in light. Fenced-in yards stretched out alongside each of the houses, and in them hundreds of white leghorns pranced and pecked and drank from rain-swollen troughs.
There were two cars drawn up in a little parking area near the fenced yard of the ranchhouse-a newish Isuzu and a mud-caked pickup truck. I parked next to the pickup. From over in the chicken yards I could hear a constant fluttering of wings, with cackling noises mingled in. But I didn’t look over there; I did not want to think about chickens any more. Or about eggs. They reminded me of my diet, and made me hungry again in spite of myself.
I walked over to the front gate and along a crushed-shell path and up the stairs to the porch. I wasn’t trying to be quiet about it, but I must have managed just the same because the two people talking inside the house didn’t break off their conversation. I could hear them plainly; there was a closed screen door, but the front door behind it was standing open, evidently to allow fresh air to circulate. Their words sounded interesting. So instead of knocking right away, I stood there and listened. Occupational license. Private eyes were supposed to be keyhole snoopers and eavesdroppers, after all.
“… don’t understand this at all, Johnny,” a woman’s voice was saying. It wasn’t the same woman I’d talked to on the phone; this one was much younger. “A mausoleum, and all those years of upkeep. Why would he have done a thing like that?”
“I don’t know,” a man’s voice said. Also young, also unfamiliar. “How should I know?”
“Well, there aren’t any Wakasas around here.”
“Not now. Maybe there were after the war.”
“Are you sure you don’t know who that woman was?”
“How many times do I have to tell you?”
“I thought Father might have confided in you…”
“Man-talk, eh? You think he had an affair with this Chiyoko Wakasa, don’t you?”
“Sshh! Do you want Mother to hear?”
I was listening good now. Chiyoko-Haruko’s middle name, and the name that had been written on the package containing the medallion.
“Well?” the man’s voice said, a little more quietly. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“It’s what you think too.”
“How do you know what I think? I don’t think anything. Maybe she was an old relative of the family or something.”
“You know we don’t have any relatives named Wakasa.”
“It could have been her married name…”
“Oh God, Johnny, she wasn’t a relative and you know it!”
“What difference does it make who she was? She’s been dead almost forty years. And now he’s dead too. What does it matter anymore?”
“It matters,” the woman said stubbornly. “Are we supposed to keep on paying the upkeep on this… this stranger’s burial place?”
“It’s only a few dollars a year. Father kept paying it; it must have been important to him. We should pay it in honor of his memory.”
“I still want to know who she was. A mausoleum at Cypress Hill! Of all things!”
“Come on, it’s not that strange.”
“Isn’t it? Did you ever hear of anything like that around here?”
“Plenty of Japanese are Catholics…”
“But we’re not. I just don’t understand it.”
“Janet,” the man said in exasperated tones, “you worry too much about little things. Worry about the big things for a change, like these files and papers. I don’t want to spend all night sorting them out.”
A couple of seconds of silence. Then, “I guess you’re right. Do you want to see if Mother needs anything before we get back to it? Some more tea?”
“Yes, okay.”
The sound of footsteps, fading. Then silence. I shuffled my feet, making some noise, and reached out and knocked on the screen door’s wooden frame.
The woman came after a few seconds and peered out at me, then drew the door open. She was thirtyish, slender, very attractive, with her black hair tied up tight on her head; wearing a black skirt and a black sweater- mourning clothes. “Oh, hello,” she said solemnly. Then she said, “I’m afraid we’re closed, if you want to buy something. There’s been a death in the family.”
I feigned surprise. “I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope it wasn’t Mr. Kazuo Hama.”
“Yes, it was. Did you come to see my father?”
“On a personal matter, yes. May I ask when he passed away?”
“Four days ago. His funeral was yesterday.”
“A sudden illness?”
“No. He… he was killed. A hit-and-run accident.”
“Have the police found the person responsible?”
“Not yet.”
“Where did it happen?”
“On the road out front. He’d gone to get the mail.”
“Then there were no witnesses?”
“No. None.”
“Did your father wear a white jade ring, by any chance?”
“Yes, but it’s missing-” She broke off and frowned at me. “You said you came to see him on a personal matter?”
“That’s right, Miss…?”
“Mrs. Janet Ito. And your name, please?”
I made one up-Allan Barker-and made up a profession to go with it. I didn’t like the idea of lying to her, lying in the face of grief, but it was easier and kinder and more prudent than telling her the truth; the truth would only have led to questions and stirred up a lot of ugly suspicion. “I’m a lawyer,” I said, “representing the estate of Mr. Simon Tamura in San Francisco.”
The Tamura name didn’t seem to mean anything to her. She said, “Yes?” blankly.
“Mr. Tamura and your father were old friends, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“He never spoke of Mr. Tamura?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“But surely he mentioned Sanjiro Masaoka?”
She frowned again. “I don’t know that name either.”
“Well, that’s odd,” I said. “Mr. Tamura kept an old photograph of the three of them on the wall of his office. He said they were very good friends as youths back in the forties.”
“Oh,” she said, “the camp, maybe.”
“Camp?”
“The Tule Lake camp.” Her mouth wrinkled up as if the words tasted bitter.“The Tule Lake concentration camp. My father was incarcerated there during the war.”
“Oh, I see.”
“For four years. He was a Nisei, as patriotic as any native with white skin. It was a terrible ordeal for him; he never really got over it. ”
“I’m sorry about that too, Mrs. Ito.”
She nodded as if she thought my response was a proper one. Not just from me; from all Caucasians of my generation, all the war hysterics in California and Washington who had been responsible for the displacement of more than a hundred thousand Japanese-Americans, for forcing them to sell or abandon their land and their belongings and then hauling them off to “relocation centers” like the one at Tule Lake, up in the northeast section of the state. And when Issei and Nisei were let out after the war, and allowed to return to what was left of their homes, there had been no reparation, no attempt at all to rectify any of the damage that had been done. Janet Ito
