Out of Time

by Michael Z. Lewin

Uncertain of me he said, ‘You need a college degree for an interview with a decent agency and you almost need a post-graduate degree to get hired. But please excuse me. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go on up. O.K. if I come through?’

  ‘Oh sure,’ I said, moving and holding the door for him. ‘You must be a real busy guy.’ He passed me and walked to the elevator.

  ‘Which apartment does Mr Bates occupy?’

  ‘It’s 1203,’ I said. ‘Just tell him you’re a friend of Al’s. Good luck with him, Roger,’ I said and left the building quickly.

  I went north again, to the Belters’.

  I spent a long time at the door, ringing the bell a second and third time.

  But I was in a determined frame of mind.

  Finally, Tamae Mitsuki opened the door.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Mitsuki,’ I said.

  Her eyes flickered over me for a moment, and then she said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr and Mrs Belter are both out.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to see you.’

  ‘I am just about to go out myself,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll try to be concise and to-the-point.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can postpone my appointment.’

  ‘It’s important,’ I said.

  Inside the house, the telephone began to ring.

  She maintained her guard at the open front door for only a moment. She made way for me, just as I had for Roger the Agency Op, and she retreated quickly to the telephone.

  I followed.

  She realised I was with her and passed one extension, heading for parts of the house I had not been in.

  I picked up the telephone and said, ‘Belter’s residence.’

  The party at the other end said nothing. I heard breathing and strained to hear the cogs and wheels whirring in the caller’s mind. Finally a decision was arrived at. The party hung up.

  I replaced the receiver as Mrs Mitsuki watched me impassively.

  I said, ‘I tried to sound like Mr Belter when he answers my calls. But maybe the caller expected Mr Belter to be at work and mine was the wrong voice answering. What do you think?’

  She said, ‘You seem to be making an effort to be obnoxious, Mr Samson. Why is that?’

  ‘Because you have told me some lies, Mrs Mitsuki. And I’m in an extra-bad mood because you’re not the only one who’s been doing it.’

  She opened her eyes wide and looked supremely innocent. ‘Lies?’

  We sat in the kitchen.

  I said, ‘I am now certain not only that Vera Wert Edwards is alive but that she has a regular source of information about her daughter.’

  Mrs Mitsuki watched me.

  ‘Nothing to say?’

  ‘Should I have something to say?’

  ‘Since you are the source of information, I would think that you would want me to congratulate me on finding out the hard way what you could have told me easily.’

  ‘That is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘I am not such an informant.’

  ‘Oh, I think you are,’ I said.

  We looked at each other.

  I said, ‘There are a few touchstones which make the conclusion inescapable for me.’

  ‘If you tell me what they are, perhaps I can explain where you’ve gone wrong,’ she said. Cool.

  ‘O.K. The first is a coincidence I don’t like.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The Belters originally came to me because of the dud birth certificate and my investigation then turned up Mrs Belter’s connection with Vera Edwards. On the same day Mr Belter hired me, I was approached by a man who had been so involved with Vera Edwards that he committed perjury at her trial to help her get off. Two people with important connections to one woman. That is quite a coincidence.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Not interested? Well, I am. Because I am sure now that I was hired by the second man so that he could keep an eye on me or even get me to drop the Belters’ case, which he tried to do. But the point is this. To contact me so quickly – the same day – he had to know the Belters’ plans and what the false birth certificate might lead me to. You are the only person apart from the Belters themselves who knew about the decision to hire me. And you would only know the significance of the birth certificate if you had regular contact with Vera Wert Edwards.’

  I waited.

  ‘Nothing to say, Mrs Mitsuki?’

  After several seconds she said, ‘I find your accusations extraordinary.’

  ‘There is more to come,’ I said. ‘And worse.’

  She sat impassively.

  I read it as support for my contentions.

  I said, ‘Vera Edwards is out there somewhere. She is interested enough in her child not only to support her and Mrs Murchison through the girl’s childhood, but to maintain you as an information source. Why, I ask myself, does the real mother not just appear, tell the story, and take a more direct part in her daughter’s life?’

  I paused. Nothing.

  ‘Must be some good reason. Now, life’s funny, full of farfetched explanations for things. Mrs Edwards might have things in her life that she is too ashamed for her daughter to know. She might be married to a politician or some other kind of gangster. Or it could be that what she’s hiding is worse than shame.’

  I paused.

  ‘It could be she feels guilty about having murdered her husband on April 21st, 1940, and doesn’t think she could manage to talk people – her daughter – into believing she’s innocent a second time. Just speculation, of course. But what do you think of it?’

  Mrs Mitsuki maintained her silence. But suddenly I felt she was tired, that a hardness in her gaze was gone. I didn’t know how close to the truth I was. But I felt some of my pot shots were hitting home. They had to be.

  I said, ‘Another question. How did Mrs Edwards make contact with you in the first place? I say you lied when you said your husband never heard from her. An association with her is the only plausible way to explain why you should choose to come to Indianapolis after the war, instead of staying put in an established Japanese community. And the fact that you just happened to find Mrs Murchison, who happened to be bringing up Mrs Edwards’ daughter, wraps the package and puts a bow on it. Another coincidence?’

