“Luck, huh?”
“It’s not me who needs it,” I said. “It’s Haruko Gage.”
The Embarcadero Center is a four-block complex opposite the Ferry Building, and not far from my previous office on Drumm Street. It had been built progressively over the past several years-high-rise office buildings, with arcades on the lower two levels full of artwork and yellow crysanthemums and lots of shops and cafes. You could get from one block to another via covered and open-air areaways spanning the streets, but that wasn’t how I entered Number Two. I parked illegally on its Sacramento Street side, because it was four-thirty and raining again and the streets were full of departing office workers and both curbside and garage parking were time-consuming chores, and I went in through the main ground-floor entrance.
Carnaby’s, according to the lobby directory, was up on the first level. I took the escalator and found the shop easily enough. It was one of those places that sold package wrapping items, greeting cards, papercraft, decorator candles that sort of thing; now, because it was December, all the stuff was aimed at the Christmas trade. A music tape was playing “Jingle Bells” when I came in. As tense as I was right then, the holiday song grated on my nerves like a file screeching on metal.
The store was moderately crowded with after-work shoppers, and the three salesladies were busy. Only one of the three was Japanese — a short, harried woman with graying hair and big pendant earrings that danced every time she moved. She wasn’t working the cash register, which made it easier for me to coax her off to one side, confirm that she was Mrs. Wakasa, and then explain to her who I was and why I was there.
She didn’t want to talk to me at first. She kept telling me she was too busy, she couldn’t take the time, her boss would fire her, but the real reason was the topic itself; you could see the reluctance in her eyes, and something. else, too, that might have been a deeply ingrained sense of familial disgrace. But I kept after her, repeating how important it was, saying that the information might help save a woman’s life. And I got it out of her finally-in grudging little chunks, without all the details, but everything I needed to know.
“Chiyoko died by her own hand,” Mrs. Wakasa said.
“You mean she committed suicide?”
“Yes. Poison.”
“Why?”
“She couldn’t live with her shame.”
“What shame?”
“The thing that happened to her at the camp.”
“The Tule Lake camp, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her there?”
“She was… attacked.”
“Raped? She was raped?”
“By three boys. Not long before the war ended.”
“Who were the three boys?”
“She couldn’t identify them; it was too dark. Another boy heard her cries and chased them away, but it was too late.”
“Do you know who that other boy was?”
“I don’t remember his name.”
“Did he know Chiyoko before the attack?”
“Yes. They were friends.”
“Was she hurt? Physically, I mean.”
“They… she could not have children.”
“Is that part of the reason she killed herself?”
“Yes. She wanted children very badly.”
“After she died, a man Kazuo Hama built a mausoleum for her to be buried in. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why he did it?”
“My husband’s father had no money and Mr. Hama did.”
“He was a friend of Chiyoko’s, then?”
“He knew her in the camp, he said.”
“But Mr. Hama wasn’t the one who chased away the three rapists?”
“No.”
That was all she had to tell me. But she also had one thing to show me-the last little quicksilver bead that put the whole thing together. I asked her if the family had kept any photographs of Chiyoko, and she said yes, she had one among other family photos in her purse, of her husband and Chiyoko taken just after they were released from Tule Lake, and she got her purse and showed it to me.
Chiyoko Wakasa and Haruko Gage looked enough alike to have been sisters.
Outside in the car, with the office workers and the rush-hour traffic streaming wetly around me, I sat remembering things.
I remembered a pickup truck with a bashed-in fender and a busted headlight. I remembered eyes that had the dull sheen of someone who had been burning a lot of midnight oil-or so I’d thought at the time. I remembered a son asking his father what had happened to some live seafoam and shooting-star miniatures, and thought that both those things could be types of roses. I remembered that same son telling me his mother had died this past summer and how rough her death had been on his father. I remembered that the Feast of the Lanterns had also taken place this past summer, and that it was a festival to commemorate the dead, and the names of those I’d been told were there.
And when I got done remembering these things, I was pretty sure I knew who had murdered Simon Tamura and Sanjiro Masaoka and Kazuo Hama, and who had sent those presents to Haruko Gage, and who had almost surely abducted her this afternoon.
The nursery man-Edgar Ogada’s father.
Chapter Twenty
It was dark and raining heavily when I got to the Ogada Nursery. My headlights made a silver curtain of the rain as I came bouncing in on the boggy access road; they shone in thin bright spatters off the fiberglass walls of the greenhouses ahead. They also picked up somebody at the door of the nearest greenhouse, the only lighted one — somebody in a yellow slicker and rain hat.
The figure stood looking in my direction for a moment; then it moved away from the greenhouse door and broke into a run. I took the car over next to the potting shed, where its roof gave some shelter from the driving rain. When I stepped out, the running figure was only twenty yards away and slowing. Enough sidespill from the headlights let me recognize him: Edgar Ogada.
He had slowed to a walk by the time he got to me. He stopped and said, “Oh, it’s you,” and he sounded troubled. He looked troubled, too; his face was set in tight lines under the rain hat. “I thought you were my uncle; I called him a while ago and he said he’d be right over.”
“Something wrong at the greenhouse?”
Edgar hesitated. Then, “I’m not sure. My father’s got himself locked inside. He won’t let me in.”
“Is he alone?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t hear anybody else. But with the rain, it’s hard to tell. He was in there when I got home a half hour ago.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Who knows? Whatever it is, he keeps talking to himself while he’s doing it. In Japanese.”
“What is it he’s saying?”
“Mixed-up stuff; I couldn’t make out half of it. He… well, he’s been acting weird lately. He works too hard.”
“Weird in what way?”
“Talking to himself, running around until two or three in the morning, not filling orders, selling stuff that’s already been sold. Or doing something with it; a lot of flowers have just disappeared.”
“What kind of flowers?”
“Mostly roses-bushes and cut pieces.”
“Edgar, was your father at the Tule Lake camp during World War II?”
“Tule Lake? Why do you want to know that?”
“Was he there?”
“Yeah. He was there.”
“Was he married to your mother at the time?”
“No, he was only fourteen when they put him in that place-eighteen when the war ended. He met my mother in 1948.”
“Did he ever speak of a woman he knew at Tule Lake named Chiyoko Wakasa?”
“Who? No. Chiyoko… that’s Haruko’s middle name…”
“Does your father also know that?”
“I guess so. I think I told him once, but-”
“All right, Edgar,” I said. “Go on over to the house. Wait for your uncle there.”
“Why should I? Say, what’re you doing here, anyway? I don’t-”