The Samurai's Daughter (11 page)

But I doubted that I would.

My father made me a Japanese breakfast the next morning: Miso soup from a packet, sliced yellow pickled radish, sticky rice in sweet tofu skins.

“This was kind of you,” I said in Japanese as I sat down across from him and put the bowl of soup to my lips.

“Will Hugh be able to eat it?” my father asked.

“Sure. But he'll make a cup of regular tea, too, to help him wake up.” Indeed, I'd shaken awake the exhausted man a few minutes before, and he was now in the shower.

“I made coffee for you. But it's probably better to take it after the breakfast.”

“Right. So the tastes don't clash.”

“Speaking of clashes,” my father began.

I held my hand up. “Never mind. It doesn't matter. I was upset yesterday, but there are worse things to worry about today.”

My father held my gaze for a long moment, then said, “Your mother told me about Hugh's client. Why did she die?”

“I don't know. Maybe Hugh will hear today.” I paused. “There's something that's been bothering me. One of the last things this woman said to me was she knew our family name—Shimura. I didn't think much of it until Julia Gan pointed out that she might
have been seen at your clinic in that old support group program.”

“Julia? I can't comment on any patients who might be alive—”

“No, I don't mean Julia. I mean the old Filipina woman. Because she's no longer alive to have her privacy violated, I don't think Hugh would mind me telling you her name. It's Rosa Munoz.”

My father sighed. “It was a long time ago. Names can be tricky. I'll have to check.”

“So the name doesn't ring an immediate bell?”

“No, it doesn't. But I tried—I tried to keep a low personal profile with the project, given my name. I thought it might be too stressful for the women to think a Japanese doctor was involved, given that they had all known Japanese doctors while they were in sexual slavery—”

“I see. You mean to say that you knew the military doctors were complicit in the scheme.”

“That's right. Their chief interest was the health and stress relief of the soldiers.” My father sounded bitter. “Their relationship with the women was pretty far from the Hippocratic oath.”

I sat for a minute, thinking. “I'm surprised, after all you've said about your own work, and your feelings, that you didn't want Hugh to pursue the class action.”

My father sighed. “Look what I tried to do. It failed. I know that for him, the stakes are even higher. Already a woman's died, maybe from stress—”

“It could be something else,” I said. “Someone might have killed her to stop the lawsuit. When the autopsy's done, we'll know.”

“Do the police suspect Hugh?” my father asked.

“No, I don't think so. Why would they?”

“Well, he was the last person to see her.”

“I was with him! He wasn't alone,” I said.

“Yes, but they didn't take you for questioning—”

“It wasn't questioning, it was making the identification.” I set down my soup bowl with a bang. “Hugh was her lawyer, Dad. He's above reproach. I can't imagine you would think him possible of—anything!”

Hugh chose that moment to lumber through the doorway, carrying both my suitcases. “I couldn't figure out how to get the dumbwaiter to work,” he said.

“If a man can't operate a dumbwaiter, how could he kill a woman?” I blazed at my father.

“Sorry? Kill whom?” Hugh looked from one to the other of us in confusion.

I sprang up. “Hugh, let's go. If I don't leave now, I'll miss the plane. We can get coffee on the way.”

“But I like the tea here,” Hugh protested.

I stared at him. Obviously, if he was willing to sit in the kitchen and drink tea in my father's presence, he hadn't heard the gist of what my father had said about him. “Fine,” I said. “But like I said, I'm going soon. I've had enough.”

I strode out and up the stairs to my bathroom. I would brush my teeth, take away the horrible taste of my father's soup, and suspicion.

“What is it, Rei?” Hugh bounded up after me, and caught me in the hallway.

“Yes, darling, what's your plan for the morning?” My mother popped out of her room, blow-dryer in hand.

“I'm a bit—stressed,” I said. “As you know, this happens whenever I have to travel somewhere. What I think would be best for everyone would be that I just cab it to the airport. I've already said good-bye to Dad.”

“Just wait!” my mother said. “Wait a half hour, and Daddy and I will drive you. There's room for Hugh, too.”

