HE SAT IN his Dodge with the radio on and watched until the girl came out of Woodward Court and walked along First Street, then caught the yellow LARy streetcar that would take her east. Once she got on, Nessheim set off himself, though he couldn’t keep up with the tram despite its frequent stops, since traffic was heavy heading out of downtown. He’d read that one in three Angelenos owned a car and all of them seemed to be heading east this evening.
After he’d crossed the bridge and followed First Street he spotted her turning towards the address he’d found in the phone book, half a mile north of Billy Osaka’s apartment. This part of Boyle Heights was tidy if poor: the streets were smoothly paved, the sidewalks laid to square and the lawns, though tiny, carefully mown, with trimmed ornamental bushes and flowering plants in neatly tended beds. The bungalows and two-storey houses were undivided. This was a neighbourhood of families, all of them Japanese in these half dozen streets, less than a mile east of the Los Angeles River.
He did a circle of two blocks and pulled up a hundred yards ahead of her on Concord Street. Making a U-turn he parked so that the passenger door was next to the curb. Looking in the side mirror he timed his wait, then opened his door and got out, standing with his forearms crossed on the top of the car. The woman was almost even with him now and looked over at Nessheim, first with curiosity, then with dismay. He was sure now – it was the same unhappy expression on her face that he’d seen on the porch of Billy Osaka’s house, though this time there were no tears.
‘Got a minute, Miss Yukuri?’ he said.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said firmly.
‘You sure?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to have to make this more formal.’
‘Formal?’
‘Yeah, I could drive you downtown and we could talk there.’
‘You’ve been watching too many movies.’
He’d forgotten the discrepancy between her sweetie-pie appearance and sharp tongue. ‘It wouldn’t look too good, now would it? What would people think?’
‘People would wonder why some plain-clothes cop was harassing me. It would be a lot worse if I got in the car. If they saw me sitting alone with a white man, people would really talk.’
‘I tell you what. I’ll drive up and park in the alley. We can talk there and no one will see us. How’s that sound?’
She didn’t answer, so he got in the car and started up, then drove about a hundred feet before turning right into a little alley that intersected the otherwise continuous line of tidy houses. In his rear-view mirror he saw her come to the corner, hesitate, then finally walk his way.
She opened the passenger side door and slid into the front seat, leaving the door open. She winced at the heat of the leather seat and tucked her skirt under her stockinged thighs.
‘What’s this about?’ she asked. ‘I thought we’d done all our business at the bank.’
‘Not quite. I’d like to know where the extra twenty-five thousand went.’
She made a show of sighing. ‘I told you, we only received twenty-five thousand. I double-checked.’
‘So where’s the rest?’
‘It was probably some clerical error in New York.’ She moved over the ‘r’s in her words like a pianist skimming scales – too quick to make the error identifiable, but with something sounding not quite right. When he kept looking at her, she said sharply, ‘It didn’t make it to LA. You need to talk to the people back East.’
‘Oh we will, don’t you worry about that.’
They sat in silence for a moment, and then she said brightly, ‘Okay mister? I need to get home.’
‘There’s another thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Billy Osaka.’
‘Who?’ she said, but her voice quavered.
‘He has a message for you.’
Without thinking she said, ‘You’ve heard from him?’
Realising her mistake, she made to get out of the car, but he grabbed her arm, roughly enough that she wasn’t going to get away without a struggle. When she sat back again, he let go.
He said, ‘Now that we’ve established you know him, the honest answer is no. I’m trying to find him and it sounds like you want to know where he is, too.’
She gave a thin laugh. ‘If you know Billy at all, you know he never stays put for long.’
‘I know that, but I’m worried about him. He’s never let me down before.’
‘Let you down?’ she asked.
‘He called and said he had something urgent to tell me. Do you know what that could be?’
‘No.’
‘Anything about the bank?’
‘Why would it be about the bank?’
Because the coincidence of Guttman’s instructions and Billy’s links to this girl troubled him. He said, ‘Is he in trouble?’
She exhaled, and said, ‘Billy is always in trouble. And no, I don’t know where he is. Can I go now?’
‘Did you know his grandmother?’
‘Mrs Oka?’
‘That’s right.’ There was no point holding back. ‘She’s dead.’
Her lips opened for the briefest moment, like a clam trying a taste of air before saying no thanks. She lowered her head and said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, but not surprised. She was very old. When did she die?’
‘At the weekend. She was murdered.’
‘No! Who would do that?’ Her horrified expression seemed genuine.
‘The police think Billy did.’
‘You can’t be serious. He loved his grandmother. He was devoted to her.’
‘I went to see an old teacher of his, a man named Larson.’ When Hanako frowned he said, ‘You know him?’
‘I never met the man.’
‘Well, Professor Larson said Billy came to California because he had a cousin here. Do you know who that is?’
She hesitated. He could see she was trying to decide what to tell him. He said, ‘Listen, Hanako: the cops are looking for Billy, and so are some other people – not nice people. You don’t want them finding Billy before I do, you understand? You’ve got to trust me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because you haven’t got any choice. And because I know he didn’t kill his grandmother, and I’m not just saying that. I can prove it.’
