Out of Time

by Michael Z. Lewin

‘He is long dead,’ Tamae Mitsuki said.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Not a fraction as sorry as I am,’ she said. ‘He treated me like a human being. That is not a common thing between a man and a woman.’

  ‘Do you remember any times when he had communications with someone who might have been his former employer?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Or from anybody who might have known him in Indianapolis?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘What sort of work did your husband do in Los Angeles?’

  ‘He was not able to get domestic work without a letter of reference. He helped in his brother’s grocery business for a while. But less than fifteen months after we were married it was Pearl Harbor.’ She looked at me. ‘Do you know what happened to the Japanese who lived on the West Coast after Pearl Harbor?’

  ‘They were interned, weren’t they?’

  ‘Rounded up. Dispossessed. Herded into camps. Over a hundred thousand people, the first within two months of Pearl Harbor. And not just Japanese subjects, but naturalised and native-born Americans too.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Koichi died in there. Manzano. That was the name of our camp.’

  ‘You were imprisoned too, Tamae?’ Paula Belter asked.

  ‘Not at first, but soon.’ She shrugged. ‘Not content with that, they encouraged the men to sign up for the army. They had a special unit, all Japanese American. I wouldn’t let Koichi go. We had our son by then. But Koichi died anyway.’

  ‘How did he die?’ I asked.

  ‘Pneumonia,’ she said. ‘He was not hospitalised or treated. I have been told since that there could have been a law suit for neglect. But that was not the point.’

  ‘No,’ I said. Then, ‘why did you come to Indianapolis?’

  ‘My family, as the war drew to a close, and after, kept going on at me to marry again. I didn’t want to, so I left. I came to Indianapolis because Koichi had worked here. It was almost the only other place in the country I knew the name of.’

  ‘How did you meet Mrs Murchison?’

  ‘She was the only boarding house proprietor who would give me a room.’

  ‘So you stayed at the house on New York Street?’

  ‘Yes. With my son. As a boarder at first, and then I did housework for her. But the property was in bad condition and was soon sold. Mrs Murchison invited us to come with her, but her new house was small. I kept my own place until Hiroshi left home.’

  ‘Hiroshi is your son.’

  ‘Yes. I still worked for Mrs Murchison and later for others and we got through.’

  ‘You must have been very sorry when Mrs Murchison died.’ ,

  ‘She was a friend when no one else was,’ Mrs Mitsuki said simply.

  ‘Did Mrs Murchison ever talk to you about the woman who—’

  ‘I have been here when you asked questions of Mrs Belter and her husband, Mr Samson. If I had any information which could have been of use to you, I would have said so. There was nothing. We did not talk a great deal. I am not a great one for talking.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  We all used our teacups as punctuation, a pause, before I began again and said to Mrs Belter, ‘My other question.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘When you visited Mrs Murchison the morning of the day she died . . .’ I could see Paula Belter stiffen. ‘You left Mrs Mitsuki with her and asked to see a doctor.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you want a doctor for?’

  Paula Belter played with her lips. She said, ‘I was angry at her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mom. Mrs Murchison. I told her I was fed up with her refusing to answer the questions about my past. I told her I thought I was entitled to know and when she avoided answers I thought she was faking and that I was going to tell her doctor and that I was going to get him to help me, maybe give her truth serum.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘How did she react to that?’

  ‘It upset her,’ Paula Belter said. ‘The poor old lady.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Not the way one would wish to say goodbye to someone who was one’s mother.’

  I was wading from one neck-deep emotional pond to another. I didn’t mean to be insensitive but I was tiring of lachrymogenic tales and had things to sort out.

  I asked, of them both, ‘And the threats didn’t produce any further information?’

  ‘No, Mr Samson,’ Tamae Mitsuki said sternly.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I want to speak to your husband, Mrs Belter.’

  ‘Must you?’

  ‘I suppose not but I have a suggestion that will involve a decision for you to make together. I can explain it for you to pass on to him when he feels better.’

