Stephenson shook his head in wonder. ‘I knew we were sending you into the frying pan, but I didn’t think you’d get burnt.’
At Union Station they walked slowly through a terminal teeming with panicky civilians talking about the prospects of a Jap invasion. Stephenson had put Nessheim in a taxi and paid the fare home after Nessheim had remembered that his wallet was still in a locker on Ford Island.
At first – which meant in the days before Christmas – the entire city had seemed on war alert, recoiling from Roosevelt’s ‘day of infamy’. Strict blackout regulations were imposed, rationing was introduced, and the Japanese population began to be rounded up. The flame-fanning headlines of the popular press meant that everyone knew what to expect – the worst.
But gradually things calmed down, perhaps because the actions of the war were once again so far away – the Japanese were advancing unimpeded throughout the Far East, while the Germans seem stalled in the Soviet hinterland and had been pushed back from Kursk. There was nothing phoney about this war, but by January there was at least a sense of lull, as America focused on preparing for the part it knew it was going to play. Like an innocent beast wounded for the first time, but now recovering, the United States was gathering strength for worldwide war. Full power had been applied to its internal engine, and the capacities of its existing factories were being maximised, while hundreds of new ones were going up. All to produce enough guns and tanks and ships and planes for a fight which no one thought would be over soon.
At the Bureau office Hood lost interest in Communists in Hollywood, preoccupied instead with rounding up Japanese-Americans, while Cohan was deputed to tour other Western field offices to help them do the same. He left, but not before reminding Nessheim of his promise to show Mrs Cohan around the AMP studio.
There the biopic of Hoover had been deferred indefin-itely, while a roster of war movies were rushed into production, boosting the studio’s fortunes but leaving Nessheim with virtually nothing to do. He’d had one brief phone conversation with Guttman in February after Guttman had come out of the hospital, but Guttman didn’t sound a hundred per cent, and Nessheim had not wanted to keep him long.
Nessheim’s social life was negligible, confined to the occasional drink with Teitz. He almost never saw Lolly, for she was no longer working in the Ink Well and had landed a succession of small parts in the studio’s flurry of new productions. Recently she had been cast in her first leading role, in one of the new features the Count was directing now that the Hoover film had been put on ice. As a mark of her move up she had been given a new name – Lolly Baker was now Lois Merola.
But it was Elizaveta Mukasei he wondered most about. The Russians were officially allies now, which coincided with her disappearance from his life. His phone calls went unreturned, a note he sent got no reply. Perhaps she now regretted her overtures – if not the flirtatious ones of their midnight swim, then her suggestion of a swap: information about her husband’s activities in return for citizenship. It would have been hard to make the deal in any case – the spies the Bureau was preoccupied with were either Japanese or German. But Elizaveta could relax, he thought. If Mikhail did go back, America was not going to deport his wife when her country was on the same side.
He had returned hoping to find answers to explain his botched mission in Hawaii. If he could not undo the disastrous consequences, he could at least unearth their causes. So many questions remained unanswered. He’d phoned Dickerson, the LAPD detective, enquiring about Mrs Oka’s case and the murder of Jimmy Lapides in the barber shop. Dickerson made it clear he had bigger fish to fry, and now claimed Mrs Oka’s murder was a botched burglary after all. According to the detective, Lapides’s slit throat was a case of ‘the wrong guy being in the wrong place at the wrong time’.
The detective went on, ‘I heard you were down in San Pedro when they found that fisherman’s wife. Check with the cops down there if you want, but they haven’t got anywhere either.’
He called the Cleveland Field Office the next day from the studio. He got through to the SAC easily enough by claiming to call on Hood’s behalf. He was just double-checking an earlier query, he said, giving Mo Dubin’s name and mentioning an associate named Ike.
Sure, said the SAC, and he was happy to explain Ike Winters was a long-time gambling boss with three convictions in Ohio alone. Dubin was even better known to the Cleveland office and was a more sinister character who had started as a small-time Shaker Heights bootlegger, then gradually moved up in life by rubbing out his immediate competitors.
