by John Lutz
Ava put down her glass, reached into her raincoat pocket, and laid a packet on the table between them.
“This came in the mail today.”
6
It was a parcel wrapped in heavy brown paper, sealed with thick tape. He recalled Tillie saying that what she was going to give Ava was a book. This was the right size. There was no return address, but the postmark was Cheltenham, Maryland, the date the last day of Tillie’s life. It was addressed to Ava’s apartment on New Hampshire Avenue.
“Is this your grandmother’s handwriting?”
“Tillie couldn’t write anymore, with her arthritis. But I recognize the hand. It’s Teresa’s. Tillie’s most loyal nurse. I’m sure she took it to the post office.”
“And are you sure that this is—well, that this is it?”
“Tillie’s bequest, like the hashtag said? Yes. She kept it with her, of course. It was never in that storage shed. I suppose you’re going to ask why I haven’t opened it.”
“No, I’m not. Your grandmother was an expert on secrets. She kept a lot of them. She judged that somebody would kill to guard this one, and she was right. If I’d received this package I’d be scared shitless.”
Ava smiled wanly. “I doubt that. But thanks.”
“You want me to open it?”
She nodded. “I guess I must trust you.”
Again she gave him that look that hollowed out his stomach and riffled his vertebrae.
He took a penknife from a drawer and carefully slit the tape. Folded back the paper. The book inside was obviously old. It had probably cost someone a few dollars when a dollar was a lot of money. It was bound in vellum with gilt-edged pages. The endpapers were patterned silk, the spine sewn. The pages were thick and cream colored, written on with fountain pen in a blue ink that had faded with the years.
“It looks like a journal of some sort,” Laker said. “It’s mostly in Japanese.”
“My grandmother was fluent.”
“Really?”
“She learned it from her grandmother. She and her husband were Protestant missionaries in the Pacific, Japan and other places. Their last post was Hawaii, and they settled down there. Tillie grew up in Honolulu. She told me her first job was at the head office of Dole pineapple, as secretary handling the Japanese correspondence.”
“The only part I can understand is the headings,” Laker said.
“It’s a diary?”
“If so, she didn’t keep it every day: 6/14/41, then 6/20/41. Only a few months before Pearl Harbor. Does that fit? Was your grandmother in Hawaii in 1941?”
“I think so. After the war broke out, her parents sent her to the mainland. I don’t know the exact date. But she spent most of the war years here. I’ve seen pictures of her wedding. Granddad is wearing an Army uniform.”
She extended a hand for the book.
“You read Japanese?” Laker asked. “I guess that’s not surprising, for someone with a Ph.D. in linguistics.”
“Sounds like you’re inviting me to be pedantic.” Ava said. “I’m a linguist, which means a scientist who studies how language works. Useful for making and breaking codes, which is what NSA pays me for. A person who can speak a lot of languages is a polyglot.”
“And you’re that, too.”
“Well, I know some Japanese.”
She paged through the book. Her dark eyebrows drew together in concentration, and a long crease divided her brow. “This is baffling.”
“You can’t understand what it says?” Laker asked.
“No, that part is easy enough. ‘It’s raining, mother, don’t go outside.’—‘I have been fishing all day and have caught nothing.’—‘The fields have been diked and leveled off. We must hurry to plant potatoes and radishes.’ It’s all bits and snatches. A lot of breaks and repeated words.”
“Is it a code of some sort?”
“My first guess would be no. I get no sense of an underlying system. You noticed in the headings, after every date there’s an address? 417 Tusitala. 88 Lemon Rd. 519 Uluniu.”
“All streets in Honolulu.”
“Really? I’ve never been there.” Turning pages, she came to a blank one. The next ones were blank, too. “So that’s it. We have fifteen or twenty entries, each a date, an address, and a few lines of doggerel.”
“What’s the last date?”
“Eleven, two, forty-one.”
“Just over a month before Pearl Harbor.”
