Woman with a Blue Pencil

by Gordon McAlpine

  He was, after all, her best hope.

  Who was the man with the gun and why was he holding Kyoko at bay? It didn’t matter.

  At the foot of the ladder, Sumida considered his options. He could call out to the armed man, demanding that he drop his weapon, as they did in the movies. But this wasn’t the movies. And Sumida was no gunslinger. He didn’t relish any Western-style showdown, wherein the man would turn and they both would fire. Sumida didn’t like his odds in such a confrontation. Another option was to creep forward along the wooden catwalk until he was close enough to put the gun to the back of the man’s head, whereupon his demand to “drop it” could not be resisted. But he feared that even with the sound of the water below and the amusement park sounds above, he could not be silent enough to draw that close. Besides, his movement along the creaking catwalk would inevitably cause enough sway (even if only a little) that the man would feel Sumida’s approach before he arrived.

  The third option was to fire from here.

  It wasn’t so far. He could steady himself against the base of the ladder, using two hands on the pistol. Perhaps he hadn’t thought of himself as being a man who’d shoot another man in the back. But that was more movie-think. Besides this man was holding a gun on Kyoko! Mustn’t it have been like this before, when Czernicek had held a pistol on Kyoko at the edge of the water someplace along the LA harbor, not so far from here? That had happened. He’d identified the body. He was not a madman. Yet here he was. He felt his heart begin to race.

  He mustn’t let his adrenalin interfere with the precision of his shot.

  And he mustn’t wait so long that the conversation at the far end of the catwalk ended with the man’s shooting Kyoko.

  He put both hands on the gun, aimed, and fired.

  Excerpt from chapter fourteen, con't. of The Orchid and the Secret Agent, a novel by William Thorne

  Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1945

  . . . But just before he pulled the trigger to eliminate the Orchid for good, Jimmy felt a hard blow to the back of his left shoulder, spinning him around and almost knocking the gun from his right hand. His first thought was of the Orchid, who, being so close, might move in on him with razor sharp precision now that he was disoriented; his second thought was that she’d have no time to reach him, as the momentum of the blow was hurtling him, helplessly, over the railing and into the ocean; his third thought was that he’d been shot; his fourth was to look in the direction from which the shot had come; his fifth was that he saw the shooter standing at the foot of the ladder, gun still raised; his sixth was that the shooter, who must be the Phantom, looked just as ordinary as Mr. Barratt had predicted; his seventh thought was to aim at the Phantom and to fire (action and thought being one now), even as Jimmy was going backward over the side of the catwalk; his eighth was that he had indeed hit his assailant in the gut (likely putting an end to the second-most-dangerous Jap on the West Coast); his ninth was subsumed by the cold splash of the water, into which he sunk like a stone; his tenth was that he had to rise to the surface and swim back to shore, despite the ache in his left shoulder, in order to survive to fight another day. All this in a matter of two or three seconds, plenty of time for a whole life to unspool, like a film ratcheting off a reel and turning a lucid story on a movie screen to meaningless white.

  Jimmy Park would not settle for mere white.

  He burst the surface of the salty, rolling sea and saw the Orchid on the catwalk above him approaching the gunman, who had collapsed, wounded, into an awkward sitting position at the base of the ladder. Jimmy believed he could still hit her from here, even as he bobbed in the water. He was that good a shot. But in his fall he had dropped his .45, which was likely settling on the sandy floor of the ocean right about now. So he ducked his head under the surface to avoid the evil pair’s notice and started swimming for the shore, pulling himself forward with his right arm only, as by now his left arm had gone numb and useless.

  THE REVISED—CHAPTER EIGHT cont'd.

  Sitting on the wooden catwalk, supported by the ladder at his back, bleeding from a hole in his left side just under his rib cage, Sumida tried to return his gun to the back waistband of his trousers, but it fell from his hand. The gut shot hurt. He watched the woman approach. He noted her walk—all sensuality and aggression, like a leopard—and he realized that this was not the Kyoko he had known, loved, married, and lost, however familiar her appearance. Yes, she had the same sparkling eyes . . . but this woman bore an expression of barely restrained, malicious power, which he had never seen in his wife, who had been many things (not all of them good) but never this. So who was this? The cartoonish villainess in the government report—the Orchid?

