Live in Infamy Read online

  To Jody Corbett, the best editor a writer could ask for

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  1

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  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

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  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  SNEAK PEEK

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  By the time he turned sixteen, Ren had witnessed three executions.

  The first criminal had been a boy, barely old enough to shave. Ren had been seven at the time and had watched from behind his mother’s back as the soldiers dragged the boy up the cliff and pushed him to his knees. But that hadn’t stopped the boy from shouting, “Freedom or death! Long live the United States of America!” Until, at last, he was silenced.

  The second criminal had been a young father, still dressed in the gray pajamas that he had been wearing when the soldiers first arrested him. His crime? Paying a bribe to free his wife from Alcatraz prison. His sentence? Immediate death. As the winds howled over the Pacific bluffs, the young father had begged for mercy — not for himself but for his children. His three daughters had also been taken into custody, even the youngest, who still sucked her thumb. Rumor had it that the girls were sent to an orphanage on the Oregon coast or driven south to an internment camp near New Tokyo, the city formerly called Los Angeles. Either way, Ren never saw them at school again.

  The last criminal had been a middle-aged woman, with bruised eyes and a broken nose but who kept her head held high until the very end. Ren had just turned eleven and was burning with the winter fever that would nearly kill him, but that hadn’t stopped him from watching the execution — because attendance was mandatory and because the criminal was his mother.

  While the crowd had gathered on the sunny beach, Ren wheezed and leaned on his father’s broad shoulder. Forty feet above their heads, the soldiers marched Ren’s mom to the lip of the killing cliffs. Ren’s father held back tears while Ren almost threw up. Neither of them could do a thing, except watch.

  The executioner sharpened his long blade, while Crown Prince Takamado of the Western American Territories lifted a bullhorn to his lips. First came the charges: treason. Then the sentence: death.

  Through it all, Ren’s mother never flinched, even though she would soon meet a slow and painful end. She stared out at the cold waves before she searched the crowd for her family. When their eyes met, she nodded at her husband and she gave Ren — her son, her only child — one last smile.

  “Don’t look,” she mouthed to them both.

  Ren’s father tried to shield his son’s eyes, but Ren struggled free.

  “Help her,” Ren whispered desperately. “We have to help her.”

  But the sword plunged in fast.

  The blood poured in a rush.

  And Ren collapsed to the sand.

  That would be the last execution in the town of White Crescent Bay — until today.

  The shop closed early that day for the killing.

  At a quarter past two, Ren finished a neat row of stitches on a pair of trousers while his father locked up the cash register. Not one customer had stepped into the Cabots’ tailoring and cobbling shop since they opened their doors this Friday morning, and Ren couldn’t blame them for that. Nobody was in the mood to buy a spool of thread or drop off a shoe with a broken strap — not with a three o’clock execution looming over their heads.

  “Time to go,” said Mr. Cabot, glancing out the front window that overlooked East Main Street. “Looks like they’re starting the roundup already.”

  Ren lifted his gaze from the worktable, which was piled high with bolts of low-quality wool and secondhand cotton, and squinted through the window blinds. Beyond the shop door, a dozen soldiers from the Imperial Japanese Army barked orders along the road, each one armed with a pistol on the hip and a rifle over the shoulder. Theirs looked particularly hungry today.

  One of the soldiers read from a piece of paper, bellowing: “Attention all! By decree of the Empire of the Rising Sun, every resident of White Crescent Bay must head to the beach for a formal announcement. Anyone found in noncompliance will be fined and face arrest.”

  Up and down the road, the citizens obeyed. The grocer’s lights shut off, followed by the pawnshop. The apartments emptied out, too. The residents hurried onto the sidewalk, forming a row as neat as one of Ren’s stitches, but one of them — an elderly woman who sold vegetables around the corner — tripped, stumbling into a soldier’s back. She bowed in apology, but not fast enough. The soldier slapped the woman hard and pushed her onto the sidewalk before storming off. After he left, she struggled to her feet, with her knees bloodied and shaking. No one dared to help her.

