1:57 a.m.
They kissed.
It was Claire’s idea. Film it at the Anti-Axis Committee. Show the mixed-race lovers in a postmidnight clinch.
It was a post–Pershing Square kiss. It refracted his beaten appearance and Kay’s barn-burning speech. The shoot was running in high gear now. Kay laid out her latest intrigue.
She wanted the film to come off broad and parodistic. She wanted it to scotch Bill Parker’s loony crusade.
The kiss required umpteen takes. Kay was eager. Ashida faked urgency. Claire played director. The open doorway served as their set.
An arc light beamed down and prickled them. Two cameramen and a light man hovered. Reynolds and Chaz stood with Claire. Saul Lesnick brought his black bag. The Japanese extras got a dollar each.
They kissed again. Kay went in with her tongue. The cameramen shot the kiss from umpteen angles. They got the shelves stacked with antifascist pamphlets. They got the walls draped with AVENGE PEARL HARBOR! signs.
They kissed again. Kay caressed his bruises. Claire said, “That’s good, kids.”
The setup drew attention. Ashida saw a Fed sedan parked across the street. They broke the clinch. Claire said, “Once more, please.”
A car rumbled by. A man yelled, “Goddamn Jap!”
Ashida flinched and bumped the arc light. Kay steadied him. He brushed free and walked to the back of the room. He stood by a jingoist toy shelf. Kabuki dolls were dolled up red, white and blue.
It was escalating.
Pershing Square. Goro Shigeta. The Japanese man shot in Santa Monica. Nao Hamano’s suicide. A suicide at the Fort MacArthur stockade.
Claire talked to a cameraman. Their voices carried. She bribed a cop at the Lincoln Heights jail. They could film the Hamano cell.
Little Tokyo was decimated. Twelve days, then to now. Incarceration, confiscation, liquidation. It was common knowledge—the internment flies in February.
Fait accompli. One possible way out.
Dudley Smith. Brutally revealed tonight. Stunning and endearing.
It started with Pershing Square and impotent Bill Parker. Whiskey Bill came solely to ogle Kay Lake. The attack on Hideo Ashida disturbed his sense of order. Scotty Bennett’s intercession was something else.
Dudley knew the hate was building. Dudley knew that he’d ducked his bodyguards. Dudley sent men out to loose-tail him. They extricated him. Bill Parker flailed for his glasses and punched at the air.
The scene replayed at the Bureau. Parker witnessed Dudley’s lapse and reacted again. The civil forfeit offended him more than the brutality. Parker hated disorder. That hatred created disorder in him. Parker’s intervention was prissy and indicative of the man. Dudley’s lapse showed the raw man beneath the glib skein.
Ashida studied the Kabuki dolls. Kay glanced back and saw him. She blew him a kiss.
He tried for a Dudley Smith wink—and failed. Nobody winked like Dudley Smith.
Kay laughed. Ashida thought of Bucky. He got that flutter and walked to the parking lot. A Fed was checking license plates. He carried a flashlight and strolled.
It’s 2:26 a.m. There’s no one out but us Feds and Reds.
Ashida got his car and drove home. That JAP! was still there on his door. He went straight inside and straight to his picture trove.
He got out the photos and his gizmo prototype. He went all flutters. He placed the Bucky pictures on his lap and nickelodeon-fanned them. He made Bucky dance in the nude.
He kept old photos loaded in the gizmo. The lens glass magnified details. He clicked levers and slid photos by. Shutter stops and Bucky, in the nude.
He scrolled pictures. They began to blur. It wasn’t attrition caused by exposure. The pictures rarely met light.
Ashida studied the gizmo. Diagnostic scrutiny, prognosis.
A too-tight lens mount. Upward pressure. Hence, tears in the film.
The housing gears had rusted. The blurs were not pronounced. A new lens mount would halt the blurs at this point.
He had one new lens mount. His new gizmo was still affixed by Whalen’s Drugstore. He could switch mounts. The new gizmo had run out of film. It was a twenty-minute drive, door-to-door.
He ran back out. He drove to Whalen’s and braced the new gizmo. He pulled wires and detached the generator. He grabbed the new gizmo and drove straight back home.
All right. Prognosis to procedure.
Ashida studied both gizmos. Ashida figured it out.
It’s a scroll-through. Go back to the first day the new gizmo clicked film. It’s thirteen days ago. It’s Saturday, December 6. It’s that drugstore 211.
Scroll film until it runs out. Pull the lens mount then.
