"A man can be judged on the strength of his enemies," Benny said. "You've got nothing to be ashamed of."
"Didn't say I did."
Benny stubbed out his cigarette, and they shook hands.
"Good luck, Sheriff," Groves said.
"Good luck to you, General."
"I've been twice blessed," Groves said. "I got to build the Pentagon, and I built Los Alamos. You don't get lucky three times. It tempts the gods."
Groves and Oppenheimer had tempted the gods, and beaten them. "What was it Oppenheimer said, after the first successful bomb test?" Benny asked, although he already knew the answer.
Oppenheimer had said, I am become death.
"You should be wary of too much philosophy," Groves said.
"Only if it conceals a falsehood," Benny said.
But what was the lie? Nobody had told him a deliberate untruth, or nothing he could put his finger on.
"Why don't you believe the Ramirez brothers?" Teresa asked.
"Their story doesn't ring true."
"You're suspicious by nature. Simplest is best."
Simplest was always best. He knew that from forty years of law-enforcement experience.
"Oscar told you he picked fruit on the Minamotos' farm when he was a teenager," she said. "So he knew Emily's father."
"He knew him at the camp in Santa Fe too," Benny said.
"Then it's more likely he did him favors than bullied him," Teresa said.
"Smuggled his letters past the censors? Or made sure he had warm clothing in the winter, something extra to eat?" Benny nodded. "That's if you take Oscar at face value."
"Why would Oscar wait two years?"
"Good point. Then again, why would anybody? There must have been any number of opportunities to stick it to an internee back during the war, when they were locked up."
"But you do think that's what this is about?"
"It makes the most sense."
"You know better than to construct a theory and then make the evidence fit after the fact," she reminded him. "You've got too many loose ends."
"Not every story we wish to be true is false," Benny said.
"Well, where to start?" Gideon Horace asked them. It was a rhetorical question. The FBI agent had agreed to meet Benny and Johnny Lee in Tierra Amarilla, the Rio Arriba county seat, halfway between Farmington and Española, far enough off the beaten path they wouldn't attract attention. Horace, of course, was required to report any official contact with local law.
This was off the record. Background only.
"The women probably got sent to Manzanar, in the Sierra Nevada," he said. "Not exactly a garden spot, but the camps in general were located away from population centers." He looked at Benny. "I'm not saying right or wrong, it's how it was. The War Department made the call."
"How did they decide who went where?" Benny asked him.
"It was pretty arbitrary," Horace said. "Japanese from Hawaii, say, were sent to the mainland. More of a risk of fifth column, is my guess. Pacific fleet had been decimated at Pearl Harbor. In any event, internees were categorized according to perceived risk. Were they loyal to the Empire of Japan, or were they loyal to the United States?"
"Why was there a question?"
"Japanese were thought to have a racial bias."
"You believed that?"
"Better safe than sorry."
Benny nodded. "What were the categories?" he asked.
"There were the die-hard imperialists, Bushido, the Rising Sun, all that eyewash. They wound up in Army custody, POWs, in effect. Then there were people who got classified as possible security risks because they wouldn't renounce their Japanese citizenship, first-generation, for the most part. And of course there were kids who got released when they agreed to serve in the U.S. military. But there was a lot of mix and match, and a certain amount of tension. Most people went along with the program, and some of them got beaten up because they were seen as collaborators, or the rumor went around they were getting preferential treatment. It depended on who did what, or who got did to."
"How did a fruit farmer from Embudo find himself shut up in a camp as an enemy alien?" Benny asked.
"He had the bad luck to be Japanese," the FBI agent said.
"How much trouble got stirred up?" Johnny Lee asked him.
"Internally? We had an ugly incident in Santa Fe. A bunch of bad apples got transferred in from Tule Lake. They had shaved heads, they did regimented calisthenics, they behaved like they were in the Nip army. In fact, most of them chose to be repatriated to Japan after the war. They were hoodlums. They thought the rest of the internees had shamed themselves by giving in to relocation."
"What happened?" Benny asked.
"They started a ruckus. Had to be broken up with tear gas and night sticks. Heads got cracked. Thankfully, nobody got dead, either side. You have to understand that the older guys, guys who'd been in the camp three or four years, they were terrified of these fanatics. Hell, they had a Suicide Squad. You crossed them, it was banzai. You wound up getting your ass handed to you, and if you were lucky, it was still in two pieces instead of six or eight."
"What happened afterwards?" Johnny Lee asked.
"Ringleaders got shipped out to the Fort Stanton stockade."
"Things settle down after that?"
"Pretty much."
Johnny Lee looked at Benny. "Goes against the conventional wisdom," he said. "That the Japanese were passive."
"They don't sound very passive," Benny said.
"They're not a passive race," Horace said.
"We back to that?" Benny asked.
"That's not what I meant," Horace said. "I meant that, as a culture, they don't like to suffer embarrassment. They have a pride in themselves."
"Don't we all," Benny said.
"What are you looking for, Sheriff?" Horace asked.
"An answer I can understand."
"Easy answers are hard to come by."
"I didn't imagine it would be easy," Benny said.
