“Part of personal collection,” Mr. Tagomi said. “Much fooled around in vainglorious swift-draw practicing and firing, in spare hours. Admit to compare favorably with other enthusiasts in contest-timing. But mature use heretofore delayed.” Holding the gun in correct fashion he pointed it at the office door. And sat waiting.
At the bench in their basement workshop, Frank Frink sat at the arbor. He held a half-finished silver earring against the noisily turning cotton buff; bits of rouge spattered his glasses and blackened his nails and hands. The earring, shaped in a snail-shell spiral, became hot from friction, but Frink grimly bore down even more.
“Don’t get it too shiny,” Ed McCarthy said. “Just hit the high spots; you can even leave the lows completely.”
Frank Frink grunted.
“There’s a better market for silver if it’s not polished up too much,” Ed said. “Silverwork should have that old look.”
Market, Frink thought.
They had sold nothing. Except for the consignment at American Artistic Handcrafts, no one had taken anything, and they had visited five retail shops in all.
We’re not making any money, Frink said to himself. We’re making more and more jewelry and it’s just piling up around us.
The screw-back of the earring caught in the wheel; the piece whipped out of Frink’s hands and flew to the polish shield, then fell to the floor. He shut off the motor.
“Don’t let those pieces go,” McCarthy said, at the welding torch.
“Christ, it’s the size of a pea. No way to get a grip.”
“Well, pick it up anyhow.”
The hell with the whole thing, Frink thought.
“What’s the matter?” McCarthy said, seeing him make no move to fish up the earring.
Frink said, “We’re pouring money in for nothing.”
“We can’t sell what we haven’t made.”
“We can’t sell anything,” Frink said. “Made or unmade.”
“Five stores. Drop in the bucket.”
“But the trend,” Frink said. “It’s enough to know.”
“Don’t kid yourself.”
Frink said, “I’m not kidding myself.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning it’s time to start looking for a market for scrap.”
“All right,” McCarthy said, “quit, then.”
“I have.”
“I’ll go on by myself.” McCarthy lit the torch again.
“How are we going to split the stuff?”
“I don’t know. But we’ll find a way.”
“Buy me out,” Frink said.
“Hell no.”
Frink computed. “Pay me six hundred dollars.”
“No, you take half of everything.”
“Half the motor?”
They were both silent then.
“Three more stores,” McCarthy said. “Then we’ll talk about it.” Lowering his mask he began brazing a section of brass rod into a cuff bracelet.
Frank Frink stepped down from the bench. He located the snail-shell earring and replaced it in the carton of incomplete pieces. “I’m going outside for a smoke,” he said, and walked across the basement to the stairs.
A moment later he stood outdoors on the sidewalk, a T’ien-lai between his fingers.
It’s all over, he said to himself. I don’t need the oracle to tell me; I recognize what the Moment is. The smell is there. Defeat.
And it is hard really to say why. Maybe, theoretically, we could go on. Store to store, other cities. But—something is wrong. And all the effort and ingenuity won’t change it.
I want to know why, he thought.
But I never will.
What should we have done? Made what instead?
We bucked the moment. Bucked the Tao. Upstream, in the wrong direction. And now—dissolution. Decay.
Yin has us. The light showed us its ass, went elsewhere.
We can only knuckle under.
While he stood there under the eaves of the building, taking quick drags on his marijuana cigarette and dully watching traffic go by, an ‘ordinary-looking, middle-aged white man sauntered up to him.
“Mr. Frink? Frank Frink?”
“You got it,” Frink said.
The man produced a folded document and identification. “I’m with the San Francisco Police Department. I’ve a warrant for your arrest.” He held Frink’s arm already; it had already been done.
“What for?” Frink demanded.
“Bunco. Mr. Childan, American Artistic Handcrafts.” The cop forcibly led Frink along the sidewalk; another plainclothes cop joined them, one now on each side of Frink. They hustled him toward a parked unmarked Toyopet.
This is what the time requires of us, Frink thought as he was dumped onto the car seat between the two cops. The door slammed shut; the car, driven by a third cop, this one in uniform, shot out into traffic. These are the sons-of-bitches we must submit to.
“You got an attorney?” one of the cops asked him.
