2 October 2020, offices of Valentine Investigations, Astoria, OR
Artemis pulled the yellowed folder from her secure documents vault and settled down at her desk, switching on the green glass lamp. Its pool of yellow light the only illumination in her otherwise dark office, she flipped open the folder and contemplated the papers within. She supposed she should finally transfer the file’s contents to her computer… Kyle had assured her that his quantum encryption technology made it absolutely secure now… but there was just something about holding real, paper documents that she couldn’t quite let go.
Especially when there was history in those papers… not to mention her own complicated feelings about their subject. David “Diamond Dave” Dawson was… what, to her, exactly? She’d begun gathering this dossier in 1973, after her second meeting with her sometimes-enemy, sometimes-ally, occasional sparring partner… and on-again, off-again romantic (if as yet unconsummated) interest. It had taken her years, and all of her considerable detective skills as Jane Valentine, to piece together this picture of the fascinating, frustrating man…
On the night of 19 August 1930, at the Los Angeles General Medical Center on Mission Road, an indigent, unwed young woman named Arlene Elizabeth Lopez, barely more than a girl herself, died giving birth to a son. At the same time, in a nearby room, Arnold and Melinda Dawson were grieving over the death of their own premature son. Born twisted, deformed, and far too damaged, it had lived for not quite two painful hours. Two tragedies, so close together… two pieces of a puzzle.
The healthy, 11 lbs. 2 oz. boy of the poor, unwed mother, alone and with no known relatives, entered the world loudly and with gusto. The frail, twisted boy, born unexpectedly to a middle-aged couple of comfortable means, weighed less than four pounds, and died within hours of his own entry into the world. It being a simpler time, the surviving boy was offered to the bereaved couple, as a solace and a kindness — sorrow assuaged for the parents, the hospital staff reasoned, and a kinder fate for the child than the one awaiting a parentless infant at the county orphanage.
The Dawsons accepted the boy as their own, naming him David; and over time, they almost forgot that he wasn’t their biological child. There seemed to be something about him, even as an infant, that drew others to protect him and shower him with love. Indeed, it wasn’t until his teens, in the aftermath of another tragedy, that David would learn that he was not biologically his parents’ son. In later years he would search for the truth of his birth parents, but it would be Artemis who eventually discovered and gave to him his birth mother’s name and all-to-brief history. Even she, however, would fail to learn anything concerning his father, not even a name.
Untroubled as yet by any of this knowledge, David grew up in the beach town of Venice in Los Angles, California, and it was, on the whole, a happy childhood. His only sister was almost 11 years older, and his parents had been a bit behind the curve when they’d had her, due to earlier miscarriages – something about which they seldom spoke. Having older parents didn’t seem to bother the boy, and certainly his parents doted on him in every way they could. He made friends easily, although in retrospect most of them seemed superficial… with the exception of his best friend, Kiyoshi Shimizu.
Of an age and living in the same neighborhood, David and Kiyoshi met in first grade and quickly became friends. The depth of that friendship surprised some of their teachers; for while David seemed to get along with everyone – or, more accurately, as his third grade teacher noted in his permanent record, it seemed more a matter of everyone getting along with him. He and Kiyoshi, however, could have knock down, drag out fights at times, even if they would always quickly make it up. Artemis suspected that, even at that young age, David was growing bored with everyone agreeing with him, with whatever he wanted, and appreciated someone who stood up to him, instead. Whatever the case, the two boys grew up into a solid friendship as adolescence dawned.
Then came the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
On 18 December 1942, when David was 12, his father enlisted in the Navy as a lieutenant. Arnold’s parting instructions to his son, as the man of the house now, were to keep the family safe while he was away. David took this very much to heart, striving to keep the household in order while his mother went to work as a welder in the Douglas Aircraft factory in nearby Santa Monica. But it was a second event, just as he was settling into a new routine, that really shook the boy. On 19 March 1942 Kiyoshi and his family, along with every other person of Japanese ancestry in the city, citizens or not, were rounded up by the government and sent off to be interned at the Manzanar “Relocation Center” in Owen’s Valley, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. David was outraged— and utterly unable to do anything about it.
