Shimura Trouble (9 page)

I
WAS AS
good as my word, and got up before six the next morning. I even skipped my run in order to cook. Spinach was washed three times, shaken and tied up in kitchen towels to dry. I put together a trifle from ladyfingers, rum, the whipped soymilk and the remaining fruit we had—ripe mango and banana. When the rest of the family came in, I gave them a breakfast of pineapple, low-sodium miso soup, rice, and a bit of pickled daikon radish and then persuaded everyone to make a part of dinner. For my father, it was mincing scallions to use as a garnish and in multiple dishes; for Tom, it was chopping long green beans for me to stir-fry later with a ginger sesame glaze. Uncle Hiroshi seemed too shell-shocked to do anything but set the table, for which I complimented him lavishly.

Everyone was having fun by the end, and my father had to remind me it was time for my appointment with Uncle Yosh. I arrived at his door five minutes from the time I left Kainani.

Braden answered the door, looking sullen in just a pair of yellow and orange shorts. He rubbed his eyes; it was nine o’clock, apparently quite early. “Jii-chan!” he hollered, and stalked off.

Uncle Yosh emerged, dressed in a faded but clean T-shirt and wrinkled pants. He looked surprised to see the van, and kicked its tire. “This thing safe to travel?”

“So far, so good.”

“Where we going?”

“You mentioned a fishmonger on North King Street in Honolulu. I hope that’s not too far…”

“No, no, it be worth it. But tell me the truth—your fadduh gonna let you drive this wreck all the way to Honolulu?”

“Yes, of course. I drove it downtown yesterday.” As we started off, I got right down to business, asking Uncle Yosh if he thought it was a good idea for us to pursue the land claim one more time. He shrugged, saying nothing.

“It’s really your house, not Edwin’s. I mean, it’s your house if there ever really was a letter or deed—”

“It was ours in writing, for sure. I remember Josiah Pierce coming to our house one evening when I was a kid, Kaa-san sending me out. That musta been when the papers were done.”

The papers, or something else? I eyed my great-uncle, and struggled for the right words. “Did you see Josiah Pierce at your home again after that?”

“No, never.”

“And your father? How did he fit into all this? Where was he during this talk?”

“He got transferred to work at a plantation in Maui, around the time I was two. Never saw him after that, ’cause he died in an accident there.”

“Why didn’t you and your mother go with him?”

“The school. She was teaching here, and got paid for that. She wouldn’t have such an easy job if she went to Maui.”

“I’m sorry that you grew up without a father. That must have been very hard.” As I murmured the apology, my thoughts were spinning. It seemed more and more likely that Harue had had a secret relationship with Josiah Pierce.

“Truth is, you don’t miss what you don’t know. Lot of men around the plantation seemed too angry. The men in those times drank a lot, and the wives hated it. That’s why no drinking in my house, ever.”

“I apologize for bringing wine the other evening; I just didn’t know.” I tried to refocus the conversation. “If you were to revisit the day that you found the Liangs in your house, could you tell everything that happened?”

Yoshitsune was silent for a minute, and when his voice returned, it came in fits and starts. “I never forget that day, March seventeen, 1942. The day I touched Hawaiian ground again, when I decided go for broke, I thought might as well return home right away, even though my mother had passed. I got the bus from Honolulu out to Waipahu, and a Filipino guy I knew since small kid time rode me out on his pickup the last few miles to the house.”

“Was the house located in the plantation village?” I asked.

“No, it was makai, kind of remote but real peaceful. Because it wasn’t in village, that’s why nobody noticed that the Liangs had taken the house.”

“What did Mr. Liang say to you, when you tried to come home?”

“He wasn’t there, when I went calling. Never saw the buggah. He probably down in Chinatown, running his store. The wife was the one who came to the door.”

“Clara Liang?”

“That’s right.” He looked surprised that I knew her name, but I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t want to interrupt the flow. “Clara Liang said to me, “What you want?” I stared at her and said, “Lady, you in my house.” Then she laughs like crazy and say the house belong to her and her husband. They buy from Mr. Pierce one year previously. While she talking, I kept looking over her shoulder to see inside. See a lot of strange furniture, but a few of our things, like the old tansu chest and some lamp that was my mother’s. I said, “My name Yoshitsune Shimura, and I see you took my household goods, too.””

