“Who else would I be?”
Jimmy knew enough to be cautious when his questions were answered with other questions, even of the seemingly harmless, rhetorical variety.
“You still haven’t answered my question, sir,” Madame Belinsky pressed.
“About the means of fortune-telling?”
“What else?” Again, she answered with what seemed a harmless rhetorical question.
“I can’t choose the method of divination, Madame Belinsky, because I’m not here to dictate terms.” He assumed his words were being heard clandestinely by the Orchid. Likely, there was a microphone hidden somewhere in the small room. “I’m here tonight only to listen humbly to whatever propositions you offer, by whatever means you deem appropriate.”
“Good answer,” Madame Belinsky affirmed. “Sit down.”
Jimmy sat at the small chair across the table from the soothsayer. “How much for a reading?”
Madame Belinsky smiled, her mouth revealing half-a-dozen gold teeth scattered among the rot. “Tonight’s reading will be free of charge.”
“That’s very generous.”
The smile disappeared as she shook her head. “I am not generous, but knowing. You see, should you return after tonight to learn more of your future, then remuneration will be quite substantial. Virtually all you can afford. Is that clear?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “But, of course, you will return only if you deem worthwhile what I say to you tonight.”
“That sounds pretty much like standard carnival patter, Madame,” he said, dismissively. “The usual ruse. I expected something a little more personal. Even unique.”
“Ah, you’re a bold young man,” she responded, rolling her eyes momentarily heavenward. “Brave. But it takes no soothsayer to see you’re courageous. After all, an Oriental out after dark walking among hundreds of whites . . .”
“If you’re a true seer, then you know I’m not Japanese,” he interrupted.
“I didn’t say you were,” she sneered. “But you know well enough that there are many Caucasians who do not ask for ID to confirm your ancestry before beating you.”
She was right.
“In fact, you had just such a close call earlier this evening,” she added, looking him hard in the eye. “Yes, I see how your reminiscence of the confrontation colors your aura. And I can see the actual scene, six threatening hulks in an alley, imprinted upon the iris of your mystic third eye.”
Initially, Jimmy wasn’t impressed. Mr. Barratt had told him that the incident with the college boys was already in the news. But how could she know it had been Jimmy who’d beaten the six boys? Unless, perhaps, the Orchid’s organization had sent the six in the first place and had been observing all along. . . . But turning a half-dozen American college boys to evil Japanese Imperialist collaboration? Impossible. Even his “mystic third eye” was a more likely explanation. In any case, he hadn’t time to fret over parlor tricks. “Look, there’s no need for you to waste my time with your usual hokum. I’m not just some sucker from the pier. You know that. So let’s get down to business.”
“But you have not yet chosen. Tarot or palmistry?”
The last thing he wanted was to give her the opportunity to ham it up with cards. “Palmistry,” he said.
“Good. Give me your palms.”
He extended his right arm, setting his hand palm up at the center of the small table.
“Both hands please.”
This didn’t feel right. But if the Orchid wanted him dead, she’d have finished the job by now. So he set his left hand palm up beside his right.
Madame Belinsky touched his hands, studying them as she lightly ran her index fingers along the creases in his palms. “I see great opportunity ahead for you,” she said.
So this was how the offer to betray his country would be made, he speculated.
“Go on, Madame Belinsky.”
But before she could say more, a loud explosion from far above rattled the pier and shook the Gypsy’s tiny structure to its nuts and bolts. Startled, Jimmy pulled back his hands.
His first thought was that the Japs were bombing.
Two seconds later came another explosion and then another and another, accompanied by the unexpected roar and cheers of revelers along the midway and the pier. Suddenly, he understood. It was a fireworks display.
He sighed, relieved. Then his breath caught in his throat.
Fireworks during a black-out?
Besides, even before the war the Pike had only displayed fireworks on summer nights. He looked at his watch. It was almost ten p.m. Too late for many of the amusement park’s prime clientele, children, who’d already been taken home. This made no sense.
Unless, of course, it was the work of the Orchid.
Had he simply been lured to the center of a bombing target?