His older sister Martha, who had married the year before, tried to help her young brother. She understood his fury well enough, as she’d had friends taken as well, but trying to make him understand the reasoning behind the internments proved difficult. Not least because she thought it absurd herself. Instead, she helped channel his anger into ways to shorten the war and get their friends and father back home as soon as possible. Her 4F husband Hank tried his best to stand in parentis loco to the boy, and while David generally had little use for his brother-in-law, he did appreciate Hank’s help in organizing the scrap metal drives and other community projects that became his focus for the next three years.
In April of 1945, however, tragedy struck the Dawson family, in a vicious one-two punch. On 6 April David’s father, currently a Commander (XO) aboard the destroyer USS Calhoun, died in a kamikaze attack on his vessel, off the coast of Okinawa. When the special Western Union car pulled up in front of their house several days later, Melinda and David knew instantly what it meant. While Melinda was shattered and nearly inconsolable, David drew inward and threw himself even more single-mindedly into his scrap metal drives and other home front efforts.
A few weeks after they learned of Arnold’s death, in an attempt to draw her mother out of her grief, Martha and Hank insisted on an outing to Ventura for the family. The idea of spending time with her first grandchild, less than a year old, persuaded the otherwise listless Melinda to agree to the idea; but Dave had no patience for frivolity, there was just too much to do… he begged off. That night a police car pulled up to the Dawson house to deliver the news that a car full of drunken sailors had run the family’s car off of a cliff, killing everyone in both vehicles.
Numb in the face of being suddenly alone in the world, David focused on trying to keep the family house, and to fight off moves by the Bureau of Public Assistance to place him in the foster care system. He simultaneously fended off his maternal aunt’s very half-hearted offers to take him in… she had always been one of the few people in his life who seemed immune to his charm, and he’d known even as a child that she didn’t really like him.
It was from her, in the aftermath of the car accident, that he first learned that he was really adopted, no matter what his birth certificate said. Melinda had confided in her sister shortly after they brought their new son home, and then never mentioned it again. But Marge Acton never forgot… nor did David ever forget the malicious glee with which, under the threadbare cover of her supposed concern, she’d slipped that truth knife into his gut at his family’s funeral.
If the Shimizu family hadn’t still been languishing in an interment camp, they would’ve taken him in, David was sure. But the idiotic policies of the US government had spiked that hope, and after his aunt’s malicious revelation, even if she had really wanted to take him in (and not just wished to get her claws into his inheritance), he’d have rather gone into foster care. It seemed to David he truly was on his own now.. and being his own man then, he chose neither option.
Instead, he played his Aunt Marge and the Bureau of Public Assistance off against one another, convincing each side (with some help from Mort Weinberg, his family’s sympathetic lawyer) that the other had taken him in. Then, for the next three years, he lived on the beach, fetching and delivering whatever was wanted by the beach’s denizens, legal or illegal. It was they who first took to calling him Dave, a diminutive he’d long rejected, but now accepted. The tourists and servicemen who frequented the amusement parks and entertainment venues of Venice were always looking for something more, something extra, and Dave was happy to connect them to whatever they required… never mind what the government might say about it.
In 1948, as soon as Dave turned 18, Mort Weinberg helped him to claim his parent’s inheritance, modest as it was, and the house. Now fairly financially secure, Dave attended Santa Monica City College and earned his Business Associates Degree. In 1950, at the age of 20, his plan to transfer to UCLA and continue his business education was upended when he was drafted into the army. This was during the Korean Conflict, and he was sent to occupied Japan to serve as a supply and logistics officer. He thrived in this role and, because he picked up Japanese very quickly (thanks to his childhood exposure, no doubt), he easily acquired local contacts, making him invaluable in securing the supplies needed to fuel the war effort.