“I'm expected at the office,” Hugh said. “I'm not going to be able to take her. But you're not going, Rei, till I've gotten to the bottom of what's wrong.”

“Something's wrong?” my mother asked. And the sight of her angular features, softened by concern, were enough to make me want to weep.

“Dad thinks the police suspect Hugh,” I said.

“Yes, your father's very worried. But of course, he thinks it is unjustified suspicion. He knows Hugh would never hurt anyone, especially since—”

“It's in my interest that she be alive. Because I'm a greedy, ambulance-chasing bastard,” Hugh said bitterly.

“Chill out, kids,” my mother said. “Toshiro has never said anything about ambulance chasing or greed, nor has he said that Hugh's a killer. He's just, I repeat, worried about the police. Remember how they behaved in the sixties? Well, you don't remember, you weren't alive then. But we do. We're all on edge. As I said to Toshiro last night, we just have to wait for the autopsy. The autopsy will show that she died of natural causes, nobody's fault but Mother Nature's.”

“Would that be the case, Catherine,” Hugh said. “Would that only be the case.”

 

I took the ride to the airport from my parents after all. I was still not really clear on whether my father suspected Hugh or not, but I didn't care. I just wanted to get back to my old life, where there was nobody I cared about enough that I could get shaken to the core.

The flight was a good one, as far as I was concerned. No terrorists on board; for that matter, nobody in the two seats next to me. I was able to stretch out and sleep, a fitful slumber in which an old woman with dark eyes floated in and out. Her lips were moving; she was trying to say something that I couldn't understand.
I don't know the language,
I thought, and began a frantic search for Eric Gan. But he was nowhere.

I touched down in Tokyo late in the afternoon; technically, it was the next day, although I'd left San Francisco in the morning and reached Tokyo early in the evening. I gave my heavy suitcases to the airport delivery service to handle getting them to my apartment, and then rode the train an hour to make my way home.

I had just enough energy to slide the key into the lock and my body onto the futon. Then I was asleep.

 

As exhausted as I'd been, I still woke up early the next day. Very early: 5
A.M
. The Family Mart convenience store wouldn't be open at that hour, so I would either have to eat the dried bonito fish still
in its box on the kitchen counter—the aged specimen I'd boasted about to my father—or break into the foil-wrapped packet of cookies I'd taken off the plane, and forgotten to declare at customs, the previous night.

I cranked up the Tokyo City Gas space heater and settled down a few inches away from it with the cookies and a cup of green tea. Lack of central heating notwithstanding, the apartment was as comfortable as a thick Japanese acrylic sock—the kind men wore in winter with thonged sandals, a habit I'd taken up myself, since my shoe size in Japan was more masculine than feminine.

I'd painted my living-dining-kitchen area in a warm persimmon, which dramatically set off the old lacquered chests and tables I'd refinished. Everything was unusually neat, as I'd taken pains to tidy up before leaving for America two months earlier, but there was a thick layer of dust on all the old wood. Dutifully, I dusted every surface, coughing at the clouds I whipped up. I was going to have to do a lot more cleaning with the New Year a few days away. At the end of each year, students cleaned their schools, salarymen washed their cars, and housewives turned over their houses top to bottom. It was all to welcome the
toshigami
—the god of the New Year—into their homes, for the promise of prosperity and happiness in the coming year. The changing of the calendar was a time to pay off debts and lay to rest all the old problems for a clean start.

The thought of starting over reminded me of Hugh's class action. It seemed a bit absurd to be calling on a Japanese Shinto god for help with a lawsuit against Japanese big business, but I couldn't escape my heritage—and the idea that with a bit of careful preparation, the class action might succeed after all.

I thought about the name Rosa had mentioned to us: Ramon Espinosa. He was her Filipino comrade who was supposed to be living in Japan.

