Rosalind glares at him.
“If that were true,” she says finally, “I would hardly blame him.” She pauses, and adds, “In fact, I would shake his hand.”
And with that, she turns and leaves Bonner’s room. Bonner still plans to spend one final night there. But already he knows she will not return; she has visited him in his room for the last time.
66
The next day, Bonner sits and stares into his beer in contemplation, his eyes vacant. It is Friday, and his per diem has run out. It is no use telephoning Reed and begging for more time; Bonner already knows what Reed will say.
Earlier that afternoon, Bonner checked out from the boardinghouse. His good-bye with Rosalind was curt, formal. Bonner stopped in to say good-bye to Whitcomb and Henderson, too, even though he is sure Whitcomb would’ve been fine—more than fine—if Bonner had just found his way out of town with no good-byes. That was the funny thing: Bonner was having trouble finding his way out of town, period. He spent the afternoon wandering around, wondering if there was something about the town, and about Louis and Harry, that he had missed. Eventually, as the sun began to set, he decided to stop in at the local tavern, to go over the case one last time. The bartender—the same Joe Abbott he’d spoken with previously—was hardly welcoming, but Bonner didn’t care. After tapping a beer for Bonner, Joe retreated to the opposite end of the bar, intent on ignoring the F.B.I. agent.
Joe’s show of neglect suits Bonner just fine. He wants the respite in order to think.
As he stares at the case files and takes a sip of his beer, he recalls his exchange with Rosalind the night before. He saw it in her face: She was certain Louis Thorn had sabotaged the biplane, that Thorn had essentially murdered Harry and Kenichi Yamada. Remembering the almost gleeful, satisfied look of vengeance on her face, Bonner shudders. To live with that much hate, Bonner thinks, is not living at all.
The question that remains, of course, is whether Louis Thorn is living with that much hate, too. Bonner can’t make up his mind about Louis—whether or not Louis is capable of murdering his best friend. Louis’s reaction when Bonner accused him directly left Bonner unsettled, and certainly undecided. The only thing Bonner knows for certain is that Louis is hiding something.
Bonner sighs, and stares again at the pile of evidence laid out on the bar. His eyes fall upon the bundle of family letters. He’s made his way through most of them. Now there are only a handful left to read, all from Ava, letters that arrived at the camp days after Harry and Kenichi had gone A.W.O.L., days after there was anyone there to receive them. The camp authorities collected them and mailed them on to the F.B.I.
Bonner picks up one of the final letters and slides a finger along the envelope, ripping it open, and taps the letter free. He unfolds it and smoothes it rather carelessly on the bar with his hands.
My Dearest Houdini, it begins in a jokey tone. But as Bonner reads on, he discovers the letter is a love letter of sorts. He’s wondered about the ties between Harry, Ava, and Louis all along, and now Bonner has hit upon one solid piece of the puzzle. So Ava loved Harry, he thinks. It wasn’t criminal to love a Jap, not in a court of law in California, at least. However, Ava’s feelings for Harry only add more motive to the case against Louis Thorn.
But then, as Bonner continues to read Ava’s letter, he suddenly stops and flinches. He starts again from the beginning, reading the whole letter over again. Could this be true? It doesn’t make sense, and it means that Ava lied—or had she? Bonner tries to remember. No. It was Louis who spoke for her. Which meant either Louis lied or else didn’t even know he was lying . . . It was Ava’s secret.
Bonner taps his fingers and chews the inside of his cheek in agitation. A theory begins to form in his brain. How did he overlook the possibility? He takes a sip of beer, wipes the foam from his upper lip, and makes an abrupt scramble for the attaché case lying on the barstool beside him. Digging through it, he finds the photograph he seeks and pulls it out for a better look. He has to be sure.
He stares at the photograph, scrutinizing it, taking careful account of all the clues. And of course they are so obvious once Bonner sees them, once he is really looking with his eyes open. The entire barnstorming troupe grins back at him: Earl Shaw with his black hair and dapper suit, his hand clamped possessively around Cleo Shaw’s waist; Ava and Louis; the two pilots, Buzz and Hutch; and—finally—Harry standing at the opposite end, counterbalancing Earl somehow, both of them approximately the same height and weight. Behind the group, the two biplanes, and the words CASTOR and POLLUX painted in shining, proud, gold letters.