I was so caught up in the story that I’d inadvertently slowed to just less than fifty miles per hour, I realized after a lumbering truck passed us up. Not good highway behavior, so I sped up. “What did she say when you confronted her like that?”

Yosh shook his head, remaining silent.

“I’m sorry if I’m being too nosy.” I shot a glance at him, and saw that the craggy-faced man looked close to tears. “I don’t mean to force bad memories. I was just trying, you know, to see if there was any information from that encounter that could help me understand what happened with the land.”

“Got nothing to do with land,” he said roughly. “You want know what she said? I remember every word. She said, “You go away, dirty Jap, I know what you did at the post office. I will remind everyone, now that you’re back.” I didn’t know what to reply, so I just started walking.”

“But you…you were a war hero,” I said. “You worked with the OSS! How could she dare label you a traitor?”

“Not many know what I did. The family know, sure, but it’s not something to show off about. And like I say, it counts nothing for getting the land back,” Yosh said. “After I left the house, I thought about things. I had a buddy whose cousin was at Honolulu PD. I talked story with him, about my house. He said, only way you can prove your story is by showing the deed. Well, I don’t know if there ever was a deed; if there had been any deed in the house, like the letter, you better believe the Liangs destroyed it. And there was nothing to prove ownership at the Bureau of Conveyances, as you learn yourself.”

“Who told you that we went to the land records office?”

“I heard it on the coconut wireless.” Yoshitsune smiled, and added, ‘My old friend’s brother, he work there. He told me there was a girl in, claiming to be family.”

So much for the helpful clerk and his questions about my name. “Uncle Yosh, we found a record of Josiah Pierce selling another property to Clara Liang for a really low price, on Smith Street in Chinatown.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s their old company building. I don’t know.”

“Well, do you think there might be something odd about him selling to her rather than the husband?”

Yoshitsune shrugged again. “Why you think that?”

“I…well…he sold mostly to Asian women. I was wondering if any funny business might have been going on.”

Instead of answering me, Yosh said, “Watch it, we’re at King Street now. Left turn, and better start look parking.”

SIGNS ALL OVER
the interior of the Tamashiro Fish Market declared NO EATING ALLOWED, though it seemed like the antithesis of fine dining. Walls were covered by the darkness of time, lights were dim, and we had to jostle through a crowd of customers to look at the fish. Yoshitsune taught me the names as we walked along. Thin, silvery butterfish, best under a miso glaze; opah, with a body as round as a full moon; and opakapaka, the best pink snapper. A large, flame-colored fish with whiskers looked especially enticing; Uncle Yoshitsune explained that it was called weke ula and was quite delicious.

I took three and had the counterman clean and scale them. Ten minutes later the complicated business was done and paid for, and I loaded my icy cooler with what seemed like an aquarium’s worth of sea life, because Yoshitsune had gone back to the prepared-dish counter for marinated sea urchins.

My great-uncle showed me an alternate route to the freeway on North School Street, which was dotted with okazu-ya open to the street where people were eating their lunches off paper plates. He persuaded me to stop, and pretty soon we were standing on the street, tasting poi-flavored Okinawan-style doughnuts and the crispest sweet potato tempura I’d ever eaten. Uncle Yosh, who’d added chicken yakitori to his order, ate quietly and fast, with obvious pleasure. In the silence, I pondered his story of the lost father, internment in a prison camp, and finally his mother’s death. After he came back, life couldn’t have been much better because he’d raised someone as unhappy and irresponsible as Edwin. My father said he wanted to help, out of guilt for what had happened to Harue. I thought if any help should be given, it should be to Yoshitsune.

“Did you ever receive reparations from the government for the internment?” I asked after we’d cleaned the oil from our hands, swigged down some water, and gotten back into the minivan, heading west.

“Yes. Twenty thousand dollah. I used the money to buy our house, and it was a good thing, because when Edwin had his financial trouble a few years back, he moved the family in.”

“Life has been hard for you,” I said, thinking of all the losses. He’d lost his father during childhood, he’d lost his happy youth during internment, plus his mother. And though he’d eventually married, his wife was gone, leaving Yosh in his old age with Edwin controlling him.

“Oh, not so bad. There was plenty of hardness to go around. The muddahs use to sing about it, I remember.”

“Your mother?”

“The other mothers had to teach mine the songs, you know, while they stripped the leaves from the cane in the fields. The plantation songs had a special name, hole hole bushi.”