Madame Belinsky raised her voice to be heard over the continuing explosive din. “Are you as distractible as a small child?” she inquired critically. “Will you be so weak as to allow a mere light show in the sky to distract you from our profound work in here!” She indicated with her hands that Jimmy was to return his palms to the table.
Meanwhile, the pier shuddered with each explosion.
The amusement park patrons roared their approval.
Jimmy raised his voice to be heard, even as he leaned toward Madame Belinsky. “Maybe we should wait until it’s over.”
She shook her head. “Give me your palms,” she insisted, her voice screeching. “Now or never.”
He did as she asked, returning his palms to the table.
The Gypsy woman resumed running her index fingers along the lines in his palms, silently.
Outside: “Boom! Boom! Boom!”
Then she looked up at him, grinning widely—all gold and rot.
That’s when he felt the muzzle of a gun at the back of his head.
“Don’t move, Jimmy Park,” said a woman, with a sultry, unaccented voice. “I wouldn’t want to have to put a hole in your head before we’ve even had the opportunity to meet properly.”
It wasn’t hard to guess whose voice it was.
Meanwhile, Madame Belinsky dexterously slapped a pair of handcuffs on Jimmy’s exposed wrists.
He took a deep, steadying breath.
The game was on. It was early yet, he thought. First quarter . . .
But he was already losing.
“You used the fireworks as distraction,” Jimmy observed, without turning his head.
“Yes,” she answered. “They are quite expensive, but effective. Americans love loud noise and bright lights. It’s like the Fourth of July out there tonight, ha! And by the time the authorities realize that the glittering extravaganza has not actually been arranged by the amusement park but by some mysterious benefactor, we’ll be long gone.”
“And the din allowed you to follow me through Madame Belinsky’s front door,” he speculated.
“We didn’t use the front door.” Her voice communicated both calm and sensuality. “No, we came in through a trapdoor beneath Madame Belinsky’s old, blue Turkish rug.”
Jimmy closed his eyes in frustration. He should have examined the room more closely before sitting down, he silently chided himself. But then he reflected: the point of the evening was to make contact with the Orchid.
And here she was.
Sure, there was a gun at his head, but nobody said it was going to be easy.
“The little trapdoor opens to a ladder that leads under the pier to a catwalk suspended eight or ten feet over the sea,” she continued. “It’s how we’ll be going out. You’ll see it soon enough, Mr. Park.”
Two large Japs dressed in black, like burglars, approached from behind and took hold of Jimmy’s arms.
“How many of you are there in this little shack?” Jimmy asked, unable to turn around to look. “Are we crammed in here like sardines?”
“Just us three,” the Orchid answered, pressing the gun harder against his skull. “My associates, Shinji and Ke
nto, and me.”
“Us four,” Madame Belinsky corrected.
The big Japs gripped Jimmy’s arms harder, securing him firmly.
The Orchid lowered the gun from Jimmy’s head and stepped around the table. At last, Jimmy got a good look at her. She wore a slinky silk gown and moved with exquisite grace. Her skin was flawless, her hair as rich and silky as a black cat’s fur, marked by the streak of white. Despite what Jimmy knew about her, his heart leaped, unwarranted, at her sight.
Who knew evil could be so beautiful?
The height of deceit . . .
The Orchid moved behind the seated fortune-teller, placing both hands gently on the woman’s shoulders. “Actually, Madame Belinsky, from this point forward it’s just us three. Shinji, Kento, and me. Or four, I suppose, if you count Jimmy, depending on how things turn out with him. But who knows what choices he will make? Regardless, you’re no longer necessary to the team.”
“But . . .” Madame Belinsky murmured.
“Oh, you were helpful,” the Orchid interrupted. “But you’re descended from a mongrel race and so you could never be considered one of us. And yet you’re here . . . a witness to everything . . . so what is to be done?” The Orchid tightened her grip on the fortune teller’s shoulders so that she could neither rise nor turn around.
“I helped you,” Madame Belinsky said, her fake accent disappearing as her panic rose. “You promised me money. But you needn’t pay, just let me go.”
