Woman with a Blue Pencil

by Gordon McAlpine

  Why would they have moved her resting place?

  Finally, he’d covered the whole Japanese section. She was gone.

  He got back in the big Chrysler and drove to the cemetery office, which didn’t open until 9 a.m.

  Outside the cemetery office was a phone booth. He had plenty of dimes. And no more foolish pride.

  However, the phone numbers he’d written on a scrap of paper kept in his wallet—one for a former teaching colleague, one for the home of the art history department chair at Marymount, numbers for his two cousins in Long Beach, the work number for a childhood friend now employed at a bakery in West LA, the office numbers of the trio of PI’s he’d sequentially hired after Kyoko’s murder—all had been blurred to inky gibberish by the soaking he’d gotten in the rain the night before.

  And when he dialed 1-1-3 for information he was told there were no such listings.

  He drove his car to the far end of the cemetery and parked it beneath a willow that hung over the narrow road.

  All he knew was that nothing made sense.

  So he had to make sense of that . . .

  He had observed his mother lose her mind over the past few years. Though still only in her sixties, she had developed early senility that began with her forgetting details dating back a few weeks or months. Next, the memory loss encroached on her recent days, then her hours, then her minutes. Now, she couldn’t say what she’d had for lunch, ten minutes after finishing. Nonetheless, she still recalled her distant past. Sumida as a child. . . . The death at age three of Sumida’s sister, Yukiko, his only sibling, from Rheumatic Fever. . . . Her husband, Sam’s father, as a young man (she thought he was still alive, not remembering he’d drowned off Dana Point). . . . Her girlhood in Japan. . . .

  It was a plague of forgetfulness, leaving her only with the present moment and the distant past. No in-between.

  And it was more than that.

  At times, he’d observed his mother filling-in the blank spaces with delusions. For example, sometimes she believed she was being held captive, rather than being cared for, by her sister and brother-in-law—lashing out at them with profanity she had never used before. Sometimes she turned upon them with physical violence, clawing and scratching at their faces or throwing objects about the house. Other times she believed she was staying at a lodge in Yosemite and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to go outside alone to enjoy the pine trees and majestic views. Her sister would tell her it was because of an infestation of bears and that all the “guests” were required to stay inside for their own safety. Lies like that helped.

  Sumida didn’t like seeing such things. She was his mother, after all.

  But he couldn’t help being fascinated by the force of the delusions. More powerful than dreams, from which one can usually awaken oneself if the dream becomes too harrowing, these were alternative worlds from which she could not awake. Doctors referred to it as a form of senile psychosis.

  It worried Sumida that his closest living relative suffered from such a thing. Particularly as he knew his paternal grandfather had suffered a similar psychological decline in Japan before his death in the 1890s. So now he couldn’t help wondering . . .

  Was it possible to skip the memory-loss portion of the illness and go straight to the psychosis?

  Or would one even remember the memory-loss portion?

  What other than madness made sense of all this? Sure, the driver’s license in his wallet attested to his name and address. But the world objected. Still, this had to be different than his mother’s affliction.

  Everything depended on that being so.

  Then he wondered: If Kyoko Sumida was not buried here, might that mean she was alive?

  Was he still even investigating a murder?

  He turned his car around and drove out of the cemetery, passing through the broken-down parts of Boyle Heights, where he’d have been beaten senseless even before America went to war with Japan, and back toward downtown.

  The Hall of Records.

  The newspaper files at the LA public library.

  He was investigating a crime, for God’s sake. His job was to get to the bottom of things.

  Excerpt from a letter dated August 1, 1942:

  . . . Your reluctance is surely understandable, considering how recent events have affected you and your family. You have my sympathies. Indeed, if you were not off to such a good start with your Jimmy Park character, if I did not think you were truly onto something successful and new here, I’d agree that perhaps a more conventional approach to writing a mystery (i.e. a Caucasian protagonist working to solve an ordinary murder case) would be the way to go. But remember, it was the exciting prospect of doing a mystery novel from the point-of-view of an Oriental detective that initially drew me to your manuscript, distinguishing your work from other submissions on the “slush pile.” Your concept of a Japanese protagonist grabbed me. And, while geopolitical circumstances have changed dramatically since that first submission, I do not believe we betray our original intention to create something NEW by having made the changes we have made to this point.

