Flying Blind

by Max Allan Collins

  Later, the shichokan pointed out a flat stretch of land, which looked to have been recently cleared, and said, “Marpi Point. We begin clear second airfield soon.”

  Saipan didn’t seem to be in dire need of another commercial airport; in fact, Aslito Heneda was barely used for that purpose. In his sly way, the shichokan was letting his I.R.A. ally know that, though military aircraft and combat units were not yet in place, the island was undergoing heavy-duty fortification.

  He was less coy back in Garapan, when we rolled past the chain-link-fenced-off Chico Naval Base with its sprawl of barracks skirting the seaplane base with its ramps and repair shed, and modest population of two flying boats. Within that fenced-off area, there was no sign of any military personnel.

  “Those buildings full by next year,” the governor bragged. “With konkyochitai…” Noticing my confusion, he thought about that and came up with a translation: “Battalion. Also, a bobitai, defense force. Five hundred men. And keibitai…guard force. Eight hundred navy troop.”

  Our sedan headed back up the main street, and turned over onto a side street parallel to the waterfront, my spider-haired chubby tour guide proudly pointing out an imposing low-slung complex of concrete buildings on golf-green grounds—a modern hospital specializing in tropical diseases (“Dengue fever, big problem Saipan”). Across the street was a small park, where a few palm trees and stone benches attended a towering pedestal on which stood a larger-than-life-size bronze statue of an older Japanese gentleman in a business suit, a hand in his pocket, an oddly casual pose for such a formal monument.

  “Baron Matsue Haruji,” the shichokan said, answering my unasked question. “Sugar King, bring prosperity to Saipan.”

  On a side street nearby, however, the tour turned less cheerful, as the sedan pulled over by an undeveloped overgrown plot of land, a reminder of the jungle this town had been carved out of. Across from us were two one-and-a-half-story concrete buildings with high barred windows. The building at right was long and narrow, stretching out like an endless concrete boxcar; across a crushed-stone area, where several black sedans were parked, a similar but much smaller building squatted, a concrete bungalow with four barred windows. Probably the maximum-security section.

  “Father,” the shichokan said quietly, “we give you trust. We show you…” He searched for the words and found perfect ones. “…good faith.”

  “That is true, Shichokan.”

  He nodded slowly. His bassy voice was somber as he said, “We ask a favor.”

  I nodded in return. “You honor me, Shichokan.”

  “We would like you to speak to two American prisoners…. Pilots.”

  My heart raced but I kept my voice calm. “Pilots?”

  “Spies.”

  I gestured toward the concrete buildings. “Are they held in that prison, Shichokan?”

  “One is. Man.”

  “There is a woman, too?”

  “Yes. She is famous woman in your country…. She is call ‘Amira.’”

  I was trembling; I hoped he didn’t see it. “Amelia,” I said.

  “Yes. Amira.” He grunted a few words in Japanese and his driver pulled out into the street, turned at the next corner.

  I said nothing; my heart was a fucking sledgehammer, but I said nothing. He had brought up the subject. It was his to pursue.

  We hadn’t gone far—maybe six hundred feet—when the sedan came to a stop again, opposite another concrete building, a two-story one; it loomed over its neighbors (a low-slung general merchandise store at left, a single-story frame house at right) looking at once modern and gothic, a church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Its four upper-floor windows, divided by decorative pillars, were tall and narrow, and the lower floor—which had a shallow, one-story extension to the street—had arched windows that cried out for stained glass.

  But it wasn’t a church.

  “Hotel,” the shichokan said. “This hotel—Kobayashi Ryokan—run by military. Keep honored guests, like honored friend, here…. Also political prisoners.”

  An interesting mix.

  “The woman is here?” I asked, with a casual gesture to the building.

  “Hai,” the shichokan said. “Second floor…. Please go to hotel. You expected. Your questions answered.”

  He gave me half a bow, and my door was opened by his driver; I damn near fell out of the sedan, or into the driver’s arms. But within moments I was crossing the dusty, unpaved street, watching the sedan roll away, with—framed in its rear window—the shichokan’s inanely smiling face. I approached the boxy gothic structure, and went in.