“Women rice farmers sing hole hole bushi in Japan,” I said. “Women are known for these songs, not men. I wonder why.”

“’Cause it’s about complaining, that’s why!” Uncle Yosh then sang in a wavering voice, ‘My man is always drinking…no more money…where shall I go?”

I laughed, enjoying the sound of my great-uncle finally expressing himself in Japanese. “I guess there aren’t many people who remember the words anymore.”

“You’d be surprised. Most people your age had either parents or grandparents on the plantation.”

“Uncle Yosh, I was wondering. I’ve seen the plantation village, but I would really like to see your mother’s cottage.”

“You saw the photograph at dinner the other night.”

“Yes, but the picture didn’t give a sense of the landscape or scale of things.” I shot a glance at my uncle, who was staring rigidly ahead.

“Things ain’t like before, when the plantation was open for business. It’s way down on the water, through five miles or so of Pierce land. Can’t enter it that way, and on the other side the land’s military, closed to people like us.”

“I’d be willing to risk traveling through Pierce land. I run there almost every morning and haven’t been bothered.”

“Well, we can’t go now. What’s the point of drive all the way to Tamashiro’s and spoil the fish driving round?”

“OK, Uncle Yosh. You’ve got a good point,” I said, thinking there was no reason to force the point any further. He didn’t want to go. I was going to have to make the trip on my own, perhaps following tips from Kainoa, or—the thought struck me suddenly—going via the military side with Michael.

Despite the bit of awkwardness at the end, my trip out with my uncle had been a success, I thought as I dropped him back off at his house with his sea urchins before returning to Kainani. As I put the three fish in the coldest part of the fridge and programmed the rice cooker to switch on at five, I thought about what I’d learned. There was more he had to say, I was sure, but I’d learned the virtues of patience at my father’s knee. The truth would come out in time. And now it was time to see Michael, so I could stop thinking about family business for a while. I changed my clothes, swept up the minivan keys, and left.

T
HE WAIKIKI YACHT
Club was situated on the fringe of Ala Moana Park, the beach known as Honolulu’s safest place for children to swim. I puttered along the parking driveway that edged the beach park, looking in vain for a spot large enough for my vehicle. As I drove, I couldn’t help noticing how many of the mothers holding children’s hands shot untrusting glances toward my Odyssey, as if the vehicle’s rust, dirt and pure ugliness indicated a thug was at the wheel.

I gave up on finding a parking spot near the water, and as I returned to Ala Moana Boulevard, I decided to leave the minivan in the large parking garage attached to the Ala Moana Center. I backed easily into a generous space near Macy’s, locked up and emerged from the shadowy garage into bright sun, and waited for the light to change so I could walk across the busy boulevard to the yacht club.

Entering the low white stucco building made me slightly anxious, as entering members-only places sometimes did. When I’d called Georgina back for more information on the timing of the boat’s arrival, I’d thought about asking her what I should wear, but decided against it for fear of being gauche. Now I wish I had. The halter back of my clingy orange and turquoise striped silk sundress, and my high-heeled turquoise-studded sandals seemed too feminine against the backdrop of club members wearing either polo shirts and shorts or bright cotton shift dresses. But that wasn’t the biggest difference between the club members and me; as Edwin would have said, it was a haole place. I was the only Asian, hapa or otherwise.

I walked around the pleasant, teak-ceilinged rooms decorated with hundreds of nautical flags, choosing to linger in the trophy room, where there were almost a century’s worth of cups, statues and plaques celebrating feats of sailing and surfing. I did a double take at a series of trophies engraved with the name of Duke Kahanamoku, the world’s fastest swimmer and most famous surfer during the first part of the twentieth century.

If Duke, who was indisputably Hawaiian, was a member of this club in the old days, that was a good sign. And then I saw another name that made my skin prickle: Pierce. Someone called Lindsay Pierce, a big handsome blond man photographed in 1968 holding a mammoth trophy. If Lindsay was in his thirties in 1968, the date of the picture, he’d have been too young to remember real-estate transactions taking place in the thirties. But the sight of him reminded me of how badly I wanted to talk to someone in the Pierce family. Now I’d found a connection.

