The Samurai's Daughter

by Sujata Massey

  I wandered back to the room where I’d been told I could relax. It wasn’t a cell by any means, but it was definitely a type of holding area—a room with three hard chairs and a table, but no diversions like books or television.

  After a while, I put my head down on my arms again. I was too sad and tired to sit up anymore. I must have slept, because all of a sudden there was a hand on my shoulder.

  Someone was very tentatively tapping me; it didn’t feel like Hugh’s touch at all. I sat up quickly and saw a Japanese man, tall and thin with glasses and a gray business suit. He bowed awkwardly.

  “I am Harada, your lawyer,” he said, and held out a name card for my inspection.

  I took it, looked it over, and then tucked it in my wallet. “Thank you for coming. I guess you know Hugh.”

  “Yes, yes, he is an old colleague from the days so long ago at Sendai. I was happy to hear from him, and sorry that I didn’t give you any information on the telephone earlier today. I think I might have been able to give advice to prevent this unfortunate situation.”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to tell you my plans for the search,” I said ruefully. “I thought I would be in and out to get the information I needed—after which, I fully intended to share it with the police.”

  “Well, the problem is the police came to you, and not the other way around,” Mr. Harada said with a sad smile. “We must talk over the situation, and work on a positive strategy—” Mr. Harada broke off as his cell phone rang. “Excuse me.”

  Mr. Harada answered the phone with a brisk “Moshi-moshi” and then, after a second, spoke in English. “Of course. I arrived just a few minutes ago. She is right here and available to speak.”

  I took the telephone Mr. Harada held out to me. It was Hugh. He told me that the police had been in the hotel for an hour, and searched Eric’s room. Hugh had managed to follow the search, and said the police had found neither eyeglasses nor any suitcase besides the Samsonite—which didn’t include the maps of Tokyo and the Philippines that I’d found in them before.

  “The police are frustrated; I can’t understand what they’re saying to each other, but I can sense it,” Hugh said. “And Eric and Charles are booking tickets to get out of the country. Charles wants to rethink everything about the class action, including my involvement—he’s already made a call to my boss at Andrews and Cheyne.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I’ve ruined your life. So are Eric and Charles both returning to San Francisco?”

  “Presumably. They’re not giving me any information. They trust me about as much as they trust you.”

  “But the police want to believe me, I think,” I said. “You’ve got to help them figure out where Eric hid the things I saw. I bet it’s still in the hotel.”

  “Well, they say they checked the room’s wastebaskets and that there are no wastebaskets in the halls large enough for a suitcase.”

  “You’re right. All I saw were—” I broke off, remembering the maid’s laundry cart heaped with sheets. “Oh, Hugh, I think I know where the suitcase went!”

  “Where?”

  “The laundry cart. There was a huge laundry cart in the hallway on the tenth floor. I bet he put everything under the pile of dirty sheets. So either the goods are in the bottom of the laundry cart, or in the hotel laundry, or in the lost-and-found—”

  “I’ll check,” Hugh promised, hanging up.

  Mr. Harada didn’t make any comment about my overexcited demeanor on the telephone. He wanted to go systematically through the events of the day, and to hear about any extenuating circumstances that might save me from a burglary charge.

  “The hotel knows another woman was with you,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to reveal her identity? If it turns out that this person coerced you into doing this action, you might be able to be released without further problem.”

  “I will not discuss her,” I said firmly. There was no question about it. Chika was my younger cousin; I was the one who’d led her into doing something stupid for my own gain. If Chika were to be arrested, that arrest would be a black mark on her life forever. She’d be expelled from the university, get rejected by future employers, and perhaps even miss out on the chance of getting married. A memory of Mr. Idabashi, the private detective, flashed into my mind. How stupid I’d been to worry about him being a gangster just because he had a pockmarked face! The true villain was a smooth-talking guy whom I’d been stupid enough to make out with in high school.

  I must have made a face, because Mr. Harada asked me if I needed to use the rest room. No, I told him, but I was desperate for solid food. He nodded. “Let me go to the street and find something. I’ll be right back.”