  But she asked first, as she drew near. “Who are you?”

  “I was your husband,” he answered.

  “What?” There was menace in her voice, despite his having just saved her life. Clearly, she did not like being confused. And, if the government report was true, then she was capable of exerting lethal force. He couldn’t afford to die now. Not with this excursion a bust (involving this other Kyoko), while Czernicek, the killer of his real wife, remained alive still in the hotel room.

  “I’ve taken no husband,” she said.

  “I’m speaking of another life,” he answered, as rationally as possible. Talking was difficult, his midsection feeling aflame, but he had things to say. “You were someone else. Identical in appearance, but different . . . Don’t ask me to explain, because I can’t.”

  “Do you work for the United States government?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Standing over him, she shook her head. “Maybe you’re just a mad dog looking to be put out of his misery.”

  Maybe he was, he thought. But not quite yet.

  “In any case, I should thank you for your well-timed shot,” she said. “What is your name?”

  “Satoki Samuel Sumida. My friends call me Sam.” Bleeding, he hadn’t time to introduce further facts that would only compel from her more questions—especially since he had a few questions of his own. “Who did I shoot?”

  “The man you shot was nothing,” she answered.

  He had to strain his neck and shoulders to look up, his midsection offering no support. “No, I am nothing,” he said. “Just ask almost anyone.”

  She knelt beside him, pushing aside his suit coat to see his bloodied shirt. “You’re delirious.”

  “I wish that were so.”

  Now that she was just inches away from him, he caught her scent. It was Lucien Lelong perfume. Familiar, of course. For a moment, he looked only at the side of her face, allowing himself to imagine that this was his Kyoko. From so close, there was no distinction, mannerisms melting away. He had never thought he’d experience his wife’s physical presence again. Yet here she was, now. His heart swelled, and he wished he could say how sorry he was for the ways he had failed her, his vain and distracted nature. He wished too that he could tell her he forgave her betrayal, which he believed was more about their strained marriage than about her true character. If he was going to die here beneath the pier, what better final image to take with him? With the back of his right hand he gently touched the perfect cheek, scented of Lucien Lelong . . .

  The woman snapped back, as if revolted by his touch.

  His reverie ceased, its sudden absence hitting him almost as hard as the bullet.

  Of course this was not his wife.

  This was the traitorous criminal described in the government report. (Assuming the Federal agents had gotten it right, which they usually did, though in this case the violence and manner of her alleged crimes strained belief, seeming the stuff of Saturday matinee B-pictures or pulp spy novels.) Indeed, it had been the seemingly exaggerated nature of her criminality that had encouraged Sam to ignore the report itself (clearly not his Kyoko) when Czernicek first provided it and to put all his faith in the attached photograph instead. So he’d been taken in, as the photograph failed to convey
the otherness of this woman who bore Kyoko’s face—the Orchid—the otherness of her walk, her facial expressions, her way of speech. What it all amounted to was yet another question: should he shoot her now himself, thereby removing a national security threat? Subsequent questions followed. Could he even reach the gun where he’d dropped it on the catwalk? Likely not . . . but was that a good enough reason not to try? He was an American and had responsibilities. Or was the entire report of her venality mere exaggerated racial prejudice? And, in either case, what of Czernicek, the killer of his real wife?

  “I have a motorboat and men coming any second and cars waiting on the shore,” she said, standing and stepping away from him. He noticed how sharp her fingernails looked. “I can instruct my men to drop you at the hospital,” she continued. “Otherwise, you will bleed to death. I can’t say if any of your vital organs have been hit. So you may bleed to death anyway. Regardless, honor dictates that I make such an offer since you saved my life. Even if you are a madman.”

  He considered his options.

