“Why did he tell you this?”
“Because he asked me…or rather, he asked Father O’Leary of the I.R.A.…to ascertain your true feelings about the Japanese.”
She was shaking her head, as if she were reeling. “True feelings…?”
“Are you sympathetic enough toward the Japanese, and bitter enough toward FDR and the United States, to come over to their side, as a valuable propaganda voice? To help them demonstrate that, as early as 1937, the United States committed an act of war upon imperial Japan?”
She was holding her head in her hands as if trying to keep it from exploding. “How this nightmare could become a greater nightmare, I never imagined…but it has…it has….”
“The chief also wanted me to ascertain whether or not your sympathies could be maintained even after the execution of your cohort. Of course, they may try telling you he died of dysentery or dengue fever—”
“Horrible…horrible.”
I took hold of her by the upper arms and swung her so that she directly faced me; I locked her eyes with mine. “Look, Amy. Love of my life, I don’t know if I can spring Fred Noonan out of that concrete pillbox. But you, you’re out walking around. The security around you is laughable. You think I can’t get around those fat fuckers across the street? I can get you out of here. Tonight.”
She was moving her head, as if shooing away flies. “Not without Fred…we can’t leave Fred….”
“It’s too risky. I’m one man with one gun. A pair of native goons with nightsticks I can take out. Spring your guy out of a maximum-security cellblock…probably not.”
Her mouth tightened; her jaw was firm; her eyes stony. “Then I’ll stay. I’ll talk to them. I’ll convince them I’ll cooperate if they’ll spare Fred.”
“They won’t. They’ve decided. Sentence has been passed, baby….”
She shook her head, firmly; her mouth was a thin narrow line. “No. After all we’ve been through, I can’t leave him behind. I couldn’t live with myself, couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, knowing I’d abandoned somebody who’d been through what I’d been through,
I let go of her, sighing, throwing my hands up. “Even if this were possible, Amy, think about what you’re saying, think of who you are, what you represent to so many people back home. Think of the young girls, cutting out stories about you from papers and magazines and pasting them in scrapbooks, like you did every time you saw some woman succeeding at a man’s task…are you going to take their symbol, the symbol of American womanhood, and turn it into a smiling face on a red sun on a Jap flag?”
“If I have to,” she said.
The breeze was picking up; palm fronds rustling.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “And I don’t blame you, either.”
“When you came here,” she said, “you didn’t know where you’d find me,
“I’d find a way to blast you the hell out.”
She gripped my arm. Tight. “Then find a way. We can’t leave Fred behind.”
There was no moving her on the subject.
So I told her Suzuki and the governor had asked me to talk to Noonan—perhaps Noonan would reveal his secrets to an American priest; it was certainly worth a try, the Japs thought, before they killed him. I would accept their invitation, I told her, and look the jail over firsthand, and see what I could come up with.
This put some spring in her step as we walked back, that gray sky darkening, whether into evening or worse weather, I wasn’t quite sure; the temperature was dropping and that cool breeze, carrying the smell of ocean, was driving out the copra and dried fish odor, or at least diminishing it.
I left her in her room, after a long slow kiss that promised wonderful rewards to a hero who succeeded at his impossible task, and went down to the lobby, where Jesus and Ramon were back at their old stand, their greasy hands filled with greasy cards.
“Tell Chief Suzuki,” I said to Jesus, “that I need to see him.”
Lord Jesus turned his face toward me, a flower seeking sun, and showed me those brown teeth again; it wasn’t a smile. “I look like your errand boy?”
“No,” I said, “you look like the chief’s errand boy.”
He thought about that, rose, brushed by me, in a stunning wave of body odor, and—without asking the clerk’s permission—reached across the counter and used the phone. He spoke in Japanese. His eyes had told me he wasn’t stupid, Suzuki had called Jesus his “top” native detective, and Amy said not to underestimate him; I was starting to see why: this beast spoke at least three languages.
When he trundled back, I had pulled up a rattan chair myself and was shuffling the deck of cards; I’d wash my hands, later. Ramon, whose eyes weren’t smart, looked at Jesus as if his friend might have an explanation for my aberrant behavior.
“Chief be here soon,” Jesus muttered.
“Fine,” I said, shuffling. “You boys know how to play Chicago? Seven-card stud, high spade in the hole splits the pot? What are these matchsticks worth, anyway?”
I’d won a few thousand yen when the chief showed up; that was only a couple dollars but Jesus seemed pretty resentful, just the same.
“You have talked to Amira?” Suzuki asked me. He was in the company of yet another member of the Chamorro police auxiliary, a shorter but no less burly boy with a billy club in the belt of his threadbare white suit.
