The Poser by Jacob Rubin

work as a “mock mole” or “counterspy,” winning the trust of the Japanese commander in order to prey on the man’s extramilitary sense of honor. How Apache had won, let alone maintained, the credulity of a blind-hearted enemy was a subject of great speculation. Some believed he and Ozu had cemented a real friendship despite whatever games of betrayals had passed between them. Others that Apache had journeyed so far into being a spy he no longer knew what he stood for. Apache answered none of the tribunal’s questions.
    In the end, the rear admiral’s fluency in Japanese, his keeping a handwritten facsimile of the correspondence, meticulously ordered and dated in the valise under his cot, his skill in prosecuting such communiqués from the secure distance of an aircraft carrier, and his extraction of valuable intelligence from the Japanese officer (as well as the secret intervention, it was widely believed, of higher-ups in the government) saved Apache from execution. He was discharged without punishment, though many in the navy still called for his head. To his few staunch champions, however, Apache was a maverick patriot, a genius of war and other things.
    â€œFinnegan said there were rumors,” Max told me. “That he was still doing spy work. That the theaters he owned were just a front. But this—” He snapped open the paper with a businessman’s panache.
    According to the
Gazette
, Apache had purchased the old Tinder Box Theater, a half mile west of Aberdeen Row, the heart of bohemia. “‘The relic of the building remains in Western Downtown on Fourteenth Avenue,’” Max read, as our cabdriver nosed toward the Fourteenth Avenue exit ramp, “‘an anomaly among the warehouses and meat-packing plants that have since sprung up around it. Renovating the Tinder has remained a cause célèbre among the more quixotic and nostalgic of the city’s philanthropists, but was considered foolhardy, if not impossible, given the reestablishment of the Theater District two miles north of what is now an industrial neighborhood. The nightlife and ne’er-do-wells of Aberdeen Row are close enough, this is true, but the theater will need more than a bohemian audience to maintain its costs. And what would draw faithful theatergoers from their velvet-lined boxes in midtown to a rickety cabaret so far west?’
    â€œApache can do it if anyone can,” Max said, as the driver jolted to obey a stop sign and then peeled right onto a potholed street, stopping when we came to a redbrick building. “He once said to me, ‘Max, if you’re good at killing in wartime, you’ll be good at turning profit in peace.’ This guy’s got something, boy.” According to the article, Apache, outside of basic renovations, planned to make no structural changes to the building. But he was giving it a new name. It would now be known as the Communiqué.
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    Bookending the entrance were two copper-topped bars where men glared at us like deer. Many circular tables, chairs stacked on top of them, filled the space leading to the stage itself, between which hunched sweepers busily worked. On the stage an unoccupied ladder stood under a massive dangling light rig. It smelled like sawdust and beer.
    â€œIs Bernard Apache here?” Maximilian addressed no one so much as the hall itself. The sweepers stopped their work to consider us. The bar hands, a few feet away, continued to peer in our direction as if incapable of speech. Max stepped forward, and I followed, both of us coming out from under the low ceiling, which, we saw now, supported a grand balcony glutted with red-cushioned seats. An illuminated box indicated a second bar above. “Is Bernard Apache here?”
    Again, silence.
    â€œIs Bernard Apach—”
    â€œWho wants to know?”
    The voice hailed from the far end of the room. Through the forest