  ‘He feels all right. He’s just tired. The doctor, my doctor, insisted that he go to bed.’

  ‘Is this something about Mrs Murchison?’ Tamae asked.

  ‘No. It is a way to try to precipitate knowledge about Mrs Belter’s mother.’

  They both looked attentive.

  ‘I have located someone who either knows where Vera Wert Edwards is or who knows what happened to her,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ Mrs Belter asked.

  ‘A lawyer in town whose firm represents Mrs Edwards or her interests. What I suggest is that you consider legal action,’ I said.

  ‘What kind?’ Mrs Belter asked.

  ‘If your mother has died, then you have a claim on her estate. If they won’t say that she is alive then they are obstructing the course of such a claim. The idea is something like a writ of habeas corpus to make the law firm produce your mother in a court. At worst, they’ll prove she is dead. At best, you might get to meet her.’

  Chapter Twenty

  I drove back to the centre of the city on Meridian Street. I thought about a couple of visits I could make but stamped them Immediate Attention, Tomorrow. I hardly glanced at Wanda Edwards’ house as I passed it.

  It was half past seven by the time I crossed the bridge over Fall Creek, near The Fandango, where I was not keeping track of Lance Whisstock. But it made me think of law and order. I stopped at a liquor store and bought a six-pack.

  I drove to Vermont Street and parked in front of a three-storey frame house of turn-of-the-century vintage. There was a glow through the curtains on the ground floor. I took the six-pack and went to the front door. I rang the bell and a porch light came on.

  It was answered by a tired-looking man with thin grey hair and only seven toes. ‘Hello, Powder,’ I said. Leroy Powder was another lieutenant of my acquaintance in the Indianapolis Police Force, head of Missing Persons. But to call him a friend would be to take liberties with the word. It is hard for those of us not privy to his innermost workings to think how a social roughneck like Powder could actually have a friend.

  He sighed heavily. He said, ‘If you hear one coming, you leave by the back, which is why you people have to wear gumshoes.’

  He did not invite me in.

  ‘Show some hospitality or fix the porch roof,’ I said. ‘It’s wet out here. I even brought you some beer.’ I held the six-pack up. ‘I won’t stay long enough to drink more than one.’

  He stood mute before me for several seconds more. Then he made way and held the door. As I passed him he said, ‘A gumshoe bearing gifts. Who did you kill?’

  We sat in his front room. When I had been there last it was covered in papers like a, snowfall. Tonight it was tidy, clean, even sparkling on the bits which could reasonably be made to sparkle.

  I broke two cans off the pack.

  Powder left the room. He returned with two glasses. He put one down next to me, and picked up one of the beers.

  ‘And lost weight too,’ I said. ‘Someone is having a good influence on you.’

  He opened the can, filled his glass and drank. ‘O.K., shamus,’ he said. ‘I’ve accepted your bribe. What is it that you want? The answer is no.’

  ‘I
came on an impulse,’ I said.

  ‘Strange urges you P.I.’s get.’

  ‘I’m trying to trace a woman who left Indianapolis in 1940. I don’t know where she went or for sure whether she is still alive now. Other things have happened, even a murder, but the core of the job is a Missing Persons case. I’m confused as hell, so I thought I would be humble and come to an expert.’

  ‘Office hours begin at nine,’ Powder said.

  ‘Come on!’ I said. ‘I read all your PR in the papers about the best Missing Persons solution rate in the Midwest. I’m paying you a compliment. Help me.’

  Powder sipped from his beer.

  I drank mine quickly and felt the benefit.

  I told him about the case.

  ‘You don’t know where she went in 1940?’

  ‘No. No idea.’

  ‘But she cares for this child.’

  ‘Set her up with a woman as a mother. Provided money all through childhood.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do for you, gumshoe? Pull the broad out of a top hat?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Make a suggestion? Give an opinion?’

  ‘I don’t think your habeas corpus ploy will help you much.’