Corporal Dawson soon came to the attention of Captain Reginald “Reggie” Baxter, commander of a Quartermaster unit based out of Okinawa. Baxter had been in Japan since the beginning of the Occupation, and quickly co-opted the new wunderkind into his unit, as much to protect his own on-going black market operation from any competition as from a grudging admiration for the new kid’s balls. Baxter quickly integrated Dawson’s skills into his organization, and Dave learned much from his mentor. Baxter, to his own surprise, also learned a few things from his protege, and came to actually like the little punk… there was just something about him that made you like him.
Six months after his arrival in Japan David met a young woman named Mimoza Mikimoto (実萌座 美樹本), in a Tokyo bar and became instantly enthralled with her beauty and kindness. They began to see one another as their free time allowed – she was a stenographer for the US military courts in Japan, and his trips to Tokyo were limited – and as the weeks passed he came to appreciate her intelligence and grace even more than her beauty. Her name, Mimoza (実萌座), meant Seat of Budding Truth, and she seemed to embody that spirit completely. He thought her the most honest person he’d ever met, and yet she never used truth to hurt another.
It was through Mimoza that he also met many of the young men who had fought in the late war, and through them came to understand the philosophy and courage of the kamikaze. To his own surprise, he found these relationships quenching any lingering resentment he might have held over losing his father to the Japanese. Indeed, he developed a growing respect for both the Japanese people and their culture as the months turned into years.
As the Korean conflict was winding down, and with the end of the Occupation looming, David learned from a distraught Mimoza that Capt. Baxter had managed to use his position to steal some rare sakura-cut diamonds from a bank in Tokyo. Timed to just before the final return of full sovereignty to Japan, Baxter hoped to be Stateside again before anything could be done. The diamonds, as it turned out, belonged to Mimoza’s uncle, Kokichi Mikimoto, a famed pearl jeweler, who had acquired the gems after the war as a hedge against future misfortune. Without them, the family business faced a very uncertain future, even as things were improving in the country overall.
Baxter had always been a bit of a boaster, and appeared to have been particularly pleased with the clever way he’d used his authority and connections to get the diamonds out of the bank’s vaults. This quirk of his personality no doubt made it easier for David, with his uncanny charm and persuasion, to get his captain to admit to the theft. In fact, Baxter gleefully showed the corporal the 22 strikingly beautiful stones. The unmatched effect of the sakura cherry blossom, achieved by the skillful cutting of 87 facets into the diamond, many more than the traditional brilliant cut, was breathtaking, and too good not to boast about! Seeing the look on his subordinate’s face when he mentioned their value, Baxter was sure he’d fully drawn young Dawson into his plot.
Assured that his corporal’s greed matched his own, and thus of his cooperation, Captain Baxter enlisted David to help move the stolen gemstones out of Japan and safely to the U.S. He had planned on simply carrying the gems home himself, when his tour ended in a month… but the corporal’s shrewd questions had made him realize just how risky that might be. No, Dawson’s admittedly ingenious plan to get the stones Stateside was certainly much safer for Baxter personally… and would make a nice surprise for his wife.
Artemis smiled as she read her notes from her interview with a much older, and more bitter, Barbara Baxter. Artemis knew that by this time in his life David had become certain that his almost miraculous powers of persuasion and charm were more than just natural charisma. He’d read about pheromones, and given that his fabled charm singularly failed over the telephone, or at any significant distance, he’d come to think his ability’s source must be something like that. And, of course, some people seemed immune to his powers.
Me, for one, Artemis thought, smiling at the memory of the look on his face that first time she’d punched him, after he’d tried to use his power on her. Although it would appear I do lack immunity to his considerable natural charm… and sex appeal. She snorted and continued reading.
Instead of helping to smuggle the gems out of Japan, David had his own plan, naturally. He managed to effect a switch, although Artemis had never been able to figure out exactly how… she’d have to wheedle the tale out of him one of these days. In any case, a week later back in the States, an excited Mrs. Baxter received a special delivery package from her husband – which turned out to be a packet of 22 very sour lemon candies, not the fortune in diamonds she’d been led to expect. David, meanwhile, had returned the stolen gemstones to Mimoza, who was able to see them safely back into her grateful uncle’s hands.