  I said, ‘I’m calling you a liar, Mrs Mitsuki. Are you not inclined to say something about that?’

  Slowly she said, ‘You said there was worse. Was that it?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Finish what you have to say.’

  ‘There are two things. The first is that I suspect your late husband was at least an accessory in the murder of Mrs Edwards’ husband.’

  She breathed sharply.

  But I was rolling. ‘I’ve already found one man who lied for her at the trial. If your husband was treated well by Mrs Edwards, and hated Mr Edwards, it is likely that he would tailor his testimony of events to favour Mrs Edwards. His version of the events on the night of the shooting differs considerably from that of the dead man’s sister, who claimed to be on the scene almost immediately after the shots. The jury accepted your husband’s story. I wonder if they would now.’

  ‘Koichi was a man of honour,’ she said stiffly.

  I followed a new tack. ‘You and he married shortly after he arrived in Los Angeles, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On what money? You said he didn’t have a secure job. Why did your family allow a rapid marriage to a man with uncertain ability to support his wife? Is that the way in the Japanese community?’

  She glared at me.

  ‘I think not. So I must conclude that he arrived in L.A. with a nest egg substantial enough to impress prospective in-laws. But where from? Did he save so much out of a servant’s wages through the depression years?’

  I saw her begin to speak, and it would have been with feeling. But she drew her lips, tight, swallowed, and said nothing.

  ‘Which brings me to the extraordinary fact that Mrs Murchison was murdered a few days ago. Mur
dered.’ I exhibited the feeling now. ‘Why should anyone kill an institutionalised woman in her eighties, of unreliable mental clarity?’

  I paused again, though I had given up expecting answers to my questions from anyone but me.

  ‘It is too much of a coincidence to think that her murder was not related to the recent revival of interest in Vera Edwards. So, looking for a motive we can ask, aren’t Vera Edwards’ secrets safer now that Mrs Murchison is dead? And if Vera Edwards was involved, we’re entitled to ask, Mrs Mitsuki, what then might your involvement have been?’

  She sat before me now breathing heavily.

  I said, ‘This woman has been responsible for the taking of two lives.’

  ‘It’s not so!’ she said. The words caught me by surprise, bursting out of her, air from a ruptured balloon. ‘It’s not so! It’s not so!’ She cried, tears flowing fiercely, and then for a long time.

  When she stopped and looked up again, I spread my hands to offer myself for convincing. I said, ‘I’ve spelled out what I think and why. Maybe I don’t have it all right. Please, sort out the details for me.’

  ‘No,’ she said harshly. ‘I am not going to talk to you.’

  ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I feel I have no alternative but to go to the police.’

  She reacted facially to the word, but again grew silent.

  I said, ‘Maybe you should think over what I’ve said.’ Snappishly, ‘Yes, yes. I will think it over.’ ‘And,’ I said, ‘discuss it with . . . your friends.’ To agree to this would have conceded something. She did not speak. ‘Just don’t take long about it,’ I said. I got up and left the house.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  I drove out of the Belters’, but headed away from the city at the end of the drive. Up the road I turned around and pulled over to wait.

  My engine hardly had time to catch its breath when a small Japanese car pulled out of the Belters’ driveway and headed for Indianapolis. I couldn’t see clearly, but I was certain that it was being driven by a small Japanese woman.

  I also was reasonably sure that I knew where the car was leading me.

  We passed taxi stands and bus stops as we got closer to the centre of the city. They put me in mind of Bates’ description of tailing Vera Edwards, that she knew enough to change her means of transport to try to shake anyone who might be following. It struck me as a funny thing for a country girl to be knowledgeable enough to do. But a country girl who has learned to sing for her living gets to know a lot of funny things.

  Tamae Mitsuki drove straight as an arrow to Tarkington Tower. She walked into the lobby hurriedly. I drew up outside the front doors to watch. She didn’t look back. She pushed a bell on the intercom unit, but then opened the locked door with a key.

  I wondered if she would be expressionless with Normal Bates when he asked her whether I had followed her and she had to confess that she didn’t think to look.

  I considered parking and joining them but decided not to. It was their time to adjust to the fact that their secrets were shared.

  Instead I went to police headquarters.

  Just inside the main entrance I ran into Leroy Powder.

  He said, ‘Decided to give yourself up?’

  ‘I’ve come to see Miller.’

  ‘Got some more errands for him, gumshoe?’

  ‘I’m making progress. You want to hear about it?’

  ‘Have you found the rich lady that knocked off her old man yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’ll pass.’

  I expected him to leave. But he didn’t. He said, ‘I had a trainee civilian in yesterday. Young kid. Stupid, but we got such a workload you got to try to use anything they send to you these days.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said.

  ‘Supposed to know his way around computer information systems so I thought up a few make-work jobs for him.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I tried him on that houseboy, Mitsuki. See if he could get anything from California. Now, Christ, something like that ought to be easy enough, even for a trainee. Wouldn’t you think that, Samson? Wouldn’t you think that?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘So, did he come up with anything?’

