“I’m not sure I understand,” Harry said. “Why has he sent you to come find us?”
The young man sighed as though burdened by unfathomable exasperation.
“Because . . . he’s interested in your stuntman act,” he said.
Louis and Harry continued to blink, their faces blank.
“He wants to make arrangements to shoot some footage!” the young man exclaimed, sarcastically rapping on the side of his head with his knuckles to underscore the thick-skulled nature of his present audience. “You know . . . shoot some footage? Screen a reel? See if there’s anything there?”
“Anything there for what?” Harry asked.
“Why . . . to cast you as stuntmen!” The young man grinned but instantly relented, forfeiting a fraction of his enthusiasm. “He’s looking to make a new movie, something action-packed, and he’s gonna need one or two good stuntmen. He wants to put on a one-night-only event that showcases the best in the biz and see how they screen so he can make a decision.”
The young man was clearly tickled with the impressive nature of his own tidings. He paused and waited for all that he had said to sink in.
“So?” he pressed. “Are you interested?”
He reached into his pocket and produced a business card.
“All you gotta do is telephone this number here.” He pointed. “Tell ’em who you are and Farrow’s first assistant will explain all about how they want to get this thing on film.”
His hand remained outstretched, the card still waiting.
“Hey—snap out of it, eh? Are you interested, fellas?”
Louis and Harry found themselves every bit as tongue-tied and confused as when the conversation had first begun.
“What am I saying?” the young man chuckled. “Of course you’re interested.” He reached out to Louis as though to slip the business card into a breast pocket, but flailed briefly when he realized Louis was attired in a costume and therefore had no breast pocket. Awkwardly, the young man tucked the card into the neck of Louis’s costume and gave it a smug pat. “Of course you’re interested . . .”
His mission completed, he turned, preparing to depart. Thinking better of the situation, he twisted around and pointed to himself with one finger.
“Remember—the third assistant!” he hollered, reminding them with such pride, it made one wonder exactly how many assistants Buster Farrow had in total. “Tell ’em Reggie sent ya!” the kid added, and was gone.
41
Newcastle, California * September 20, 1943
That night, as Bonner waits for sleep, his mysterious hostess comes to him again. She had given no sign over dinner that this would be her intention, and yet, when he hears her soft footsteps, he is somehow expectant, not at all surprised.
He had retired to bed two hours earlier and had lain awake, restless, on the mattress, mulling over his case—in particular, Sheriff Whitcomb’s revelation of opium in Kenichi Yamada’s system, and Deputy Henderson’s gossip that Louis and Harry had attracted a possible offer to perform their stunts in Hollywood. As he mulled, the night drifted in through the open window, bearing the scent of damp oak leaves.
This time there are no groaning floorboards, no feeling of being watched. He simply hears Rosalind’s feet approaching without stealth, and watches the doorknob turn. She lets herself into the room and silently crosses to the bed. With one efficient gesture, she strips her nightgown off, over her head, and crawls under the sheets beside Bonner’s own warm body.
They don’t speak throughout the entire interlude. They reach for each other with plain understanding, limbs moving without apology, hands and mouths advancing frankly to what each wants. Bonner notices that while Rosalind’s movements are sure and steady, he nonetheless detects a kind of tremor beneath her skin, a flutter deep within her chest that is more than a simple heartbeat. And there is that look in her eyes again: a frantic, tortured look that suggests the transaction between them is far more complicated than Bonner can comprehend.
His own mind races. She is a stranger to him; he has never met a respectable woman who behaves as she does. Her motivations are opaque, confusing. Will people in town find out? And what will happen if they do? Will he have caused her shame? What will, say, Sheriff Whitcomb think of her, or him? Bonner can’t help but wonder.
He has never been the type to visit whorehouses or bed strangers. He is rarely so free with himself, but there is a quality about Rosalind—a dark, intense melancholy—that makes him feel blameless, makes what they are doing feel curiously necessary, free from filthier connotations.