  Naturally, I do not want you to go forward with something that makes you uncomfortable. But these are complex times. And you are a young man, just starting out.

  The truth is, there may be no better way to introduce an Oriental as protagonist in a popular spy story than the one afforded us now: by making Park’s enemy Japanese you win over a mass audience’s sympathies in a way that your original plan to have your Nisei detective solve the murder of his wife by tracking down a Caucasian police detective would never have accomplished. The specter of “the Yellow Peril,” like it or not, might have doomed our project even before Pearl Harbor. In fact, it now seems reckless, almost mad, to have entertained the notion that we could pull that off. So, mightn’t the current revisions be a blessing in disguise?

  As I’ve said before, I don’t mean to offend by failing to acknowledge the differences between Japanese and Koreans (Chinese too, for that matter). I know better than to lump all Orientals together. And, for that reason, I understand that for you this project may hold complexities that most authors do not have to face. But I recommend courage! The fact is, there are Japanese spy rings in California, true? At least, there might be . . . So why shouldn’t a Korean-American detective work to break them up? Think long about your answer to that question. While I do not for a moment believe you harbor Japanese Imperialist sympathies, I wonder if your hesitation to use Jimmy Park as your hero does not represent the very prejudice that you so eloquently derided in your most recent letter to me?

  Look, I am a woman working as an editor of detective fiction—my office is dominated by men. I, too, know about being the underdog. And that is why I believe we make such a good team. The way to beat the system, my young friend, is to come up with some new approach to it. I believe that is exactly what you’re doing with your book. So please weigh your decision carefully. Know that I will understand if you choose to cast your good beginning aside and write poetry or political tracts or whatever you choose. But know too that I hope I’ve persuaded you to continue your work on the book and that I am looking forward to receiving the next chapters.

  Sincerely,

  Maxine Wakefield

  Maxine Wakefield,

  Associate Editor,

  Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc.

  P.S. This book could be big! And wouldn’t that be a blessing for your family, especially there at Manzanar?

  Excerpt from chapter six of The Orchid and the Secret Agent, a novel by William Thorne

  Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1945

  After a forty-minute car ride, Jimmy Park was guided out of the car, still blindfolded, and led fifty yards up a gravel path. While he could see nothing, his other senses remained acute. He smelled a hint of pine, mixed with the gasoline-tinged scent of the city, suggesting that he was in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, perhaps Altadena or Sierra Madre. He
heard birdsong and the crunch of the gravel underfoot. The men holding his arms stopped. Standing between them he turned to the agent on his right and sniffed, “Hmmm, Old Spice cologne,” he said. Turning to the agent on his left he sniffed again. “No cologne, but a hint of Burma Shave.” Neither agent responded, but a key turned in a lock and a heavy metal door opened. Inside, they continued down a corridor that smelled of metal and mildly mildewed drywall. Through another door, they passed into a room that featured thick carpeting and smelled of furniture oil, cigarettes, scotch whiskey, and (of all things!) orchids. Pressed down by his shoulders onto a leather chair, Jimmy reached for his blindfold, at last encountering no resistance. He tore it off.

  For a moment, the light stung his eyes.

  Before him was a large desk.

  Seated behind the desk was a grey-haired man with sparkling blue eyes and a manner that seemed at once sophisticated and fire-hardened. He smiled at Jimmy, then stood (quite tall) and extended his hand across the desk.

  Jimmy stood and shook his hand. “Mr. Barratt, I presume.”

  He nodded. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Park. Please sit down.”

  Jimmy sat.

