it together.”
I turned back to the phone and dialed the Oakland and Vacaville numbers again. Still no answer at either one. The telephone installer had left a couple of brand-new directories; I opened the white pages to the number of the Shimata Art Gallery in Japantown.
Eberhardt said, “I’ll go downstairs and get us some coffee. You look like you could use a cup.”
I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. “Okay, Eb, thanks-but make it quick, will you? If I’m still drawing blanks in fifteen minutes, I’d better get out of here and on the road to Petaluma. The rush-hour traffic’ll be bad enough as it is.”
He hustled out and I called the Shimata number. A woman’s voice answered; she said Kinji Shimata wasn’t there and was not expected back today. She wouldn’t tell me where I could find him. Maybe there was something in that, and maybe he was out playing golf or getting a tooth filled or any one of a hundred other mundane things.
I called Nelson Mixer’s house. No answer. Still at CCSF, maybe, which meant I couldn’t reach him by phone. But I called there anyway, on the chance that he might have left for the day and signed out at the registrar’s office. But as far as the woman I spoke to was concerned, he was presently conducting his three o’clock lecture on nineteenth-century U.S. history.
Ogada’s Nursery wasn’t listed in the San Francisco directory; I got the number from San Mateo County Information. No answer. Which didn’t have to mean anything either; Edgar and his father both might be out somewhere doing mundane things of their own.
I considered calling Ken Yamasaki’s number and decided that would be an exercise in futility. Even if the Yakuza had let him go with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, he didn’t figure to be the man I was after. The probable time of Haruko Gage’s abduction was between eleven-thirty and twelve, after she left the Sundler Agency and before she was able to board a bus for home, and at that time Yamasaki had been sitting and sweating in Hisayuki Okubo’s private compartment on the Kara Maru.
Frustration and a mounting sense of desperation made me try the unanswered Oakland number again, even though it had only been ten minutes since I’d last dialed it. But someone had come home in those ten minutes-a teenage girl from the sound of her voice, probably just in from school. She picked up on the fourth ring and said, “Hi. Andy?”
“Not,” I said, and identified myself and said it was urgent that I locate either a man named Michio Wakasa who had once worked as a gardener in Petaluma, or any of his relatives. Silence. I thought at first that it was because she was disappointed I was not someone named Andy, but that wasn’t it at all. Pretty soon she said, “My grandfather’s name was Michio. My dad’s father. He died about ten years ago.”
“Did he once live in Petaluma?”
“I think so.”
My hand was tight around the receiver now; I could feel the tension in my bad arm and across my back. “Did he have a daughter named Chiyoko?”
Pause. “That was my aunt’s name. How come you’re asking all this stuff about my family?”
“It’s complicated,” I said, “and I don’t have the time to explain it so it’ll make sense to you. But I’m a detective and I’m trying to find someone-a lady who’s in serious trouble.”
“She’s not in my family, is she? This lady?”
“No. You don’t know her. Tell me about your Aunt Chiyoko.”
“Well, I don’t know much about her. She died before I was born. In Petaluma, I think.”
“How did she die?”
“I don’t know. Nobody in the family ever talks about it.”
Damn! “When will your mother and father be home?”
“My father’s out of town on business. My mother’ll be home around six. She works in San Francisco.”
“She does? Where?”
“Embarcadero Center.”
“Where in the Embarcadero Center?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you that…”
“Please, it’s very important.”
“Well… Carnaby’s. That’s a shop in Number Two.”
“Thanks, honey,” I said. “Thanks very much.”
I was putting the receiver down when Eberhardt came back with the coffee. He read the look on my face and said, “You get something?”
“Looks that way. The name of Chiyoko Wakasa’s sister-in-law and the place where she works-right here in the city.” I took one of the styrofoam cups he was carrying, unlidded it, drank a slug of coffee, and then put the cup down on the desk and started for the door. “I’ll call you if it leads anywhere definite.”
“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.”
