that stopped at Diamond Head, the long volcanic ridge that lay like a sleeping lion, its head slightly raised, towards the east end of the island.

  As they gradually left Oahu behind them Nessheim lay down with his back against the boat’s side. The waves were low and regular, and Moana Two cut across them in a lazy chop. Nessheim dozed, using a life preserver as a pillow, trying to make sense of the events of the past week.

  He had left LA on a Friday night for San Francisco, taking the Southern Pacific Lark. Since the train was all Pullmans, he got a sleeper to himself. He wasn’t worried about the expense – that wouldn’t get him into trouble; it was the trip itself that would. He’d done his best to cover for himself: at the studio he had left a note for Lolly’s dimwit replacement, saying that he had been called to Wisconsin on a family emergency. He figured this would give him seven days’ cover when you included the train time to the Midwest and back. As for Hood and the local Bureau, he was crossing his fingers that they wouldn’t have any reason to contact him while he was gone.

  His roomette was small (the bed folded down from the wall) but comfortable, and on the left side of the train as it moved along the coast. He sat up for a while, not going to the fancy dining and lounge car in case he met someone he knew; instead he tipped the porter fifty cents to bring him a ham sandwich and bottle of beer. West of Santa Barbara, the tracks moved close to the ocean, and as a half-moon moved in and out of cloud he caught glimpses of the Pacific Ocean, rough and unsettled as it moved in on the tide.

  He sat gazing towards the shore, wondering where Guttman was sending him this time. He was glad to be out of LA, where puzzle seemed to devolve into puzzle – the more he discovered the more became unclear, a kind of learning process in which he took one step forward and got shoved two steps back. If Ike’s debts had been paid off for Billy before the wire transfer of money from the East, then why had half the fifty grand been diverted by Hanako into a cashier’s cheque? Who was this Lyakhov and what did he do with the other twenty-five grand?

  He thought, too, of the gruesome corpse at Albert’s barber shop, wondering if it could really have been a case of mistaken identity. For the first time since Billy Osaka had disappeared, he felt real fear, which was enhanced by guilt over the murder of Jimmy One, who he was certain had not been the intended target.

  He had arrived in San Francisco at nine in the morning and gone straight in a taxi to Devereux’s house. It sat off Ocean Avenue on a side street that ran sharply up towards Monterey Heights, in an area which even in Nessheim’s time there had started to be developed. The lots were filling up quickly with new builds, and Devereux’s house had neighbours on either side.

  The door was answered by a young woman who introduced herself as Devereux’s fiancée, Mona. Explaining that Devereux was busy at the Bureau, she took Nessheim into the living room, which had a bay window with a view of the Pacific down the hill, almost two miles away. On the sofa Devereux had left a large manila envelope. Nessheim sat down to go through it and Mona disappeared into the back of the house. She seemed slight
ly suspicious of Nessheim and though he hadn’t expected a brass band, he could have done with a cup of coffee. At least she was tactful enough to leave him alone with the envelope.

  Its instructions were detailed, particularly about the Kalaupapa Peninsula on the island of Molokai, where he was to make contact with agents of the Japanese. He was going to conduct the rendezvous which Popov had failed to make, and his instructions replicated the procedures Stephenson of the BSC had arranged for that missed contact in July. At the Bureau Guttman alone knew of Nessheim’s mission. Popov was persona non grata since his disastrous meeting with Hoover, and any operation emanating from the double agent would have never received the Director’s approval.

  As instructed, Nessheim put the notes back and left the resealed envelope on the sofa, then went and found Mona in the kitchen, where he asked her to phone a cab. While they waited, she warmed up slightly, probably because he would be going soon, and told him about her plans for the wedding that spring. She said that after they were married she and Devereux hoped to move up the hill, where the houses were swankier and the lots larger. The Devereux whom Nessheim used to know would have laughed at this kind of aspiration, but there was a certainty in Mona’s voice; it suggested that either his old friend had discovered career ambition, or he was going to soon. It explained, too, why Devereux hadn’t been there to greet him: he must be uneasy about his role as Guttman’s intermediary – rightly so, since he wouldn’t be working for the Bureau much longer if this were discovered.

