The Little Tokyo Informant

by Andrew Rosenheim

  ‘Who killed him?’ Nessheim demanded. He noticed there was very little blood.

  Kramer didn’t reply. The MP shrugged, then said, ‘There’re disagreements among the Japs. Sometimes the arguments get out of hand. Somebody gets mad …’

  ‘Bullshit. Look at him – he hasn’t been in a fight.’

  The MP looked uncomfortable.

  Kramer said from the window, ‘The soldier’s right, Agent Nessheim. Osaka wasn’t very popular among the Butoki-Kai. And they seem to be in charge.’

  The reactionary nationalists.

  ‘Seem to be? Don’t you know?’

  Kramer shrugged.

  ‘Where was Hanako Yukuri when this happened?’ Nessheim asked angrily.

  The MP said, ‘The women gather once a week to sort out any problems with the food supply. Last night was meeting night. When Yukuri came back she found him, just like this.’

  ‘I want this looked into right away. Fingerprints and people interviewed. Somebody must have heard something.’

  Kramer looked at him glumly. Nessheim could see he was worried about what had happened under his watch, and he wouldn’t want another telegram from Washington.

  Kramer said, ‘There’s one other thing you should know.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Somebody cut the fence last night. At the outer perim-eter. We’ve done a roll call and everyone’s accounted for. It looks like they were cutting their way in, not out.’

  36

  NESSHEIM STAYED IN the Owens Valley for two more days, consoling Hanako and starting a process to send her to her family in Chicago. No one in the camp talked, no one claimed to know anything. He returned to LA with a low-grade fever and once home he slept for twelve hours straight. The next day he sat in his AMP office and kept the door closed. Lolly’s replacement had the moxie of a timid mole, so he managed to keep to himself while he thought about Billy Osaka.

  In a curious way he was mourning him, this extraordinary figure whom he had barely known – until, that is, he had gone missing; then Nessheim had learned more about Billy Osaka than he had ever bargained for. Billy’s old teacher Larson had been right; Billy would never have been truly ‘one of us’ – his deportation to the Owens Valley was proof enough of that. But he’d paid a terrible price for his sheer exuberant Americanness; the nationalists had punished him for that. There seemed little hope of catching the killer, since they must have called in someone from outside to do the job.

  Then late that afternoon Teitz poked his head in. He looked like his old self, with a spanking new blue bow tie. ‘Coming to the Liberty Bonds party?’

  ‘I hadn’t planned to,’ Nessheim said without interest.

  Teitz pulled a face. ‘We’ve got to do our bit. It’s not like we’re in uniform – yet. I could use a lift – one of my tyres needs retreading and it’ll be a week before they can get it done. I never knew rubber was such a key ingredient for waging war.’

  So he drove Teitz to the fundraiser in West Hollywood, which was being held in a school gym. That meant no booze, so they stopped for martinis at Musso & Frank, where Teitz claimed to recognise half a dozen famous writers as they sat down at the bar.

  ‘So what’s new?’ asked Nessheim, chewing on his tooth-picked olive. ‘Heard from Stuckey?’

  ‘He’s still in Basic, apparently.’

  Nessheim nodded. ‘How goes the great job hunt?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? They’re keeping me on to work on a new comedy. Madame Merola’s bid for fame.’

  Nessheim smiled. ‘She’ll always be Lolly to me. I hear she’s stepping out with Pearl Junior.’

  Teitz laughed. ‘I don’t reckon it’s going to last – apparently Buddy doesn’t think Lolly’s good enough for his boy. But at least she’s got her teeth fixed out of it.’

  The benefit turned out to have been hijacked by pink politicos, which meant no band and not much food, just a succession of putatively stirring speeches, lauding the Russian counter-offensive. Waverley was there, and Nessheim thought he saw Nick from the weekend at the ranch near Santa Barbara.

  At last even Teitz’s enthusiasm for a party flagged. Just as they had decided to go for another martini, Teitz plucked Nessheim by his jacket’s sleeve.

  ‘There she is,’ he said.

  ‘There’s who?’ asked Nessheim.