I asked around until I was directed to Georgina Dobbs, the woman who’d telephoned me about the boat’s arrival. She turned out to be a graceful woman with a mahogany tan and helmet of silver hair. Her trim figure was flattered by her slim-fitting floral cotton sheath dress, just like the others but somehow more Hawaiian in appearance.

“Why, hello, Rei!” she said warmly when I greeted her. “Funny, I thought you’d be Japanese, because of your cousin who answered the phone—what good English he speaks!”

I eyed her more cautiously. “I’m half-Japanese.”

“Oh, hapa-haole, just like my grandkids. My daughter married a Hawaiian, so the children, good Lord, are they gorgeous! Now I’m so glad that you’re here, because the gal I’d been counting on to help me carry mai tais had to take the shuttle over to the Honolulu Yacht Club for some reason or other…”

“Any update of when
Four Guys on the Edge
is arriving?” I asked.

“Maybe an hour or two away. Can’t tell for sure, but don’t leave.” She smiled at me. “You could kill the time with a few drinks in the bar. Our mai tais are infamous.”

The characters in Juanita Sheridan novels were always sipping mai tais, but I couldn’t risk getting tipsy when I had to drive back to Kainani and serve dinner to nine people. “Maybe later. By the way, I noticed a picture in the trophy room—a man called Lindsay Pierce. Is he involved with Pierce Holdings?”

“Hmmm. Lindsay is the younger son, and he left fifteen or twenty years ago for California. As far as I know, he’s retired. Pierce Holdings isn’t actively run by the family anymore, just its corporate people.”

“Is there an older son?”

“Yes, Josiah Pierce, or JP Junior, as people used to call him in my parents’ day, when his father was still living. He retired back in the 1970s, but I believe he lives up on Tantalus at the old family house.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” I said. “There’s a little real-estate deal I’m looking into, with a Pierce connection. I’d love to talk to him directly.”

Georgina raised her eyebrows, as if measuring me in a new way. “Like I said, JP’s still in Tantalus, but I’m sure he’s unlisted. And…I really shouldn’t do this, but…there’s got to be an old club directory lying around somewhere.” She said a few words to the bartender, who produced one from under the counter.

“Let me mark this down for you,” Georgina said, writing on the back of a bill.

“Thank you.” I chatted a while longer with Georgina, and when she was called away to the telephone, I took advantage of the break to step outside of the building toward the water and tried the number she’d given me. It rang almost ten times, an unusual occurrence in a world now filled with answering machines, but at last an aged-sounding male voice answered.

“My name is Rei Shimura,” I said, after I’d ascertained I was speaking with Josiah Pierce the Second. “Actually, I’m a friend of a friend—Georgina Dobbs.”

“Oh, from the yacht club. You’re calling to try to get me to contribute to a fundraiser?” His voice sounded dismissive.

“No. I’m trying to put together an accurate historical record. I hope to interview you about something relating to the plantation.”

“You shouldn’t disturb me at home about that kind of thing. It’s all handled out of our offices in Kapolei.”

“I’m afraid the officers of Pierce Holdings may be too young to help me. They weren’t around sixty-some years ago.”

He paused. “Who did you say you were? And what’s your company—or is it a magazine?”

“My name is Rei Shimura,” I repeated. “And I’m actually just visiting from the mainland. I know it sounds forward, but I would very much like to talk to you, face to face.”

“Well, then.” He paused, as if making a decision. “Can you come to me?”

“I’d be very happy to do that.”

“How about tomorrow, say one o’clock?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“My house is close to the top of the road in the last stretch of houses before the parkland at the top.”

“Is there a number?”

“Yes, twenty-seven. But you’ll know it because of the roses.”

MORE THAN AN
hour passed, during which I consumed two virgin mai tais and kept consulting my watch, wondering how late I could get away with leaving Honolulu for the Leeward side. But my patience was rewarded as, finally, a ripple went through the yacht club’s bar.
Four Guys on the Edge
had passed Diamond Head and would be at the dock within a half-hour.

“You must be happy to see your friend,” Georgina said as we left the building and walked along the dock, where most of the slips were filled with yachts, large and small, that belonged to the local crowd. “And it looks like his boat will be finishing first in its class. Has that happened before?”