  Clearly, he could never climb up the ladder. Nor could he drop into the ocean and swim to shore. And even if he could do either, how would he get a cab ride back to the Barclay Hotel, a “Jap” soaked from the ocean and bleeding from a gunshot wound? No, she was offering him his only way back to Czernicek. His only chance to make good on the vengeance he’d sworn in that other world, his world.

  “I accept your offer,” he said.

  She picked up his gun and handed it back to him.

  About then, he heard the sound of a motorboat approaching.

  Excerpt from chapter fifteen of The Orchid and the Secret Agent, a novel by William Thorne

  Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1945

  . . . but, fortunately, Jimmy Park had always been an outstanding swimmer, having won ribbons and medals on his Glendale High School team. He made it to shore, where he took stock of his injury. The bullet had passed clean through his shoulder, missing the brachial artery, so he tore a strip of linen from his soaked shirt, wrapped the strip around his shoulder covering the entrance and exit wounds, and made his way up from the sand to the midway. There, in no time, the wet, disheveled appearance of a bleeding Oriental drew the attention of the police. With his good arm, Jimmy showed them his soggy but still legible special ID, and within moments an ambulance arrived to take him to safety.

  The doctor told him he’d been very lucky.

  Maybe so, but he didn’t feel lucky. Nor did he feel he even deserved good luck, having allowed his verbal parrying with the Orchid to cost him his mission. How many thousands of lives were now jeopardized by her escape? Why hadn’t he just put one between her eyes, as Mr. Barratt had instructed? He didn’t like to admit that her female wiles had had something to do with it. His nation was at war and a man couldn’t afford to be soft, even where women were concerned. Jimmy had never felt so disconsolate, so ashamed.

  Admitted to a private hospital room on the fifth floor of County General, where the best gunshot men had cleaned and stabilized his wound, Jimmy passed on the painkilling pills that the nurse offered.

  “Tough guy, huh?” said Mr. Barratt, who entered the room just as the nurse was leaving.

  “I deserve whatever pain I’m feeling,” Jimmy said listlessly. “It serves to remind me of my failure and to inspire me to give no quarter if I should ever be granted another chance to finish off that sorceress of violence.”

  Mr. Barratt laughed. “Quite a speech, Jimmy. But you’ve got it wrong.”

  “What?”

  “Well, it’s true you missed an opportunity with the Orchid, but it looks likely you got the Phantom, which deals a vicious blow to her organization.”

  Jimmy nodded, unimpressed. In the seconds falling backward from the catwalk, just before he’d hit the water, he’d seen the deceptively ordinary-looking Jap go down in a heap, gutshot. From a marksmanship perspective it had been a whale of a shot. But this was no shooting contest, no gentlemen’s pastime. The better shot would have been the point-blank bullet for the Orchid.

  “The elimination of the Orchid’s right-hand man is an important victory for our nation, Jimmy,” Mr. Barratt continued. “Our first clean win in the intelligence war.”

  Jimmy merely shrugged. “Maybe if we’d been able to take him alive,” he muttered. “At least then we’d have been able to get some information out of him to help dismantle their wretched organization.”

  Mr. Barratt beamed. “We might just have that opportunity.”

  “What?” Jimmy asked, sitting up straighter in the hospital bed. The self-recrimination stopped in favor of the renewed enthusiasm of a patriot.

  Mr. Barratt turned and started for the wooden wardrobe in a corner of the private room. He opened the doors and removed Jimmy’s still-damp suit from its hanger, tossing it onto the hospital bed. “Get dressed,” he instructed.

  Jimmy picked up his suit jacket, which had a hole through the front and back of the left shoulder.

  “I didn’t have time to stop by your place for a change of clothes,” Mr. Barratt said. “A little dampness won’t kill you.”

  Jimmy slid his legs around and stood up slightly unsteadily from the bed. “What’s happened?” he asked, tucking his hospital gown like a long, wrinkled shirt inside his moist trousers.

  “We’ve intercepted a call from a downtown hotel reporting that a gut-shot Jap stumbled into their lobby a few minutes ago, brandishing a handgun. He made his way upstairs to a room rented earlier to a Mr. Henry Czernicek, a name that in the past fifteen minutes I’ve learned via hotline from our people in DC does not exist on any tax records, census, or immigration reports.”