  ‘I’m hoping to establish whether she is alive or dead.’

  ‘In the fullness of the time it takes to utilise the law?’ I smiled, accepting the point.

  ‘So what are you left with from the 1940 end?’ Powder leaned back and rubbed his face with both hands. ‘The dead man’s sister,’ he said. He thought. ‘I suppose Miller could check out the houseboy in California for you.’

  ‘Miller is pretty busy with the Murchison case, and some personal problems,’ I said. Then, ‘But why check that?’

  ‘I don’t like his wife coming back to Indianapolis. What’s the name again?’

  ‘Mitsuki.’

  ‘Why the hell come here? There is no Japanese community here. There are a dozen other places she might have gone first.’

  I thought about it. I said, ‘I have the feeling that she was pretty unworldly then. Maybe even now. She still gets emotional about her husband, and that was more than thirty-five years ago.’

  ‘A long time,’ he agreed. ‘But you asked.’ He shrugged. ‘Or you could try to go at it from the other end.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If this Edwards woman cared about the kid,’ he said, waving a finger at me, ‘enough to arrange for her bringing-up, then chances are she still keeps some kind of eye on it. If she’s alive. Either she isn’t far away or she has somebody here who lets her know how the kid is doing.’

  I paused with a lip on the rim. I said, ‘That makes considerable sense.’

  ‘I always make sense,’ Powder said. He looked at his watch. ‘Go away, will you?’

  On the way home I stopped at a supermarket and filled a recycled paper bag with an ecologically unjustifiable steak. A thick one.

  For a change there was no message on the answering machine.

  I was grateful, because my mind was in tired tatters.

  I grilled my steak: ‘Where were you on the night of November 18th?’

  I was sopping up the last of the blood with instant mashed potato when the telephone rang.

  I felt better for the food. I answered immediately.

  It was Charlie Carson. He said, ‘I got a date for you on that Daisy Wines thing.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘She first worked here August 11, 1935. She did two weeks. I don’t know if you know the business . . .?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a slow time, August. He hardly paid her anything. A kind of audition rate, you know. But she musta been O.K., because she did two more weeks at the beginning of September and she got better money. There was two more weeks in October, nothing till end of February in ’36, and then it was off and on until June. June she started a long spell, five straight months. One of the regulars, Ginny, you met her, yeah? She went away for a while and Daisy Wines got herself established. Her money went up good. Ginny got back December. That’s when the newspaper shot I showed you was took. The picture you got is from early ’38.’

  ‘I’m very grateful that you’ve taken the time to look all this up.’

  ‘No problem. Makes a nice change from kicking the tails of fourteen-year-olds who think they look like they’re twenty-one.’

  He agreed to accept more than my thanks, when I returned his photo. We hung up.

  I sat by the phone and thumbed through my notebook.

  Paula Wines Belter had been born February 5th, 1936. Making conception sometime after the beginning of May the previous year. When her mother was sixteen. Within a couple of weeks of Paula’s birth, Daisy Wines was working again.

  I fidgeted.

  The accretion of information about Daisy Wines was making me restless. Every time I learned something, more questions flaked up.

  * * * * *

  After pacing around the room, until the mice that live under my floorboards began banging their ceiling, with pieces of stale cheese, I decided to call my woman friend and maybe go out. She would understand.

  ‘You’re not in a fit state to be with anybody,’ she said within a minute on the phone. ‘You always get like this when some case is not resolving itself. It addles your brain. Why take it out on me?’

  She understood only too well.

  I hung up in a moment of isolation and despair.

  But then, as it sometimes does, the telephone relented, and rang.

  ‘Hello, love.’

  A light thin female voice with a thick rural accent asked, ‘Is that Mr Samson?’

  Addled or not I sensed a need to speak gently. ‘Yes Ma’am, it is.’

  ‘Are you the one that’s offering that there reward for information rendered about Vera Wert?’

  ‘I am certainly trying to learn more about her, yes.’