Unfortunately, Baxter learned of Dawson’ s betrayal all too soon, and in his fury took his revenge by framing his erstwhile subordinate on trumped up charges of malfeasance, smuggling, and black marketeering. David was not stupid, far from it, and had been expecting some such retaliation. For the past two years he’d been keeping careful records of the captain’s own crimes, for just such an occasion. Sadly, the mutually assured destruction he had assumed would protect him, failed in the face of the desire of the Occupation Government and the US Army to avoid an embarrassing scandal just as the reigns of power were being handed back to the Japanese people.
To avoid that scandal, David had fully expected the charges against him to be dropped altogether. Instead, they’d been reduced to a single count of misappropriation and he faced a court martial. But what really enraged him was that the far more serious charges against Baxter were swept entirely under the rug. Without sponsors or powerful connections back Stateside, David’s court martial ended in his conviction; meanwhile, Baxter, with powerful connections and a long career, faced no court martial, and was allowed to retire with an honorable discharge and a ticket home. David’s powers of charm and persuasion failed to gain him an outright acquittal, but they did seem to have contributed to him getting off with only a less-than-honorable discharge, and no further time in the stockade.
Even if they’d offered it, he would have sneered at the idea of a ticket home.
In the spring of 1953 David found himself adrift in Tokyo, disillusioned and with no particular desire to return to a country he saw as having failed him, along with so many others. In gratitude for his actions, however, the Mikimoto family took him in as a sort of adopted son. This was a move that would prove wise for the clan. The young American proved an invaluable liaison between the family’s jewelry business, the new civilian government, and the remaining US Army forces, with which he still maintained contacts. Able to get American supplies and money where others could not, David proved a valuable asset, while they gave him the family he’d lost so young.
David married Mimoza Mikimoto (b. 17 May 1934) on 24 March 1954, and by the time Kokichi Mikimoto died in September of that year, David had established a solid reputation in Tokyo as the guy to come to when you needed anything special, or difficult, or even slightly less than legal. Especially American stuff. For the next two years he forged connections between his Asian contacts and associates (made during his teen years) in California, impressing many in the world of Japanese business, both legitimate and… not so legitimate.
His admiration for the Japanese, despite losing his father in the war, became well known, as did his respect for the courage of the actual pilot who had steered his plane into the bridge of his father’s ship years ago. It was at a party in Okinawa that he was approached by an elderly gentleman who, after a long conversation about such matters, revealed that it was his son who had flown his plane into the USS Calhoun that fateful day.
The meeting became emotional for both men, within the bounds of proper Japanese self-control, of course. It ended with the old man stating that, because Daiyamondo Deibu had lost his father, and the man his son, honor demanded that they were now family. This was how David came to the favorable attention of the Yakuza, and expanded his connections in the underworld from the gray to the black… it also led to certain connections with the Black Dragon Society. Connections that would one day come back to haunt him, Artemis knew.
In the years after his marriage the sobriquet “Daiyamondo Deibu,” or Diamond Dave, became the one by which most people knew him. The nickname was based on two things – the story of his involvement in the return of the stolen Sakura diamonds to their rightful owners, and his signature walking stick, a wedding gift from old Kokichi Mikimoto himself. Made of the rarest type of Jindai Sugi (甚大), or Old Japanese Cedar, it was a rich, deep black, with a steel core that gave it real weight, and an octagonal steel cap, etched with a cherry blossom (sakura) pattern, protecting the tip. The head of the stick was a large Kagami crystal, especially commissioned from that famed Imperial Purveyor by the elder Mikimoto, cut into the 87 facets of a sukara cut, imitating a cherry blossom, in memory of the recovered diamonds.
A princely gift, an impressed Artemis had thought, when she’d first uncovered that little fact. Japanese cedar was said to be anywhere from a thousand to several thousand years old, and was only found buried in lake beds or marshes across Japan. The iron content of the wood was what gave it that rich, deep grey-brown or black color for which it was noted. Extremely rare, it was used almost exclusively for precious items, including tea ceremony utensils and flower vases. Indeed, Artemis’ own ceremonial tea set was made of Jindai Sugi, and was one of her own most valued possessions. No wonder David prized his walking stick so highly. It was never far from his hand, she knew.