“We shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that this has anything to do with the Japanese attack, Laker. Tillie wasn’t involved with powerful men and great events at this point in her life. She was barely out of her teens. Just a missionaries’ kid, working as a secretary for Dole.”
“Okay. But why is this book so important, do you think?”
She flipped back, rereading and shaking her head. “ ‘Lizard so still so quick. Lizard.’ I don’t know, maybe it is a code.”
“You can work on it on the plane.”
“Plane?”
“To Honolulu.”
“What do you expect to find there?”
“I don’t know. But you said Tillie gave you a headstart. Let’s use it. Before whoever killed Tillie figures out that this book still exists, and that you have it. We’ll take the first flight tomorrow morning.”
“It’ll have to be a later flight. The funeral is tomorrow. You should come. It may be . . . interesting.”
He nodded gravely. “Considering what we know.”
7
Ava could see nothing but blue ocean from the plane’s window, but her ears were telling her that they had begun a gentle descent. She got up. She wanted to talk to Laker before the fasten-seatbelts sign went on. She moved down the wide aisle and opened the curtain. She was in first class, he in tourist. It had been the same on the flight from Washington to Los Angeles, and during the long layover at LAX he had kept his distance. He wasn’t much into explanations, she’d noticed, and she was getting more nervous as they neared Hawaii.
He would soothe her. Just being near the big, broad-shouldered man made her feel protected. She liked the way he bent down to listen to her, half-turning his head to bring his good ear to bear. She knew about the IED blast in Baghdad that had partially deafened him.
Now hold on, she told herself. No going soft on Laker. Wariness had been bred into Ava, as the offspring of a prominent Washington family, long before she joined the NSA. People were not what they seemed. If you trusted someone instinctively, better mistrust your instincts.
If she’d needed a reminder of the soundness of that rule, yesterday’s funeral would have provided it. The capital’s hypocrisy had been on full display. People were texting in church. At the gravesite. Anytime, in fact, that they were sure a camera wasn’t pointed at them. In the receiving line there had been phony smiles and crocodile tears.
Then there were the former presidents. They didn’t do receiving lines. You were brought to them, after their Secret Service details had treated you to a final pass of the handheld metal detector. It was so confusing, meeting former presidents. The ones you’d voted against turned out to be nice guys, while the ones you’d voted for were jerks.
The worst part was that in church, people spoke at the microphone of Tillie’s tragic accident. At the reception, they speculated in whispers about who had murdered her.
Ava had not spoken to Laker, but every time she’d caught sight of him, literally standing head and shoulders above the crowd, she’d felt a little better. Was she looking for a father figure in this tall man with his deliberate movements and soft but authoritative voice? He was older than she was, but she couldn’t tell how much. His close-cropped hair was still black, but there were streaks of gray in his neatly trimmed beard.
Just ask the man about his plan, she told herself sternly. Keep emotion out of it.
In the more narrow confines of the tourist cabin, a line of people waiting for the lavatories blocked most of the aisle. As she hesitated, the lavatory door nex
t to her folded open and Laker stepped out. She had to look twice. He’d shaved off his beard. Now he didn’t look much over forty.
She stepped close and spoke just loud enough to be heard over the rush of air around the fuselage. “Why the shave?”
“I’ve been to Honolulu before. Might be useful to look different.”
“A naked face is the best disguise? I think so, too. And who would expect you to have a cleft chin, just like Cary Grant?”
Laker gave her a puzzled look. Which was understandable.
God, Ava, pull yourself together.
They squeezed through the crowd to a pair of empty seats. The plane was half-empty. July must be off-season for Hawaii.
“Any luck with the code?” he asked.
“It’s not code. Just gibberish. I’m not surprised. How would a twenty-year-old secretary at Dole learn how to write code? Why would she need to?”
He said nothing. Which was a sensible response to questions you didn’t know the answer to. She changed the subject. “I didn’t see much of you at the funeral.”