After their bodies are spent, she allows him to hold her again, as she did the last time—albeit briefly. He stares up at the ceiling, where his mind finally strikes upon a piece of the riddle. Once he sees it, it seems obvious.
“You’re grieving for someone,” Bonner says now in a low voice, breaking the silence between them.
Rosalind’s body tenses but does not move. A matter of minutes goes by. Bonner almost begins to believe he never spoke at all. He shifts so as to get a better view of Rosalind’s eyes, but the configuration of their tangled bodies makes this awkward, impossible. He waits, but can’t tell whether she ever intends to acknowledge him. Soon enough, however, he gets his answer.
When he reaches a hand to gently touch her face, her cheek is wet with tears.
42
It’s time to wrap it up.”
Bonner is on the telephone again with his supervisor, Reed. According to Deputy Henderson, Reed phoned the sheriff’s office a few times, trying to track down his field agent. Reluctantly, Bonner called to check in.
“It’s over, Bonner. Time to wrap up your investigation,” Reed repeats. “You’ve been up there for five days. You ought to have everything you need for your report by now.”
“I can’t.” Bonner hears a frog in his voice and coughs to clear it. “Sir, I’m not done yet. I’m still following up on a couple of leads,” he protests. “Besides the evidence suggesting someone may have tampered with the airplane’s fuel line, I just found out there was opium in Kenichi Yamada’s blood—a lethal amount.”
“Oh, I know all about that, Bonner—you had them send a blood draw all the way down to the lab in Los Angeles . . . Who do you think gets the bill for that?”
“It seemed necessary, sir.”
“Necessary for what?”
“To determine what killed the two Yamada men,” Bonner replies. He almost says, To determine if it was murder, but stops himself, realizing this is the wrong tack to take—exactly what Reed doesn’t want him looking into. “To determine if someone engineered that airplane crash,” he says, shifting course slightly to emphasize the insinuation of a terrorist plot.
“First you were thinking a sabotaged fuel line, now you’re thinking opium poisoning?”
“Maybe . . . a combination of both . . .” Bonner tries to keep a neutral, persuasive tone.
“All right, Bonner . . . here’s my take on that, as your supervisor . . . There’s a war on. We got plenty to do just monitoring the living Japs; we don’t need to spend weeks investigating a couple of dead ones.”
“They were internees in a federal facility,” Bonner stammers. “That makes it federal business.”
“Maybe so, but I’d just as soon hand it over to local law enforcement,” Reed replies. “Like I said, dead Japs don’t pose a national security threat; live ones do. You haven’t been able to find anything on the Yamadas concerning treason or a plot to do harm against Americans—certainly nothing that might continue to be a threat now that they are deceased; you said so yourself. If it’s a murder case, the local sheriff can investigate.”
Hearing Reed’s words, Bonner feels as though he has been winded. It takes him a moment to catch his breath.
“But, sir . . . he won’t,” Bonner says quietly into the receiver, throwing a cautious look in Sheriff
Whitcomb’s direction to determine whether he’s listening.
“Well, that’s his business, then,” Reed replies. “Local cops have local reasons for doing what they do.”
“Wait—sir,” Bonner begins to plead. “There are still some things I’d like to follow up on. Just give me a couple more days to tie up loose ends.”
Pondering what this will entail, Bonner silently decides he will confront Louis Thorn, once and for all.
“If this is about you atoning for the Minami family, Bonner, I’m warning you: You’d better nip that in the bud. The F.B.I. is not going to cater to your guilty conscience. We’re in the business of protecting America for Americans, not playing Sherlock Holmes for the Jap community. I hope that’s clear.”
“It is,” Bonner says. “And I’m telling you, this has nothing to do with the Minami family.” It is a lie. It was relatively true when Bonner first requested the case: Back then, all Bonner wanted was to get a look at Newcastle, at the Thorns. But as soon as the biplane fell out of the sky, the case had become something else for Bonner, and the Minami family—who he had been able to push to the outskirts of his thoughts for weeks at a time—has circled in closer and closer to his consciousness.
On the other end of the line, Reed sighs.