  Once he was gone, the enormity of my situation struck me once again. This time, I didn’t hide my face in my arms when I cried. I stared at the wall and the plain Seiko clock on it, watching the minutes pass as I thought about the life that was passing away from me forever. I thought about how my engagement would probably never turn into a marriage. I thought about how, if I wound up in jail, Hugh shouldn’t have to wait for me; he would be better off moving on to someone with no criminal record—and better sense.

  I must have fallen asleep looking at the clock, because I jumped, and refocused, when I heard the door to the room open. I turned around to see Mr. Harada holding a lacquered take-out box that smelled like yakitori—skewered chicken grilled with soy marinade. Of course he did not know that I was a vegetarian.

  Before I could say anything, I heard another set of brisk footsteps, and Hugh Glendinning entered the room.

  “Hugh,” I said. “You’re supposed to be at the hotel! What’s happened?”

  “A quick question first. What do you call that card game in America that’s like Snap?”

  “Snap?” I repeated. He was talking about a game where you matched cards to each other. “Well, it’s kind of like the American game, bingo, I guess. Don’t tell me you brought a card game to pass the time. It won’t distract me one bit.” But the yakitori would. I took a long look at it, and then closed up the box regretfully.

  “I’m not here to play games. I was searching for that word, that ‘bingo’ word, that Americans use when one gets something exactly right. Which you did.” He leaned against the wall, smiling triumphantly at me.

  “Which part did I get right?” I asked warily.

  “Bingo, you were right about where Eric hid things. The cart with linens from the tenth floor made it down to the mezzanine, where the laundry room is. The staff there had been wondering what to do with an unmarked suitcase that had been found mixed up with sheets from floors nine through eleven. There were a few things in the case, but that didn’t help them make any identification.”

  “What were they?” I asked.

  “The glasses, as you suggested. There was also a small book written in Braille, a folded-up metal detector, maps of the Philippines, and a confidential list of potential plaintiffs around the world. Your police chief was quite excited about the find, and went straight to Eric, asking him why he’d thrown these things away. Of course, he tried to deny they were his, but then we had a visitor who proved otherwise.”

  “Mrs. Moriuchi? But how—”

  “I had Mr. Harada call her. We weren’t sure that she was going to come to the hotel, but in the end she did and saved the day. She said that without a doubt Eric Gan is the man who impersonated Ramon’s nephew.”

  I thought for a second and said, “Impersonation’s a minor offense, though, isn’t it? That’s one of the things that I’m accused of.”

  “Yes, it is rather minor, but the marvel is that once Mrs. Moriuchi identified Eric, he crumbled. He admitted not only to entering the apartment to get Ramon’s address book—this is the book in Braille that we found—but to using the suitcase to make it look as if he were going to bring the man clothing in the hospital. And after the police demanded his passport and saw from the stamp that he’d in fact entered Japan before the New Year, he confessed to
having had his sister telephone me anonymously with the information to go to Kawasaki.”

  “So Julia was an accessory,” I said.

  “An unwitting accessory. The police have talked to her in San Francisco to confirm details of the story, and it seems that she didn’t really know why Eric wanted her to make the call—she just did it as a favor to her brother. Now, getting back to Eric, he’d already researched the address and phone number of Ramon Espinosa. He telephoned ahead of time to make sure Ramon was in, and had planned to visit him the day that you did, Rei. But, because you were there, he felt it was safer to wait to make his own visit until New Year’s Day.”

  “When he thought he could kill him and avoid detection, because I’d be with my relatives—”

  “Actually, Eric claimed that he didn’t mean to hurt him but that a struggle ensued after Ramon refused to give out any information.”

  “About the gold?” I guessed.

