In the twilight, at the border, they ducked down under the door and stepped inside the garage. The body was lying on the cement floor under a bloodstained white sheet. They put on their gloves. They turned down the sheet to the waist. The head and hair were soaked in blood. There was a black hole in the left side of the chest. A pistol lay on the floor by the outstretched fingers of the right hand.

Did you know him personally, asked the detective from the City of Edinburg Police Department, Hidalgo Co., TX.

The left hand was resting on the left leg of the pants. They turned the hand over. They touched the marks on the wrist. They shook their heads.

Well, lucky you guys got here as fast as you did, said the detective. We can easy hit eighty degrees in March. Stink can be something else, I tell you.

They looked up from the body. They stared around the garage: pistols and rifles in cabinets and on the walls, boxes and boxes of ammunition on shelves and on the floor.

We don’t ordinarily like to leave them in situ so long, said the detective. Not if we can help it.

They looked back down at the body. They turned the sheet back up over the face. They got to their feet and walked over to a long workbench against the length of one wall.

We left everything just the way we found it, said the detective. Just like your field office told us.

Hanging over the workbench was a photograph in a frame, a photograph of a Japanese mask: The Mask of Evil.

No note, said the detective. Just that postcard.

They looked down at the workbench. The top of the workbench was covered by a single sheet of old newspaper: page sixteen of the New York Times of Wednesday, July 6, 1949. There was a photograph of American troops parading down a wide Tokyo street for the Fourth of July. Below the photograph, the headline: TOKYO’S RAIL CHIEF FOUND BEHEADED. On top of the sheet of newspaper, a picture postcard was propped up against an alarm clock. They picked up the postcard, a postcard of the Sumida River in Tokyo.

Guess our friend Stetson had a real thing about Japan, right, said the detective. Beats me why, I swear.

They glanced back down at the alarm clock on the table. The hands of the clock had stopped at twelve twenty.

Forty years ago, we were fighting the hell out of them. Now they’re the second goddamned largest economy in the world. Makes you wonder why we fucking bothered. They must be spinning, all them boys that died for nothing. Half the country driving about in Jap cars, watching Jap TVs. Makes no sense to me, I tell you. No goddamned sense at all.

They turned over the postcard. They read the three words scrawled on the back: It’s Closing Time.