Ashida tapped levers. Click—car wheels hit a rubber strip stashed curbside. Click—the shutter snaps. Click—an image appears under glass.
Click—that first car parks. Click—the man looks like Bucky. Click—there’s the robber’s car. Click, click, click—throughout the day.
Click—the gizmo works. The precise time and date are clock-marked below each image.
Click—cars pull up and park. Click—there’s a double exposure and blurred image. The gizmo jerked off the pavement. The lens jerked upward and snapped foot traffic. See the passersby on Spring Street?
Ashida scrolled photos. Click/snap/picture—all 12/6/41. 1:46 p.m., 2:04 p.m., 2:17 p.m. A rattled-lens run—note the blurred foot-traffic pix.
2:36 p.m., 2:42 p.m. Clear pix off an upward-right image. 3:08 p.m., 3:18 p.m., 3:19 p.m.—WAIT.
Hold it now. Wait, wait, wait.
Click/snap—a downtown street scene.
That’s FUJI SHUDO in the foreground. He’s stagger-gaited and visibly bleary. He’s zorched on terpin hydrate. The people around him look agitated and downright scared.
They should be. He’s evil. He practices bamboo-shoot rape.
It’s 3:19 p.m. He’s three and a half miles south of the Watanabe house. He’s out among refuting eyewitnesses. It’s Nort Layman’s precise time of death.
The fearful people will recall Shudo. He’s that outré. Coerced eyewits have placed Shudo in Highland Park at this time. These eyewits countermand those eyewits. Sure, it’s a frame. Sure, The Werewolf will burn. Yes, it’s justifiable. But that brings up this:
The Hearst papers will blast the case. Evidential details will be spilled nationwide. The real eyewits will recall The Werewolf and fuck it all up.
Ashida studied the image. Earthlings walk with a werewolf. He terrifies them.
Call-Me-Jack ran late stags most Thursdays. He should hear this.
Ashida rolled. He ran down to his car and burned tread to City Hall. He double-parked in a City Council space and ran up to 6. He heard dirty-joke snippets, straight off.
He tracked it. “Dudster this,” “Dudster that.” “What do you call an elephant hooker? A two-ton pickup that lays for peanuts.”
Ashida walked to the briefing room. It was cops and Feds, intertwined. Note the Hearst Rifle Team boys. Note Brenda Allen by the all-Kwan’s buffet.
Highballs and a dice game. A Jap flag for a craps-rolling felt.
Ashida stood in the doorway. Call-Me-Jack waddled over. The lipstick smear on his neck matched Brenda’s shade.
“Dr. Ashida. What brings you here?”
A rifle man said, “Banzai.”
Thad Brown said, “Shut up, he’s ours.”
Jack gestured out to the hallway. Ashida complied.
“I’m sorry for the intrusion, sir. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t consider it urgent.”
“Urgent always gets my attention. Remember, though, I’m jaded. It was the Dudster versus The Wolfman a few hours ago.”
Ashida said, “This pertains to that, sir.”
“Okay, kid. Impress me. The Dudster versus The Wolfman. Take it from there.”
Ashida said, “Fujio Shudo was outside Whalen’s Drugstore at 6th and Spring at Nort Layman’s precisely estimated time of death. The trip-wire device that Ray Pinker and I installed that morning authenticates this quite plainly. Shudo was surrounded by five people who were obviously quite frightened of this fearsome individual. Those people will not forget Fujio Shudo, sir. They will come forth as newspaper and radio publicity accrues, they will contradict our eyewitnesses, and they will be credible.”
Jack shrugged. “So what? Five eyewits aren’t nine eyewits. Your device is something out of Buck Rogers or Tom Swift and His Flying Saucer from Mars, and you and Ray Pinker are the only two white men on earth who understand how it works, and you aren’t even white. There’s that, and there’s a kicker. Yeah, Dud blew up at a bad time, but he picked himself up off his heinie, quick. He went back to the Watanabe house and turned up an eight-point print on The Wolf. You want a final kicker? The print was in Ryoshi Watanabe’s blood.”
Ashida reached for the wall. It wasn’t there. Jack steadied him.
“You missed a fingerprint. So what? I don’t blame you. Dud blows his cork, you blow an eight-point latent. We’re all human, right? The important thing is solidarity. This police department has stepped way out on a limb for you, Doctor. You’re too damn smart not to know that, and there’s one other thing.”
Ashida said, “Which is, sir?”
“Which is this. Dudley Smith is real fond of you.”