So why had Cohan claimed Ike and Dubin were clean? He couldn’t have called the Cleveland office, as he said he had. There was only one explanation (and the only one for his ritzy house in Beverly Hills). He was on the take. Which solved a mini-mystery for Nessheim, not that he had an ounce of proof.
So now as March was ending, Nessheim looked down at Hanako’s letter again, strongly tempted to put it in a drawer and forget about it. He’d be in the Forces soon enough, where he could make a new life for himself and forget about the recent past.
But then he thought about Billy Osaka, wondering again what was the real story behind his disappearance. Nobody knew, thought Nessheim. Except maybe Hanako.
35
THE CAMP WAS a vast, stark complex of low-roofed barracks, stretching for almost a mile into the grey salt flats. It was Spartan housing, uninsulated, with tar-papered roofs. The landscape was bleak, though in the distance dramatic, snow-capped mountains lined the horizon on three sides, foreshortened in the clear desert air like tantalising colour postcards held just out of reach.
At the front entrance to the compound a sentry swung the gate back as soon as he saw Nessheim’s badge. A twelve-foot fence ringed with triple strands of barbed wire lined the simple vast rectangle, studded at intervals by high watchtowers, which were manned by soldiers carrying vintage Springfield rifles from the Great War. Nessheim parked his car off the main dusty thoroughfare of this newly created ‘town’, between a general store with shuttered windows and a schoolhouse, which had a pretty little bell tower but no bell. Next to that sat the command post, a larger version of the general store. Two MPs stood guard on either side of its front doors.
Inside, Nessheim showed his credentials and was ushered in to the governor, a New Yorker named Kramer. Nessheim explained why he was there, turned down Kramer’s offer of an escort, and drove almost half a mile to Row C, passing monotonously identical tar-papered barracks. It was all a far cry from the Little Tokyo he had known, though since the deportations the LA neighbourhood should have been rechristened Ghost Town.
As he walked towards Hut 11 Hanako appeared in the doorway in a faded calico dress and a scarf to protect her hair from the dust.
‘You came!’ she exclaimed. He couldn’t tell if she was delighted or just surprised.
‘Hanako, why are you here? I thought you’d gone to Chicago with your family.’
‘I did, but then I came back and then internment started.’
Nessheim looked around at the packed dust, the high, wire-topped fence and the bleak hut.
She shrugged. ‘You’ll understand in a minute. Come on in.’
He followed her into a small room that had a pine table and a small sink in one corner. She crossed the room and stopped at a doorway that was screened by an old sheet held up by tacks. Lifting a corner, she gestured Nessheim to come through. He followed her cautiously into a darker room, where only a small shaft of daylight came through the solitary window, illumin-ating a patch of knot-holed plank floor and a few pine slats of the walls. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw that the furniture consisted of a camp bed against the far wall and a stool in one corner, where a man-like figure was sitting. It looked like a tailor’s dummy, but dummies didn’t wave hello.
‘Hey, Jimmy,’ said a quiet voice from the stool. Even subdued, the voice had the happy-go-lucky tone that had always made its owner such a breath of fresh air.
Nessheim moved forwar
ds until he could make out the face.
‘I thought you were dead,’ he said without relief.
‘If I don’t get out of this place, I will be soon enough.’
‘Is the food that bad?’
Billy gave a wan smile. ‘I thought I was the guy who made the jokes.’
He didn’t look good. Bare-chested and barefoot, he wore only a stained pair of khaki trousers. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and there were stray black hairs on his cheeks the size of staples. His hair had been cut, but lopsidedly.
Maybe it was because he had been looking fruitlessly for Billy so long, or maybe it was because of all that had happened since Billy had asked to meet (It’s import-ant), but Nessheim couldn’t think of anything to say.
He looked around and found another little stool in a corner. He hooked it with his foot and drew it out, then sat down. When he let his eyes rise they met Billy’s, which were animated now, as if Nessheim’s arrival had brought him to life.
Nessheim said at last, ‘As I remember, you wanted to see me.’
