Next thing I know, I’m out in the living room and I say everything is fine with the kid, and now the woman starts to scream in her drunken way that I abused her child—now it’s me, not the husband—and that I am in a conspiracy with the husband, that we are both child abusers. My partner figures she’s crazy drunk and we leave, and that’s it. My partner says, “You were in that room a while.” And I say, “I had to check the kid,” And that’s it. Except the next day she comes in and makes a formal complaint that I abused her child. She’s hung over and she has a record, but even so it’s a serious charge and it goes through the system as far as the preliminary, where it gets thrown out as entirely without merit.

That’s it.

That’s what happened.

That’s the whole story.

“And the money?” Connor said.

“I went to Vegas for the weekend. I won big. I paid taxes on thirteen thousand in unearned income that year.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“Lauren. She told me how to handle it.”

“So she knows what happened?”

“Sure.”

“And the department investigation? Did the preliminary board issue a report?”

“I don’t think it got that far. They just heard it orally and dismissed it. There’s probably a notation in the file, but not an actual report.”

“All right,” Connor said. “Now tell me the rest.”

So I told him about Ken Shubik, and the Times, and the Weasel. Connor listened silently, frowning. As I talked, he began to suck air through his teeth, which was the Japanese way of expressing disapproval.

“Kōhai,” he said, when I finished, “you are making my life extremely difficult. And certainly you make me appear foolish when I should not. Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

“Because it has nothing to do with you.”

“Kōhai.” He was shaking his head. “Kōhai…”

I was thinking about my daughter again. About the possibility—just the possibility—that I would not be able to see her—that I would not be able to—

“Look,” Connor said, “I told you it could be unpleasant, Take my word for it. It can get much more unpleasant than this. This is only the beginning. It can get nasty. We must proceed quickly and try to wrap everything up.”

“I thought everything was wrapped up.”

Connor sighed, and shook his head. “It’s not,” he said. “And now we must resolve everything before you meet your wife at four o’clock. So let’s make sure we are done by then.”

15

“Christ, I’d say it’s pretty fucking wrapped up,” Graham said. He was walking around Sakamura’s house in the Hollywood hills. The last of the SID teams was packing up cases to leave.

“I don’t know why the chief has such a bug up his ass on this,” Graham said. “The SID boys have been doing most of their work right here, on the spot, because he’s in such a rush. But thank God: everything ties up perfect. Sakamura is our boy. We combed his bed for pubic hair—it matches the pubic hair found on the girl. We got dried saliva off his toothbrush. It matches blood type and genetic markers for the sperm inside the dead girl. Matchup is ninety-seven percent sure. It’s his come inside her, and his pubic hair on her body. He fucked her and then he killed her. And when we came to arrest him, he panicked, made a break for it, and died as a result. Where is Connor?”

“Outside,” I said.

Through the windows, I could see Connor standing down by the garage, talking to policemen in a black-and-white patrol car. Connor was pointing up and down the street; they were answering questions.

“What’s he doing down there?” Graham said.

I said I didn’t know.

“Damn, I don’t understand him. You can tell him the answer to his question is no.”

“What question?”

“He called me an hour ago,” Graham said. “Said he wanted to know how many pairs of reading glasses we found here. We checked. The answer is, no reading glasses. Lots of sunglasses. Couple of pairs of women’s sunglasses. But that’s it. I don’t know why he cared. Strange man, isn’t he? What the hell is he doing now?”

We watched as Connor paced back and forth around the squad car, then pointed up and down the road again. One man was in the car, talking on the radio. “Do you understand him?” Graham said.

“No, I don’t.”

“He’s probably trying to track down the girls,” Graham said. “Christ, I wish we had gotten the ID on that redhead. Especially now it’s turned out this way. She must have fucked him, too. We could have gotten some sperm from her, and made an exact match with all the factors. And I look like a horse’s ass, letting the girls get away. But shit, who knew it was going to go that way. It was all so fast. Naked girls up here, prancing around. A guy gets a little confused. It’s natural. Shit, they were good-looking, weren’t they?”

I said they were.

“And there’s nothing left of Sakamura,” Graham said. “I talked to the PEO boys an hour ago. They’re downtown, cutting the corpse out of the car, but I guess he’s burned beyond identification. The M.E.’s office is going to try, but good luck.” He stared unhappily out the window. “You know what? We did the best we could with this fucking case,” he said. “And I think we did pretty good. We got the right guy. We did it fast, no fuss no muss. But all I hear now is a lot of Japan-bashing. Fuck. You can’t win.”

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“And Christ they have juice now,” Graham said. “The heat on my ass is terrific. I got the chief calling me, wanting this thing wrapped up. I got some reporter at the Times investigating me, hauling out some old shit about a questionable use of force on a Hispanic back in 1978. Nothing to it. But this reporter, he’s trying to show I’ve always been a racist. And what is the background of his story? That last night was a ‘racist’ incident. So I am now an example of racism rearing its ugly head again. I tell you. The Japanese are masters of the smear job. It’s fucking scary.”

“I know,” I said.

“They getting to you, too?”

I nodded.

“For what?”

“Child abuse.”

“Christ,” Graham said. “And you got a daughter.”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t it piss you off? Innuendo and smear tactics, Petey-san. Nothing to do with reality. But try and tell that to a reporter.”

“Who is it?” I asked. “The reporter talking to you.”

“Linda Jensen, I think she said.”

I nodded. Linda Jensen was the Weasel’s protégé. Somebody once said that Linda didn’t fuck her way to the top. She fucked other people’s reputations to the top. She had been a gossip columnist in Washington before graduating to the big time in Los Angeles.

“I don’t know,” Graham said, shifting his bulk. “Personally, I think it’s not worth it. They’re turning this country into another Japan. You’ve already got people afraid to speak. Afraid to say anything against them. People just won’t talk about what’s happening.”

“It would help if the government passed a few laws.”

Graham laughed. “The government. They own the government. You know what they spend in Washington every year? Four hundred million fucking dollars a year. That’s enough to pay the campaign costs of everybody in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives. That is a lot of fucking money. Now you tell me. Would they spend all that money, year after year, if it wasn’t paying off for them? Of course they wouldn’t. Shit. The end of America, buddy. Hey. Looks like your boss wants you.”

I looked out the window. Connor was waving to me.

I said, “I better go.”

“Good luck,” Graham said. “Listen. I may take a couple of weeks off.”

“Yeah? When?”

“Maybe later today,” Graham said. “The chief mentioned it. He said as long as the fucking Times is on my ass, maybe I should. I’m thinking of a week in Phoenix. I got family there. Anyway, I wanted you to know, I might be going.”