  The one-story extension served as the hotel’s minuscule lobby: at right, nobody was behind the check-in counter; at left, under a churning ceiling fan, straining their rattan chairs, sat two massive Chamorro men, playing cards on a rattan table with a deck turned splotchy from sweaty, dirty fingers. Also on the table were the kitchen matchsticks they were betting, a pack of Japanese cigarettes, two long black billy clubs, and a sheathed machete.

  They were the first native males I’d seen wearing shirts; in fact, they wore suits, only soiled-looking, threadbare, as if these were hand-me-downs from the Japs.

  But that seemed unlikely, because these were two very big boys. One of them was hatless, with a thatch of black hair atop a cantaloupe head with watermelon-seed eyes in walnut-shell pouches of skin in a litchi-nut-toned face so unwrinkled, it was as if neither thought nor emotion had ever traveled across that arid plain. Twenty years of age or maybe fifty, he was just plain fat, bursting his seams.

  Such flab made him less dangerous than the other one, a bull-necked mass of muscle and fat in a straw fedora, with a face so ugly, features so flat and blunt, so wrinkled, so pockmarked, the white knife scar down his right cheek seemed gratuitous.

  The worst part was the eyes: they were not stupid; they were hard and dark and glittering and smart. He looked at me above a hand of cards clutched in knife-handle fingers and said, “Six.”

  At first I thought he was making a bet, but when a frown tightened around the hard dark eyes, I asked, “Pardon me?”

  He was missing a front tooth; the others were the shade of stained oak, approximately the tone of his skin. “Six.”

  “That’s, what? My room number? Room six?”

  He played a card. “Six.”

  “Do I need a key?”

  “Six!”

  That seemed about as close to getting directions as I was going to get, so I entered the main building through a doorless archway, making my way down a central corridor, my shoes echoing off the hardwood floor. Doors to rooms were on either side of me; the walls were plaster, not rice paper. Stairs to the second floor were at the rear, but there seemed to be no exit down there. Fire inspectors apparently played it fast and loose in Saipan.

  Okay, Room 6. I stopped at number 6, tried the knob, found the door unlocked. Slippers awaited me just inside the door, and I traded my shoes for them. The pale yellow plaster walls were bare; a tall sheer-curtained window looked out on the side of the wood-frame residence next door. Though this was a Western-style structure, the room was in the style of a Japanese inn: a “carpet” of fine woven reed, padded quilts on the floor for a bed, two floor cushions to sit at a scuffed, low-riding teakwood table. No closet, but a rack with a pole was provided. The only concession to any non-Japanese visitors was a dresser with mirror.

  My travel bag was on the dresser.

  I checked inside, found my nine-millimeter; both the clip I’d loaded into the weapon, and my two spare clips, seemed untampered with. Weapon cradled in my hands, I looked up and saw my face in the mirror, or anyway the face of some confused fucking priest holding a gun.

  Then I looked at the ceiling, not for guidance from the Lord, but thinking about what the shichokan had said: the woman, “Amira,” was on the second floor….

  So what should I do? Go upstairs and start knocking on doors? And take my nine-millimeter along, in case I needed to bestow some blessings?r />
  A knock startled me, and I didn’t know whether to tuck the gun away in the bag, or maybe in my waistband, with the black coat over it.

  “Father O’Leary?”

  Chief Suzuki’s voice.

  “Father O’Leary, can speak?”

  I returned the nine-millimeter to my bag, and opened the door.

  Chief Suzuki stood respectfully, his pith helmet with the gold badge held in his hands. “I hope you find comfort.”

  “Thank you. It’s nice. Please come in.”

  Suzuki gave me a nod that was almost a bow, stepped inside and out of his shoes, and I closed the door.

  “Those two in the lobby,” I said, “do they work for you?”

  He frowned. “Jesus and Ramon? Did they give you trouble?”

  “No. I just saw their clothing, and the billy clubs, and wondered.”

  “Billy…?”

  “Billy clubs. Nightsticks, batons?” I pantomimed holding a billy and slapping it in my open palm.