Billy laughed and Nessheim gave a wry smile. He noticed Hanako had left the room.
‘Like old times, huh?’ said Billy.
No, thought Nessheim. He said, ‘I was sorry about your grandmother.’
The smile on Billy’s face melted. ‘They ever catch who did it?’
‘No,’ said Nessheim. ‘The LAPD’s not too good in Little Tokyo. You know that. They say it must have been a burglar.’
Billy shook his head.
‘So where did you go anyway?’ asked Nessheim casually. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere.’
‘I needed a change of scene. I worked with my cousin in Oregon during the salmon run; I picked grapes for a bit in Napa; and I saw the High Sierra at last. Don’t tell Hanako,’ he added with a wink.
Nessheim nodded slowly. ‘That’s funny, I’ve been travelling too.’
‘Anywhere nice?’ asked Billy. They could have been swapping holiday stories over a beer.
‘Hawaii,’ said Nessheim, and Billy blinked. ‘Unfortunately I was on the job. I saw your cousin Akiro while I was there. He sent his best.’
Billy’s eyes didn’t waver, but one of his hands was now clenched. If they’d been playing five-card stud, Nessheim would have doubled down.
‘How’s he been keeping?’ Billy managed to say.
‘So-so. He lost his wife, you know.’
‘I didn’t.’ The surprise seemed genuine.
‘Yeah, someone mistook her for a tuna in the San Pedro cannery. She bled to death.’
Billy paled.
‘Still, he’s doing okay, I think. They say time heals all wounds, but I reckon money medicine works just as well. And I heard in Hawaii that Akiro’s had a big dose of it.’
‘Maybe,’ said Billy, coolly neutral. ‘But Akiro has always been a big spender.’
‘Well, he’s got something to spend now.’ Nessheim waited a moment, then asked as if out of the blue, ‘Did you pay him?’
‘For what?’ Billy looked suddenly alert. ‘I might have slipped him the odd couple of bucks now and then. Akiro was always short.’
‘Your friend Ike says the same of you.’
Billy whistled air through pursed lips. ‘You get around, Jimmy.’
‘Akiro was on a different scale altogether. He’s come into something like twenty-five grand.’
‘How the hell do you know?’ Billy was sitting up now.
‘I did the groundwork. Ask Hanako. I even met her boss Mr Satake. Did Hanako siphon off the money? You know, twenty-five grand from the Russians?’
‘You’d better ask her. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘The Russians must have thought they were smart using a Japanese bank – excuse me, a Japanese-American bank.’
‘Is there a difference?’ asked Billy with a bitterness Nessheim had never heard in him before. Billy gestured to the grim room they sat in and with a wider sweep of his hand to the camp itself. Nessheim could see his point.
‘Anyhow,’ Nessheim continued, ‘it was pretty dumb of them. If the Russians were trying to hide the transfer they couldn’t really complain when Hanako lifted half of it.’
‘You’ve learned a lot of things,’ said Billy.
‘Not that much really. I was hoping to get some more answers from you.’
‘Sure,’ said Billy, but his eyes were flitting to the door.
Nessheim sat back, making sure his gun hung loose. ‘When did Akiro tell you about the plan to attack Pearl Harbor?’
Billy pursed his lips, then rocked his head back and forth. ‘Take it easy on me, Jimmy,’ he said. He wouldn’t look Nessheim in the eye.
‘Is that what you were going tell me?’
Billy nodded reluctantly.
‘So why the hell didn’t you?’ Nessheim was almost shouting. He heard Hanako stir in the next room and lowered his voice. ‘All those guys who died. I saw it, Billy. It wasn’t nice.’
‘They were trying to kill me. They still are. They thought I was going to talk.’
‘To me?’
A faint hint of a nod.
Billy was trying to pull himself together.
He said, ‘Listen, I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but first you have to get me out of here.’
Nessheim was still picturing the sunken USS Arizona. ‘Then play ball, Billy. Who is trying to kill you? I know it’s not Ike any more. Is it the nationalists? Or the Tokyo Club? Or are they the same thing? I need to know.’