"You think we're barking up the wrong tree?" Johnny Lee asked.
"I think you can't catch smoke in a bag," Benny said.
"What do you want to do?"
"Go back to Santa Fe PD. See if they've turned anything up on the crime scene."
"Homicide squad won't be glad to see us."
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
Johnny Lee smiled and shook his head. "You ever get tired of being a pain in the ass?" he asked.
"Not a bit of it," Benny said to him.
"Me either," Johnny Lee said. "Let us go amongst them."
"Eight millimeter shell casings."
"Which suggests what?"
"Jap gun," the detective said. "Probably a Nambu, souvenir pistol somebody brought back from the Pacific."
"Interesting," Benny said.
"Yeah," Norris said. "Not that it gets us any further."
"Still no witnesses?" Johnny Lee asked.
The cop shook his head. "Everybody was watching Zozobra burn," he said. "The killing took place behind their backs. It might as well have happened in a vacuum."
Benny nodded. "Crowds," he said to Johnny Lee.
"You got something going?" Norris asked him.
"The old guy arranged to meet somebody, is what I think," Benny said. "They did it at Zozobra because nobody would notice them, with all the people."
"Why keep it a secret?"
"Guilt, maybe."
"What was Minamoto guilty of?"
"He was Japanese."
"You think it was a race crime?"
"I meant the Japanese take personal shame very seriously," Benny said. "Minamoto was old-school. He may have been looking to atone for something."
"You didn't tell me your family was separated," Benny said.
"It didn't occur to me," Emily said.
He was familiar with this habit of mind. If it was a thing everybody had common knowledge of, that made it unremarkable.
"Tommy joined the Army, and my mother and I were released."
"When was that?"
"Nineteen forty-three. We still had to report to INS once a month."
They were standing by the cenotaph at the edge of the national cemetery. Emily put her hand on the warm stone. Her brother's name was engraved there, along with many others. They were buried overseas, but their names were here.
"A lifetime ago," she said, sadly.
For these guys, Benny thought. "When you were released, why wasn't your father released as well?" he asked. "He didn't present a danger."
"He felt he had an obligation."
"I'm sorry?"
"The camp in Santa Fe was self-governed, to a degree."
"How much of a degree?"
"More than you might think," Emily said. "Because of its size, and the number of internees, there were frictions, and they turned to some of the older men, like my father, who formed grievance committees, to see that people were treated fairly."
"So your father worked with the camp administration."
"Both sides respected him."
"Did they offer to let him out?"
"Early in 'forty-four."
"Why didn't he take the deal?"
"Because of the hard-liners," Emily said. Kibei, she explained, American-born Japanese who'd gone back to Japan for their education, and then returned to the U.S. As a group, they tended to resist assimilation.
"I heard that after some of them got transferred in from Tule Lake, there was trouble," Benny said. "Your father wind up in the middle of it?"
Emily nodded. "They called him a traitor to the Emperor."
"Your father was an American citizen."
She smiled, without humor. "So he was."
Benny shook his head. "What a can of worms," he said.
"It was a difficult time."
"Everybody fought their own war," Benny said.
"We did," Emily said. She glanced at the memorial.
"Who took care of the farm while your family was interned?" he asked her.
"Our neighbors," she said. "We've always helped each other out, then and now."
"And they wanted nothing in return, when you came back?"
"We share the land, we share the water rights, we share the labor," she said. "Come harvest time, everybody pitches in."
Even a kid with Coke-bottle glasses? he thought to himself. "You remember a guy named Oscar Ramirez?" he asked.
"Sure," Emily said. This time her smile was unrehearsed.
"What?" Benny asked.
The smile stayed in her eyes. "Oscar had a terrible crush on me, I'm afraid," she said. "He never spoke up, of course. I knew how he felt, it just wasn't in the cards."
"Cultural differences?"
Emily shot him a sharp look. "No," she said.
"Excuse me," Benny said. The question still hovered.
Emily cleared her throat. "Oscar's a sweet person," she said. "He's sincere, he's honest, he's a good catch. The plain truth is, I'm not attracted to him, or not that way."
"Which isn't what he wants to hear."
"Who does?"
"He was a guard at the Santa Fe camp," Benny said.
Emily kept her gaze level, face front. "I wasn't about to break Oscar's heart to get my father preferential treatment," she said. "People do a lot of things, out of necessity. We all disappoint ourselves."
"Which wasn't a compromise you were willing to make."
"For my own sake, I might have, but Oscar deserved better."
"What if he's still in love with you?" Benny asked.
"I wouldn't betray that," she said.
"You think it's all he has left?"
"Oscar's entitled to his feelings," Emily said.
About those feelings, Benny realized Oscar probably wouldn't be forthcoming, especially since Benny had already rubbed him the wrong way, but there was no helping that. Benny could only hope a second interview might go better than the first.
In the event, he got lucky, because Oscar's brother Fidelio called him.
The three of them met at the VFW. This time it was Benny's turn to buy the first round.
Oscar, it turned out, was embarrassed. "My brother figures I owe you an apology," he said to Benny.
"No need," Benny told him.
