A moment of silence and then a shiver of discovery raced up Max’s spine. “Military intelligence?”
“CIC, actually,” Phillip said, smiling mischievously at his father.
“Hold on,” Elizabeth said. “What are you boys talking about?”
Philip looked at his mother. “I’m in espionage, Mom. With the Counter Intelligence Corps. You can blame Dad, actually. They liked the fact that I was the son of a New York police inspector. Figured maybe I inherited some of his investigative skills. Plus, the Japanese language classes I took as a kid impressed recruiters. I wanted flight school, but I got CIC instead. I’ve been stationed in Washington DC all this time.”
“But your letters…” Elizabeth said.
Max gave her a look like a school master peering over reading glasses. “They’re spies, Elizabeth. They know how to do these things.” He made it sound glib, but he could not help feeling betrayed. That his own son could not trust him.
“You mean there was no bombing mission in the Philippines?” she said. “No best friend killed in combat?”
Philip shook his head. “Sorry. But it’s the only way they’d let me near this one. I had to have cover.”
“Well, that’s gone now,” Max said. “With us, at least.”
Philip started to say something, then stopped, shrugging. Finally, “It’s my job, Dad. I’m sure you had cases you couldn’t discuss with mom and me. And it’s been eating me up.”
Max looked across the table and saw not just his son but a grown man. A man who had his own mission in life, who was doing his best. Who did not need parents treating him like a teenager. Then he understood.
Elizabeth reached across the table and grasped her son’s hand. “I’m proud of you, Philip.”
Max nodded, holding up his glass in toast. “Misery loves company. Here’s to the next generation. Now, what can you share about your case? Any suspects?”
Philip hesitated for a moment. Then, “I’m more interested in this Aleotto guy now. What were his leads?”
“You didn’t know the FBI was investigating?” Elizabeth said.
Again, father and son exchanged knowing glances.
“What?” she said.
“Mom, it’s just that the FBI doesn’t share information with other agencies. It’s not in their culture.”
“Well that doesn’t make much sense. We’re all on the same side, aren’t we?”
“Not if you ask Hoover,” Max said. He’d had enough run-ins with FBI agents over the years to make him wonder just who Director Hoover thought he was working for.
Philip turned to his father. “Why the check on Aleotto’s fingerprints?”
Max explained the flashlight found at the scene of Tadeo’s death and the subsequent suspicion that he was a Japanese spy signaling a sub from the Bluff.
“But the prints on it were not Tadeo’s. They were Joe Allen’s, as he was calling himself at the time. Real name, Aleotto. When I confronted him with the facts, he folded.”
Then Max shook his head. “Jesus, I look back on it now, and I thought I was so clever. My working hypothesis was that Aleotto was hiding his Italian roots. That he planted the flashlight next to Tadeo in order to take the heat off of Italian Americans. Make the Japanese look like the bad guys. And then I supplied him with that story. No wonder he folded. I was protecting his cover. Idiot. He played me.”
“Yeah. Sounds like it.”
Which was not the response Max was hoping for.
“So,” Elizabeth said. “This Aleotto was using the name of Allen while working undercover?”
“Looks like it,” Phillip said.
“So why would he plant the flashlight on Tadeo?” she asked.
“The FBI likes winners,” Philip said. “Likes field agents who deliver. I guess Aleotto was happy enough to use the death of Tadeo Suzuki to clear his case.”
“Even if the real spy kept working?” Elizabeth looked shocked.
“What can I say? The FBI wants to be first. But once Dad got involved, then there went that nice little score for Aleotto. I assume he had to get to work again looking for the real spy.”
“He was at the Grange Hall the other night. Standing right in back of us. I was trying to figure out what would bring him to that meeting. Thought maybe he was trying to salve his conscience for trying to frame Tadeo. But no. He was working.”
Philip shrugged. “Lots of possible suspects in attendance.”
“Right. Or he was there to stir up trouble and make the internment order easier to enforce. Maybe he was responsible for the lights going out. An outside agitator wanting to create a riot or ensure that the confrontation with Carswell and his men became violent. That would make the Japanese community seem like a real threat.”
Philip considered this for a moment. “Could be. Either way, though, it doesn’t narrow things down much for suspects. There were both Japanese Americans and white sympathizers present. But Aleotto’s earlier efforts to frame Mr. Suzuki makes me think the FBI was focusing on the Japanese community for the spy. Makes sense. Their simplistic thought process.”
“So,” Max said. “I’m still waiting. How about you?”
“I’m not so sure we aren’t stumbling around in the dark as much as Aleotto was. But CIC is looking more at the white community. A sympathizer, maybe, or someone compromised and in the pay of Japanese intelligence.”
“Maybe Mr. Aleotto found his spy,” Elizabeth said. “And got himself killed doing so.”
Max sighed. “And there’s also the coincidence of Aleotto’s death on the same night as Jimmy’s. Shit, I know I’ve said it before, but I do hate coincidence.”
“You think the deaths of Tadeo, Jimmy Suzuki, and Joe Aleotto are related?” Philip asked.
“Lots of deaths for a small town. But our killer had to be very busy to do both Jimmy and Aleotto the same night.” Max pushed his plate away.
They were quiet for a moment. Max was the first to break the silence. “We need to find this Basho fellow that Jimmy was meeting.”
“Well, that would be wonderful if we knew who he was,” Philip said.