  Then he saw Elizaveta Mukasei. She was wearing a knee-length black dress with a twin-strand choker of pearls. Elegant, understated. If she had seen Nessheim she didn’t let on.

  ‘You remember the older broad I told you Osaka used to see.’

  ‘Billy?’ Nessheim said the name reluctantly.

  ‘Well there she blows.’ He pointed straight at Elizaveta. There was no mistaking who he meant.

  ‘Are you sure, Teitz?’ Nessheim asked urgently. ‘I thought it was Mrs Pearl that Billy was knocking off.’

  ‘I’ve never laid eyes on Mrs Pearl in my life. So yes, I’m sure.’

  He tried to tell himself that Elizaveta could have been just a friend of Billy’s. He didn’t want to chase answers any more, not unless they could tell the whole story. Maybe there weren’t any big answers. Maybe they were like Bishop Berkeley’s tree falling in a forest with no one around – it doesn’t make a noise if nobody’s there. It doesn’t even exist.

  As the day for his planned departure neared, his sense of detachment grew. When late one day he dropped by the field office in the Federal Building it was after an absence of ten days. He didn’t want to see Hood and, thankfully, Cohan was still away on secondment. He’d send them both a copy of his resignation letter to Guttman once he had successfully enlisted.

  He went to his desk in the corner, intent on emptying his few belongings into a paper bag. On the desk top he found an envelope addressed to him, postmarked Honolulu.

  Inside the envelope there were two folded pieces of paper. One was a copy of a form, the other a handwritten note on official stationery from The Office of Births and Deaths, Honolulu Hawaii. He read that one first:

  Dear Mr Nessheim,

  Sara Kane our high school helper found the birth certificate you were looking for. It was buried with a few others underneath the files in the new record room. I am so sorry you didn’t find it when you were here, but hope the attached Photostat will do in its stead – the Court officials upstairs finally bought a machine!

  Yours truly,

  Mary Beth Carlyle

  Glancing at the certificate with Billy’s parents’ names, he was glad they weren’t alive to learn about their son’s wretched end.

  Then he looked at the birth certificate again. The name Billy had put down on his FBI form was Mary Mitchie. Irish as the Book of Kells. But there could be no mistake: on the birth certificate it said Maria Lyakhov.

  Suddenly the answers were making lots of noise.

  He got through to her at last on the phone. When he proposed a meeting she tried to put him off, but something in his voice must have sounded an alarm bell and eventually she agreed, even offering to come to his house. She seemed to find it odd when he insisted they meet somewhere else.

  He parked his car below Griffith Observatory and walked down to the small park at the bottom. It was an open, grassy space of maybe two acres with gravelled paths. There were a few wooden benches, which had their donors’ names engraved on little brass plates.

  He sat on a bench with his arms spread along its back, trying to look relaxed. He kept his eyes open and after a few minutes he saw Elizaveta begin the trek from the lower parking lot towards the bench. She had come without a coat, which reassured him, and was wearing a smart, cherry-coloured dress and black felt hat. There was no one with her.

  He stood up.

  ‘It’s been too long,’ she said brightly as they both sat down on the bench.

  ‘I wanted to see you before I left town.’

  ‘Really? Have you been transferred?’

  ‘No,’ he said, but didn’t explain.

  ‘Oh.’ She gave a short
sigh. ‘It is good to see you, but sad to think it may be the last time. At least while this war goes on.’

  ‘Have you changed your mind about staying?’

  She looked surprised. ‘Didn’t I tell you? I will be staying. Mikhail has been told it is crucial that he continues with his vice-consular duties here. He was very disappointed.’ She smiled. ‘And I pretended to be.’

  ‘Have his duties changed?’ he asked shortly.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘If you are referring to our conversation at the ranch, I am afraid I was guilty of exaggeration. I was worried about going back to Russia. You see,’ and she ducked her head like a schoolgirl, ‘I’m afraid I am the most terrible coward.’

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, but looked across the park. A gardener was planting some roses near a little pavilion. He wore thick canvas gloves to keep his hands from being pricked.