  “Well, it turned out that Eric had indeed learned about gold through Rosa’s testimony—information that he didn’t include in the transcript, so he could follow up on it later and find the gold by himself in the Philippines. He thought Ramon could be the key, because apparently Ramon had been an engineer before he was blinded—he might have remembered details about locations that Rosa wouldn’t have known. So, in order to find out what he needed to from Ramon, Eric came to Tokyo early. He’d hoped to learn the name of the town closest to the mine’s location. But Ramon refused to talk about the past, and Eric, in his frustration, became violent. He didn’t mean to try to kill him, he said, just as he said he didn’t kill Rosa.”

  “I can understand him not wanting to admit killing Rosa. Murder is the most serious felony.” I said.

  “Yes. Rosa’s case, though, is not under the jurisdiction of the Japanese police. They’ve arrested him in connection with the attack on Ramon Espinosa, but it’ll be up to the American police to decide whether to charge him in Rosa’s death.”

  “Well, if the San Francisco police have ruled Rosa’s death a homicide by poisoning, I hope they’ll want to interview Eric. I’ll go insane if they don’t.”

  “I do, too. Mr. Harada, I’m sure, will have a better idea of whether Eric will even be allowed to be extradited to America for that kind of interview. Countries can be quite possessive of foreign criminals arrested on their own soil.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Harada. “The government here understands that if this man is extradited to America, he may or may not be convicted of murder. Yet here, he has confessed to the attack of a Tokyo resident. Whether he’s convicted of attempted manslaughter or attempted murder, he’ll be in prison for quite a while.”

  “Everything’s going to come out in public about the class action now, isn’t it?” I said in a low voice to Hugh.

  “I’m afraid so. But at least we don’t have to worry that our interviewing plaintiffs will bring about their death.”

  “So, it’s back to work for you.”

  “Yes, it is. Just as it’s back to the apartment in Yanaka for you, if Mr. Harada and I can do anything to prove our legal training wasn’t for naught.”

  Finally, I relaxed. I decided that before I went anywhere, I would do something I’d been longing to do for years.

  Once again, I opened the yakitori container that Mr. Harada had brought me.

  I picked up a skewer of grilled chicken and bit in.

  30

  I’d been home for days, but nothing was the same.

  For one thing, I was still eating meat. I couldn’t stop—why, I wasn’t sure. But I ate heartily at night, pairing the food with wines I’d thought in the past were too expensive. Now life seemed so uncertain; it was a waste to be parsimonious about food and drink.

  The Tokyo police had announced to the general public that they’d caught the Kanda Ward Attacker and he was secured behind bars awaiting trial. However, we’d heard from one of our friends in the American consulate that despite Eric’s ready confession to having knocked over Ramon, he still refused to admit that he’d murdered Rosa Munoz. Of course, there were all kinds of DNA tests that could be done to prove otherwise, but the U.S. was having trouble extraditing Eric back to California to pursue this line of investigation. Japan didn’t want to let Eric go, the consul said, because it might mean losing the chance to prosecute him for the attack on Ramon.

  “It’s not over,” I said to Hugh glumly when he came home for the evening. “It seems insane that Eric Gan can’t be prosecuted for murder just because he’s in custody here. I’ve read so many accounts of American police chasing down American criminals who’ve fled overseas to escape much lesser charges. What’s going on this time?”

  Hugh sighed. “Mr. Harada thinks it’s a turf war between the two countries. And I have to say, Eric Gan’s damn fortunate to be in the middle. Even if he’s charged with attempted manslaughter here, he won’t get any kind of death penalty or life-in-prison sentence—which he might have in California, if they were to pin Rosa’s murder on him.”

  As Hugh talked on about the death penalty, I stared at the rack of New Zealand lamb on my plate. I was still eating meat. The body that I’d once kept clean as a temple had turned into something else.

  And so had I. Now that Eric had been nailed, I found myself obsessed with the recovery of Ramon Espinosa. I visited Kanda General Hospital daily, for hours at a stretch. I’d almost stopped going on my second day there, when TV reporters ambushed me, wanting comments on whether I felt the imprisonment of Eric Gan meant justice had been served. The idea of gold hidden in the Philippines was also a hot-button topic. Every day there were maps of the Philippines in the papers depicting places other stashes of gold had been dug up in the past—and where more might lie today. Whose gold was it? Should it be shared between all looted Asian countries, or remain the property of the Philippines?

