“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Gen said. “It’s been a busy day.”

“You seem to know Harry Niles,” Shozo said.

“Oh, I know Harry.” Gen shrugged his coat off of navy blues. The sight of a lieutenant’s stripes on the sleeve prompted Kawamura to give Gen an additional ninety-degree bow.

“I’m in the dark,” Shozo said. “I am told that Mr. Niles performs valuable services, but I can’t imagine what they are.”

“You’ll see.” From his dispatch bag Gen took a legal-size book of faded maroon that he laid on the desk and opened. “The ledger of Long Beach Oil. Fascinating reading.”

The entries were in India ink for English and blue for Japanese. As Kawamura stared down at the pages, he sweated despite the warehouse chill.

Gen explained to Shozo, “Kawamura is the accountant of Long Beach Oil. He finds himself in an unusual and uncomfortable position because Long Beach assets have been frozen by the Japanese government in retaliation for the freezing of Japanese assets and properties in the United States. The American managers of the company have gone back to the United States, leaving Kawamura, their senior Japanese employee, in a caretaker position, and he has carried out his duty to his employer faithfully.”

“And faithfully to the emperor,” Kawamura interjected.

“Of course.” Gen grinned at Harry.

As kids, Gen and Harry used to strut around Asakusa in dark glasses like hoods. One day they were getting their fortunes told in the temple when they heard a nasal buzzing overhead, looked up and saw a biplane come in low to waggle its wings over Buddha. Gen took off his dark glasses. The plane came by again, a silvery vision towing a sign that said EBISU BEER. It made Harry thirsty, but it changed Gen’s life. Determined to fly, he became a model student who headed to the Naval Academy and aviation, then the University of California at Berkeley, studying English. Gen actually put more time in at American schools than Harry, and at Berkeley, he had picked up a little American sis-boom-bah, which fitted him for the navy general staff. The army’s model was Germany, but navy comers tended to admire the British and the States and adopted a tradition of white gloves and ballroom manners. Somehow Gen Yoshimura had found the money to cover the costs that nagged at a student and officer. Harry thought there must have been some scrimping. With his poor-boy ambition and American style, Gen was a perfect amalgam.

“Let’s assume,” Gen told Kawamura, “that your employers were anxious as to how exactly the freeze of assets would be carried out here-whether there would be appropriation of their property, damage or misuse. By now they should be reassured that the Emergency Board for the Protection of Foreign Commercial Interests has the well-being of Long Beach Oil in mind. The freeze is an unhappy but temporary measure. It is a system that only works, however, when everyone cooperates, as most American companies have done.”

“Yes.” Kawamura tried to ignore Harry, as if not acknowledging a wolf would make it go away.

“But,” Gen said, “there have been exceptions. Unfortunately, some American companies have created Japanese subsidiaries in which they attempt to hide assets. In other cases, American companies underreport their assets or their activity. The more critical the commodity, the greater chance of inaccurate reporting. Yo-yos, for example, have been accurately accounted for. Oil has not.”

“I still don’t understand,” Kawamura said.

“Let’s take an example,” Harry said. “According to your own ledger, the tanker Sister Jane left California for Japan on May first with ten thousand barrels of oil. On May fifteenth, the Sister Jane arrived here and delivered one thousand barrels. It left the States with more oil than it delivered, ten times as much.”

Kawamura finally exploded. “What is an American doing here? Is he an expert on trade?”

Harry said, “I’m an expert on cooking the books. It’s the last item in the ledger. Read it.”

Kawamura put on spectacles to read the page. “Ah, well, this is all a misunderstanding, a simple error. The first number was written as ten thousand but later corrected to one thousand. One thousand barrels left Long Beach, one thousand arrived here. You can see there is even the initial P for Pomeroy, our branch manager, to show his correction. There was no attempt to disguise anything. I would never have allowed it.”

“I remember Pomeroy,” Harry said. “Lived right next to the racetrack. Pomeroy went home?”

“He is gone, yes.”

“To Long Beach?” Gen asked.

“Los Angeles.”

“He treated you well?” Harry asked.

“Always.”

“It’s quite an honor to be left in charge?” Gen asked.

“He trusts me, I think,” Kawamura said.

“He should,” Harry said. “You are obviously a stout defender of Long Beach Oil. But why the mistake? Why did a full ten thousand gallons of oil have to be corrected to a mere one thousand?”

“I don’t know. I am embarrassed that there should be even the suggestion of a discrepancy. I can assure you, however, that when a ship arrives, we measure the quantity of oil in each tank on the ship before it is pumped, and again at the storage tanks after.”

“How do they measure the oil on the ship?” Shozo asked.

“Tape and plumb bob,” Harry said.

“Japan depends on oil,” Gen said. “Japanese soldiers are giving their lives every day for oil.”

Harry said, “It’s hardly worth taking one thousand barrels across the Pacific. Did the Sister Jane stop on the way?”

“Only Hawaii,” Kawamura said.

“Hawaii?” Gen asked.

“There was a problem with a sick seaman, as I remember. The ship was only in dock two nights.”

“Tough luck for the seaman,” said Harry. “But maybe a stroke of good luck for the rest of the crew. Honolulu has a lot of hot spots. Do you think the captain gave the crew two days’ liberty?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Do you think maybe he pumped out nine thousand gallons of oil when the crew wasn’t around?” asked Gen.

“No.”

Harry said, “I’m just wondering why someone thought the Sister Jane left Long Beach with a lot of oil and ended up here with very little.”

“No one was cheated. Whether it was one thousand or ten thousand, that was what we sold, no more, no less.” Kawamura looked to Shozo for support, but the policeman’s expression was grim. Go had started to giggle, which even Harry found unnerving. “I’m sure Pomeroy would have a good explanation if he were here.”

“But he’s not here and you are,” Harry said. “I looked through the entire ledger, and in the twelve months before the freeze on deliveries, there were three other corrections for shortages of deliveries, totaling another thirty-six thousand barrels of oil that Japan desperately needed. You’ll find the ‘corrections’ on pages five, eleven and fifteen, a little smudged but definitely altered.” Kawamura flipped from page to page. This was like hunting rabbit, Harry thought. You didn’t chase rabbits, you lit a fire and they came to you if you showed them a safe way out. “Who actually had possession of this ledger, you or Pomeroy?”

“Pomeroy.”

Gen asked, “Who wrote down the number of barrels leaving Long Beach and arriving here?”

“Pomeroy.” Kawamura looked ready to pull his head in his collar if he could.

“You didn’t actually run the books on oil at all, did you?” Harry said. “That was the manager’s job. After all, you’re a financial man, not an oilman. What you were really in charge of was the branch budget, the payroll, dock fees, accounts payable. It must have been confusing to suddenly have to deal with customs, immigration, bills of lading. I doubt you ever would have noticed these barrel amounts.”

“I didn’t.”

“But thirty-six thousand barrels and nine thousand, that is forty-five thousand barrels of oil,” Shozo said. “Where did it go?”

“Good question,” Harry said. “I personally think that Kawamura here is an honest Japanese employee duped by the American manager Pomeroy, who is probably at the racetrack at Santa Anita even as we speak.”