  At the sight of it all, Ren tensed and stood from his worktable. He wanted to make sure that the woman was okay, but his father quickly shut the blinds.

  “Leave it be,” Mr. Cabot said, a weary warning. “It’s not our business.”

  Ren stood on his tiptoes to get another look, looming a half head taller than his father, thanks to a recent growth spurt. “I just wanted to see —”

  “You know we have to be careful. Those soldiers have orders to keep an eye on us.”

  “I know.” Ren sank back onto his heels, and his heart sank with them. “But I had to know if that lady was all right.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Get the lights.” Mr. Cabot turned away from his son. The matter was closed.

  Ren swallowed the sour taste in his mouth. Five years ago, his father would’ve helped that old woman. His mother would have, too. But that was before the Cabots had lost everything — before Ren’s mom was arrested and killed on top of the cliffs, and before the patrol cars started lingering outside the shop. Ren had lost count of the times when the soldiers would pop into the store unannounced and stomp upstairs to the Cabots’ apartment. They’d kick over the beds to search for contraband: illegal radios, banned newspapers, an old copy of the Constitution, anything that could lead to an arrest. But they never found a thing — Mr. Cabot made sure of it. Losing his wife had changed him. Nowadays, he followed the rules and fell into line and forsook his past, rarely mentioning the rebel Resistance that he had once been a part of and never speaking about the illegal newspaper that his wife had run almost single-handedly. And he expected Ren to do the same.

  Ren may have lost his mother to Imperial Japan, but in some ways, he had lost his dad to it, too.

  “Can you grab the keys?” Mr. Cabot called from the back room.

  Ren was about to do just that when he saw someone approaching the shop. Dread filled every corner of his stomach. “Dad? Looks like we’ve got company.”

  His father hurried back into the shop’s main room. “Is it a patrol? Or a Ronin Elite?”

  Before Ren could answer, the front door was flung open and a single soldier stomped into the store with his rifle swinging. He wore a cloth cap on his head, a rising sun patch on his arm, and a standard gray uniform that marked him as a low-ranking private. Fortunately, he wasn’t a member of the Ronin Elite — the most feared soldiers in the imperial military — but Ren’s throat still closed like a noose. He would never get used to these visits.

  “Why haven’t you two left yet?” the soldier asked in Japanese. He looked about Ren’s age, but th
e haughtiness in his eyes was generations older. “Didn’t you hear the announcement?”

  Mr. Cabot glanced at the soldier’s name tag and replied in halting Japanese. “Our apologies, Kawabe-sama. We were locking up.”

  The soldier didn’t seem to like that answer. “Where are your papers?”

  Mr. Cabot kept his head down. “In the drawer below the register. License and rental agreement. It’s all in order.”

  While the soldier thrust open the drawer, his gaze narrowed at Ren and his dad, volleying between their faces. “You two related?”

  “He’s my son, Kawabe-sama,” replied Mr. Cabot, taking a protective step toward Ren.

  Ren remained quiet. He had gotten used to the soldier’s question over the years. He and his dad may have shared blood, but they looked nothing alike. Ren was stick-thin while his father was built like a sequoia, thick around the neck and everywhere else. Ren had inherited his mother’s straight black hair while his father had no hair at all, having gone bald years before. And then there was the matter of race.

  The soldier stared intently at Ren. “What are you anyway?”

  Ren flinched. American he wanted to say. He was born here and was just as American as anyone else. But he knew exactly what the soldier was asking — it was another question that he had heard many times before. With a sigh he murmured, “I’m half Chinese.”

  Ren had never been ashamed of his identity — his dad was white and his mom was Chinese American — but as a kid he had learned where it left him in the pecking order. After the Axis powers won the war and carved up the US into three pieces — the Eastern American Territories, ruled by the Nazis; the Dakotas, run by the Italians; and the Imperial Japan–ruled Western American Territories, which covered the rest of the states west of the Mississippi River — the government had imposed a strict social hierarchy. After all, the Axis powers had long reasoned that they were destined to rule the world because they were superior in every way — mentally, physically, and especially racially.