In the fall of 1956 Diamond Dave returned to Los Angeles with his beloved wife, by way of Astoria, OR. Mimoza was greatly enamored by the Pacific Northwest, and it was for her sake that he purchased their first property there — a summer home for them to enjoy. This eventually led to other real estate investments, but his newly established import/export business was centered around LA, and so it was there that the couple eventually settled.
Although primarily a front for his on-going black/gray market actives, Dawson Imports also did well as a legitimate business, probably due to the influence of Mimoza Dawson. She understood her husband’s less-than-legal endeavors, perhaps even understood the particular needs that drove him onto those paths, but she never wholly approved of them. This seems to have kept his under-the-table dealings relatively benign in those years. Whatever the reason, David’s fortunes steadily improved. His life seemed on track for a comfortable “happily ever after.”
Then, at the age of 26, her own past caught up with Mimoza. As a child of 11, during the Allied firebombing of Tokyo, she had been sent by her family to the safety of the countryside. Unfortunately, this was the countryside on the outskirts of Nagasaki. She witnessed the atomic bombing of the city, but appeared to escape the experience unscathed. Until 1960, when Mimoza was diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctors agreed that it was almost certainly due to her childhood exposure to radiation, and the cancer proved particularly virulent.
Mimoza Dawson died on 14 February 1961. David was devastated, and after a period of listless, inconsolable mourning, he turned his considerable talents to a life of active crime. Donning a mask and equipped with various clever gadgets he became the infamous “gentleman robber” known up and down the West Coast as “Dapper Dan.” He spent most of the Sixties buried in this alter ego, stealing from the wealthy, the privileged and, when possible, the government. Artemis had eventually come to the conclusion that he’d done it more for the thrill of it, to make himself feel alive, and to bury his pain, than out of any financial need.
It was during this period that Artemis herself had first encountered the man professionally, during a visit to San Francisco. She’d actually been living in LA at the time, shacked up with the musician Daniel Moore, but had never encountered Dawson there. She’d heard of him, of course, but he’d seemed mostly harmless and hardly worth pursuing. It was only chance that they crossed paths in the City by the Bay, where she’d foiled his attempted robbery of the De Young Museum. But he had managed to escape her in the end, no easy feat, and she’d found herself intrigued by their rather flirtatious first meeting…
Of particular attraction to Dawson during his years of gentlemanly crime seemed to be the financial interests of one Reginald Baxter. His former captain and black market mentor had certainly landed on his feet after his “retirement” from the military. If lacking the fortune he’d expected to gain from his theft of the Sakura diamonds, he’d had enough ill-gotten profits from his years in the black market, and enough connections, to start a very lucrative business in finance and art sales. By the early Sixties he had become quite comfortably rich. But by the end of the decade, thanks to the relentless predations of Dapper Dan, the Gentleman Robber™, he was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. When he then became the focus of criminal investigations into allegations of fraud and embezzlement, it had all become too much. He’d committed suicide in April of 1969.
Dapper Dan’s own active criminal career was eventually brought to an end with his capture in Los Angeles, in the autumn of 1969, by the Ladies Auxiliary, a local team of female superheroes. While his meta-human powers of persuasion didn’t prevent his capture (because, although Artemis had privately despised them as tools, a whispered word from her had meant the “ladies” were wearing nose plugs that day), his abilities had allowed Dawson to escape custody before he could actually be booked, and his true identity discovered. It had been a narrow escape, with a healthy dose of luck thrown in, and the near disaster served as a wake-up call. Dawson retired his “Dapper Dan” persona, and returnied full time to his half-neglected primary businesses, both legitimate and illicit.
In 1971 he relocated to Astoria, Oregon and established himself as a legitimate (albeit controversial) businessman. It was around this time that Artemis next met him, in the guise of one of her “civilian” identities. As the “direct descendant and heir” of the “late” Eunice Hayward, Belinda Hayward sought to regain ownership of the Hayward Building in Astoria’s Old Town. Having financed and overseen the building’s construction in the first years of the 20th Century, she’d been dismayed to find it, in 1973, a run-down flop house, with an adult bookstore and XXX arcade on the ground floor.