“You had your hands full with members of Congress. POTUSes and FLOTUSes. I was talking with aides, assistants, and secretaries. Chauffeurs are especially informative. They overhear a lot of conversations in the backseat.”
“Conversations about Tillie?”
“And you.”
She leaned close and whispered, “Does anybody know about the journal?”
“No.”
She sat back. “That’s a relief, anyway.”
“But it’s common knowledge that Tillie grew up in Hawaii. You flying there is going to arouse interest.”
“Laker, I wasn’t dumb enough to tell anybody.”
“The NSA trolls through airline reservation computers regularly.”
“Right. I knew that,” said Ava, irritated with herself for forgetting. “As do other agencies. Meaning a lot of people know I’m on this plane now.”
He nodded. “That’s why I’ve been keeping my distance.”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“To see if anyone else is.”
“And so far I’m clean. Or we wouldn’t be talking now.”
“Yes. But all the agencies have field offices or other assets in Honolulu. We should expect surveillance, maybe even an approach.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“It’s in our interest to keep them confused. Act like you’re on vacation. You needed a few days away from the stress of Washington. Check into a hotel in Waikiki and lounge by the pool.”
“And wait for some guy to offer to rub sunblock on my back, then ask too many questions while he’s doing it?”
“Exactly. Anything like that happens, call me.”
“Uh huh. So why am I the goat? Why don’t you loll around at poolside? If they’re going through passenger lists, they know you’re on this plane, too.”
“I’m using alternative ID.”
“Oh. You’re not Laker. And, since you weren’t seated next to me, there’s no reason for anyone to connect us. What will you be doing?”
“Seeing what I can find out about your grandmother’s life during the time she was keeping the journal.”
“Why do I get the feeling you just want to keep me safe?”
He gave her that quizzical look of his. “You’re not safe anywhere, Ava. We have to assume that somebody knew about the journal. And murdered your grandmother to prevent it from falling into your hands.”
“Then he thinks he succeeded. That the book is ashes.”
“We can’t count on that. Better give it to me before we land.”
“No. I’ll do as you say otherwise, but I’m keeping the journal.”
8
He followed her through the airport corridors to ground transportation, keeping well back, with plenty of other travelers between them. She passed the security barrier and the small crowd waiting to meet arriving passengers. No one detached from it to follow her.
Still he tagged along as she headed for ground transportation, towing her wheeled carry-on. She was drawing occasional glances. Her dark pantsuit, standard Washington wear, was conspicuous among the arriving vacationers. Her beauty was conspicuous, too.
A few passersby—all male—stopped and turned for a second look at the slender redhead. At the counter, the guy was taking way too long to arrange her ride on the courtesy van to The Royal Hawaiian hotel.
Laker had to smile. What right did he have to be irritated? He turned and headed for the rental-car counters. Nobody from an intelligence agency was following Ava. Guys trying to hook up with her were none of his business. She could no doubt handle them on her own.
He should have rented a nondescript four-door, but there was a Mustang convertible available and he couldn’t resist. Must be the island spirit getting into him. Once on the road with the top down, he was pleased with the choice. The weather was beautiful, of course. The temperature was probably the same as Washington’s, but the humidity was much lower.
He took the fastest route to Honolulu, which was not the prettiest. The Nimitz Freeway ran past factories and warehouses, power lines and billboards. It looked like any mainland city. Exiting the freeway, he was among steel-and-glass skyscrapers that could have been downtown anywhere. But between the buildings, he saw sparkling blue ocean in one direction, lush green mountains in the other. Looking maukashe and makaishe the Hawaiians called it, and the urge was irresistible. He wondered how people got any work done here.
He parked and went into the building that housed the Honolulu Advertiser. When beginning an investigation, particularly in a town he didn’t know well, Laker made the newspaper his first stop. In his experience, reporters always found out a lot more than they were able to put in the paper, for reasons of space, or for other, more interesting reasons. You could always get them to talk by saying you were a fellow writer working on a book and offering them lunch.
