2:36 a.m.

I tended to Lee in the kitchen. His back and arms were covered with small cuts. He stood over the sink, stripped to the waist. I stood behind him with alcohol, tweezers and swabs.

The new tong truce was rigged for Hop Sing. Many Chinatown residents knew this. They gathered on rooftops and hurled bottles down on the cops. A dozen men were rushed to Queen of Angels; Lee’s uniform shirt was now rags.

I extracted a shard and daubed the cut. Lee said, “It hurts, but it feels good. Tell me what that means.”

“It means that your nerve endings were injured in a certain way. Your brain is receiving conflicting signals of pleasure and pain.”

“Sioux Falls or UCLA? Where you learned it, I mean.”

“I read an anatomy text. I studied the diagrams of the skin.”

Lee smoked. I held his head down to get purchase on his wounds. I kept thinking of lovelorn Hideo. Bucky was in the room with us then, Bucky stayed with me now. Hideo was crucial to my documentary-film plan. He was my inside source and device to shape the film into a conflicting political statement. Parker wanted the film to explicate Claire De Haven’s seditious designs. It would do that—while it showed these designs manifested as the exposure of a grave injustice. The film would portray the roundups as systematic brutality, war profiteering and racial hysteria of inescapable dimension. I would convince Claire to shape the film sans editorial comment. She and her comrades would not be permitted to speak on film, and thus validate Parker’s assessment of their treasonous intent. I saw the film as my film and my codicil to Claire’s tract defaming Parker himself. One person would speak to the world in my film—and that would be Dr. Hideo Ashida. He would exposit my ambivalent view of the police world I both loved and despised; he would speak from deep professional knowledge and his deeper personal experience as an oppressed Japanese. This film would nullify Parker’s attempt to further maim Claire De Haven and would liberate Claire from her grandiose martyrdom.

Lee said, “Scotty B. wasn’t hurt. I bet you’re happy to hear that.”

“Don’t move your head. I’ve got a deep one here.”

Lee said, “Did you screw him?”

I said, “Yes.”

“Did you screw Hideo Ashida?”

“I offered, but he declined.”

Lee laughed. “He probably goes for Jap girls exclusive. I’ll hand it to him there. He knows there’s lines you don’t cross.”

I pulled out the sliver and swabbed blood off the cut. Lee said, “The war’s this license to fuck like rabbits. Not that you’ve ever needed one.”