“Just a couple of days . . .” Bonner repeats.
“Fine,” he says, “but I’m only giving you through Friday—which means no per diem to stay the weekend, mind you; I want you driving out of there Friday night. Get what you need for your report and wrap it up. And be prepared to hand off whatever you find to the sheriff. Come Monday morning, I expect you back in the San Francisco office, bright and early.”
“Understood, sir.”
Bonner hangs up the phone, grateful but not altogether relieved.
43
Hollywood, California * October 3, 1941
Louis, Harry, and Ava were so awestruck they hardly knew where they were. Champagne coupes clinked in the air all around them. None of them had ever been to a Hollywood screening, let alone one with such lavish pomp and circumstance.
Once they stepped from the chauffeured car the studio had sent for them, they were lost in a swell of bodies clad in evening gowns and tuxedos, milling about outside the theater. Velvet ropes created an aisle and there was plush red carpet underfoot, covering every inch of sidewalk for almost a full block. It was as though a party had turned itself inside out, as though the theater—a stark white adobe building styled to look like a hacienda or maybe a great palace in Spain—had opened its mouth and its sumptuous ruby interior had spilled out onto the surrounding pavement.
Outside the main entrance, a showgirl in a shimmery dress stepped up onto a riser and struggled to lift a bottle nearly half her size, eventually managing to pour it over a pyramid of glasses stacked three feet high atop a table. Her arms quivered, betraying the perfectly lipsticked smile she beamed throughout her struggle. Onlookers cheered as golden suds slipped down the champagne fountain and the pyramid of glasses began to fill up, brimming over and filling each successive tier below. More coupes clinked.
Photographers’ lightbulbs flashed and popped, and magnesium sparks showered the dark with spectacular brilliance. Doll-eyed women, most of them minor starlets, wiggled up the crimson swath of carpet, sipping champagne, speaking a few words into the radio announcer’s giant silver microphone, turning and waving before disappearing between the dark curtains that flanked the theater’s entrance. The majority of these beauties were escorted by various Hollywood types: producers, directors, leading men, oil barons, eccentrics—even the occasional European aristocrat. Ava couldn’t help but notice that a great number of the starlets wore hats with veils pulled down over only one eye, or else had their hair pinned to one side, occasionally festooned with a flower tucked over the exposed ear, each of them with their blond, brunette, or red smooth-brushed curls spilling over one shoulder like a liquid wave of silk. They reminded Ava of her mother’s efforts to imitate an earlier generation of starlets in what already felt like a lifetime ago, living in that little bungalow in Santa Monica.
A SELECT ENGAGEMENT, the marquee above the theater read.
“I still feel like there’s been some kind of mix-up,” Louis breathed in disbelief.
“Shhh,” Harry hissed, “or they’ll catch on and give us the boot.” He winked.
“HELLO THERE!” came a jovial roaring voice. They turned to see Buster Farrow. He was a large bear of a man, well over six feet, with graying hair and very pale blue eyes. His face was slightly red and he was puffing prodigiously on a cigar. “Boys, boys—my boys!” he repeated, his cheeks shining as he smiled. “Welcome! We are honored to have you here!”
The event was technically an “exhibition”—a screening of several different stuntmen plying their trade, all of them motorcyclists and wing-walkers and the like. Buster Farrow had—with the help of his assistants, of course (it turned out there were nine)—rounded up all of the daredevil acts that had recently caught Farrow’s eye and commissioned ten minutes or so of film to be shot of each. Then he’d had the footage all cut together, with black title cards to introduce each stunt act, and a sound reel laid in for good effect. It was a slapdash job, but it was good enough for a single screening. The idea was to call it a “special event,” but, more important, Farrow wanted to screen the different stunt acts together to see how a Hollywood audience reacted to them. He liked everyone who his studio employed to constantly compete; it kept the overhead low and the profits up.
Farrow pumped Louis’s and Harry’s hands and welcomed them inside the theater.