“Jesus,” Bonner mutters. He rubs his eyes and looks again. It was in front of me this whole time, he thinks. “Houdini,” he grunts, a combination of flabbergasted, impressed, and annoyed. He shakes his head. “Houdini,” he repeats, “eat your heart out.”
In the next second he becomes a flurry of motion. He grabs up the letters and the photograph and shoves the entire wad clumsily back into his attaché case. He throws several greenbacks down on the bar and races out the saloon door, leaving Joe Abbott looking after him, frowning and scratching his head.
Eventually, Joe crosses back to where the agent was sitting and scoops up the bills. As he tosses what remains of Bonner’s warm beer down the drain with a dismissive shake of his wrist, it makes a satisfying splat.
67
Yamada property * September 16, 1943
We have to all agree,” Ava said. “No one will ever know about this.”
She poked the fire that was burning in the oil drum with a stick. It was so late, it was now early. The first hint of dawn had begun to glow, eerie and blue, in the eastern horizon. It was only a very slight glow, but it alarmed Ava nonetheless. She was worried they were running out of time.
They were all so stunned, it had taken them a while to get a grip on their senses, to figure out what to do, and then there was Kenichi—poor Kenichi.
Three of them now stood in a circle, watching the barrel burn: Ava, her mother, and Harry. Harry stood slightly slumped, still injured from his earlier fight with Louis, his spirit now broken even further by everything that had happened since. Something rustled in the bushes nearby. They all jumped and looked but saw nothing.
“A chipmunk,” Ava diagnosed.
She poked the contents of the barrel again. The fire was getting too hot for them to stand so close, the heat was radiating in waves, and it was beginning to feel like an oven. Good, she thought. We need it to get as hot as we can get it. When she was sure no one would be able to identify the remains, she would douse the barrel with water, and that had to happen before the sun came up, otherwise the white smoke of the fire being extinguished might catch folks’ attention. There could be no questions about what they had done. There could be no questions about what they were about to do.
It was not their fault—none of them. Earl Shaw had always had bad timing and a knack for trouble. After he disappeared, Ava had tried to help her mother track him down. All Cleo wanted was a divorce, but looking for Earl proved difficult—and expensive. The shoddy private investigator they hired traced Earl’s steps to the Southwest but said the trail went cold near the Mexican border. After stealing the flying circus members’ money, he managed to rack up even more debt borrowing from loan sharks. For all they knew, said the private investigator, Earl might be hiding from his creditors in Mexico, biding his time and possibly even changing his name yet again. After a few months, Cleo and Ava stopped looking for him. It seemed he would stay gone forever.
Of course, there were times when they occasionally looked over their shoulders—not only Cleo and Ava but the rest of the barnstorming troupe, too: Louis, Harry, Buzz, and Hutch. If Earl caught wind of the fact that they’d banded together and resurrected the barnstorming act—if he heard the rumor that Eagle & Crane was successful and had even caught Hollywood’s attention—well, then there was a good chance he might come back to t
ry to stake a claim.
And, sure enough, Earl had done just that—right when Cleo and Ava both had let their guard down and forgotten all about him.
After they’d all recovered from the shock of seeing Earl standing there inside the caravan, Ava noticed two things. One: From the looks of him, Earl seemed more down on his luck than usual. And two: He reeked of moonshine.
“Lookit, you sorry thieves . . . Thought you were gonna steal my flying circus and put on shows without me, eh?” he slurred, confirming Ava’s fears. “This here is my goddamn caravan, and you been getting rich offa my goddamn plane, my goddamn pilots and stuntmen!
“The way I figure it, you owe me my cut,” Earl continued to rage. “’S’all I want, just my cut! Now . . . if these Japs gimme what I’m due, then there ain’t got to be any trouble, and I’ll be on my way . . .”