“He’s never sailed this race, although the man who owns the boat is pretty seasoned. But Michael said something about there being a staggered start, which would put the boat’s finishing rank into question still, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s right. The boats leaving Newport Beach don’t all depart at the same time; there are so many of them, it could cause accidents. Instead, the boats follow a staggered schedule, and we record their total elapsed time, and subtract or add their handicap. The goal is for all the boats to get here around the same time, so we can celebrate together at the awards dinner—you’ll be going, I assume?”

“I’m not sure. Hey, is that the boat coming in?”

“No, dear, that’s just the shuttle taking people back and forth between the yacht clubs. But out on the horizon, I think I see something.”

The speck of something dark in the water became larger, and indeed it was a sailboat—a handsome, sleek hull. Four men were aboard, busily rolling down sails and guiding the boat into place. They all wore navy-blue polo shirts and ball caps obstructing their bearded faces. Michael hadn’t had a beard before, so I was having trouble recognizing him. I bided my time, making guesses. Michael might have been the wiry man pulling down the front sail…or was he the one at the wheel?

Even after
Four Guys on the Edge
had docked, I couldn’t discern Michael from the others. Then I noticed that one of the men had a bit of silver hair showing from under a Naval Academy cap, and was waving frantically at me. We made eye contact, and my stomach made the funny little skip that it had been doing for the last few months.

“Welcome to Hawaii,” I called out to Michael, whose eyes were bluer than I remembered, set against the deep tan he’d developed. The sea life clearly had agreed with him, I thought as he took off his cap and ran his fingers through his closely cropped, salt-and-pepper hair. He was making no effort to disembark after the boat was tied up and, as if sensing my disappointment, Georgina explained that they couldn’t set foot on Hawaiian soil until the customs agent had thoroughly inspected the boat for contraband.

The crowd around us was growing—after all, these were the first to arrive in the fifty-foot class, which was worthy of a big celebration. Georgina and I handed up the drinks, and each man took one and also bent his head to receive a lei made of yellow and white flowers and kukui nuts, the fruit from Hawaii’s state tree. But when it was Michael’s turn to take the lei, his arms were suddenly around me and, before I realized it, I’d been pulled up the rigging and on to the boat.

“I missed you too much to wait a moment longer,” Michael said as he embraced me in a classic friendly hug, perfect for public observation. This close, I smelled something slightly astringent about him—the seawater, and something else.

“What am I smelling on you—cologne?” I teased as we separated.

“No. It’s joy.”

What a romantic. “I’m happy too, but I smell something—a kind of citrus aroma.”

“No, it’s Joy. You know, the dishwashing soap? We mix it with seawater to clean ourselves.” Michael laughed. “Speaking of cleaning up, I can’t wait to get off this boat and get a real shower, not to mention shave this thing off.” Michael rubbed at his chin.

“Sure,” I said rashly, since the family dinner was still two and a half hours away. “I’d be happy to drive all of you to the hotel.”

That opened the floodgates for me with his three crewmates, all of whom had been quietly watching and smiling. I could understand the interest: their good friend had been without female companionship for years, so the appearance of a real woman was a curiosity. Michael introduced me to the Afghanistan and Iraq returnee, Kurt Schaefer, a deeply tanned, muscular man with white-blond hair cut military-short like Michael’s, and green eyes that looked as if they’d seen too much. It was easier for me to connect with the softer-faced crew captain, Parker Drummond, who was a real-estate investor in Southern California. Finally, I met the fourth man in the group: Eric Levine, an engineer at Goddard Space Center, who had terrible-looking sunburn. He didn’t say more than a quick hello, because he was on his cell phone trying to help his wife, who was lost somewhere in Los Angeles trying to meet Parker’s wife, Karen, for the next flight to Honolulu.

The customs inspector arrived and Michael and Parker followed him as he went below deck looking for contraband. Kurt lounged on the side of the boat, giving interviews to sports reporters. When Michael emerged from the cabin a few minutes later, he steered me around to the side of the boat that wasn’t facing the harbor, so that we could talk.

“Don’t count on taking the guys back to the hotel; they already said they plan to stay around the yacht club for a few hours to get their land legs back,” Michael said. “Frankly, I think they don’t mind being showered with free drinks and adulation.”

“A little adulation is in order for the fastest finishers in your class.”

“We don’t know yet if we’re the fastest—and I don’t really care, to tell the truth.”

“Come on.”

“I’m just glad I did the race, and it got me out here, with you. I have to say, though, that I’m more than ready to be on land and get a full night’s sleep.”