  The terminal on Treasure Island was a vast U-shaped Art Deco building that had been built for the World’s Fair two years before. It had a curved concourse that faced west towards San Francisco; next to the main building were the ramps for the flying boats, and behind them the hangars for the aircraft when they were out of the water. Inside, at the wood-panelled Pan Am reservations desk, Nessheim had found a ticket waiting for him. A colourful poster on the wall, ‘Fly to the South Seas Isles’, showed an enticing picture of palm trees, smiling Polynesian girls greeting passengers, with the Honolulu Clipper in the background.

  Less than three hours since arriving at Third Street Station, Nessheim took off again, the Honolulu Clipper calmly gathering height over the Golden Gate Bridge, flying west towards the sun. Only three of the ten seats were occupied in his compartment, which had thick turquoise carpet and pale-green walls, and was curtained off. A woman in a powder-blue dress and hat to match was playing cards with her companion on the wide table in front of them both; a man in a suit who looked like he’d never voted for a Democrat in his life was reading a copy of the San Francisco Examiner. It was luxuriously peaceful. Later on, in the dinner lounge, Nessheim settled down at a table laid with silver cutlery and bone-china plates, and examined the thick card menu, handed to him by the steward in a white uniform.

  It was a long flight, slow-paced to conserve fuel, since there was nowhere between California and the Islands to land. When the plane came down at last, almost eighteen hours later, it gently skimmed the surface of the Pearl Harbor loch and idled towards shore, until the pilot turned off the engines as they reached the dock. When Nessheim disembarked, two hula girls stood under one of a dozen palm trees, ready to welcome the new arrivals with fragrant leis. He skirted them politely and walked into the terminal, a converted beach house. There was another one next to it for baggage and other cargo. It was midday in Hawaii.

  Nessheim had taken a taxi into downtown Honolulu, which seemed as sleepy as Madison, Wisconsin, and not much bigger. He got out at the corner of Hotel and Bishop Streets, half a mile from the beach, and went into the grand-looking Alexander Young Hotel, which had white awnings along its block-long façade. It had over two hundred bedrooms, which would make it easy to come and go unnoticed.

  After checking in, he napped for an hour, then changed into a light cotton suit before walking to the Honolulu Field Office. The one request he’d made of Devereux, relayed through Mona, was to send a telex, alerting Shivers that he was coming and citing Guttman’s authorisation, although Guttman was still in the hospital.

  Shivers turned out to be a soft-spoken Southerner, whose office had Venetian blinds tilted to keep out the high hot sun, a bookcase full of legal texts, a photo of FDR on one wall and a smaller one of Hoover on another.

  ‘I got news you were coming,’ he said, sounding cordial. ‘What’s this all about?’

  Nessheim explained what he was doing in Hawaii, and Shivers nodded at first, as if this were reasonable enough. Then he asked, ‘Does SAC Hood know you’re doing this?’

  An early Rubicon. Nessheim couldn’t duck the truth, not when ten minutes’ teletype would expose him.

  ‘No.’

  Shivers weighed this up with a frown.

  ‘The cable said you work for Harry Guttman now.’

  ‘Yes. He would have sent the wire himself, but he’s out of commission.’

  Word of the shooting must have reached even this remote part of the Bureau; in the LA office there had been talk of little else. Most people there thought the Nazis had plugged Guttman – Cohan, perversely, had opined it was the work of the Brits.

  Shivers said, ‘It’s a damn shame. I’ve never met the man, but I’ve always heard he was crackerjack. So I figure he knows what he’s doing sending you here.’ Again he paused, then said questioningly, ‘You wired me before from the LA office, asking about this fellow Osaka.’

  Nessheim nodded. ‘And a cousin of his, who’s called Akiro. He’s originally from Hawaii too.’