  That he understood. “They are…native police. Ten Chamorro work with us—internal security. We have Jesus…” He traced a finger down his right cheek, in imitation of the bullnecked pockmarked Chamorro’s scar.

  I nodded that I understood who he meant.

  He continued: “We have Jesus on guard here many time. Jesus is my top jungkicho…detective. Jesus takes care of his people.”

  All of a sudden Suzuki was sounding like the priest. But what I figured he meant was, Jesus took care of investigations into crimes among the Chamorro.

  “Well,” I said, “he didn’t give me any trouble…. The shichokan said you wanted a favor, involving a woman in this hotel.”

  “Yes,” Captain Suzuki said. “May I sit?”

  “Certainly….”

  Soon we were seated on floor mats facing each other.

  His skeletal, gray-mustached countenance was grave, and regret clung to his words like a vine on a trellis. “Some people think the woman in this hotel…in the room above yours…should receive mercy. They say she is a fine person. A beautiful person.”

  Trying not to betray the chill his words had sent through me, I said easily, “If she is who the shichokan says she is, she is a famous person, too. Important.”

  “Yes. This is true. Nonetheless I disagree—she came here to carry out duties as a spy, and it cannot be helped. She should be executed.”

  And then Captain Suzuki asked his favor of Father O’Leary.

  18

  The room directly above mine was number 14. Chief Suzuki did not accompany me up the stairs, nor were there any signs of Jesus Sablan or Ramon Reyes, the chief’s Chamorro watchdogs; Jesus and Ramon were apparently still down in the lobby, playing rummy with smeary cards. I was alone in the hallway; according to the chief, right now only a few guests were registered at this hotel, whose rooms were reserved by the Japanese for honored guests—and prisoners.

  My two knocks made a lonely echo.

  From behind the door came a soft, muffled, “Yes?”

  Wrapped up in the sound of that one spoken word were so many hopes and dreams carried with me across the months, across the ocean, a single word spoken in that low, rich, matter-of-fact feminine voice I never thought I’d hear again.

  “Amy?” I said to the door, my face almost rubbing against its harsh, paint-blistered surface.

  But the door didn’t reply. The voice on the other side of it had granted me only that one word….

  I looked both ways, a kid crossing the street for the first time—stairwell at one end, window at the other, no Chief Suzuki, no members of his Chamorro goon squad, either. I kept my voice at a whisper, in case someone was eavesdropping across the way.

  “Amy—it’s Nathan.”

  It seemed like forever, and was probably fifteen seconds, but finally the door creaked open to reveal a sliver of the pale, lightly powdered elongated oval of her face. Under the familiar tousle of dark blonde hair, one blue-gray eye, sunken but alert, gaped at me, as half of the sensuous mouth (no lipstick) dropped open in astonishment.

  “You know what I hate,” I said, “about seeing a married woman?”

  The door opened wider and displayed her full face with the astonished expression frozen there, though her lips quivered and seemed almost to form a smile. “…What?”

  “Always meeting in hotel rooms.”

  And she backed away, shaking her head in disbelief, hand over her mouth, eyes filling with tears, as I stepped into the room, shutting the door behind me; she was thin but not emaciated, her face gaunt but not skeletal. She wore a short-sleeve mannish sportshirt and rust-color slacks and no shoes and looked neat and clean.

  That’s all I had time to take in before she flew into my arms, clutching me desperately, and I held her close, held her tight, as she wept into my clerical suitcoat, saying my name over and over, and I kissed the nape of her neck, and maybe I wept a little, too.

  “You’re here,” she was saying, “how can you be here? Crazy…you’re here…so crazy…here….”

  Our first kiss in a very long time was salty and tender and yearning and tried not to end, but when at last she drew away from me, just a little, still in my arms, and looked at me with bewilderment, she didn’t seem able to form any more words, the surprise had knocked the wind from her.

  And so she kissed me again, greedily; I savored it, then pulled gently away.

  “Take it easy, baby,” I said, running a finger around my clerical collar. “I got a vow of celibacy to maintain.”