‘How?’ she asked, sounding as if she wanted to believe him.
He brought the envelope out of his side pocket. ‘Recognise the handwriting?’
‘Where did you find this?’
‘It was on the dresser in Mrs Oka’s bedroom. It had five hundred dollars in it – that’s with the LAPD now. I kept the envelope.’
‘Do you know what it says?’
‘“Grandmother”. He wouldn’t have left Mrs Oka five hundred dollars if he’d just murdered her.’
Hanako Yukuri sat silently for a moment. Down the alley two Japanese boys were playing on bicycles, circling around each other slowly and talking animatedly.
‘Did she suffer very much?’ asked Hanako.
‘I’m afraid she did.’
Hanako shook her head. ‘I don’t know why anyone would want to harm her.’
‘It had to do with Billy. They were warning him.’
‘Warning him, how?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me that. All I’ve managed to find out is that Billy liked to gamble. I think he had debts.’
‘He liked to play cards, but he only told me about the times he won.’ She looked suddenly disheartened.
He said more gently, ‘That’s what most people do.’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m a good girl, from good hard-working parents. They raised me as a Baptist and raised me as an American – it’s other people who seem to have a problem with that. And I never put a foot wrong – until I met Billy.’
‘Your parents don’t approve of him.’
She shook her head. ‘They were polite, but I could tell they didn’t like him. He was doing his best to be humble and respectful, but they could see he isn’t really that way. They thought he was yogone.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A roughneck.’
He nodded. ‘Did you ever go with Billy to the Sierra?’
‘What do you know about that?’ Her eyes widened questioningly.
He shrugged. ‘Billy mentioned it.’
‘He promised to take me there this summer. I arranged everything. I told my parents I was going with old school friends. Then he cancelled at the last minute.’
‘Why was that?’
‘He went to Hawaii instead.’
‘Hawaii?’ He thought back to Billy’s absence. It couldn’t have been more than ten days. Had he lied about this to Hanako too?
‘Yes, he flew there. Don’t ask me where he got the money. It costs more than six hundred dollars to go that way.’
What a layer of lies – telling Nessheim he was helping a relative in Oregon, then ‘admitting’ he’d gone to the Sierra, when in fact he’d gone to Hawaii. ‘Was this a vacation?’
‘He claimed it was family business,’ Hanako said crossly. ‘Since both his parents are dead, I don’t know what family he had in mind.’ She gave a sour laugh, and added, ‘He was only gone a week.’
‘What about this cousin of his, did you ever meet him?’
‘No.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘On Terminal Island, off San Pedro. There’s a Japanese community there. He’s one of the fishermen. They sell their catch to the canneries on the island.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘No. Talk about yogone – Billy says the people there are very coarse.’
‘Does his cousin look like Billy?’
‘No. By Japanese standards he’s tall – but not as tall as Billy. I saw a picture of him once at Mrs Oka’s. He has a harsh face and when he’s out at sea he doesn’t shave.’
That will help me find him, thought Nessheim. ‘Did you ever meet him?’
Hanako shook her head. ‘Billy said since he’d met my family I should meet his, and I was always happy to see Mrs Oka. She was a sweet old lady. But I drew the line at Akiro.’
Nessheim noted the name. ‘Why’s that?’
‘He is not a good influence on Billy. For one thing, he started him gambling. And I know he doesn’t think Billy should be courting me.’ Hanako said irritably, ‘Billy told me Akiro called me a gaijin wannabe.’
‘What?’
‘It means I’m loyal to America more than Japan. Which I am, Mr Agent Nessheim. I was born here, I work here, I have a home here. I have as many rights as you do.’
‘I’m not arguing with that,’ he said mildly.
She was still cross. ‘I just want to be American – if I’m allowed.’ She added with a shake of her head. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Yes I would,’ he said quietly. Nessheim thought of his father, hounded during the last war for his ancestry – a mob had made him get on his knees and kiss the American flag. ‘But Akiro doesn’t want that for himself?’
‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘He believes in Japan. He likes to look backward rather than forward.’
‘Was Billy like that?’ It seemed hard to believe, after Larson’s portrait of Billy as so eager to be American that he turned a blind eye to the prejudice blocking his way.
Hanako hesitated, but when she spoke it was emphatic: ‘No.’
‘If you never met Akiro, how do you know? Did Billy tell you?’
‘He knew I disapproved of him so he didn’t talk about him much. But you only have to know the kinds of people Akiro hangs out with. Gamblers, hoodlums.’
‘The Tokyo Club,’ he said.
‘For sure,’ she said vigorously.
‘More than enough.’
‘How’s that?’ asked Nessheim.
Hanako sighed. ‘You remember Mr Satake?
‘Of course.’
‘He’s a very good grocer.’
‘Yes, and president of the bank.’
‘He doesn’t own the bank.’
Nessheim could see she wanted him to ask. ‘So who does?’
‘The Tokyo Club.’