"Caught me off-guard, you telling me Tashi Minamoto was dead. It hit a little close to home. And the way you asked the questions, you got my back up."
"Man's only doing his job," Fidelio said.
"You find out who killed him?" Oscar asked Benny.
Benny shook his head. "Not yet," he said.
"You include us out?" Fidelio asked.
Is that what this was about? Benny wondered. "I don't have a reason to include you in," he said.
"Well, there's Bataan," Fidelio said.
Benny looked at Oscar. "Tell me about the riot," he said.
Oscar pulled a face. "Those guys were trouble from the get-go," he said. "They were a gang. They intimidated the old guys. The young guys had all joined up, like Tommy Minamoto, so there was nobody left to stand up to the muscle-heads."
"Tommy's father," Benny said.
Oscar nodded. "Tashi had brass balls. He wasn't afraid of making enemies. He knew who his friends were."
"Friends come and go," Benny said. "Enemies accumulate."
He'd meant to ask Oscar about Emily, but in the end he thought better of it. There was no purpose in rubbing salt into old wounds.
"You had a major running security at Los Alamos," Benny said.
"Peer de Silva," Groves said. "He made lieutenant colonel, before the war ended."
Groves was back in Washington. Benny was both surprised and pleased he'd taken his call. "Is de Silva still in military intelligence?" he asked.
There was a pause. Benny could sense Groves smiling. "You must be cashing in that favor, Sheriff," he said.
"In late 'forty-three or early 'forty-four, two or three dozen Japanese nationalists were released from Army custody at Tule Lake, and reassigned to the internment camp at Santa Fe, where they caused some fair amount of grief."
"I've heard the story," Groves said.
"They were returned to Army custody for the duration. What happened to them after V-J Day?"
"They were sent back to Japan."
"All of them?"
"What's your question, Benny?"
"I want a list of their names, and the disposition of their cases."
"That would take months."
"I don't have months," Benny said. "Colonel de Silva has access to the classified records, and you've got a few chips you can call in."
He could tell the general was making careful notes of their conversation. "Anything else?" Groves asked.
"Current location," Benny said.
"Needles in a haystack."
"I mean whether any of them are stateside," Benny said.
"What's this about?"
"It's about a murder in wartime."
"The war's over."
"Not for everybody," Benny said.
"Okay," Groves said.
They'd had the same conversation before.
"I started out thinking it was payback," Benny told Teresa. "A revenge killing, an American GI who was mistreated when he was a POW, say, or a family member, somebody with an axe to grind."
"Like one of the Ramirez boys."
"Except they don't fit the picture. I could cast a wider net, maybe, but I just don't get the impression there was bad blood between the Minamoto family and anybody else up in the Embudo valley. They worked hard, they got along with everybody, their neighbors took care of things when they were interned."
"You don't think there was prejudice?"
"There had to be some," Benny said. "These people were unfairly singled out because they were of Japanese descent, and then they all got lumped together, so it could be that easy, the only good Jap is a dead Jap."
Teresa knew he was thinking out loud.
"Thing is, th
at of course they weren't all the same," he said. "Yeah, some of them still had family ties to Japan, some of them were active enemy sympathizers. But look at Tommy Minamoto. Purple Heart, posthumous Silver Star, fighting in Italy. He died for his country, and that country was the United States, not Imperial Japan."
"So which side was his father really on?"
"Our side," Benny said. "I think that was the problem, the tensions between the interned Japanese in the camps."
"He tried to be a peacemaker."
"And got labeled a collaborator."
"Where's this leading, Benny?" she asked.
"Your question, remember, was why anybody would wait two years," he said. "A survivor of the Bataan Death March, or some kid who was Four-F because he's almost legally blind?"
She smiled. "And who's still carrying a torch for Emily?"
"So maybe the guy's been out of action the last two years," he said. "Two years to brood about the injustice, the shame."
"You think he's been in prison?"
"I'm guessing he's been in Japan," Benny said.
"Colonel de Silva's list," Johnny Lee said. He was calling from Albuquerque, an hour and a half south of Santa Fe.
Of the thirty-five men, only three had been issued visas with recent U.S. entry dates. The FBI had tracked one guy down in Los Angeles, where he was visiting family. The second guy was reportedly in the Baltimore area. The third guy was dead in an Albuquerque motel room, of self-inflicted wounds.
"I'll drive down," Benny said.
"You're not going to see anything I haven't," Montoya said. "And you won't want to see what I saw."
After three days, the people in the adjoining rooms had complained about the smell. Even in September, the weather in Albuquerque could be hot. When the cops broke the door down, the first of the responding officers who went into the room fell to his knees, his stomach heaving.
Nobody made fun of him later. None of them had ever seen a Japanese ritual suicide.
Kneeling on a bamboo mat, the dead man, later identified as Iyeshi Saito, had placed the katana, the sword of a samurai, to his left. He'd used the wakizashi, the short sword, to open his bowels into his lap. Just out of reach, to his right, was an 8mm pistol, a Japanese officer's Nambu model. There had been no friend present to administer the killing blow, and the pistol was Saito's last resort, but it had apparently slipped away from his bloody hands, and he'd thrashed to death.
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