I called information, spelling out the name Espinosa to the operator. No luck. I should have expected that. Mr. Espinosa was probably a retired laborer without many comforts. I pondered whether it would be preferable to be a broke foreigner in San Francisco or Tokyo. Both were terrifically expensive cities. But San Francisco
embraced a myriad of cultures—Tokyo didn't. Ramon Espinosa had chosen a hard lot in life, to stay in Japan instead of returning to the Philippines—that is, if he was still in the country.

If he were alive, there would be a police record of his presence. And if he'd died here, that record would exist as well. Japan was mad for keeping records. Searching the nation's local ward offices for such records, though, would take months. To get it done quickly, I'd need to ask a professional for help.

I flipped open the telephone book for my district—in Tokyo, there are so many people, you can only get a phone book covering one's own ward—and looked in the business section for detectives. Private detectives were plentiful, because families frequently used them to research their children's prospective marital partners. I doubted PIs worked on Sundays—it was the only day of the week Japanese people rested—but at least they'd hear my message first thing Monday morning.

I spent the rest of the morning making telephone calls to business associates, leaving messages that I was back in town. There was another call I should have made, to my parents, to let them know I'd safely arrived. But I told myself it was too late—they'd be in bed already, asleep. Better to call them another day.

Around eleven, I decided to venture out to the Family Mart convenience store a few blocks away. I stepped out into typical January weather—mid-forties, sunny, and dry. Everything on my tiny street looked the same as always. Two bicycles leaned against the wall of the apartment house, unchained because nobody would ever steal them; the fan shop's exterior was decorated with a line of potted plants struggling to stay alive in the forty-degree weather; and the ever-present wet spot on the sidewalk outside the tofu shop had not dried. As I walked, I passed my neighbors; the Tanakas carrying their young baby toward the subway, old Mrs. Yuto cleaning the outside of her windows, Mr. Haneda polishing the chrome on his car. Yes, the New Year's cleaning was on, full force. I resolved to buy extra cleaning supplies at Family Mart.

I'd wanted to see my dear old friend Mr. Waka, who was usually behind the counter at this Family Mart franchise, which he owned. Mr. Waka always had a ready hand to give me candy or
advice on my life. But his son was there, saying that he was filling in while Mr. Waka was home with the flu.

“It's been a difficult winter for illnesses,
neh
?” Kenji said, while wiping his nose with a tissue.

“I didn't know that your father had a flu! Please give him my best regards and tell him that I finally returned from America. I've been away over two months—too long entirely.” I felt strangely desperate to have someone recognize that I'd been gone.

“Oh. Well, please take care,” Kenji said, using the hand that had wiped his nose to load my little plastic shopping bag with the food and the cleaning supplies.

“Right. And please say hello to your father for me,” I said, thinking the younger generation just wasn't as fastidious about hygiene as their elders.

As I entered my apartment I heard a voice talking into my answering machine. It was Hugh, telling me he was having trouble getting a flight booked. Without bothering to take off my shoes—a big no-no, if anyone Japanese had been watching me—I dashed into the living room to lift the receiver.

“Hello,” I said breathlessly, just as Hugh hung up.

Damn it. I played the whole message, during which Hugh said that Rosa's autopsy results had come back, revealing a cardiac event—in other words, a heart attack; a typical elderly person's death. Hugh went on to say that since nobody had claimed a relationship with Rosa, the law firm was being asked to clean up her effects. If it went quickly, he could fly to Japan within the next day or two.

So Rosa had died of natural causes. I should have felt reassured. Now I didn't have to worry about the New Year bringing a police investigation. The matter was cleaned up, dealt with. But it was too bad I couldn't have caught Hugh on the phone and pressed him for details; I felt quite unsatisfied.

I was distracted for a while by the delivery of my suitcases from the airport. I got right to unpacking, and as I was finishing up, the phone rang again.

On the other end was my aunt Norie.

“Oh, welcome home, Rei-chan. When you come tonight, don't
forget to stop by the
senbeiya-san
in your neighborhood. Can you bring your uncle's favorite crackers?”

“What? I don't remember making plans.” I had no idea what Hiroshi's favorite style of
senbei
cracker was, either.