It was Kenichi who accidentally set Earl off. He chuckled—a small, almost lighthearted chuckle. It struck Kenichi as absurd that after everything his family had been through, after everything they had lost—material, physical, and spiritual—this white con man might think they were holding out, that they were secretly hoarding some kind of riches, when the truth was, they had been systematically stripped of everything, including their dignity. It was an unintentional laugh, the maniacal laugh of a man still grieving his wife and daughter.
“Think that’s funny, you old Jap?” Earl growled. He whirled on Kenichi, fists flying. Harry was still laid out flat on the straw mattress farther inside the caravan. There was an iron crowbar propped near the doorway that they had used to bar the caravan doors whenever Earl parked the caravan overnight in less-reputable areas. Cleo and Ava had continued to keep it there, forgetting about it, mostly. But now Earl knew all too well where to find it. Before anyone could stop him, he picked up the crowbar and brought it down hard upon Kenichi’s skull. Harry was off his bunk in a flash, but before he could reach his father a flurry of motion plunged the room into stunned chaos.
The terrible CRACK of the crowbar meeting Kenichi’s skull was quickly eclipsed by a louder, more earsplitting BANG!
For a long, terrible moment, Ava and Harry couldn’t figure out what had just happened. Then they recalled: the pistol. Ava had picked up the pistol Louis had dropped in the orchard and carried it back to the caravan, where she had set it down on the table.
All heads turned in the direction of Cleo Shaw. She stood with her back against the wall of the caravan, a terrified expression on her face, the gun trembling in her hands.
Earl lay in a heap on the floor. The bullet had caught him smack in the chest.
No one dared to move until Kenichi broke the silence, groaning nearby.
“Oh, God!”
With Ava and Cleo’s help, Harry lifted his father onto the bunk and tried to get a better look at the wound. It was bad—mortally bad. It was very likely that Earl had fractured the older man’s skull. Kenichi’s eyes were open and his lips hissed as though trying to speak.
“We have to get him to a doctor,” Ava said in an urgent voice.
Still moving painfully, Harry began to lift his father into his arms, ready to transport Kenichi anywhere that promised salvation.
“No . . .” Kenichi managed to form the word with his lips. “I am already done with that. They will punish Harry and they will take me back . . .” He fought to open his eyes and look at his son. “There is no medicine for us . . .” he said.
“But, Otōsan, you’re hurt too badly—”
“Let me die.”
The moment the words touched air, they haunted the caravan. No one spoke. Harry felt a small, excruciating stab.
“Let me die, Haruto.”
Harry was still half holding his father as though he couldn’t decide whether to rush him to a doctor or let him be. His eyes were dry and steady, but his mouth trembled.
“Please,” Kenichi added with an air of finality.
Harry relaxed his arms, letting his father lie back again. Ava came over and propped pillows behind Kenichi’s head, and Cleo—still with quaking hands—did the same. With no further discussion they agreed to obey Kenichi’s wishes.
Earl had blown in like a vicious wind. Now a vacuous feeling invaded the caravan, taking the place of the tremendous chaos Earl had caused. Earl was definitely dead; no one touched his body where it lay on the floor. All eyes were on Kenichi. Everyone was filled with quiet distress at the prospect of witnessing the old man’s passing.
It was, however, more difficult than simply deciding to let him sink into a dignified slumber. Kenichi was gravely injured, but he did not die immediately. It soon became clear he was in tremendous pain. He began to moan.
“I have opium,” Harry said finally in a quiet voice. “I got some from a man in the camp . . . a lot of it, actually. If something happened to us and we didn’t want to go back to the camp, there was always this . . .”
He produced a packet from his inside jacket pocket.
“We could boil it with water,” he said in a somber voice.
Ava took the packet, but Cleo was too quick.
“I’ll do it,” Cleo said firmly. “You keep him comfortable.”
Cleo set about making a thick, syrupy tea.
“It will be quick,” she said when it was ready.
* * *
Kenichi’s body was still in the caravan, hours after his final moments.