“And who do we have here?” he asked, noticing Ava for the first time. He towered over her, leering a little at her pretty mouth and lithe figure; but when he got to her décolletage—or lack thereof—his interest waned.
Ava fought the urge to roll her eyes at him.
“Only one date between the two of you?” Farrow joked.
“This is Ava Brooks,” Louis explained. “She’s . . . well, she helps us run our act. She does the books for our barnstorming spectacle.”
“I’m here as their manager,” Ava said in a matter-of-fact voice.
Farrow raised an eyebrow.
“Oh-ho! Manager, is it?” His lips twisted into a jovial, bemused grin. “I guess I’d better be on the lookout for this one, eh, boys?”
This time Ava openly rolled her eyes at Farrow, but Farrow took no notice, herding them all into the theater instead.
“If you’ll pardon me, I ought to say hello to some of the other stars and their, ahem, managers . . .” Farrow winked at Louis and Harry, still ignoring Ava. “Enjoy the show, fellas! Nothing like seeing yourself on that silver screen, I hear. We’ll talk afterward!”
With that, he shuffled off to clap some other, brawnier stuntmen on the back in greeting.
“He’s not going to offer us a movie contract,” Louis said. “He thinks we’re small fry. Besides, he already got the footage he wanted for free.”
“You don’t know that,” Harry insisted. He turned to Ava. “What do you think?”
“I think that man doesn’t do anything that isn’t in his best interest,” she replied. “And in some ways that’s encouraging: There is the slightest chance that in this case his interest runs parallel to ours.” She looked at Louis and Harry. “You’re talented—both of you,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Eagle & Crane steals the show tonight,” she predicted.
Unaccustomed to the sound of blatant compliments spilling from Ava’s lips, Louis and Harry were surprised into silence. More trays of champagne were being passed around them as they lingered in the lobby; one whizzed quite close to Ava’s shoulder and she turned to lift a pair of glasses, offering them to Louis and Harry.
“Cheers,” she said, flashing them a rare grin.
The beautiful people around them continued to mill about until, at last, a bell r
ang, the signal for the audience to take their seats. Everyone in the lobby made a quick move to shuffle into the theater, and the three of them followed, sinking into their seats just as the lights went down. A curtain opened and a projector flickered to life. There were no advertisements, no newsreels. A hush settled over the theater.
“THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF TIME,” boomed the narrator’s voice, “MANKIND HAS DARED TO PERFORM FEATS OF BRAVERY, PUSHING HIS LIMITS FURTHER AND FURTHER . . . NOW MODERN TECHNOLOGY HAS ALLOWED TRUE DAREDEVILS TO GO FURTHER THAN EVER BEFORE, HIGHER, AND FASTER THAN WAS ONCE THOUGHT POSSIBLE! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LET’S DELVE DEEP AND TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE GREATEST LIVING STUNTMEN OF OUR DAY!!!”
Out the corner of her eye, Ava observed both Louis and Harry watching the footage very carefully as the movie progressed. The other stuntmen were profiled first; Eagle & Crane turned out to be last on the reel. They watched the other performances with rapt attention, nonetheless agonizing to see Eagle & Crane turn up on-screen. Louis and Harry both held their breath as the black title card announcing their act finally appeared and the screen flickered to life with their own grainy black-and-white shapes performing various tricks.
The cameraman had done a pretty good job capturing their various stunts: You could even make out a little bit what the storyline was behind their choreography. Ava knew that would make Louis proud; he’d come up with the idea to have a story in the first place, and had even drawn it out like one of his comic books. For the purposes of the exhibition, their forty-five-or-so-minute act had been compressed down into twelve minutes. This gave it an additional impression of exhilarating, nonstop action.
When their act concluded, their familiar Stearman—piloted by Hutch—flew off into the sunset in a parting shot, and the theater lights came up. The audience began to cheer and applaud as though they had just witnessed a live performance. It was clear that Eagle & Crane was the finale, the favorite. Ava looked to Louis and Harry, who were grinning madly and blushing at the same time, as though overcome with a strange sense of embarrassment mingled with pride.
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