“Thank you for the help,” the Orchid said, as she reached with one hand around the front of the woman. Jimmy hadn’t noticed the Orchid’s long fingernails until now. They were as sharp as razors. Literally. With a backhanded motion, fast as an adder, she slashed the fingernail of her middle finger across the throat of the fortune-teller, opening it wide. The shocked woman raised her own hand to the bleeding slash, attempting to hold the flesh together; she managed a short, anguished cry that went unheard in the din of the fireworks outside. But she could stem the tide only for a moment before the blood began gushing over her whitening hand. Her eyes widened as she realized she was coming to her end.
Jimmy tried to leap out of his chair to help.
But the Japs in black held him tight.
The fortune-teller fell face-first onto the café table, a pool of blood widening as it soaked into the velvet tablecloth.
There was nothing Jimmy could do for her.
He took a deep breath to calm himself.
He couldn’t afford to panic, however gruesome the scene before him.
“She wasn’t one of us,” the Orchid announced calmly.
“And I am?” Jimmy asked, daring to meet her eyes.
“We’ll see,” she answered, wiping the blood from her middle fingernail onto the velvet tablecloth. “Your cliché-ridden philosophy leaves much to be desired. But your courage is commendable.”
Jimmy’s breathing steadied. He was no beginner. He had a mission to complete.
And his dying before the Orchid died wasn’t part of the plan.
“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble for me,” he said. “I’m flattered.”
“You should be,” she answered, smiling warmly, as if inches away there was no dead woman or widening puddle of blood.
“So?” he asked, feigning nonchalance. “Are we ever going to get down to business?”
She sighed, as if suddenly wearied from her activities. “Yes, but first I’m going to slip back through the trapdoor, returning to the catwalk beneath the pier. There it’s private and quite lovely, the sheltering pier above, the rolling water alight with reflections of the moonlight below. You’ll see it soon enough. We’ll talk business there, Jimmy. You’ll decide if you want to work with me. That is, if you want to win or lose. But first I need a moment of privacy for my meditation.”
“And what am I supposed to do here with your two goons?” Jimmy asked. “Play three-handed poker with the Gypsy’s tarot cards?”
She laughed. “Before we meet beneath the pier, Jimmy, my ‘goons’ are going to disarm you of whatever weapons you may be carrying, and then, in this little room, they will give you a taste of what happens to anyone who says no to me. A mere taste. Any more than that and you’d be a corpse, and what good would you be to me then?”
“Sounds fun,” Jimmy said.
“I need my meditation.” She looked at her henchmen. “Teach him humility. Take him to the very edge.”
She walked past Jimmy without another word.
He heard the trapdoor slam shut as she descended from the shack to meditate with the ocean. And to await Jimmy’s softening up. The fireworks continued outside, eliminating any chance of Jimmy calling for help. But that wasn’t his style anyway. He smiled up the Jap hoodlums.
Neither smiled back.
“So this is where we get to know each other, eh Shinji?” Jimmy asked the taller of the two.
“I’m Kento,” the thug replied, punching Jimmy in the face.
Jimmy saw stars.
He assessed his situation.
Being handcuffed wasn’t going to make his task any easier. But they’d made the mistake of handcuffing his hands in front of his body. That meant at least one of these Japs was going to die with marks from the cuff’s metal chain around his treacherous neck. As for the other . . . well, Jimmy was good at improvisation.
“You sure you wouldn’t prefer we got to know each other a little better before we get . . . you know, physically involved?” Jimmy queried, unsure if the goons would get the joke.
They didn’t answer.
At least, not with words.
This time, Shinji punched him in the face.
It was time Jimmy went to work.
Excerpt from a letter April 23, 1943:
. . . naturally supportive of any young man’s involvement in our nation’s critical military endeavors. However, I do not think it prudent that you enlist immediately, whatever the enthusiasm currently sweeping your internment camp. You are so close to finishing your novel! Why invite a distraction that is literally global in scope to interfere with your concentration? You have already overcome the challenges of internment, grief at the loss of your father, and the heartache of a breakup with your girlfriend, to complete 90 percent of your first book! Why voluntarily introduce yet another distraction when you’re so close to completing your work and being a writer, which was your dream? I am emphatic on this point, Takumi, and I think by now you know that I always have your best interests in mind.