They had propped him up on the straw mattress and Harry had helped him take long, steady sips from a tin mug. He slipped away into unconsciousness, an angelic expression on his face. Harry gripped Ava’s hand. After an hour of ragged breathing, Kenichi gave one long, last, sibilant exhale, and it felt as if a spirit was truly passing, moving from the caravan, making its way out into the gentle California night air.
Earl was another matter.
It was Ava who had ultimately devised their plan. She took a long look at Earl. Then her eyes swept around the caravan and happened to land on the book Harry had given her: Shakespeare’s play, The Comedy of Errors. She thought of the names of their two original biplanes, Castor and Pollux: The solution was already all around them, she realized. She looked at Harry—Harry, the magician—and the idea came to her. The ultimate escape act.
The first step was to char the body, making it unrecognizable. They loaded Earl into an oil drum and doused him in kerosene. Ava insisted they remove his clothes first. Nothing identifying on his person, she said. We ought to wrench his teeth out if we can . . .
When she explained the rest of her plan, Harry protested. It was too much risk for her. But Ava insisted. She was taking charge again, just as she had taken charge when Harry and Kenichi had shown up back on their old property, having broken out of the internment camp.
She had a plan, and they would follow it.
68
After leaving the Yamada orchards, Louis Thorn walked into town and promptly got drunker. At Murphy’s Saloon, Joe Abbott took pity on him, glimpsing the fresh bruises on Louis’s face and guessing the boy was likely full of piss and vinegar on account of his brother being killed in the Pacific. Word traveled fast, and by that time the whole town knew Edith Thorn had received a telegram earlier that day. The Thorn children were simply too numerous for anything in their family to remain secret for longer than an hour. Full of sympathy and patriotism, Joe had gotten Louis good and tanked up, then let him snooze in a corner of the bar until four o’clock in the morning, when Joe roused him with a cup of coffee and told the poor fellow he was obligated to lock up.
Now a very hungover Louis retraced his earlier walk, trudging in the direction of the Yamada ranch. He hardly knew what he wanted to say to them, but he needed to go back and see Harry, see Ava . . . and, if nothing else, knew he needed to go back and clear out his things.
He arrived just as dawn was breaking. It was a hazy day, a day made overcast by all the agricultural activity in th
e area, the farmers all burning their fields in the valley. There was a terrible charred scent on the breeze. The sunrise was intensely bloody, then all the color drained out of the sky, replaced by a dull gray. It was just as well: What little sunshine there was only gave Louis a splitting headache.
“Hello?” he called out as he entered the Yamada house. He didn’t necessarily expect to see Harry or Mr. Yamada—he knew Ava would want to keep them hidden out in the caravan, per her plan—but Louis assumed Cleo and Ava had slept inside, even after Louis’s awful scuffle with Harry. He was surprised to find absolutely nobody at home.
Feeling lonely, he switched on the radio. It had become his ritual to listen to the war bulletins every day. Remembering Guy, he reached out to switch it off, but hesitated and decided to leave it on. It was nice to pretend, if only for a minute or two. The radio quivered with excitement and gave off a curiously reassuring noisy squawk, as though it were promising the end of the war in one ultimate blaze of glory.
Louis felt nature calling and went into the bathroom. Once there, he caught sight of himself in the mirror and let out a shocked grunt, followed by an exhausted laugh. Dirt was caked over the cuts and bruises on his face, his left eye sported a shiner, and he displayed all the obvious signs of a terrible hangover. On top of all that, he needed a shave.
It was something to do. He turned on the hot-water tap, took out some shaving soap, splashed water on his face, and lathered up. He had gotten through half of his shave when he heard a truck sputtering up the drive and, soon after, heavy boots on the wooden stairs leading up to the Yamada porch.
Still only half-shaven, his undershirt dirty and his suspenders hanging at his hips, Louis went out to see who was at the door. He recognized the shapes of Sheriff Whitcomb and Deputy Henderson through the window, coming up the stairs. There was a third man, too—a man Louis didn’t know. He squinted and was startled almost to the point of nausea to notice the man bore a striking similarity to his brother Guy.
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