I heard a knock at the door, looked out the window and saw a prowl car at the curb, red lights blinking. I took my time turning on lamps, wondering if it was warrants and handcuffs or maybe somebody who wanted to talk dealsky. More knocks–a familiar cadence. Bill Malloy at midnight.
I opened the door. Malloy was backstopped by a muscle cop who looked like a refugee from the wrong side of a Mississippi chain gang: big ears, blond flattop, pig eyes, and a too-small suitcoat framing the kind of body you expect to see on convicts who haul cotton bales all day. Bill said, “You want out of your grief, Hearns? I came to give you an out.”
I pointed to the man-monster. “Expecting trouble you can’t handle?”
“Policemen come in pairs. Easier to give trouble, easier to avoid it. Sergeant Jenks, Mr. Hearns.”
The big man nodded; an Adam’s apple the size of a baseball bobbed up and down. Bill Malloy stepped inside and said, “If you want those charges dropped and your curfew waiver back, raise your right hand.”
I did it. Sergeant Jenks closed the door behind him and read from a little card he’d pulled from his pocket. “Do you, Spade Hearns, promise to uphold the laws of the United States Government pertaining to executive order number nine-oh-fivefive and obey all other federal and municipal statutes while temporarily serving as an internment agent?”
I said “Yeah.”
Bill handed me a fresh curfew pass and an LAPD rap sheet with a mugshot strip attached. “Robert no middle name Murikami. He’s a lamster Jap, he’s a youth gang member, he did a deuce for B and E and when last seen he was passing out antiAmerican leaflets. We’ve got his known associates on this sheet, last known address, the magilla. We’re swamped and taking in semipros like you to help. Usually we pay fifteen dollars a day, but you’re in no position to demand a salary.”
I took the sheet and scanned the mugshots. Robert NMN Murikami was a stolid-looking youth–a samurai in a skivvy shirt and duck’s ass haircut. I said, “If this kid’s so wicked, why are you giving me the job?”
Jenks bored into me with his little pig eyes; Bill smiled. “I trust you not to make the same mistake twice.”
I sighed. “What’s the punch line?”
“The punch line is that this punk is pals with Maggie Cordova–we got complete paper on him, including his bail reports. The Cordova cooze put up the jack for Tojo’s last juvie beef. Get him, Hearns. All will be forgiven and maybe you’ll get to roll in the gutter with another second-rate saloon girl.”
* * *
I settled in to read the junior kamikaze’s rap sheet. There wasn’t much: the names and addresses of a half dozen Jap cohorts– tough boys probably doing the Manzanar shuffle by now–carbons of the kid’s arrest reports, and letters to the judge who presided over the B&E trial that netted Murikami his two-spot at Preston. If you read between the lines, you could see a metamorphosis: Little Tojo started out as a pad prowler out for cash and a few sniffs of ladies’ undergarments and ended up a juvie gang honcho: zoot suits, chains and knives, boogie-woogie rituals with his fellow members of the “Rising Sons.” At the bottom of the rap sheet there was a house key attached to the page with Scotch tape, an address printed beside it: 1746¼, North Avenue 46, Lincoln Heights. I pocketed the key and drove there, thinking of a Maggie-to-Lorna reunion parlay–cool silk sheets and a sleek tanned body soundtracked by the torch song supreme.
* * *
The address turned out to be a subdivided house on a terraced hillside overlooking the Lucky Lager Brewery. The drive over was eerie: Streetlights and traffic signals were the only illumination and Lorna was all but there with me in the car, murmuring what she’d give me if I took down slant Bobby. I parked at the curb and climbed up the front steps, counting numbers embossed on doorways: 1744, 1744V2, 1746, 1746Y2. 1746¼ materialized; I fumbled the key toward the lock. Then I saw a narrow strip of light through the adjoining window–the unmistakable glint of a pen flash probing. I pulled my gun, _eased_ the key in the hole, watched the light flutter back toward the rear of the pad, and opened the door slower than slow.