Newcastle, California * September 20, 1943
There was opium in his body,” Sheriff Whitcomb says, almost as soon as Agent Bonner steps through the door. He delivers the news with a characteristic grunt. “The coroner did as you requested and took some of his blood—Kenichi, the elderly Jap’s, that is. Sent it to that laboratory all the way down in Los Angeles. They wired with the results. Didn’t want to deliver the news over the telephone. I got the details of what was wired right here.”
“Opium?”
Bonner stands frozen in the middle of the sheriff’s office, still holding his hat in his hand. He’d been about to hang it on the coatrack when Sheriff Whitcomb temporarily paralyzed him with the unexpected news.
“Opium?” Bonner repeats again.
“That’s what I said.”
“How much opium?”
“Enough to kill a horse, according to the coroner,” Whitcomb says, grunting again. He hands Bonner the transcription of the results that had come over the wire.
“Opium . . . Is that common around these parts?” Bonner asks, reading and rereading the scanty details. “Easy to acquire?”
Whitcomb shrugs.
“Some folks keep a little around for toothaches and such. The pharmacist two towns over sells a tea plenty of women like. Helps with insomnia, I suppose.”
“Makes sense the Yamadas would be good and stocked, don’t it? Everybody knows Chinamen love to smoke opium,” Henderson chimes in. “Out of those long Oriental pipes they got.”
Bonner doesn’t make the effort to point out the inaccuracies of this statement, and even Whitcomb shakes his head like a weary parent too tired to correct a boisterous, misguided child.
“We ain’t seen opium dens in these parts since the gold-mining days, to be honest,” Whitcomb says to Bonner in a stern, confidential tone, as though to set the F.B.I. agent straight.
“Even so . . . Chinamen are Chinamen, ain’t they—even if they’re Japs,” Henderson persists.
Whitcomb and Bonner have no reply for this; they stare at Henderson, both of them with blank, unamused faces. Bonner shakes himself, still trying to work the puzzle out aloud.
“But the high dosage . . . it doesn’t make any sense . . .”
So much opium! Were Harry and Mr. Yamada suicide pilots after all? And Harry had to have been flying the plane—during the moment they took off, at least. Planes could not take off without a pilot who knew what he was doing, of this Bonner is certain. Could a person ingest that much opium in midair?
“The other body,” Bonner continues, tracing out his thoughts, “did they find opium in the second body as well?”
Whitcomb shakes his head.
“Can’t say. It was too burned-up for anybody to tell, really. The coroner couldn’t get much off it to send to the lab boys in Los Angeles, and they reported back they couldn’t make heads nor tails of what they did send.”
“So . . . just because Kenichi Yamada tested for opium doesn’t mean Harry Yamada necessarily ingested any,” Bonner reflects aloud. “It would make more sense, given the fact that Harry had to have piloted the plane. Perhaps it was a . . . a . . . kindness to his father? A suicide pact, but one that spared his father the pain?”
Sheriff Whitcomb’s mouth twitches irritably. It is plain he doesn’t care for all this speculation, making wild guesses about what dead people did and did not do and why. A plane crashed. There was opium in at least one of the bodies. Fine. Sometimes people did strange things and you couldn’t account for it.
Oblivious to Whitcomb’s fresh annoyance, Bonner moves across the room, back to the empty secretary’s desk, staring at the lab results as if in a trance. Without asking for permission this time, Bonner sinks into Irene’s vacant chair, further unmindful of Whitcomb’s disapproving grunt. Some time passes as Bonner ruminates in silence. Finally, more questions come to him and he pipes up again, breaking the quiet thrum in the room.
“Say, Louis and Harry and that flying circus of theirs . . . the one they started on their own after the first one folded . . . was that operation successful? Know if they turned a profit?”
Yet another grunt from Whitcomb. “I reckon that’s their business,” the sheriff says.
“I’d say it looked like they were doing pretty okay,” Deputy Henderson chimes in. “Their act sure got an awful lot of attention. Eventually, they even had that Hollywood producer offering to make ’em rich and famous.”
Bonner’s head snaps to attention.
“Hollywood producer?”
“Louis said that fizzled and came to nothing,” Whitcomb reminds his deputy.
Henderson shrugs.
“Well, maybe it did,” he replies, “but they only got themselves to blame. I know for a fact they got a bona fide offer to be in a Hollywood picture. They stood to make some real money, get some fame in the whole deal. Louis told his brother Ernest, and Ernest . . . well, Ernest is the kind of fella who can’t help himself; he’s always gotta run his mouth . . . ya know?”
“What happened?” Bonner asks. “Why didn’t it take?”
“I heard one—or maybe both of ’em—decided to back out.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Bonner mumbles, more to himself than anything else.
“Who knows?” Henderson continues. “Maybe it was that girl they were both chasing—Ava what’s-her-name—who talked them out of it. They were funny about her, both of them, I reckon.”
“I don’t understand why the two of you are on about Ava Brooks or Hollywood or any of the rest of it,” Whitcomb abruptly snaps from across the room. “I’ll thank you to both shut your traps and not spread idle gossip about the good folks of this town unless you know something I don’t know and can prove it.”
Bonner falls silent. Whitcomb is right: Bonner can’t prove anything—yet. But, given the new information he’s just acquired—the opium, the alleged Hollywood offer that didn’t pan out—Bonner knows one thing: He certainly has more questions.