  And she laughed—with only a little hysteria in it—and said, “Nathan Heller a priest? That’s good…. That’s rich.”

  “That’s Father Brian O’Leary,” I corrected, stepping away from her, taking a look around her room. “If anyone should ask….”

  Her living quarters were identical to mine, save for a few additional allowances for an American “guest”: a well-worn faded green upholstered armchair and, near the window looking onto the neighboring house and the rooftops beyond, a small Japanese-magazine-arrayed table with a reading lamp and an ashtray bearing the residue of several incense sticks. Incense fragrance lingered, apparently Amy’s antidote to the ever-present Garapan bouquet of dried fish and copra.

  But she had the same woven-reed carpet, padded quilts for a bed, low-slung teakwood table with floor cushions. On the clothesrack, among a few simple dresses and the inevitable plaid shirts, hung the oil-stained, weathered leather flight jacket she’d worn when she flew me in her Vega from St. Louis to Burbank. I checked the walls—including behind her dresser mirror—for drilled holes, found nothing to indicate we were being monitored. I didn’t figure we had much to worry about: the Japanese weren’t exactly known for their technical wizardry.

  Nonetheless, we both kept our voices hushed.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, studying me with wide eyes that didn’t seem to know whether to be filled with joy, disbelief or fear. “How in God’s name did you…?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No,” she said, with a sigh of a laugh, “hell no,” a rare swear word from this proper creature, and she flung herself into my arms again. I squeezed her tight, then held her face in my hands and studied it, memorized it, and kissed her as sweetly as I knew how.

  “Why did do you this?” she asked, cheek pressed against my chest, arms clasped around me, grasped around me, as if she were afraid I might bolt. “Why did you…?”

  “You know me,” I said. “I was hired. Works out to a grand a week.”

  And she was laughing quietly into my suitcoat.

  “You just can’t admit it, can you?” She looked up at me, grinning her wonderful gap-toothed grin. “You’re a romantic fool. My mercenary detective…coming halfway around the world for a woman….”

  There was something I had to ask, had to know, though I knew she was brimming with so many questions she didn’t know where or how to start. With us standing there, in each other’s arms, I said, “I thought…maybe…”
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br />   She was studying me now, almost amused. “What?”

  “That there might be…someone else here with you.”

  “Who?” She winced. “Fred? He’s in that horrible jail…poor thing.”

  “No, I…Amy, was there a baby?” It came out in a rush of ridiculous words. “Did you have your baby and they took it away from you?”

  She smiled half a smile, and it settled on one side of her face; she touched the tip of my nose with a finger lightly, then asked, “Who told you I was pregnant?”

  “Your secretary.”

  “Margot?” The grin widened. “I bet you slept with her.”

  “Almost. How about you?”

  She slapped my chest. “I shouldn’t have confided in that foolish girl. I hope you’re not too disappointed…. I hope you didn’t make this trip just to be a father…but most men would be relieved to hear it was a false alarm.”

  I hugged her to me, whispered my response into her hair. “I am relieved…not that I wouldn’t mind being a father to a child of yours…but to think our kid would be caught up in these circumstances.”

  She drew away, her eyes hooded in understanding, nodded, taking my hand, leading me to the quilted sleeping mats on the floor. We sat there, cross-legged, like kids playing Indian, holding hands.

  Her smile was a half-circle of embarrassment. “Nathan, I’m afraid…it was something else…”

  “What was?”

  “What I thought was the baby. There never will be a baby…not in these circumstances, or any other.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She squeezed my hand. “What I thought was pregnancy, Nathan…was early menopause…” Shaking her head, her expression grooved with wry regret, she added, “The, uh, symptoms are similar.”

  I slipped an arm around her, pulled her against me. “You picked a hell of a climate for hot flashes, lady.”

  She laughed softly. “I didn’t feel a thing…I was so ill with dysentery when they brought me here…can you imagine? I arrive at the dysentery capital of the world with a case of the world-class trots…. They had me in the hospital here for many, many months…I almost died.”

  “Were you ever in that jail?”