She spat out a retort. “You aren’t exactly what I was expecting either. They gave us your ashes, Onii-san.”
“My ashes, ah?” His turn to look shamefaced and shift his weight. He let a very un-cremated hand slip from her shoulder. “I didn’t know, Mi-chan. But I did use a false name during those years in America. I assumed you’d rather believe me gloriously dead.”
“We’d rather not have spent six years believing a glorious lie.”
A pinched expression crossed his features. “We’d rather? Where is everyone else?”
She answered in a softer tone. “Papa-san’s in the hospital.”
“The hospital? With what?”
The withered place inside her grew. She led him a few steps away from the press of people around the Delhams. “Leukemia.”
“Leukemia?” He gave her a blank stare.
“They sent him into Nagasaki.”
“Ah.” He sucked his breath in hard. “Hibakusha?” His forehead wrinkled, as if explosion-polluted was too much to take in. A beat passed. “And Mama-san?”
“Gaijin bombing raid.” She shot a glance at Delham. “You have no idea what those firestorms were like.”
A wounded look lodged on his face. “Hiro-chan?”
She took a small step around him, placing his back toward the missionary. “Another bombing raid. The night you ‘died.’” She went up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “Your friend behind you, ah? Your Delham?”
“Hai?”
“He dropped the bomb that killed your brother.”
“What?” He took a step back, like she’d punched him. He lowered his voice. “You know this?”
“Hai.”
His features folded in pain, as if his own gut had been slit with a blade.
She anchored her eyes on his face and watched for some sign of the outrage he should feel. A change of expression that would tell her he knew his duty now and was prepared to do it. Some hint that he remembered who he was.
She didn’t see it.
He stood very still, eyes going wider. After a few seconds, he gave her a long, slow shake of the head.
Papa-san’s words repeated in her ears. It’s you and me, Mi-chan. We two can’t pause, even to retrieve our weapons. It was still up to her. Akira-san might come to himself in time, but she couldn’t pause for that. Somehow the Christian demons had duped her brother so badly he forgot everything he stood for.
Delham’s wife called out to them. “Akira-san, won’t you bring your sister over and introduce us?”
Akira-san leaned toward Miyako, concern creasing his features. “Are you all right? Maybe I should see you home now?”
“I’m fine.” Miyako flashed her teeth. “I’ll meet your new friends.” She strode toward the banister.
Akira-san caught up with her and laid a hand on her arm. “Mi-chan.” He searched her face. “What exactly are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question.” She shrugged his hand off her shoulder, stopped in front of Delham, and made a low bow. She straightened and smiled.
Delham extended a hand toward her. “Pleased to meet you.”
Still smiling, she slipped her right hand into her purse as if she were after a pen. Her fingers closed on the hilt of the six-inch knife. And that was it. She clenched the weapon in her right fist, let the handbag drop to the floor, and drew the knife above her shoulder. Six years of bitterness and tortured shame uncoiled in a pouncing strike. She drove the knifepoint straight at the space below Delham’s ribcage.
Akira-san moved faster.
Her blade bit into flesh and met resistance. The weapon sliced, then twisted from her grasp and clattered to the floor. Delham’s wife screamed. Delham stood with gaping jaw, blood spattering his jacket.
Akira-san slumped against the banister between them, hand pressed to his neck, face contorted in pain. Blood oozed between her brother’s fingers. The truth sank in as pandemonium erupted around the room.
She gasped. “Akira-san! What have you done?”
Oda smashed into her. Got her in a chokehold that had her gasping and clawing at him until he pinioned her wrists behind her.
The gaijin missionary vaulted the banister and grabbed Akira-san, supporting him from behind. “Doctor! Is there a doctor here?”
Both Marines leveled their pistols. The closest one ran up to her. “Freeze!”
Oda jerked at her arms. A pair of clicks and the feel of cold steel on her wrists. He sucked his breath in softly behind her. “Che! So you are your papa-san’s daughter.”
