I knew from his tone and the way he said "over with" that I was finished, hadn't made it. But why? What had I done? The burly captain opened the door, and I followed him to the rear, where we entered his private office. He shut the door behind me.
I stood at full attention in front of his desk, glancing at the silver nameplate, "Captain Earle Sansing, Commander, Personnel Division." He sat down in the large leather chair and said, "I'm not going to mince words, son. I am not going to certify you for acceptance to the police academy. You have no business being a police officer. I know all about your family and your father. It would be a waste of the taxpayers' money to let you go to the academy. It would be a total waste of their time, your time, and my time. I am going to reject your certification."
Standing there in disbelief and intimidated by this man who held the final word, I responded with a mixture of controlled anger and passion. I spoke with real emotion, and before I realized it, I was making a formal plea.
"Captain, sir," I began. "I have spent the last five months preparing for this moment. During that time I have tried to focus my heart and my mind toward one purpose, one goal, making it to the academy. I have finally done that. I have proven myself to be of fit character, mentally, physically, and morally. I don't know what you mean about knowing my father. I can only assume you are referring to his trial back in 1949. I know nothing of it other than he was found innocent of some charges that my half-sister Tamar made against him. He left us right after the trial, and my mother never spoke about it. I do know that I am not my father. I am myself. I also know that it is I, not my father, who wants to become a policeman. It is I, not my father, who has worked and sweated and struggled through each separate test toward this opportunity. Please, sir, do not take away this chance from me now. Let me prove myself in the academy. All I am asking from you is the chance for me to prove myself."
The veteran captain never took his eyes off of me, studying every inch of me, as if he were looking at an X-ray, sizing me up as if he were doing long division in his head. I also got the impression that he was trying to use his street smarts and intuition, which any experienced cop develops over the years on the job. It's what enables him to trust his gut feelings and not second-guess himself when he has to make a shoot/no shoot decision. Captain Sansing was taking a mental photograph of me that morning, looking for something in me that he could compute and confirm a decision he was trying to reach. A full minute passed, but it seemed like an eternal silence. Then he blinked, and I thought I saw his hardness change to a twinkle.
"Hodel," he said, "I am going to certify you to the academy. I shouldn't, and I know I shouldn't, but I am. I say again, it's a waste of time and money. You will start the academy three weeks from today. Now get the fuck out of my office!" Thus began my career with LAPD.
Now, with a steady and secure civil service job and a hundred-dollar-a-month increase in her purse, Kiyo decided we should buy a new home, and almost immediately one came our way. A good friend of hers, who was married to the old-time cowboy-in-black hero Lash LaRue (whose black whip was as fast as his gun), had recently put her Laurel Canyon home up for sale. At the top of a hundred concrete steps, it was more like an estate and it had a Hansel-and-Gretel roof.
Veteran movie director Tay Garnett, it was rumored, had built the home for a beautiful young actress he had fallen in love with, at a cost of more than $100,000, several fortunes in the days of the early studios. Then, just as the final bricks were being put into place, the fairy tale ended when the young starlet ran off to Malibu with a handsome young actor. Heartbroken, Garnett sold the house and ultimately Lash and his wife bought the place.
I especially liked Laurel Canyon, a community of homes high in the Hollywood Hills. The area was filled with actors, writers, artists, bohemians about to be reborn as hippies, lots of right-brain people. And I liked their energy. Kiyo offered Lash and his wife $37,500, which was the amount of money they had paid for the home fifteen years earlier. They happily accepted, figuring they did well to get their money back, and Kiyo and I moved in a few months later. I didn't know how we would ever pay the mortgage, but Kiyo simply told me to hand over my paycheck every two weeks and she'd take care of the rest.
After a year I'd completed my probation both on the LAPD and in my marriage. I'd followed all of Kiyo's rules, my training officer's rules, and the rules of any patrol sergeant who happened to be sitting at a desk in the divisions where I worked. I had kept my promise to Kiyo: neither my brothers nor my mother knew we were living together, much less married. As far as my family was concerned, I had ceased to exist. However, I did write a short message to my father in Manila simply telling him I had married "a Japanese woman" but provided no additional information. I don't remember if he answered my note.
If I had any doubts about my marriage with Kiyo or the growing differences between us, they were obliterated by the Watts riots that took over all our lives in the summer of 1965. Overnight the city became a third-world capital, aflame with massive rioting and running gun battles. I and five or six other uniformed officers were assigned to ride around the streets of South Central, jammed tightly into a single black-and-white, each of us armed with a shotgun. That was our sole function — a "show of force" — moving targets driving around in circles for twelve hours a day, never firing a shot, never making an arrest, and never getting out of the car except to grab a coffee or take a leak. We just drove in circles as a "perimeter control," more afraid of ourselves and the loaded shotguns we carried than of any rioters. The city would require full armored military occupation before order could be restored, and the myth of LAPD's invincibility vanished.
The riots had barely ended when, in October, my father sent a message that he would be in town for two days and asked me to call him at the Biltmore Hotel so he could meet with me and my "new bride." Upon hearing the news, Kiyo seemed oddly excited and urged me to call him immediately and schedule it. We arranged to meet the following afternoon in the lobby of the Biltmore at 6:00 p.m. and have dinner together.
That whole afternoon Kiyo acted rather bizarre. She had bought a new red dress for the occasion and had spent three hours on her hair and makeup, as if she were going to audition for a leading role. She was stunning, and all heads followed her as we walked through the Olive Street entrance into the lobby at 5:50 p.m. We waited in the lobby bar, she with her chardonnay and me with my double scotch, for Dad to make his appearance on the double stairway leading from the elevators to the main lobby. Father, as was his custom, was fifteen minutes late as he approached us with the beautiful Diana on his arm. I blinked as I looked up at them because Diana and Kiyo seemed to resemble each other. They didn't actually look alike, but they carried themselves in the same way. I could almost see sparks flying between them.
As Dad and Diana came within four feet of us, Kiyo looked directly at him, smiled broadly, and said with more intimacy than any stranger would have dared, "Hello, George!" Father looked at my wife, at first blankly, then, as he remembered, his eyes slowly changed from surprise to shock. Uncharacteristically, his speech faltered, and his voice broke as he replied, "Hello, Kiyo."
Diana and I looked at each other, both aware that something very strange had just occurred between the two of them. I said, "Hello, Diana, it's been five years, good to see you. This is my wife, Kiyo." Diana extended her hand, but Kiyo ignored her and kept staring at my father and smiling. I said, trying to paint over the awkwardness of the moment with some small talk, "Dad, I understand you two knew each other when Kiyo was quite young." He had recovered his composure now, and there was fire in his eyes as he replied, "Yes, we did. She was quite young, quite young indeed. Steven, I tried calling you before you left your home to inform you that, unfortunately, we won't be able to have dinner after all. Some very urgent business matters have come up unexpectedly, and we are on our way now to try and put out some fires and deal with them. We're off tomorrow for New York, so perhaps the next time through town we can have more time."