"You have a shooter?" Johnny Lee asked.
"No, sir." The sergeant knew Montoya for another hard-ass.
He'd let the chain of command bump heads.
"What are you doing here?" Benny asked Johnny Lee.
"Same as you, celebrating Fiesta with my kids," Johnny told him. He smiled. "Aurora was terrific."
Benny nodded. He looked at the sergeant. "Anything?"
"We're trying to canvass witnesses, and we're looking for a throw-down," the sergeant said. He meant a discarded weapon.
"It's not our jurisdiction, Benny," Johnny Lee said to him.
"Anywhere my girls are at risk is my jurisdiction," Benny said. He looked at the sergeant again. "All due respect, but I could use a word with the investigating officers."
"No problem, Sheriff," the sergeant said, only too happy to hand this one off. "Homicide dicks are on the way."
"ID on the victim?" Benny asked.
The sergeant shook his head.
Benny knelt down. The dead man was an elderly Japanese.
Three in the chest, DOA when he hit the ground. He was wearing an old suit, much repaired. His hat was a few feet away. Benny stood up. "Your crime scene," he said to the Santa Fe cop.
As if he were doing the guy a favor. No such luck.
Dean Norris didn't like Benny Salvador stepping on his toes. And he didn't much care for the state police presence either. Johnny Lee Montoya had pull with the governor's office. But it was a Santa Fe PD homicide case, and Benny was Rio Arriba, out in the sticks. He could show an interest, but he had no real reason to be involved. Neither did Montoya. Lieutenant Norris made every effort to make this clear, short of telling them they could butt out.
They were in the detective bullpen on the second floor of police headquarters, in the municipal building. It was Saturday morning, the day after the burning of Zozobra.
"Not a lot I can tell you," the homicide commander said. "We don't have much more than we had last night. It was a big crowd, it was dark, everybody was watching the show, and none of them saw the shooting."
"Anything we can do to help," Montoya said.
"I appreciate that," Norris told him.
"You identify the victim?" Benny asked.
"His family did. Takeshi Minamoto, age seventy-three. Guy was a peach farmer, on the Embudo, your neck of the woods."
"What was he doing down in Santa Fe?"
Norris shrugged. "Looking for the party," he said.
"Was he by himself?" Benny asked.
"Far as we know. His daughter tells us he got in his truck yesterday afternoon and drove off."
"Okay," Benny said. "Keep us posted. We turn anything up, we'll let you know."
"Good enough," the homicide dick said. He didn't want to give Rio Arriba or the states a marker, but it had gone unspoken that a murder is solved in the first seventy-two hours, or the trail goes cold. If the sheriff came up with anything workable, it was all to the good.
Benny and Johnny Lee went down to the street.
"Something on your mind?" Johnny Lee asked.
"The cop upstairs thinks we're looking for credit on his arrest, if he makes one," Benny said. "You looking for points?"
"I'm not as hungry as I used to be."
"I don't fault him for ambition," Benny said. "If the guy wants to get ahead, more power to him."
"You just don't want it to get in the way."
Benny nodded. "We'll take what comes," he said.
"What else?" Johnny Lee asked him.
"Japanese are generally close, in terms of family."
"Just like Norteños," Johnny Lee said.
"The old guy gets in his truck and drives away, and doesn't tell his daughter anything. That's uncharacteristic."
"Unless he's keeping something from her."
"What's the big thing about Fiesta?" "Tradition," Johnny Lee said.
Benny shook his head. "Crowds," he said.
"I see where you're going. If the old man wants to meet somebody, and he wants to keep it a secret, he comes to Fiesta. Who notices, all the people in the streets?"
"Question is, who did he want to meet with?" Benny asked.
Twenty miles upriver from Española there was a cluster of small towns, Velarde, Dixon, Peñasco, along the banks of the Embudo, a tributary of the Rio Grande. It was orchard country, and an acequia system kept the farmland well watered. Peaches, apples, pears, and apricots, grapevines and lavender, piñon and pecans.
First cultivated by the Pueblo, then settled by the Spanish; the Minamoto family were relative latecomers.
Three generations, Emily Minamoto told Benny. They were walking under the peach trees, heavy with fruit, ready for their second harvest of the season.
Benny was only a kitchen gardener, himself, but he could appreciate Emily's connection to the earth. There was something gravitational about it.
"Did your father emigrate from Japan?" Benny asked.
"No, he was born here."
Nisei, she meant, second-generation. Emily herself was Sansei, or third-generation, pretty much assimilated, which her English name suggested.
"It didn't keep us out of internment," she said.