Except Papa-san would have succeeded. Akira-san should have succeeded, but he was too lost to try. And now he slumped in front of her, bleeding.
Commotion reigned throughout the building. But she focused past the Marine’s shoulder at her brother. He lifted his fingers from his neck and studied the blood smeared across them.
“Onii-san!” She forced the words around what felt like jagged glass in her throat. “Forgive me, please.”
He winced, pressing his fingers where his neck met his shoulder. His eyes were wide in his contorted face. “Mi-chan, not this way. There is a better way.”
Delham eased her brother onto one of the long benches. Delham’s wife followed with a wool muffler. She pressed it against Akira-san’s neck, and crimson bloomed around her fingers.
A Japanese man with thinning hair ran toward Akira-san. “Keep the pressure on it.”
“Dave-san.” Akira-san gasped out his words, grabbed at Delham’s arm. “Forgive her. She doesn’t know. You must tell her.”
Oda wrenched Miyako’s arm so hard she teetered. “Guess you’re going back in, Matsuura-san.”
She shrank inside, but only for a second. She’d barely survived her last round at Oda’s office, but what happened to her now didn’t matter. This was her gyokusai, her suicide charge. She’d done all in her power to spend herself for honor, her own and that of her samurai ancestors.
Akira-san moaned. She looked at him and a chill wrapped her heart. The brother she’d venerated. Yet she was leaving him with these gaijin, bleeding from her blade.
Oda pushed her toward the door. She resisted with all her strength, twisted to look up at him. “Captain Oda. Please, please. Not yet.” The police captain frowned and gave her an overpowering shove. “Let me talk to Akira-san!” Her voice rose in pitch.
The captain set his jaw. “Move, Matsuura.”
She stared over her shoulder. Her brother rested with his eyes closed, his features etched with pain. A rich ruby-red stain suffused the gray muffler Delham’s wife pressed to his neck.
Like the blood in the cement dust around Hiro-chan’s battered little corpse.
The old sick angry feeling jolted her. With everything she’d lost, this Onii-san she neither knew nor understood was all she had. Had she killed him—like she had Hiro-chan?
“Akira-san,” she called out. “Please forgive me. It wasn’t meant for—”
His eyes flicked open and locked on hers. She couldn’t hear it, but his mouth shaped words. “Mi-chan. You must listen to Dave.”
Before his eyes drifted shut, she saw it. In the midst of his pain, his concern for her.
Oda pushed her through a side door.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Monday, January 3, 1949, Osaka, Japan
First Day in Police Custody
Vertical bars. How long could you stare at vertical bars? They stretched from floor to ceiling across the full four-foot front of Miyako’s cell. Like the shoji that had formed an entire wall of her chamber at the brothel—but an implacable steel version.
The bars separated her from a narrow hallway. The wall on its far side boasted patches of peeling paint that added some interest to her view. If she squinted, she could make one patch resolve into a horse trotting. She imagined its mane flowing free. She could picture another as a brazier, like the one in the common room at the Oasis. In her unheated cell, her eyes lingered there. She chafed stiff fingers and summoned the
most vivid image she could of those glowing coals and the warmth they suffused through that cheery room.
But the physical discomfort wasn’t the worst of it. What tortured her, beyond all else, was not knowing. Had she killed Akira-san?
Firm footsteps sounded on the hallway linoleum. She thrust her hands into her lap and jerked into the only allowed position—seiza posture, the formal kneel. Back straight, gaze level, as befit a courageous daughter of daimyo.
The policeman strode into her field of view. He was tall and unnaturally thin, with jutting cheekbones. He stopped and fixed his eyes on her. They seemed to take on a glow. As he studied her, the cell seemed colder. She didn’t know his name, but at that moment she gave him one. Zugaikotsu—the Skull.
His hand went to his wood baton. “Sit straight. Look forward, horyo.”
She lifted her chin, stretched a quarter inch higher, and anchored her eyes on the middle bar.
“Better.” He moved directly into her line of sight. He slapped his baton into his other palm and made a grimace that might have been intended for a grin. “Come.”