“No,” he said.
“They’ll give you a list of names at the station.”
“Thanks,” Frink said.
“What’d you do with the money?” one of the cops asked later on, as they were parking in the Kearny Street Police station garage.
Frink said, “Spent it.”
“All?”
He did not answer.
One of the cops shook his head and laughed.
As they got out of the car, one of them said to Frink, “Is your real name Fink?”
Frink felt terror.
“Fink,” the cop repeated. “You’re a kike.” He exhibited a large gray folder. “Refugee from Europe.”
“I was born in New York,” Frank Frink said.
“You’re an escapee from the Nazis,” the cop said. “You know what that means?”
Frank Frink broke away and ran across the garage. The three cops shouted, and at the doorway he found himself facing a police car with uniformed armed police blocking his path. The police smiled at him, and one of them, holding a gun, stepped out and smacked a handcuff into place over his wrist.
Jerking him by the wrist—the thin metal cut into his flesh, to the bone—the cop led him back the way he had come.
“Back toGermany,” one of the cops said, surveying him.
“I’m an American,” Frank Frink said.
“You’re a Jew,” the cop said.
As he was taken upstairs, one of the cops said, “Will he be booked here?”
“No,” another said. “We’ll hold him for the German consul. They want to try him under German law.”
There was no list of attorneys, after all.
For twenty minutes Mr. Tagomi had remained motionless at his desk, holding the revolver pointed at the door, while Mr. Baynes paced about the office. The old general had, after some thought, lifted the phone and put through a call to the Japanese embassy in San Francisco. However, he had not been able to get through to Baron Kaelemakule; the ambassador, a bureaucrat had told him, was out of the city.
Now General Tedeki was in the process of placing a transpacific call to Tokyo.
“I will consult with the War College,” he explained to Mr. Baynes. “They will contact Imperial military forces stationed nearby us.” He did not seem perturbed .
So we will be relieved in a number of hours, Mr. Tagomi said to himself. Possibly by Japanese Marines from a carrier, armed with machines guns and mortars.
Operating through official channels is highly efficient in terms of final result . . . but there is regrettable time lag. Down below us, blackshirt hooligans are busy clubbing secretaries and clerks. –
However, there was little more that he personally could do.
“I wonder if it would be worth trying to reach the German consul,” Mr. Baynes said.
Mr. Tagomi had a vision of himself summoning Miss Ephreikian in with her tape recorder, to take dictation of urgent protest to Herr H. Reiss.
“I can call Herr Reiss,” Mr. Tagomi said. “On another line.”
“Please,” Mr. Baynes said.
Still holding his Colt .44 collector’s item, Mr. Tagomi pressed a button on his desk. Out came a nonlisted phone line, especially installed for esoteric communication.
He dialed the number of the German consulate.
“Good day, Who is calling?” Accented brisk male functionary voice. Undoubtedly underling.
Mr. Tagomi said, “His Excellency Herr Reiss, please. Urgent. This is Mr. Tagomi, here. Ranking Imperial Trade Mission, Top Place.” He used his hard, no-nonsense voice.
“Yes sir. A moment, if you will.” A long moment, then. No sound at all on the phone, not even clicks. He is merely standing there with it, Mr. Tagomi decided. Stalling through typical Nordic wile.
To General Tedeki, waiting on the other phone, and Mr. Baynes, pacing, he said, “I am naturally being put off.”
At last the functionary’s voice once again. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Tagomi.”
“Not at all.”
“The consul is in conference. However—“
Mr. Tagomi hung up.
“Waste of effort, to say the least,” he said, feeling discomfited. Whom else to call? Tokkoka already informed, also MP units down on waterfront; no use to phone them. Direct call to Berlin? To Reichs Chancellor Goebbels? To Imperial Military airfield at Napa, asking for air-rescue assistance?
“I will call SD chief Herr B. Kruez vom Meere,” he decided aloud. “And bitterly complain. Rant and scream invective.” He began to dial the number formally—euphemistically—listed in the San Francisco phone book as the “Lufthansa Airport Terminal Precious-Shipment Guard Detail.” As the phone buzzed he said, “Vituperate in highpitched hysteria.”