‘If I tell you now there won’t be any reason for you to pull strings. Don’t bullshit me, Jimmy. I know how it works.’
Billy hadn’t lost his cunning. It sat beneath his surface razzmatazz like tracks under a bouncy train.
Nessheim stood up. ‘I’ll see what I can do. I’ll come back in the morning.’
‘Hey Jimmy,’ Billy said, shivering slightly. ‘Any chance you could loan me your gun? Just for the night.’
Nessheim shook his head. ‘Sorry.’
Billy hugged himself. ‘And I’m sorry, too, that I didn’t tell you. But I was scared.’
There was no sign of Hanako when Nessheim left. He drove down the dusty avenue and pulled up at the command post again. Inside, his conversation with Kramer proved unsatisfactorily short; in the base commander Nessheim had run into a classic bureaucrat who was uninterested in individual situations. Kramer wasn’t going to be swayed by the fact that people in the camp – nationalists? gangsters? – might want to harm Billy Osaka. Kramer’s concern was with authorisation, and he made it clear that here Nessheim fell short.
Lone Pine was an arid, unattractive little town with one hotel on its main street. It was two storeys with a long railed balcony on its upper floor, but had seen better days. He paid for a room, then went and asked for a Western Union office, which turned out to double as the Southern Pacific railway depot, a little north-east of town.
OSAKA LOCATED. OWENS VALLEY RECEPTION CENTER INDEPENDENCE CALIFORNIA. REQUIRE AUTHORISATION RELEASE IN MY CUSTODY ASAP TO BASE GOVERNOR KRAMER. URGENT REPEAT URGENT. REPLY HOTEL TROUBADOR LONE PINE
JN
It was only three o’clock, but it would be six out east, too late for Guttman to do anything until morning.
Nessheim read in his room for a couple of hours, then ate an early supper of chicken-fried steak with baked beans in the hotel dining room. After supper, he was half-tempted by the saloon, but went up to his room. It had a radio and he listened to news on KSL, a Salt Lake station, about the Russian push against the Germans, and about the Japanese advance in the Philippines. There was a report, too, of the American soldiers now in Great Britain – a crackly voice said that it was just fine over there and the boys were getting used to fish and chips. Then KSL played religious music until he fell asleep. When he woke halfway through the night it was to a blanket of static.
There were no messages downstairs when he checked out after a breakfast of grits and bacon, and his frustration grew as h
e sped towards the camp – the MP barely had time to open the gate as he drove in. He parked and jumped out of his car, half-running up the steps into the headquarters, passing a typist who did a double take when he walked straight into the governor’s office.
Kramer was at the window, looking out at the dusty parade ground where the internees gathered for announcements and the distribution of parcels.
‘Have you had a telegram from D.C.?’ Nessheim asked immediately.
Kramer didn’t turn around.
‘I have,’ he said.
‘Did it authorise Osaka’s release?’ he demanded.
‘It did.’
‘Can I see the internee, please?’
He didn’t care if Kramer wanted to sulk. He just wanted to get Osaka out of there. He’d do what he could for Hanako once he got back to LA.
Kramer went and stood behind his desk. He sighed and bowed his head.
‘You may not want to.’
Kramer looked at Nessheim for the first time. There was something awful in his eyes, something beseeching. It spooked Nessheim.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Come with me and I’ll show you.’
There was no sign of Hanako at Hut 11. The tiny table in the front room still held their dishes from last night’s supper. There was an MP in the next room, visible when the sheet hanging in the doorway ruffled in the slight breeze. He looked relieved when they joined him and after entering the room Nessheim saw why.
Billy was lying on his back on the floor, both his arms extended. He wore the same trousers but had put on a shirt; he was still barefoot. He looked smaller and almost frail, stretched out on the plank floor like an overgrown kid. But there was a knife in his chest, which had a long oval handle and was stuck in to a hilt that was covered in phoney little jewels. It looked like a stage prop from a production of The Arabian Nights, but it had done its job.
The Little Tokyo Informant Page 31
