What a room.
A dozen slants staring at me with tiny black eyes like Jap Zero insignias, Bob Murikami smack in the middle. Arkansas toad stabbers drawn and pointed square at my middle. A Mexican standoff or the sequel to Pearl Harbor. Kamikaze was the only way to play it.
I smiled, ejected the chambered round from my pilfered piece, popped the clip, and tossed both at the far wall. Jumbo was stirring at my feet; I helped him up, one hand on his carotid artery in case he got uppity. With my free hand, I broke the cylinder on my gun, showing him the one bullet left from my shoot-out with Walter Koenig’s killers. Jumbo nodded his head, getting the picture; I spun the chamber, put the muzzle to his forehead, and addressed the assembled Axis powers. “This is about bankbooks, Maggie Cordova, Alien Squad grifts, and that big heist at the Japtown B of A. Bob Murikami’s the only guy I want to talk to. Yes or no.”
Nobody moved a muscle or said a word. I pulled the trigger, clicked an empty chamber, and watched Jumbo shake head to toe — bad heebie-jeebies. I said, “Sayonara, Shitbird,” and pulled the trigger again; another hollow click, Jumbo twitching like a hophead going into cold turkey overdrive.
Five to one down to three to one; I could see Lorna, nude, waving bye-bye Hearns, heading toward Stormin’ Norman Killebrew, jazz trombone, rumored to have close to a hard half yard and the only man Lorna implied gave it to her better than me. I pulled the trigger twice — twin empties — shit stink taking over the room as Jumbo evacuated his bowels.
One to one, seven come eleven, the Japs looking uncharacteristically piqued. Now I saw my own funeral cortege, “Prison of Love” blasting as they lowered me into the grave.
“No! I’ll talk!”
I had the trigger at half pull when Bob Murikami’s voice registered. I let go of Jumbo and drew a bead on Bad Bob; he walked over and bowed, supplicant samurai style, at my gun muzzle. Jumbo collapsed; I waved the rest of the group into a tight little circle and said, “Kick the clip and the roscoe over.”
A weasel-faced guy complied; I popped one into the chamber and tucked my Russki roulette piece in my belt. Murikami pointed to a side door; I followed him over, a straight-arm bead on the others.
The door opened into a small bedroom lined with cots — the Underground Railway, 1942 version. I sat down on the cleanest one available and pointed Murikami to a cot a few yards over, well within splatter range. I said, “Spill. Put it together, slow and from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”
Bad Bob Murikami was silent, like he was mustering his thoughts and wondering how much horseshit he could feed me. His face was hard set; he looked tough beyond his years. I smelled musk in the room — a rare combo of blood and Lorna’s “Cougar Woman” perfume. “You can’t lie, Bob. And I won’t hand you up to the Alien Squad.”
Murikami snickered. “You won’t?”
I snickered back. “You people mow a mean lawn and trim a mean shrub. When my ship comes in, I’ll be needing a good gardener.”
Murikami double-snickered — and a smile started to catch at the corners of his mouth. “What’s your name?”
“Spade Hearns.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“I thought private eyes were sensitive guys with a code of honor.”
“Only in the pulps.”
“That’s rich. If you don’t have a code of honor, how do I know you won’t cross me?”
“I’m in too deep now, Tojo. Crossing you’s against my own best interest.”
“Why?”
I pulled out a handful of bankbooks; Murikami’s slant eyes bugged out until he almost looked like a fright-wig nigger. “I killed Walt Koenig for these, and you need a white man to tap the cash. I don’t like witnesses and there’s too many of you guys to kill, even though I’m hopped up on blood bad. Spiel me, papa-san. Make it an epic.”
Murikami spieled for a straight hour. His story was the night train to Far Gonesville.
It started when three Japs, bank building maintenance workers pissed over their imminent internment, cooked up a plot with rogue cop Walt Koenig and a cop buddy of his — Murikami didn’t know the guy’s name. The plot was a straight bank robbery with a no-violence proviso — Koenig and pal taking down the B of A based on inside info, the Japs getting a percentage cut of the getaway loot for the young firebrands stupid enough to think they could hot-foot it to Mexico and stay free, plus Koenig’s safeguarding of confiscated Jap property until the internment ended. But the caper went blood simple: guards snuffed, stray bullets flying. Mrs. Lena Sakimoto, the old dame shot on the street the next day, was the finger woman — she was in the bank pretending to be waiting in line, but her real errand was to pass the word to Koenig and buddy — the split second the vault cash was distributed to the tellers. She was rubbed out because the heisters figured her for a potential snitch.
Double-cross.
Bad Bob and his pals had been given the bank money to hold. Enraged over the deaths, they shoved it into Jap bank accounts, figured the two whiteys couldn’t glom it, that the swag would accumulate interest until the internment was adios. Bob stashed the bankbooks at his crib and was soon to send the white boy fronting the getaway pad over to get them — but he got word a friend of his got greedy.
The friend’s name was George Hayakawa, a vice-warlord in the Rising Sons. He went to Walt Koenig with a deaclass="underline" He’d get the cash for a fifty-fifty cut. Koenig said no dealsky, tortured the location of the bankbooks and the address of the hideout out of Hayakawa, snuffed him, chopped off his dick, and sent it over in a pizza delivery box. A warning — don’t fuck with the White Peril.
I pressed Murikami on Maggie Cordova — how did she fit in? The epic took on perv-o overtones.
Maggie was Bad Bob’s sister’s squeeze — the femme half of a dyke duo. She was the co-finger woman inside the bank; when Mrs. Lena Sakimoto got shot to sukiyaki, Maggie fled to Tijuana, fearing similar reprisals. Bob didn’t know exactly where she was. I pressed, threatened, and damn near shot Murikami to get the answer I wanted most: where Maggie Cordova got “Prison of Love.”
Bad Bob didn’t know; I had to know. I made him a deal I knew I’d double-cross the second Lorna slinked into view. You come with me, we’ll withdraw all the gelt, you take me to T.J. to find Maggie and the money’s all yours. Murikami agreed; we sealed the bargain by toking a big bottle of laudanum laced with sake. I passed out on my cot with my gun in my hand and segued straight into the arms of Lorna.
It was a great hop dream.
Lorna was performing nude at the Hollywood Palladium, backed by an all-jigaboo orchestra — gigantic darkies in rhinestone-braided Uncle Sam outfits. She humped the air; she sprayed sweat; she sucked the microphone head. Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin, and Hirohito were carried in on litters; they swooned at her feet as Lor belted “Someone to Watch Over Me.” A war broke out on the bandstand: crazed jigs beating each other with trombone slides and clarinet shafts. It was obviously a diversion — Hitler jumped on stage and tried to carry Lorna over to a Nazi U-boat parked in the first row. I foiled Der Führer, picking him up by the mustache and hurling him out to Sunset Boulevard. Lorna was swooning into my arms when I felt a tugging and opened my eyes to see Bob Murikami standing over me, saying, “Rise and shine, shamus. We got banking to do.”
We carried it out straight-faced, with appropriate props — handcuffs on Bad Bob, phony paperwork, a cereal box badge pinned to my lapel. Murikami impersonated over a dozen fellow Japs; we liquidated fourteen bank accounts to the tune of $81,000. I explained that I was Alien Squad brass, overseeing the confiscation of treasonous lucre; patriotic bank managers bought the story whole. At four we were heading south to T.J. and what might be my long-overdue reunion with the woman who’d scorched my soul long, long ago. Murikami and I talked easily, a temporary accord in Japanese-American relations — thanks to a healthy injection of long green.