  Here in the Western American Territories, the citizens of Imperial Japan and the Third Reich claimed the very top of the racial ladder while Caucasian Americans (especially those with Western European ancestry) hovered toward the bottom. All other Americans were squished together at the lowest rung, from blacks and Latinx, to Native Americans and non-Japanese Asians. Biracial and multiracial citizens like Ren were looked down upon, too, although children born to one Japanese parent and one German parent were given special status. That sort of logic had never made sense to Ren, but this was how the world was run and he didn’t have any say in it.

  The soldier dumped out the contents of the drawer and lifted a neon-orange badge from the mess. It was a day pass to enter Fort Tomogashima, the massive military complex up the road. “How did you get your hands on this?” he demanded.

  “I have a job interview there tomorrow morning,” said Mr. Cabot. “Kato-sama sent me the pass.”

  “What sort of a job?”

  “As a temporary tailor for the upcoming ball.”

  “Kato-sama sent for you?” the soldier huffed.

  Mr. Cabot nodded. “A few of his tailors are out sick due to a stomach virus. I’m honored for the invitation.”

  The soldier studied the badge, and Ren fought off a frown. To be honest, he still couldn’t believe that his father had gotten a call-up from Fort Tomogashima. Ever since his mother’s arrest, there had been a black mark on the Cabot name. That was why Ren had thought someone was playing a joke on them when they got the request from the fort. But the caller had explained that the facility was very short-staffed for the upcoming Joint Empire Prosperity Ball — the state-run papers had called it “a celebration of our Nazi allies” — and spat out a time and a date for Mr. Cabot to come in for an interview.

  After the call had ended, Ren told his father to turn the job down. How could he even stomach the possibility of having his name on Crown Prince Katsura’s payroll? But Mr. Cabot had rubbed his eyes and said that he couldn’t let a man like Kato-sama lose face. In any case, business had been dragging at the shop all winter and a week’s worth of pay from the fort — meager as it was — would help cover next month’s rent. They were already behind on their loan payments, and Ren had gone quiet when he’d heard that.

  “This badge better not be a counterfeit,” said the soldier, still pinching the day pass between his fingers.

  Mr. Cabot blinked rapidly. “I can assure you —”

  The soldier silenced him with a glare. “Did I ask you to speak, old man?”

  Ren’s hands tightened into fists. A familiar fury ignited in his gut, a slow-burning rage that had kept him company since his mother’s execution, but Ren had trained himself to ignore it. It was a lesson he had learned the hard way. Three years ago, Ren had let his fury boil over. The patrols had ransacked the Cabots’ apartment yet again, but this time they’d smashed Ren’s mother’s music box into pieces. The old box had long lost the ability to play its song, but it had belonged to Ren’s mom, and for that it was priceless.

  As Ren had stared at the broken music box, his anger simmered and steamed and burst. He tried to tackle one of the patrols before Mr. Cabot yanked him back — but the damage had been done. The soldiers pummeled Ren hard, kicking his ribs and threatening arrest until Mr. Cabot promised to give them all of the money in the cash register if they’d put away their handcuffs. Ever since then, Ren had done whatever he could to control his temper. He took deep breaths and counted to twenty. He bit his tongue; he gritted his teeth. He never wanted to hear his dad beg like that again, and he had learned firsthand that he’d never beat the Empire with his fists alone. If he wanted to fight back, then he would have to find another way.

  “I should take this pass back to Fort Tomogashima for confirmation,” the soldier announced.

  While Mr. Cabot spluttered a response, Ren took a small step forward. He may have hated the thought of his dad working at Fort Tomogashima, but he hated the idea of losing the shop even more. He didn’t think his father could survive that kind of loss.

  So Ren did what he had to do, even if it made him cringe. He tucked his narrow shoulders inward and slipped on his usual mask, the one with humble eyes. The one that he wore for the enemy.