“If it was Tadeo’s Basho that killed Jimmy, the motive had to be he was trying to cover up his earlier murder of Tadeo. So, we start out looking for an elderly Japanese man who might have had some sort of grudge against Tadeo Suzuki. Look, we’ve been down this road before and it leads to—”
“Kito Watanabe,” Elizabeth said.
“And he would fit the FBI profile,” Philip added. “A Japanese American spying for the Japanese. If this Basho really is the old friend from Yokohama come seeking revenge, then like Tadeo told you he was also with the Kempeitai. Maybe still is.”
Max thought out loud. “And if Tadeo found out his old enemy was still working for Japanese intelligence, that would provide even more motive for his death.”
Philip nodded. “Right. And getting him to meet at the Bluff in spite of it being a restricted area to Japanese. That would be the perfect set up to make it look like Tadeo was the spy and not this Watanabe. I hate to give any credit to FBI theories, but they are right about one thing. Japanese intelligence has played the long game. The Kempeitai still recruit all sorts of civilian Japanese in intelligence gathering and they’ve got informal agents spread around the world, wherever Japanese immigrated. So maybe our friend Basho is still in the game, the spy at Fort Ord. He killed Aleotto when the agent fingered him. Maybe even blackmailed him.”
They were silent for a moment. Max remembered the pain in Tadeo’s eyes the day he told him of his old friend, Basho. As if it had happened last week and not forty years ago. But Basho and Watanabe the same person?
Elizabeth finally said it out loud: “So Mr. Watanabe could actually be our prime suspect.”
“Could be.” Philip looked down at his untouched plate again and then at his mother.
“Alright, alright,” she said, pushing her own plate away now. “How about I throw together a Spanish omelet?”
Max couldn’t hide his smile. No more tuna casseroles.
“But first,” she said, “you need to tell me something, Philip.”
“Okay. I mean, if I can.”
“It’s about Suzy. Did you date her just to pump her for information she might have from her answering service?”
Max watched Philip’s face color at this question. “I see you did,” he said, experiencing an emotional tug-of-war about his son’s tradecraft.
“That was my intention, yes. And I feel like a heel for doing that. I mean we’ve only gone out once, but I really like her. She’s a great girl.”
Max nodded, understanding his son, and liking him the more for it. “And so that’s why you aren’t seeing her again. Because you feel guilty about wanting to use her.” Not a question, but a statement.
Philip pursed his lips, nodding.
“Well that’s about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Elizabeth thundered. “You two men and your silly sense of propriety. It’s a wonder the species has survived with your type in the gene pool. Don’t listen to your father on this one. He’s too fair for his own good sometimes. Listen to your heart. If there’s anything this war is teaching us it’s that life isn’t in any way permanent. You get a chance at some happiness, you grab it, son.”
She cleared the table. “You boys sit and talk. I’ll be back with something more edible.”
With Elizabeth in the kitchen, Max and Philip sat in silence for a time. There was a lot Max wanted to know, but he decided to let Philip take the initiative.
“Who was the other primary suspect?” Philip finally asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve mentioned the Martindale woman and the former partner, Pinkus. But you also said there were three who want the Suzuki land.”
“Yeah, right. I interviewed him the day you arrived. When I was such a mess. A guy named Hicks. He’s got some crazy cult and has been pretty insistent on buying the Suzuki farmland to make a city of God or some such thing.”
Philip sat bolt upright in his chair.
“Something wrong?” Max asked.
“Lawrence Hicks?”
Max nodded.
“He’s also a major Nazi sympathizer,” Philip said excitedly, “and right at the top of my suspect list for the spy who’s been tracking troop movements at Fort Ord. And we know he’s got money in back of him. The Germans like his racial purity line and pretty much bank-rolled him until the war broke out. The Germans and Japanese are allies now, so…”
“That would explain how the hell he could afford prime agricultural property and the armed guard at the gate.” He would love to see Hicks put in a cage where he belonged.
“So he’s got motive to kill Tadeo Suzuki in order to buy the land,” Philip said. “And he just might be my spy, as well.”
“He’s a piece of work,” Max said. “Carries a Luger and thinks he can mind-fuck you with his eyes. His alibi for the time Tadeo was killed was that he was busy sleeping with a vulnerable mother and her daughter who are among his followers.”
“Well,” Philip said calmly, “we might want to re-check that alibi. You were probably a little easy on the women, right? An embarrassing situation, embarrassing questions.”
Max looked at his son. The more they talked, the more respect he felt for Philip, seemingly wise beyond his years in many respects. Philip was right about this. He had been uncomfortable confronting the women with Hicks’s claim. Something he would never have done as a cop in New York. But then lots had changed with the pulling of a trigger.
“And he’s got a goon who could have done the dirty work for him even if Hicks’s alibi checks out,” Max said. “So, it looks like we’ve both got our work cut out for us.”
“Looks like it.”
“But you’re going to look damn silly riding my old bike on your investigations. Want to ride along with me?”
Philip angled his head and pursed his lips. “Come on, Dad. I’ve got my own investigation to deal with. I’ve been trained. I know how to handle myself.”
“Sorry. Just asking.”
“Thanks. But my requisition came in today. I’m picking up a loaner car at Carlyle Motors tomorrow.”
“You boys still hungry?”
Max smiled as Elizabeth returned with plates crawling up her arms like a waitress in a busy chop house. He was suddenly hungry enough to eat anything.