The interrogation room was a windowless box with a single door. The light came from a bulb in a dented fixture dangling from the ceiling. The room was just big enough for a battered table and four simple wooden chairs.
Stern-faced policemen occupied two of those chairs. A third policeman with more elaborate epaulets leaned against the wall, appraising her.
Is Akira-san dead? These men could tell her.
One of them stood and yanked out a chair. Zugaikotsu shoved her into it. The second policeman grabbed two pairs of cuffs from the table and knelt. He clicked the first cuff shut around her right ankle, then secured it to the chair leg.
She shifted her gaze forward and worked to keep her breathing steady. She’d done her duty. She would face the consequences as a daughter of samurai.
The second set of cuffs clicked around her left ankle and the other chair leg.
Epaulets-san nodded his satisfaction. “Bring in Suzuki-san.”
Suzuki-san. Her other interrogators had not identified themselves. He’d be the first man here with a name.
“Hai.” Zugaikotsu disappeared.
She bowed to Epaulets-san. “Pardon me for troubling you, Officer. Please, how is my brother?”
His lips quirked. “Ah. The esteemed brother you knifed? It would be best if Suzuki-san answered that one.”
Weariness washed over her, and she closed her eyes. It was a long moment before she opened them again. Studying the items on the table was easier than meeting anyone’s gaze. A manila folder—her dossier, no doubt. Three mugs of coffee. Four bento boxes filled the room with the tangy odors of broiled fish, seaweed, and soy sauce.
The door opened. Zugaikotsu held it for a man in a subtly striped flannel suit with threads of silver running through his hair. He exchanged bows with the three policemen.
The one with the fancy shoulders introduced her. “Suzuki-san, allow me to present Matsuura. Matsuura, Suzuki-san. Your prosecutor.”
Her prosecutor. This man would evaluate the evidence against her and recommend her sentence to the judge, a recommendation the judge would inevitably accept. Suzuki-san would, effectively, decide her fate. She made the deepest bow she could from her chair.
He gave her a perfunctory head-bob, took a seat, and made a show of examining her dossier. This gave her a chance to study him. The intensity of his focus and the authoritative set of his jaw. A man accustomed to getting what he wanted. Which, in this case, would no doubt be a lengthy sentence.
He shook his head before looking at her. “So. You got yourself in a little trouble, ah?” He let out a dry laugh. “Attempted murder. Assault with a weapon. Fifteen years. How does that strike you, Matsuura? How old are you?” He glanced at the paperwork. He leaned back and studied her face. “Thirty-five years old before you’ll know freedom again, yes?”
That would be a long time. Forever, in prisons like this one.
“Too old for a husband. Too old for children.” He paused, no doubt to let her absorb this. A frown etched its way into his forehead. “Shame.” He sat up with a brisk nod. “Well, let’s get started. Naturally, I have a few questions for you.”
“Please pardon me for the trouble, Suzuki-san.” She gave him another bow from her chair. “Could you kindly tell me about my brother? Is he in the hospital? Is he all right?”
He shared a smirk with Epaulets-san, then looked at her. “You need to know, ah?”
“Hai. Please.”
“I could do this for you—this thing you need. In fact, there are many things you probably need.” He gave a pointed look at the stack of bento on the table between them. She tried not to focus on the delectable odors drifting from those boxes. “But if I’m going to do something for you, you’ll have to do something for me first.”
“What do you want? I confessed to everything.”
“Come now. You don’t expect me to believe you came up with all of this on your own, do you?” He pulled a pack of Chesterfields from his pocket. He lit one and leaned toward her. “Why should you take all the blame, ah? Just some names. That’s all we want. Who else was involved in your little plot?”
He handed the pack around to the other two. They each took a cigarette and lit up.
She stared at Suzuki-san. “But there was no one else.”
“The sooner you tell us the truth—the full truth, Matsuura—the easier things will be for you.” He jerked his head at the policeman on his left. The man stood, stalked around the table, and loomed over her.