  “We received the badge from an official courier, but you’re welcome to call Kato-sama if you prefer, Kawabe-sama,” said Ren, his own Japanese taking off from his tongue on near-perfect wings. His mother had made sure that he’d become fluent — because the more fluency he gained, the easier it would be to put the soldiers at ease. “Can I make you something to drink while you phone the fort? We have Kato-sama’s office number.”

  The soldier’s eyes narrowed at Ren one more time. Then he snorted and tossed the badge back into the drawer. “It’s not important. It’s not like Kato-sama will hire you anyway. You better hurry up or I’m taking you both into custody.”

  Marching off the way he came, the soldier slammed the front door shut, and Ren released a sigh. When his pulse began to slow, he gave his father a smile. “At least your badge is safe.”

  Mr. Cabot just sighed. “Let me handle the soldiers next time, all right?”

  Ren’s grin vanished. “I got him to back off, didn’t I?”

  “I don’t want you getting involved if you don’t need to.” His father scratched the gray stubble on his chin, looking a decade older than his forty years. “Grab a jacket and let’s go. We’re already late.”

  Ren looked down at his work uniform, the usual button-down blue shirt with tan trousers, and shrugged. “I’m okay.”

  “It’s windy down at the beach. You should take your vest.”

  “I’ll be fine, Dad.”

  “You could catch a cold.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Ren said again, this time through tight teeth. I’m not a sick little kid anymore, he wanted to say. It was true that he’d almost died from the winter fever that had burned across the WAT five years ago, but he had survived the disease when thousands
of others didn’t. And yet sometimes Mr. Cabot still acted like Ren was a sneeze away from his deathbed.

  Mr. Cabot reached for their coat tree. “I’ll bring the vest just in case.”

  Ren mumbled something but let the matter drop. He wasn’t in the mood to fight about this, and they really needed to leave before they got arrested.

  The two of them stepped into the winter sunlight, passing underneath the old shop sign that read: CABOT’S TAILORING AND COBBLING, FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1940. Ren’s great-grandfather had painted it himself when he was a boy, not long before the US entered the Second World War. Back then, America was still called America, home of the brave and land of the free. The Stars and Stripes had flown in front of every school, and photos of President Franklin D. Roosevelt had graced the morning papers. The old US may not have been perfect — Ren’s mother had never minced words about slavery or the Trail of Tears or FDR’s internment camps for Japanese American citizens — but there had been progress. There had been hope. But all of that had withered to dust once President Roosevelt signed the official surrender.

  Life changed after that. The Axis powers moved in to settle their new colonies, and the Empire had made quick work of installing its military and tossing out the law books and turning the Japanese internment camps into “reeducation centers” for American dissidents. Nowadays, owning an American flag could get you arrested and it was His Imperial Highness the Emperor’s face splashed on the evening news. Disobeying a soldier could get you beaten, while speaking out against the Empire could land you a life sentence in the camps.

  Home of the desperate, Ren’s great-grandfather was known to say, land of the condemned.

  Ren used to think about who had it worse. Was it his great-grandpa, who had known what liberty felt like but had lost it during the takeover? Or was it Ren himself, who had never tasted it at all? On a day like today, the answer to that question seemed easy.

  Ren and his dad made their way toward the beach, joining a mass of townspeople wearing work uniforms or secondhand clothing that had been resewn and patched over the years. Ren’s outfit didn’t look much different from theirs, but he always stuck out of the crowd like a broken key on a grand piano. It wasn’t only his height that set him apart; more than anything it was his ethnicity. Big cities like New Tokyo were more diverse, but a small town like White Crescent Bay — just twenty miles outside of San Francisco — had remained mostly Caucasian. Sometimes, Ren wondered if his mom had felt like an outsider, too. He was sure that she did, but then again she had never experienced what life was like for him. Being biracial meant that Ren had come from two different worlds but never felt like he fit into one or the other. He had often gotten the feeling that people saw him as a curiosity or a question mark — never as a person.