Look, this new 442nd Division can do without you for another month or two in a way that Jimmy Park and the other indelible characters you’ve created cannot. I know you understand that. By resisting your impulse to be among the first wave of volunteers for this new unit, you can give Jimmy and the Orchid a life for readers. What a gift! Not only to the readers and the nation (your book is, after all, inspirationally patriotic at this most critical of historical moments), but also to your deserving characters, whom I have quite come to love.
As for your having your cake and eating it too: I simply don’t believe that you could continue writing while in basic training. Or that you would scrawl the conclusion and incorporate final revisions to your book on a troop carrier months from now crossing the Atlantic. Your moment as an author is now, Takumi. Your moment as an American soldier will come soon enough. Please finish what you started. Then enlist. Here’s the truth: my marriage was permanently interrupted by war; don’t allow this book, which I’ve come to think of as ours, to suffer the same fate. Get Jimmy out of that shack on the pier, bound as he is now by the two Japanese thugs with brutality on their evil minds. (Such a well written scene—the Orchid’s deadly fingernail, what a touch!)
Your concerned partner,
Maxine
THE REVISED—CHAPTER EIGHT cont'd.
In the dimness, among the countless small flashlights—one of which Sumida had bought for two bits at a concession stand—it took longer than he’d hoped to find the establishment of “Madame Belinsky—Au
thentic Gypsy Fortune-Teller,” which was not actually on the midway but was located in a small, wooden shack halfway along the pier. A few minutes earlier, when he was still searching the midway, a fireworks display had begun without warning over the Pike—as if the dimly lit place was not already surreal. But the fireworks confused him. In black-out conditions, what could serve as a more obvious marker to enemy aircraft than such a colorful display? At first, he could hardly believe it. Who could be behind it? But the crowd milling about the Pike responded to the impressive display almost as they would on an ordinary Fourth of July—rapt attention, oohs and ahs, and applause when a particularly big and colorful explosion rained down light over the otherwise-dimmed coast. Sure, with the first loud boom there’d been nervous confusion (a bomb?). But when the glorious rockets flowered red, white, and blue, people reacted to it as a rebellious display of patriotism. Perhaps that’s what it was. Nonetheless, Sumida worried he might be at the center of a target for an aerial attack. No matter. He wasn’t going to run away now. Didn’t the government dossier that Czernicek had lifted indicate the fortune-teller’s was to be the rendezvous point for a meeting between an unnamed Federal agent and the Orchid? If he was going to be bombed to oblivion trying to reach it, then so be it.
He’d seen the photograph. It was his Kyoko.
He didn’t have to understand the fireworks.
And he didn’t have to understand this “Orchid” business, which portrayed Kyoko as mastermind of a spy ring working to lay the groundwork for the invasion of America’s West Coast by forces of the Imperial Japanese Army. Ridiculous! Kyoko was a gentle woman with little interest in politics. And anti-American espionage? She’d been valedictorian of their class at Long Beach Wilson High School, delivering a graduation speech on the blessings offered to immigrants by the American way of life. Yet the report acknowledged no such past—no past at all. Instead, it depicted her as being of unknown birthplace and upbringing, seeming to have burst into life fully realized as a femme fatale who was feared even by other brutal Japanese operatives. Sumida couldn’t help but recall the Dragon Lady characters from a handful of movies he and Kyoko had walked out of because of the wearisome Oriental stereotypes. And the government report did not stop with mere insults. Seeming to take seriously the virtually impossible portrait of evil on its pages—including the absurdity of Kyoko’s having committed three brutal murders (including one decapitation and dismemberment) in just the past twenty-four hours!—the report called for her assassination, to be carried out by the unnamed operative whose meeting with her had been arranged under the guise of his going over to her side.
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