“The truth, Matsuura!” Suzuki-san said.
The policeman grasped her forearm. He jerked it toward him and twisted to expose the soft flesh of her inner arm. He poised his lit cigarette a quarter inch from her skin. She pulled away from the spot of heat it created. He squeezed her wrist tighter.
Suzuki-san’s expression was stoic. “You should also understand that the better you cooperate, the better recommendation we can give the judge.” His voice went deep with menace. “Believe me, we will pry the truth out of you. It’s up to you to decide how long—and how unpleasant—the process will be.”
And so the first interminable day of it began.
Morning. Her third day in detention. The law stated Suzuki-san had to bring her before the judge that day, outline the case against her, and request a warrant to keep her in detention.
It would all be for show. He could keep her there as long as he wanted.
Footsteps echoed at the end of the hall. Panic crept up from her belly. She forced it away, straightened her spine, and braced herself for Zugaikotsu and his leer. She was going back to that room.
He strutted into view. She screwed her eyes shut and worked at summoning the strength of will to endure what would come next. Several more hours of Suzuki-san. And the police rotation. No name badges. No introductions. Different voices, different faces, different volume levels. But again and again the same questions. Taking it by turns and wearing her down.
There was nothing more to tell them—except about the yakuza and the poison she never bought. She’d let enough people down already. She wasn’t going to add one more broken promise to the list.
“Horyo. Hurry.”
Her gut went as watery as her rice-porridge breakfast. “Hai.” She tried to stand but her right leg wouldn’t straighten beneath her—bruised and stiff from a vicious kick the day before. She made a second wobbly effort and lurched onto her feet.
Zugaikotsu conducted her up the usual corridor, past a row of identical cells. He ushered her into a room she hadn’t seen before. The visitation room. Long and narrow, divided by a windowed wall. A stained counter ran along her side of the dingy glass, with two mismatched chairs. And on the other side—
Akira-san. With a generous swath of blood-stained gauze taped across his neck, but alive.
Zugaikotsu, the detention center, the beatings. All of it disappeared in a wild rush of joy and relief. “Onii-san,” she
breathed. She took a half-step toward the glass before she registered his companion and froze. Delham? The gaijin pilot—here? Her heart hammered. They’d brought him in to accuse her. And Akira-san was part of it.
Zugaikotsu pressed a heavy hand on her shoulder and pushed her into the chair. Which was a good thing, since her legs no longer seemed inclined to support her weight.
Delham caught her eyes and bowed in his seat. A wave of disgust flooded her. She dropped into a deep bow to disguise it. If she’d done what she was supposed to, he wouldn’t be there. Confucius said not to share the same sky with your enemy. Here she was under the same roof.
She lingered with her face to her lap and took long breaths, working to compose herself. Zugaikotsu settled into the chair beside her. A second guard stood on the visitors’ side of the room, just inside the door.
Zugaikotsu addressed them. “I will remind you of the rules concerning this visit. You will confine your conversation to approved matters. You will not attempt to communicate with the horyo by gesture, in writing, or”—he directed a pointed glare at Delham—“in any foreign tongue. The visit will last no longer than thirty minutes.” He encompassed them all with a withering gaze. “I am authorized to conclude it at any time I deem you’ve violated these rules. Understood?”
Akira-san bobbed a bow. “Hai. May I translate this to Reverend Delham?”
The guard grunted his agreement. Akira-san spoke a few sentences to the gaijin in English. Delham nodded as he listened, then gave the guard a brisk nod and a “Hai.”
“You may proceed,” Zugaikotsu said.
She took another deep breath, anxiety roiling her gut. “Please forgive me, brother. I am very happy to see you. I hope you know I never meant to hurt you.” She kept herself from looking at the gaijin—at his chest, which that knife should have punctured.
“Mi-chan.” Akira-san’s throat worked. “I’ve been trying to come to talk to you.” He glanced at the guard at the door. “But it was nearly impossible to get clearance.”
The Plum Blooms in Winter Page 32