Half an hour later, he was seated at a table by the window at Kakaako Kitchen, across from Joseph Kalapalea, obituaries editor. “I thought it was a career disaster when they sent me to the obit desk,” Joe was saying. “And it probably was. But I like the work. You write an essay that sums up a person’s whole life. And it’s usually the last time that person will appear in the paper. So you get the final word.”
Joe had unruly black hair, golden skin, and narrow dark brown eyes. Like many Honolulans, he was a hybrid of Hawaiian, Japanese, and mainland Caucasian. A stocky man in his forties, he was dressed in flip-flops, three-quarter-length pants with cargo pockets, and a blue T-shirt. The Hawaiian version of business casual put the stress on casual.
“You said there was a hang-up with your Tillie North piece.”
“It’s finished. The editor’s holding it, waiting to hear if the Maryland cops change their mind about her death being accidental. You know anything about that?”
“I’m sure I don’t know anything you don’t already know.”
The waiter arrived with their food: laulau, assorted meats and fish wrapped in ti leaves. Joe insisted that he try poi, taro root pounded to a light-brown mush. Laker found it kind of bland. Joe suggested combining it with kalua pork. It was still bland. Laker slid his bowl unobtrusively aside to concentrate on the neatly folded ti-leaf bundles, which were delicious.
“In fact, Tillie’s obit was written years ago, by my predecessor. I just had to update it. Fill in a few gaps. When it runs, it will be in a prominent place.”
“Even though she left Honolulu more than half a century ago?”
“Local girl made good,” said Joe wryly. “We feel way out on the edge here, and most of the time we like it, but there’s still that fascination with somebody who’s born here and becomes prominent in the nation’s capital.”
“Especially remarkable for someone from a pretty humble background. Missionaries’ kid, I mean.”
The reporter’s eyes widened with pleasure at the prospect of straightening Laker out. “Not so humble.”
“The missionaries who settled here in the nineteenth century were the first haoles who came to stay. A lot of them bought land low and sold it high decades later.”
“They did good and they made good.”
“Yep. Tillie’s family, the Brighams, especially. Her parents didn’t carry on the missionary tradition. The father owned a shipping line. The mother was prominent in society, as they used to say.”
“And Tillie was earning her living as a secretary at Dole. Wasn’t that unusual?”
Joe nodded and excitedly pointed his chopsticks at Laker. The ti-leaf dumpling between them slipped out and plopped onto his plate. “Very unusual. A family like the Brighams was expected to send a bright girl like Tillie to the mainland for college. To Vassar to meet and marry a Yale man. Or Radcliffe to nab a Harvard guy.”
“So what happened?”
Joe retrieved his dumpling and popped it in his mouth. Chewed leisurely. Reporters could never resist building up the suspense.
“I think Tillie rebelled. I think there was some scandal that got hushed up.”
“You think?”
He gave a shrug and a nod. “I spent a long time in the Advertiser morgue, read acres of fading newsprint. Found only one fact to support my theory, and that wasn’t enough. My editor made me cut all that out of the piece.”
“What was your theory?”
“Tillie wanted to stay here. Her parents insisted on the college and husband-hunting thing. There was a family blowup. She had to move out of the house and support herself.”
Laker nodded. As she had shown in later life, Tillie had a mind of her own and a strong will. He could believe she had been a rebellious teenager. “But you couldn’t find anything about her in the newspapers of the time?”
“I didn’t say that. She was all over the society pages.” Joe had one of those shoulder bags in which reporters carried their tape recorder and notebooks. He opened it and took out a manila folder, which he handed to Laker.
Laker had finished his meal. He set the plate aside and opened the folder. The first page was a photocopy of a newspaper page from 1939. A picture showed a girl holding a wooden tennis racquet and wearing a white dress that reached to just above her knees. She had nice legs. He looked at the face and at first saw no resemblance to the worn, wrinkled woman he had met in Maryland. Slowly a resemblance emerged: the high cheekbones and firm chin. And the eyes. Even in a black-and-white photo you could tell they were blue.