As Belinda Hayward she had fought for almost a year with Diamond Dave Dawson, and in the end had only convinced him to sell her building back to her by offering, in addition to a cash payment, the trade of two other properties she owned in Astoria. The first, directly adjacent to the Hayward Building, Diamond Dave turned into the flagship of an eventual chain of Centerfold Gentlemen’s Club venues; the second, larger building would serve him for many years mainly as a warehouse and administrative offices, until its rehabilitation and rebirth in the early 21st Century as the city’s most popular nightclub.
When Artemis returned to Astoria for good in the 1980s she had occasional run-ins with Diamond Dave, both in his capacity as an information broker and occasional fence, and in his rare forays into art theft. By this time it was obvious to them both that he was, like her, functionally immortal — at age 50+ he appeared to be a man in his late twenties. He had, by the early 90s, figured out Artemis’ Jane Valentine identity and learned the secret of her own immortality. The fact that he had never, even when in dire straits with the Cabal, revealed that information to anyone else had gained her respect… and led to a certain level of trust between them.
From that point on most of the notes in the dossier were her own personal observations, and Artemis closed the folder. Tapping it absently with a finger, she considered her next move. Dawson’ s continued, if desultory, dabbling in robbery and grand theft seemed to her a habit he’d never quite broken himself of, despite the success of his other businesses, both aboveboard and underground. It appeared to her that he pursued it mainly for the sport of the thing… or maybe it was only to keep playing the little game of cat-and-mouse which the two of them had been enjoying for decades now.
She’d not seen him personally in almost three years, but she needed information now, and he was the best source in town… hell, on the West Coast. But if she was going to ask him for a favor, she needed to know where she stood with him – with them – in her own mind. Over the years they had come close, but had never quite consummated their “will-they-won’t-they” relationship. Every time they’d come close, one or the other would back off… him, in earlier years, because of his lingering feelings for his late wife; she, in more recent years, because of her own dark doubts and trust issues.
The last time they’d come close, the year before the Astoria Incident, it had been her pulling back – David had actually seemed prepared to go through with it, and that had, she was forced to admit, unnerved her. She eventually realized he’d finally come to grips with his own immortality, and suspected that was what had allowed him to put aside his lingering love of Mimoza, if not her memory. No, you never forget the mortal lives that slipped through your fingers, Jane knew… and the last several years with the Vanguard had reminded her that trust and friendships were still possible. And maybe love? If so, maybe another immortal was a good choice…
Yes. If David was still interested, then she was ready to take the next step… and she was quite certain he was still interested. God knew, he knew how to get her attention, and her goat. She flipped open the folder again, and pulled the last sheet from the bottom of the pile, glaring at it. It was a flyer for Mimoza, David’s wildly popular night club – created over a decade ago from that old warehouse she’d traded to him back in ’73 to regain her own building.
The center of his operations now, and the hottest nightclub in Astoria, Mimoza included several elements: a public restaurant, bar, and dance floor; a members-only private club; and a discreet (and surprisingly classy) strip club; and a popular jazz room. The place had always had an eclectic clientele, from college students and business types, to local gangsters and, discreetly, supervillains and superheroes (but not in their “working” togs!). Everybody used the place to relax, party, talk business and, most importantly, to be seen.
Since the Incident, the club had begun openly catering to both the city’s suddenly expanded super-powered set and to the wider public’s fascination with meta-humans. One of the ways David had found to appeal to that latter interest was by hiring people with powers to act as wait staff, bartenders, security, dancers… and strippers. Strippers dressed as superheroes or supervillains. And, according to the flyer she was now glaring at, ARTEMIS was the latest “super stripper” to grace the stage at Mimoza Burlesque… debuting this very evening!
Oh yes, she was certainly going to have words with David tonight. But whether that conversation ended with her punching him or fucking him was very much a question at this moment…