  I broke into a run to get away from them, because I knew that to talk would make my situation even more tenuous with the police. While the Hibiya police understood that I’d given them the necessary evidence to catch the Kanda Ward Attacker, Charles Sharp still wanted me prosecuted. This put pressure on the police to ensure that my situation was handled within proper legal boundaries.

  “I still don’t trust Charles,” Hugh said one night when we were lying in bed after I’d grilled us both steaks. “He’s a dodgy one. But Eric remains steadfast in his statement that he had no accomplice, save for his sister who placed the call steering me to Kawasaki. But Charles…he’s changed his behavior so dramatically these last few days. First he was heading back to San Francisco and making sure that I was thrown off the case—but the coalition of law firms is backing me, so his hands are tied, and now he’s decided to stay a while longer here, because things are going well with Morita.”

  “What do you mean, ‘going well’? Are you able to tell me?” I asked.

  “Well, I personally think we started settlement negotiations with Morita too soon. But Charles feels that the media attention given to the case has the potential to embarrass Morita, should their name get out. And that’s our trump card. They’ve started throwing out numbers to Charles that I think are too low. But being odd man out these days, it’s all I can do to get bits and pieces of information. I heard Charles say something on the phone about wanting twenty thousand per survivor—which is pitiful.”

  “But that’s what the U.S. paid to the Japanese-Americans they held in internment camps. And isn’t it the same amount the Germans paid Jewish survivors?”

  “Those were governments that paid that amount in the past to vast numbers of survivors,” Hugh said. “Morita is a very rich company that didn’t commit these injustices for the sake of politics or national defense. They did it out of greed. And the war slave survivors we’ll find are so few in comparison to the Holocaust and internment survivors. They can damn well afford to pay more than twenty thousand per survivor.”

  Hugh’s words made me shiver, because I’d been reading more and more of my great-grandfather’s
history text over the long hours that I was spending in the hospital, sitting with Ramon. There was one passage to which I kept returning:

  The challenge today is to continue the rightful expansion of our Pacific empire. China and Korea are much the better under the guidance of our culture; what now of the countries awaiting our touch, the lands of Siam, the Philippine Islands, Indonesia, and so on? After they join our empire, with courage and duty we will move onward to Hawaii, occupied currently by Americans. When Hawaii is rightfully restored as an Asian kingdom, its people will become grateful subjects of Japan.

  Pearl Harbor wouldn’t happen for several more years, but still…here was the idea of the attempt lying dead ahead. As I examined the passage, I couldn’t help wondering if my great-grandfather had advised anyone that the attack would be a good idea. Or perhaps, when my grandfather had tutored Hirohito, he’d encouraged the young future emperor into believing Japan’s conquest of Hawaii was a matter of destiny.

  There were still many pages left to read. I could only imagine how my embarrassment would grow, reading them. It was all so ironic. Great-grandfather Shimura was part of me, genetically and emotionally. He probably had bequeathed to me the spirit that made me love Japan so fiercely—more fiercely than my own father ever had. But because of his love of nation, my great-grandfather had done a terrible thing. He’d possibly imprinted his attitudes on the mind of the nation’s emperor, and he had definitely warped the thinking of the generation of students who came of age in the 1930s and ‘40s. I found myself wondering whether it was worse to try to kill with your own hands, as Eric Gan had done, or to emotionally enable millions to kill with theirs.

  On the morning of the sixth day, I was at Kanda General Hospital again when Ramon had a breakthrough. I had been talking to him—reading aloud from my great-grandfather’s book, in fact, and telling him what I thought of it—when his left cheek began twitching hard. I called for a nurse, and with her as my witness, I told him about Eric Gan’s being arrested for attacking him. An hour later, the police were there with a tape recording of Eric Gan’s voice, which Ramon signaled to them was the voice of the man who had hurt him.