  ‘I nearly had to do the whole thing for him myself He’s that bad.’

  ‘Did you find anything out?’

  ‘Oh. You in a hurry? Why didn’t you say so? We tracked down a Koichi Mitsuki that died of pneumonia in ’42 in a camp for Japanese called Manzano. We get the right one?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘So there the trail ends for the missing houseboy. Unless you can track his wife and kid. You know he had a wife and kid?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Name of wife Tamae Seto? Married September 20th, 1940?’

  ‘I didn’t have her maiden name,’ I said.

  ‘Kid named Hiroshi. That’s a boy. Only child.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Jesus, no flies on you, gumshoe,’ he said. ‘Born November 13th, 1940.’

  I raised my eyebrows.

  ‘I finally got to something interesting, huh?’ he said, smiling. ‘Didn’t know she had a kid who was seven months premature?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the Japanese never suffered from the same kind of Victorianism we did, so I read. Bit of a mover this Koichi Mitsuki?’

  ‘The kid wasn’t his,’ I said sombrely. Suddenly I felt a wall of my edifice of speculation crumbling. Maybe Koichi Mitsuki had needed no money to be offered the opportunity to marry quickly into Tamae’s family. The willingness to take on another man’s child might have given him the shortcut. And maybe also given Tamae Mitsuki reason to leave California after the war when she was alone, with a child and a history. Maybe her gratitude to Koichi was enough to make her want to go to the last place he was associated with. Maybe he had told her that Ella Murchison had been a friend to Vera Edwards and so might be to her.

  Powder said, ‘Your eyes are glazed. Have you just had a stroke?’

  ‘My jigsaw pieces fit together in different ways and I don’t know which to choose.’

  He laughed at me and shook his head slowly. ‘Poor gumshoe.’

  I said, ‘Your trainee ought to have a chance to track someone in California all by himself, now you’ve shown him how to do it. He’ll never learn otherwise.’

  Powder said, ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Check for Vera Edwards.’

  ‘The rich lady,’ he said, starchily. ‘I remember.’ He glared.

  ‘It’s a reasonable place for a woman with money to lose herself. She was pregnant too. Your trainee could look for a birth somewhere, August through December 1940, to a mother named Vera or Daisy, Wert, Edwards or Wines.’

  ‘Any special reason to suspect California?’

  ‘I think she contacted Koichi Mitsuki.’

  ‘Contacted,’ he repeated.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘As in it could have been a telephone call?’

  It could have been. I nodded.

  ‘Go waste somebody else’s time,’ Powder said.

  I went upstairs to Miller’s office.

  He wasn’t there and they didn’t know when he would be back.

  Having enjoyed a certain heady feeling of accomplishment earlier in the day, I was dropping like a diver off the high board who was wondering whether there was really water in the pool down there after all.

  A new slant wasn’t necessarily more right than an old one. But I was subject to the disquiet of wanting to know answers to things I didn’t even have the right questions for.

  Before I left the police department I wrote a note asking Miller to call me, and I tried to talk to the duty detective about whether there had been any information from the reconstruction at the Biarritz.

  But there had been no progress.

  I went home. The snow was beginning to stick on the sidewalks.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  I was having a late lunch of
pickle and peanut butter sandwiches when somebody entered my outer office.

  I wasn’t in the mood, so I didn’t bound up, dash to the door, bow, scrape.

  Still, pickle doesn’t go that well with peanut butter.

  I found that my visitor was none other than Roger the Agency Op, last seen about to visit Normal Bates for Wanda Edwards.

  ‘Roger!’ I said.

  He was surveying my reception chamber. A wisp of a smile showed as he turned to me. ‘Mr Samson?’

  ‘My friends call me “sir,” but don’t feel obliged. Sit down. If you’re staying.’

  He looked around the room. I have a bench and a chair for clients. He didn’t look taken with either but he finally chose the chair.

  ‘How’d you get on with Norm?’

  ‘How did you know who I was?’ he asked.

  ‘I recognised you from Jane’s description. Great way with words, Jane.’

  He rubbed the back of his head. I felt he was getting annoyed. But he forced himself into a working gear. He said, ‘Miss Wanda Edwards hired me through my agency a couple of days ago to locate her sister-in-law.’

  ‘I know,’ I said.

  He nodded as if it had been front-page news and everybody should know. ‘But I don’t know why the hell my controller took the case on. We’re rushed off our feet. Seems everybody in the whole damn city wants something investigated. You probably have the same problem.’

  ‘My feet hardly remember what the floor is like,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t usually work on weekends,’ he said.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘But when the clients are ready to pay for speed, it’s hard to turn them down.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘once I found out that there was another operative working on the same case, but for different people, I thought to myself, what are we both killing ourselves for? We’re pros. If the trail is there, we’ll both find it. So, I thought, why not stop by and talk to the other guy, man to man. If we pool our resources, and work together, then we find the lady more quickly and with less fuss.’

  ‘Normal Bates got fussed, huh?’

  ‘Frankly, for someone who knows what the job is about, he didn’t cooperate a lot. I couldn’t seem to find a way to get to him.’