  Nessheim turned to Elizaveta. ‘I want to tell you a story.’

  ‘Story?’ She looked amused.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Her eyes were scanning the park. ‘Why don’t you take off your jacket first?’

  ‘My jacket?’ It wasn’t hot that day. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just take it off. Please.’

  He stood up reluctantly and took off his jacket, then turned around, thinking of Akiro’s similar request. He was wearing his .38. ‘You know I carry a gun.’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t know if you were wearing a microphone.’

  ‘It would have to be awfully small. We don’t have them like that.’

  ‘We do,’ she said flatly.

  ‘I see,’ he said. He sat down again and without looking at her, he began to speak:

  ‘Once upon a time there was a boy named Billy. He had a Japanese father and a white mother and in his early years he grew up in Hawaii. His father died when he was young, and after that people were told he went to Japan for the rest of his schooling. His girlfriend here in LA – I bet you never knew about her – thought he was Kibei. But he wasn’t. He told people he was half-Irish, but in fact his mother was Russian. She didn’t send him back to Japan for his education, but to Moscow.’

  ‘Is there something wrong with that?’ Elizaveta asked.

  ‘That depends on your point of view. This was the early Thirties and the first Soviet espionage teams were being sent abroad.’ Stephenson had told him this on the train. ‘A new generation of spies was being trained. Billy was one of them.’

  ‘But he would have been only a schoolboy,’ she protested.

  Nessheim shook his head. ‘It’s like the Jesuits. You know, give me your son until he’s seven and he’s mine for life. I don’t think Billy went to a normal high school in the Soviet Union. Or if he did, he had supplementary tutoring in spycraft. He would have kept up his Japanese – he was bilingual after all – but they would have taken particular care to keep his English fluent, because it was America he would be returning to, not Japan.

  ‘When he left Moscow he came to the mainland here, and the first thing he did was re-establish contact with a cousin he’d known as a boy in Hawaii. Akiro wasn’t half-Russian – or half-Red for that matter. He was a bit of a crook – most of his friends were Tokyo Club mobsters – and he was a Japanese nationalist. Ideal, if you wanted to connect with the nationalists here and those in Japan.’

  ‘This is a very interesting story,’ said Elizaveta. ‘Perhaps you have missed your calling.’

  ‘Not if you know what most Hollywood writers get paid,’ he said dryly. ‘But let me go on. Now, our Billy became more valuable when other agents arrived and started giving him direction. They had specific things they wanted to know. Such as: were the Japanese going to attack America? Or would they move on neighbouring territories, like the parts of China they hadn’t occupied? Or – and this was the biggest fish of all – attack the Soviet Union?’

  ‘I would call that natural curiosity.’

  ‘Of course, but it wasn’t the Vice-Consul who was going to supply the answers. It was Billy, with a large helping of funds. You see, Billy’s cousin was very well connected in nationalist circles, but he was also a gambler – he’d bet on anything. I’m sure you’ve met the type.’

  ‘No doubt. Perhaps Billy did some gambling, too.’

  ‘You bet,’ said Nessheim, his lip curling at the pun. ‘To cut a not-so-long-story short, Billy told the Russians that if they gave him money to pay Akiro, he could get information out of him about the Japanese plans. They agreed, and he did.’

  ‘So everyone was happy.’

  ‘For a little while, but I’m beginning to see why money doesn’t play a part in fairy tales. When this money came in, not all of it went to Billy’s cousin.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Billy, you see, had started to worry about his own well-being. And there’s nothing like twenty-five grand to keep a guy healthy.’

  ‘You think he stole this money?’

  ‘Yes. And I think the Russian running him thought he did.’

  ‘And you believe that was my husband?’

  Nessheim shook his head. ‘No. It was you.’

  She tried to protest, until she saw the expression on his face.

  He said, ‘Though I don’t believe that romancing Billy was part of your assignment. I just think you were sweet on the kid. That’s what makes you even more frightening.’

  ‘Frightening?’ she asked, as if fear were only something in the movies.

