4:34 p.m.

Sentry posts ran down the coast. MPs scanned southbound traffic. The beachfront was jammed with machine-gun nests.

Ashida felt Jap and looked Jap. He was too Jap to get cut and look Chink. It wouldn’t work anyway. The Lux-Smith plan was madness. He told Dudley that. The Japanese and Chinese were one race. Nationhood divided them. Biology did not. Terry Lux knew that. He simply wanted to cut.

The notion remained tantalizing. It was a controlled experiment spawned by world war. How would racially altered people behave? An all-new discipline of eugenic psychology results.

Ashida swerved inland. He couldn’t risk a stop-and-frisk. He was stretched thin. He might blurt the names of his many white patrons. They were the ones stretching him.

He said good-bye to Dudley and huddled with Kay. She was soon to join Claire for a mud bath. Claire gave Kay camera gear for Comrade Hideo. He secured permission to film the roundups. Comrade Dudley granted consent.

The canyon was narrow-laned and twisty. He oversteered and induced fishtails. His foot slipped off the clutch.

He was exhausted. He’d been up since dawn yesterday. Every moment stretched him.

Kay’s love charade stretched him. Claire stretched him. She cogently analyzed the roundups. She said, “Will you shoot some film for us, darling? Your eye would be invaluable.”

He said, “Yes.” It was easy. That fact astonished him.

He went home. He tried to sleep and failed. He got up and worked the Watanabe case.

He canvassed Japanese curio shops. He pressed on swords purchased by white men. Half the shop owners recognized him. They refused to converse. The other half said they knew zilch.

The roundups were on overdrive. He choked on the hate and fear. He saw Bill Parker, couched in his car. He appeared comatose. The Sunday-morning Parker was all raw-sober nerves. The Tuesday-morning Parker was half-dead.

He called the War Department and tried to track Jack Webb’s lead. Jack said a sailor saw the purple-sweatered white man. The sailor shipped out of L.A. that night. He pressed a clerk on troop movements for December 6. The clerk refused to divulge.

He called PC Bell. He requested records for the Santa Monica pay phones. The clerk told him to submit the proper forms.

He went to the morgue and talked to Nort Layman. They discussed The Knife found at the Griffith Park scene. They reexamined the wound photos of the four dead Watanabes. They reexamined the frozen cadavers nine days postmortem.

They agreed. It might be The Knife, replicated. The Knife might be the murder weapon.

They discussed the poison found in the victims’ livers. He detailed his tea-and-soiled-clothes theory. Nort found it credible. Nort identified the poison by its bond components. It was anachronistic and was not mass-produced under a brand name.

It could not be purchased wholesale or retail. A skilled chemist could manufacture it in large or small quantities. The killer was a skilled chemist or knew a skilled chemist. Said chemist was adept at ancient Asian chemistry.

The cut-through hit the Valley. Ashida took ranch roads to the Cahuenga Pass. Hollywood traffic was light. Full dusk was on. He could shoot Little Tokyo at twilight.

Sunset downtown, Alameda south. A sawhorse roadblock at 1st Street.

He pulled up short of the barricade. He rolled film into the camera. He screwed on a mid-range lens.

Metal wheels crunched. He tracked the sound to the far side of the roadblock. Four cops pulled a jumbo handcart into view. It was piled high with rifles and shotguns.

Small radios fell off and shattered. A fat Fed trailed the cart. He held a cocked revolver.

Ashida heard screams and smelled tear gas. A Japanese boy ran toward the cart, rubbing his eyes. The fat Fed fired over his head and blew out a second-floor window.

J. Edgar Hoover leaned on a government limo and watched. Hoover wore a camel-hair topcoat. His hair was pomaded. He was diminutive.

Ashida noticed a black-and-white parked three car lengths up. He knew that license plate. He walked up and checked the front seat.

Bill Parker sleeps again. He looks beyond half-dead now. A photograph rests on the dashboard.

A woman. Quite the stern beauty. Plaid shirt, jodhpurs, high boots.

Ashida studied the photo. It was sharp-contrast black-and-white. The woman was probably red-haired.