  ‘Could you tell me how much in the way of payment that might be, please?’

  ‘It depends really on how good the information is.’

  ‘Well, it couldn’t hardly be none better,’ she said.

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Cause I’m the only sister what she’s got, and the onliest living direct close relation because all our brothers is dead.’ This was said with strength and defiance.

  ‘Can I know your name, please?’

  ‘I am Miss Winnie Jane Wert.’

  ‘Where are you, Miss Wert?’

  ‘I have me a little house in Peru.’ In Hoosierland we pronounce the town Peé-roo.

  ‘I know it’s late,’ I said, ‘but would you be willing to talk to me about your sister tonight?’

  ‘That would suit me just fine,’ she said.

  I looked at my watch. Nine-twenty. ‘I would think that I could be there a little before eleven.’

  ‘I’ll be here,’ she said.

  I asked for and received instructions for getting to her house.

  ‘Would you,’ she asked, ‘be bringing cash money?’

  ‘I can do that,’ I said.

  ‘You ain’t never said how much you was thinking of.’

  ‘Would twenty dollars be worth some of your time?’

  ‘I was thinking more like . . .’ She thought. ‘Twenty-five?’

  Miss Wert’s house was a clapboard shack on the edge of Peru on the Wawpecong road. I made good time, even at 55mph, on US 31, a divided highway all the way to Nead. From there it was another five miles. I pulled up outside the house at two minutes past eleven.

  There was no bell so I knocked at the door. A dog round the back barked a couple of times and some paint came off on my knuckles. After a minute, a short, round woman with one burn-scarred cheek opened the door a crack.

  She asked, ‘Who’s there?’

  I gave my name and she stepped back to invite me into a room which was Spartanly tidy.

  ‘Make yourself at home,’ Winnie Jane Wert said. She was dressed in a loose gingham dress with vertical stripes. It loo
ked clean and recently ironed.

  I sat and before she followed suit she said, ‘I hope you got cash money.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Because I ain’t got no cheque account. Don’t cotton to banks a lot.’ She sat down and faced me.

  ‘You looking to capture Vera for something, or what?’

  ‘I’m a private detective,’ I said, ‘and I’m just trying to find out what happened to her and where she is if she’s still alive.’

  ‘Someone say she died?’ Miss Wert asked, with her dark eyebrows arching under mostly grey hair. She seemed to be in her mid-fifties.

  ‘No. But I don’t know much about her since about 1940, and it’s a long time.’

  ‘She sure left these parts since a long time,’ she echoed. She shook her head, looked down and sucked her lower lip. ‘My big sister,’ she said. ‘My onliest big sister.’

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘See her? When I was seven years of age.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘That was in 1935, two years after Ma and Pa was took.’

  ‘Took?’

  ‘Died. They was at a bank, in Logansport, and some robbers come in. They was a sheriff with his deputy come along and gunplay opened up and Ma and Pa both got theyselves killed. Trying to get out’n the line of fire of the one bunch they ran in front of the other. Both of ’em had their heads blowed off.’

  ‘How many children were there?’

  ‘The six of us. Vera was the old un. Earl was next, then Cloyd. Me, Jimmie Luke and baby Emmett.’

  ‘What happened to you all?’

  ‘Too many to stay together. The two youngest went to Pa’s brother. That was his son’s wife you called on the telephone today what then called me and give your number. Me and Cloyd come to a friend of Ma’s here in Peru. Earl and Vera got placed with different folks in Logansport so as they could be near to go to school there. The deal was they would help at the houses.’

  ‘Who did Vera get placed with?’

  ‘Doctor and Mrs Wingfield, only she runned away. Took off and nobody ain’t seen her since. I didn’t see her since they got us together Easter time. The Wingfields was real nice people and saw us kids right as far as meeting up a couple of times a year was concerned even after she left them. But the last time I saw Vera was Easter in 1935. By time the Fourth of July rolled around she was long gone from their house.’