  ‘Yes. You were so in thrall to your ideological masters that you were even willing to kill the man you were sleeping with.’

  For a moment he thought she was going to slap his face. When she didn’t he said, ‘I’ll finish my story. I think that after Billy came to live here in America he gradually started to fall for the place – something one of his old teachers at UCLA understood. Ultimately, Billy wasn’t interested any longer in being a good Communist. You were starting to see this too, and you saw the potential threat. Billy was right to think his life was in danger. Then Billy went missing and I came along, looking for him. He wanted to see me, said he had something important to tell me. You must have suspected something like that so you had the note put in my house – Billy Osaka RIP. It couldn’t have been you personally – you were with me at the benefit. I figure your friend Ivan the Bruiser must have slipped out, after bumping into me so I’d think he was there all evening.’

  ‘Maybe you were just being warned off.’

  ‘I like the “maybe”, Mrs Mukasei. But when that didn’t work, your people did the next best thing – they tried to kill me.’

  ‘We must be very inept then. You seem to be breathing.’

  ‘But others aren’t.’

  ‘I never killed anyone.’

  ‘I think you did.’

  She started to object, but he cut her off – ‘Hitler’s never pulled a trigger, but he’s killing millions.’

  She said disdainfully, ‘How can you compare the two? It’s ludicrous, just like this story of yours.’ Her voice was impatient. ‘There is a war out there, you know, which you have only just discovered. My country is fighting for its life, but that’s nothing new for us: Mikhail was fighting in Spain while you were chasing petty crooks. So don’t lecture me.’

  ‘An old lady’s strangled? Akiro’s wife gets chopped up like tuna fish? Some poor bastard gets his throat cut in the barber’s chair? And you’re saying they’re all done to protect the Soviet Union?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said without hesitation. ‘My country was in the utmost danger – it still is. I could not risk news of the Japanese plans reaching your government.’ She added, almost as an afterthought, ‘There are many innocent casualties in war, Agent Nessheim.’

  ‘I have to agree: we both know I was supposed to be the guy in the barber’s chair.’

  She stiffened and Nessheim gave a caustic laugh. ‘Chim,’ he said, mimicking the voice beneath his cabin window in the mountains above Santa Barbara. ‘Come for a svim, Chim.’

  The greater his a
nger, the more futile he felt. He suddenly thumped the bench arm with his fist. ‘If it weren’t for this goddam war you’d be facing the chair!’

  ‘I don’t know about that. There seems very little evidence to your accusations,’ she said smoothly. ‘And we are allies now, Agent Nessheim.’

  She was right. There was little, if anything, he could prove.

  Elizaveta took a deep breath. ‘I have listened to your story with great interest. Now, is there anything else left to discuss? If not I must be going.’

  When he stayed silent, Elizaveta stood up.

  ‘I am sorry this was not a friendlier meeting.’ She extended her hand. ‘I hope we may meet again.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said.

  Her face froze when she realised he wouldn’t shake her hand.

  37

  HE DROVE UP the side of Laurel Canyon slowly, still outraged by Elizaveta Mukasei. She hadn’t told him anything he hadn’t known or guessed already, nor had she seemed surprised by his accusations – it was the matter-of-factness of her acknowledgement of what she’d done that had enraged him in the park, and depressed him now.

  He couldn’t wait to leave LA. Nessheim wasn’t going to miss the house on Mount Olympus Drive, which had only been a transient station for him. Although he liked the space it had provided (and the privacy), he had been too unsettled ever to consider it a home. Not that he’d be settling down anywhere in the near future. Barracks life in boot camp and then – who knew? He hoped it would be combat in a theatre of war, but it was impossible to predict whether he’d be fighting in the Far East or in North Africa. A year before he had only thought of the Nazis as America’s enemies, but Los Angeles and then Pearl Harbor had changed that. He wished that the Russians were also on the enemy side.

  He parked in the garage, then climbed the stone steps and unlocked the front door. The living room already seemed deserted, even though the furniture wasn’t his and would be staying. He had little to pack, really, just clothes and a box he’d gradually been filling with books in the spare room.