  Mr. Barratt moved away from his big, leather swivel chair and came around to the front of the desk, leaning casually against one edge, like a friend or confidant rather than a professional superior. “I apologize for the blindfold, Mr. Park. Believe me, it was strictly for your protection.”

  “You mean in the event I’m captured by the Jap spy ring,” Jimmy said.

  “That’s right.”

  Jimmy grinned. “So that no matter how much they torture me I’ll be unable to tell them your location.”

  Mr. Barratt shrugged. “That’s right too.”

  “Thanks for the ‘protection,’” Jimmy said, good-naturedly.

  Mr. Barratt laughed. “Yes, it’s quite a line of work we’ve embarked upon, eh?”

  Jimmy was gratified that Mr. Barratt referred to it as a shared line of work. It hadn’t been that long since Park had worked as an ordinary PI, tracking down runaway daughters and shadowing unfaithful wives and husbands. The importation of Oriental criminal organizations these past few years had changed all that.

  “The dashing out of the man’s brains in the movie house,” Mr. Barratt started, “the decapitation and quartering of your informant in the alley, the slashed throat of your neighbor . . . can’t have been easy for you.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I would understand if you feel you’ve had enough of dealing with these people. If you’d prefer to withdraw from operations.”

  “But I haven’t even begun to deal with ‘these people!’” Jimmy answered.

  “Good man!”

  Jimmy looked around the room. It was windowless and paneled in fine, dark walnut, though at two or three places, where the wall met the plaster ceiling, he caught sight of cement beneath the paneling. He suspected this room was as much bunker as office. Nonetheless, it was comfortable. One wall was lined with crowded bookshelves and on the other wall hung a pair of large maps—one of Southern California, the other of the west coast of the United States. A conference table large enough to seat ten occupied most of the far end of the room and a door, half-ajar, led to a bathroom.

  On the desk an arm’s length away was a magnificent orchid.

  “You’re an orchid fancier?” Jimmy asked.

  Mr. Barratt shook his head. “The flower’s there as a reminder of what we’re up against. It’s of the Cymbidium variety, beautiful but poisonous.”

  Jimmy waited for further explanation.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll understand soon enough,” Mr. Barratt said. “Perhaps more than you ever wanted to.”

  Jimmy nodded—there was indeed a lot about this he didn’t understand. But he suspected Mr. Barratt was unlikely to be rushed by questioning.

  “Look, you’ve done an excellent job of getting the Jap organization’s attention,” Mr. Barratt said. “The enemy is, shall we say, ‘engaged.’”

  Jimmy nodded. “So far all the casualties have been on our side.”

  Mr. Barratt shrugged. “Indeed unfortunate. But . . . not altogether out of keeping with our plan.”

  “What?” Jimmy snapped.

  “Jimmy, you’ve done good work for your country the past few years. We know how effective you’ve been infiltrating the Tong gangs, heading off massacres of Chinese-on-Chinese and even Chinese-on-whites! Your skills have made you invaluable. And impersonating a Yakuza crime lord was masterful and highly effective.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And with the outbreak of war a few weeks ago, you became more important than ever,” Mr. Barratt continued.

  “Glad to hear it, sir.”

  “But Jimmy, there’s a reason you’re not in the FBI offices now, receiving a new assignment. The same reason you’re here instead, at a top-secret installation.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Mr. Barratt tossed a photograph on the desk. “She’s called the ‘Orchid.’ We don’t know her actual name.”

  Jimmy picked up the picture.

  “Study it,” Mr. Barratt continued.

  The woman was beautiful—her skin silk, her cheekbones and chin somehow imperially strong without diminishing the softness of her femininity, her black hair streaked with white.

  “Look Jimmy, your success precedes you, not only here but among our enemies. You’re known to these Jap spies. So obviously we can’t use you anymore as an investigator.”

  Jimmy stood, agitated. “But sir, you can’t leave me out of the fight.”

  “Please, sit,” Mr. Barratt instructed.