  “So the police are moving in?” Jimmy asked, sitting on the chair in the corner of the room to put his wet socks on his feet, his Florsheims at arm’s reach.

  “No.”

  “What? Why not? We can’t let him get away. It’s got to be the Phantom.”

  Mr. Barratt nodded. “You’ve answered your own question, Jimmy. We don’t want the police getting to the Phantom first. If so, he’ll be booked, jailed, arraigned, tried, convicted, executed, etcetera. From a law-enforcement standpoint it’ll go fine. But from an intelligence-gathering viewpoint, it’s inefficient. You understand that there are methods of persuasion that we might execute that are unavailable to ordinary law enforcement and judicial agencies, right?”

  Jimmy understood. He finished tying his shoes. (Not so easy with a bum shoulder.) He stood. “Can you help me with this jacket?” he asked, indicating his wounded left shoulder.

  Mr. Barratt nodded and helped his agent into the dank suit jacket. “I’m only too happy to be your valet, Mr. Park,” he said kiddingly. “Just so long as you don’t call me your ‘houseboy.’”

  “You’re going to have to be my chauffeur, too,” Jimmy added.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Wait,” Jimmy said. “I don’t have a gun.”

  “You shoot with your right hand, right?”

  “Yeah, the wound is no problem.”

  Mr. Barratt reached inside his suit coat and withdrew from his own shoulder holster his standard-issue weapon, which he handed to Jimmy. “You’re a better shot than I am.”

  Jimmy didn’t bother with false modesty. There wasn’t time.

  He just took the gun.

  Turning to leave, the two men were stopped by a skinny, five-foot-tall nurse standing in the doorway.

  “He can’t go,” she said. “He’s not discharged.”

  Mr. Barratt showed her his ID. “Maybe just this once you could make an exception, ma’am.”

  THE REVISED—CHAPTER NINE

  Two worlds, like audiences, disperse

  And leave the soul alone.

  —Emily Dickinson

  Sumida’s squeaking left shoe was heavy with blood, which still flowed down his side. The Florsheim left a print with every step he took along the fifth-floor hallway from the elevator to Czernicek’s hotel room. If he had e
ntertained any notion of evading pursuit—from the police, pro-Japanese Fifth Columnists, Federal agents, whomever—the bloody footprints would have given him away. But he harbored no such notions. He’d already lost too much blood for pulp fiction fantasies of escape. His ears rang, his eyesight wavered, his breaths came fast and short, his body temperature felt arctic—he knew he hadn’t much time. Besides, he’d wearied of hiding from authorities (the absurd night spent sleeping in the stolen Chrysler Royale . . .), just as he’d wearied of being in this world that was not his any longer.

  He didn’t require much time to do what was left for him to do anyway.

  He opened the door to the hotel room and, hoping to make a dignified entrance, stumbled inside.

  Czernicek was where Sumida had left him, still gagged and handcuffed to the radiator. The police detective had regained consciousness, though he looked nearly as unsteady sitting upright as Sumida felt walking. Nonetheless, Czernicek’s eyes burned with fury, his face streaked with blood from the kick Sumida had administered before he’d left for the Pike—a lifetime ago.

  Sumida pulled the hand towel from Czernicek’s mouth.

  The police detective spit at Sumida, but missed.

  Sumida paid the gesture no heed, managing to make it to a chair that faced his quarry from six-feet distant. He took the gun from the waistband of his trousers and aimed it at Czernicek’s heart.

  “You’re going to shoot an LAPD detective, Sumida?”

  Sumida laughed. The notion of his being kept from doing what needed to be done merely because of a man’s job title struck him as hilarious.

  The problem was that it hurt too much to laugh.

  So he stopped laughing.

  “You’re making a big mistake,” Czernicek said.

  “It wasn’t her,” Sumida said.

  “Let me go, you son of a bitch, or I swear you’ll pay,” Czernicek snapped.

  “What are you going to do, kill me?” Sumida asked, again having to fight off laughter.