Fujiwara’s parents both had been born in the United States. He was the youngest of four sons and the only one of them to join the police force. His eldest brother was a lawyer in San Francisco. The next two brothers owned a Japanese restaurant downtown on Larimore Street. Fujiwara hated Japanese food, so he rarely visited his brothers in their place of business. His mother kept telling him he should learn to appreciate Japanese cuisine. She kept serving him sashimi. He kept kissing her on the cheek and asking for steak.
It had been his mother’s misfortune, when she was just sixteen and when Fujiwara and his three brothers were not even the faintest glimmer in her eye, to accept from her grandmother in Tokyo an invitation to visit her. Reiko Komagome—for such was her maiden name—was at the time attending a private school in the San Fernando Valley, her parents being rather wealthy Japanese immigrants who owned and operated a brisk silk business with its base in Tokyo and its primary American outlet in Los Angeles. Reiko’s Thanksgiving holiday started on November 21 that year, and she was not due back at school till December 1. But since her birthday fell on November 10, a Monday, and since a trip to Japan could, after all, be considered an educational and cultural experience, Reiko’s mother was able to convince the school authorities to let her out a week and more before the start of the scheduled vacation—provided she diligently did her assigned homework while she was in the Orient. Reiko left for Japan on November 9. Toward the end of her stay there, however, she came down with a severe cold and an attendant fever, and her grandmother was fearful of sending her on the long voyage back to the States. She called Los Angeles and received Reiko’s mother’s permission to keep her in Tokyo at least until the fever abated.
The year was 1941.
On December 7—when Reiko’s temperature was normal and her bags packed—the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. She did not return to Los Angeles until the summer of 1946, when she was twenty-one years old. She got married the following year to a man who subsequently taught her the intricacies of the jade business and the joys of sex (Reiko was delighted to learn that Japanese prints did not lie) and who incidentally impregnated her with four handsome sons, the youngest of whom was Tack Fujiwara.
The way Fujiwara got to be a hero and subsequently a detective/3rd came about quite by accident. He had relieved on post at a quarter to 5:00 and was walking a singularly dreary stretch of Culver Avenue some three blocks from the station house, an area of grim tenements interspersed with several greasy spoons, a billiard parlor, a check-cashing store, a pawnshop, a bar, and a shop selling tawdry lingerie of the breakaway variety. Most of the stores would be open till 6:00 or 7:00, he would not have to start shaking doorknobs till then. One of the greasy spoons would be open till 11:00, the other would close at midnight. The billiard parlor generally closed its doors sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 A.M., depending on how many customers were in there shooting pool. He had checked with the sergeant riding Adam Six, who’d told him to keep his eyes open for a brand new, blue Mercury sedan reported stolen that afternoon and who jokingly advised him not to drown out there in the rain.
At ten minutes to 5:00 he stopped by at the billiard parlor to make sure nobody was breaking anybody else’s head with a pool cue. At four minutes to 5:00 he dropped into the greasy spoon next door and declined the proprietor’s proffered cup of coffee, telling him he’d stop back later tonight. He was walking past Martin Levy’s pawnshop at precisely two minutes past the hour when the opportunity to become a hero presented itself. The gates on the shop were already up for the night, but a light was still burning inside. Fujiwara saw nothing unusual about this; Mr. Levy often worked inside for a half hour or more after he’d locked up. He did not even glance into the shop. He turned back to look at it only because he heard the bell over the door jingle, and he was surprised to see a hatless dark-haired man running out into the rain with what appeared to be a diamond necklace clutched in his fist.
Fujiwara did not have the faintest inkling that this was Hillary Scott’s eighteen-karat gold choker set with diamonds and valued at $16,500. Nor did he know that Levy’s shop had been one of those judiciously eliminated from Carella’s list because it was impossible to cover eight shops with two men to a shop when there were only an even dozen men available for the job. In fact, Fujiwara didn’t even know a stakeout operation was currently in progress at assorted pawnshops in the precinct; such information was rarely passed on to mere patrolmen, lest they behave in ways that might blow the whole undercover scheme. Fujiwara was just a poor wet slob walking his beat and witnessing what looked a hell of a lot like a robbery in progress. As the man ran out of the shop, he stuffed the necklace into the pocket of his coat, and if Fujiwara had entertained any doubts before that moment, they all vanished now. Drawing his pistol, he shouted, “Police officer! Halt or I’ll shoot!” and the fleeing man knocked him flat on his ass on the sidewalk and then trampled over him like a herd of buffalo and continued running for the corner of the block.
Fujiwara rolled over onto his belly and, holding the gun with both hands and propping himself on his elbows the way he’d been taught at the academy, pulled off two shots in succession at the fleeing man’s legs. He missed both times and swore under his breath as the man turned the corner out of sight. Fujiwara was on his feet at once. His gun in his right hand, his black poncho flapping so that he resembled a giant bat flitting through the rain, he reached the corner, and turned it, and found himself face to face with the man he’d been chasing. The man was holding what looked like a bread knife in his right hand.
Not knowing the man was a suspect in three murders, believing only that he’d stolen a piece of jewelry from Mr. Levy’s pawnshop, Fujiwara’s eyes opened wide in combined fright, surprise, and disbelief. It was one thing to walk into a store where some cheap thief was holding a gun on somebody; in a situation like that you might expect an attack. But this guy had already rounded third and was heading for home, so why the hell was he risking a hassle with a cop? You dope, I’m a cop! Fujiwara thought, and stepped aside in reflex to dodge the knife. The tip of the knife penetrated the poncho, missing his body by an inch, snagging on the rubberized fabric, and then pulling free again for what Fujiwara hoped would not be a more definitive thrust. This time he didn’t bother with the niceties of shooting below the waist. This time he fired straight at the man’s chest, and this time he hit him—not in the chest, but in the shoulder, which was plenty good enough. The man reeled back from the force of the slug. The knife dropped from his hand and clattered to the slippery wet pavement. He was turning to run again when Fujiwara said, so softly that it sounded almost like the whisper of the rain, “Mister, you’re dead,” and the man stopped in his tracks, and nodded his head, and to Fujiwara’s great astonishment began weeping.
The formal Q and A took place in Jack Rawles’s hospital room at 8:20 P.M. on New Year’s Eve. Present were Lieutenant Peter Byrnes, Detective Stephen Louis Carella, Detective Cotton Hawes, and an assistant district attorney named David Saperstein. A police stenographer took down everything that was said. Saperstein asked all the questions; Rawles gave all the answers.