  Jimmy sat.

  Mr. Barratt strode across the room to a portable bar set against the wall. He poured himself a rye.

  “Drink, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy nodded.

  Mr. Barratt poured a second drink and then crossed the room back to Jimmy. He handed him the drink.

  “To victory,” Mr. Barratt toasted.

  “Victory.”

  They drank.

  “So tell me this, Jimmy. Now that your cover is essentially blown with the Jap infiltrators, how can you still be of service to your country?”

  “Well,” Jimmy started, thinking fast. But he didn’t have a ready answer.

  Mr. Barratt didn’t wait for him to come up with one. “Don’t strain, Jimmy. Let me tell you how you can serve.”

  Jimmy waited.

  Mr. Barratt took a long drink before speaking. “All of the gruesome murders of the last twenty-four hours were either discovered by you, or, in the case of your quartered and decapitated informant, Gypsy Martinez, involved an important professional acquaintance. However, Jimmy, I don’t believe they were intended as any sort of ‘warning’ to you.”

  “What else could they be?” Jimmy asked.

  “These people don’t ‘warn’ their victims,” Mr. Barratt said. “They just kill them.”

  Jimmy shrugged. “So what are you thinking?”

  “The killings were an invitation to you.”

  “Invitation? To me? For what?” Agitated, he didn’t wait for an answer. “To go over to their side? To be some sort of double agent? You know I’d die first, sir. It’d never happen!”

  Mr. Barratt held up one hand. “Never say ‘never,’ Jimmy.”

  Jimmy considered. “You mean . . .” He stopped.

  “Yes, it’s a way in.”

  Excerpt from a letter dated September 11, 1942:

  . . . so gratified that my words served to clarify things for you. You’re a strong young man indeed.

  I can’t wait to see your next couple of chapters. My trusty blue pencil has felt neglected these past weeks with no new pages from you. I believe our working in this close manner through your first draft has been most effective, don’t you?

  Sincerely,

  Maxine Wakefield

  Maxine Wakefield,

  Associate Editor,

  Metropolitan Modern Mysteries, In
c.

  P.S. Perhaps, in the context of your recent “crisis of conscience,” this is not the most delicate time to make the following editorial comment, but it’s been much on my mind: I think it important that you establish early in the manuscript that all the action takes place during what is now the rather short period between the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the relocation of you Japanese Americans to camps. After all, wouldn’t it be during this brief period that your Japanese villains (who, by the way, I’m getting quite anxious to meet) would have greatest mobility and thereby pose the greatest threat? Of course, you don’t want to begin the book too close to December 7 of last year, as the shock that befell the nation would distract from the ready spirit of Jimmy to get right on with his business. Also, you want to leave enough time for a Japanese spy ring to become fully established and functional (though, of course, we might assume the spies commenced their planning before Pearl Harbor). In any case, I’m thinking that the story, as written, begins sometime around the third week in January. That allows enough time for the villains to have laid their evil groundwork and enough time for Jimmy to track them down, infiltrate them, and finally show them justice, all before the internment of Japanese Americans can intrude on the story to become a potential distraction to what must be a triumphant and patriotic climax. So, I’m thinking your story, which you’ve so cleverly plotted to take place over a little more than a single day, begins January 21, 22, 23 . . . Whichever you pick. After all, it’s your book. Just so long as it takes place before the President’s Executive Order of February 19th, which would confuse matters regarding the Japanese still on the streets. Cheers!

  THE REVISED—CHAPTER FOUR

  . . . wipe away all trivial fond records.

  —William Shakespeare

  To discern why his wife’s grave had been moved and where he might find it now, to say nothing of how his own house in Echo Park had, seemingly, become the property of someone else, Sumida would begin his research at the LA Department of Public Records, which was located in a large granite building near the corner of Spring and Temple Streets. He parked his stolen car in an alley off First Street, where it was unlikely to be noticed by any police while he was inside doing his research.