  ‘It must be something extraordinary these two are up to, if Guttman doesn’t want to use the local field office to investigate.’

  Shivers sounded slightly peeved, but then nobody liked it when Bureau HQ sent someone in to step on the toes of the local agents. Nessheim said, ‘I think it’s more a case of their activities occurring in multiple locations. I believe Mr Guttman thought it would be better to have one agent following them to different places, than several agents trying to tie the story together.’

  Shivers stared at him and finally shook his head.

  ‘Well, I’ll let you get on with it then,’ he said in a resigned voice. ‘You let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.’

  Nessheim made very little progress for the first two days. The Osaka home turned out to be a modest bungalow, north of the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, on a street grandly named Maypole Avenue that petered out in a cinder track. The actual house had been sold twice since the death of Billy’s mother and the latest owners didn’t even recognise the name. The neighbourhood seemed transient, a mix of first- or second-generation Japanese and Filipinos, with a smattering of Chinese and Hawaiian natives. A few people recalled Osaka’s mother – she had stood out as a white woman in the district. But no one claimed to have known her well. Billy himself was only dimly remembered; his high-school years as a Kibei in Japan meant people in Honolulu wouldn’t have seen anything of him for over a decade.

  Nessheim also went to the county courthouse in search of Billy Osaka’s birth certificate. It was a classical building, covered in white stucco that shone like toothpaste in the bright sun. But inside they were reorganising the archives, and after a fruitless hour combing through a disorganised mountain of files on the floor, Nessheim gave up.

  This part of the trip was starting to feel like a big waste of time, but then three days in he found a note from Shivers at his hotel, inviting him to dinner at his house that night. When he showed up at a pleasant brick-and-board ranch house on Black Point Road, close to Diamond Head, he’d been surprised to find that Shivers was a relaxed host, who handed over a lethal glass of Planter’s Punch before Nessheim had even got through the front door. Mrs Shivers came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She was trailed by a Japanese girl, who Nessheim figured was the cook.

  They all shook hands and Mrs Shivers introduced the girl as Sue Kobatake.

  ‘Sue lives with us. I guess you could say we adopted her.’

  The Japanese
girl gave a little bow and smile, then retired to the kitchen with Mrs Shivers.

  Nessheim sat down with Shivers in the living room, which had family photographs on a pedestal table and watercolours of the Islands on the walls. There was a huge arrangement of brightly coloured Hawaiian flowers, which Shivers proudly named: red-leafed anthurium, white plumeria, yellow ilima, and blue-and-gold bird of paradise.

  ‘That little gal you met just now,’ and Shivers gestured towards the kitchen, ‘her blood is a hundred per cent Japanese. Yet all she wants is to be an American – she’s even changed her name from Shizue to Suzette. And she’s taking American citizenship. I’m hoping she’ll go to college on the mainland if war doesn’t break out.’

  ‘Are the other Japanese here like that?’

  ‘Pretty much. Oh, there’s a minority who want the Emperor installed on Waikiki Beach. But we know who they are, and if war breaks out we’ll know what to do with them. What I keep telling Washington is that the others are completely loyal. I wouldn’t draw up the lists they wanted.’

  Nessheim thought about the rosters the LA office had been compiling. The same lists Osaka was supposed to help create. Things were clearly different here.

  Shivers refilled their drinks from a jug on the little bar he kept in a corner of the room. Sitting down he asked, ‘So how are you getting on finding this Osaka fellow?’

  Nessheim told him the truth, then said, ‘I’m going to turn to his cousin next. He may have had more contacts here. There’s a chance he had a rap sheet, too. He’s a bit of a low life, from what I’ve managed to find out.’

  ‘Then you’d better take a look down by the harbour.’

  The next day Nessheim had walked the waterfront. He dipped into two bars, where he found a tough-looking mix of Oriental fishermen and American sailors drinking hard. Then he saw a place that looked more promising, for its lettering was distinctly Japanese. Jin Jin read the big red neon sign, which was blinking from a faulty bulb.