Benny had known this was coming from the beginning. Out of courtesy, he'd waited for her to bring it up.
"I was in eighth grade," Emily said.
Fourteen, he thought. Angelina's age.
"They let us bring one suitcase apiece."
American citizens, behind barbed wire, armed guards on the perimeter.
"My father still practiced Shinto," she said, smiling. "I was educated by the nuns, so I was a Catholic."
The camp had been located at the western edge of the Santa Fe city limits, on a hillside overlooking what later became a national cemetery, where many veterans of the Pacific war were buried, some of them survivors of the Bataan Death March. Benny was aware of the ironies.
"It wasn't easy, but it was livable," Emily said. "My brother told me they got to play softball, listen to the World Series on the radio. Then he enlisted in the Nisei brigade. He was killed at Monte Cassino."
It was the most decorated unit in U.S. military history.
They'd been awarded more Purple Hearts than any other outfit in Europe. The 442nd had fought in Italy, and into France. They had something to prove, so the conventional wisdom went.
"You know what's hard," she said. "It's hard to come back and pick up the pieces. My father was Japanese, culturally, but I thought of myself as an American."
"I can't repair the damage," Benny said.
"I'm not asking you to," Emily said. "I'm wondering why we went through all of this, and then my father gets shot."
"I'm wondering the same thing," Benny said.
"Is it racial bias?"
"Possibly."
"In other words, you don't know."
"What was he doing in Santa Fe?" Benny asked.
"He didn't tell me," Emily said.
"That makes two of us," Benny said.
Benny hadn't gone to war, but the war had come to New Mexico.
The secret city up at Los Alamos, the Japanese relocation camps, the Navajo Code Talkers. Much of it under wraps, still.
"We're boxing with shadows," he said to Johnny Lee Montoya.
"The War Department won't give anything up."
"When did they ever? I thought you had an in with Groves." He meant the guy who'd spearheaded the Manhattan Project.
"Groves is a lieutenant general these days. He walks with the gods. Mere mortals are beneath his notice."
"So we've got no chips we can call in?"
Benny mulled it over. "What about the FBI?" he asked.
Johnny Lee had had a prickly relationship with the Bureau during the war. They were security-conscious, jealous of their prerogatives, and dismissive of local "hick" law.
"I was thinking maybe Gideon Horace," Benny said.
Johnny Lee sucked on his teeth. "Maybe yes, maybe no," he said. "But worth a shot, anywa
y." Horace had been with the Albuquerque office. Not the senior man, the AIC, but not the lowest-ranking guy either. Montoya thought he was even halfway human, an exception to the culture of mental constipation that generally characterized the Feds. "I heard he's been reassigned to the Big Rez, up in Farmington."
"Give him a call?"
"Sure," Johnny Lee said. "What are you going to be doing?"
"I'll try the back door," Benny said.
The so-called relocation camps had been run by INS, with staff recruited locally. Benny thought it would be easy enough to track down some guys who'd worked the guard duty at the Santa Fe camp. He went over to the VFW on Montezuma.
"Yeah, my brother Oscar, matter of fact," Fidelio Ramirez told him. Fidelio was working the stick, and offered Benny a beer. Benny hesitated, and then said yes. Fidelio drew him a long frosty. "He was kind of, what's the word? Chagrined, when the Army turned him down in 'forty-two. Couldn't pass the eye exam."
"You active duty, yourself?" Benny asked.
"National Guard, the Philippines," Fidelio said. "You know what I'm saying?"
Benny nodded. Fidelio had survived the Death March.
"We were stationed at Clark Field. Anti-aircraft was outgunned by the Zeroes. They hit the B-17's right on the deck. We faded into the jungle, and MacArthur, that windbag, got on a PT boat and beat it for Australia." Fidelio shook his head. "We held out until April. Dysentery, malaria. The drizzly shits and no quinine. The worst with the watery bowels, see, it ain't the squirts so much, it's how it makes your skin raw, the inside of your legs. Then you try walking seventy-five miles."
Five thousand men died because they couldn't keep up, shot or bayoneted, disemboweled, beaten to death.
"I was at a hundred and seventy-two pounds when I enlisted. I weighed ninety pounds when I was liberated," Fidelio said.
How much had he aged? Benny wondered. Three years as a POW translated in physical terms to ten or twelve, he'd heard. So if Fidelio were thirty, he actually looked forty. He'd given up ten years of his life in the Philippines.
"We figured we were dead meat. After we surrendered, the Japanese thought we'd dishonored ourselves. They didn't respect us as soldiers."
"How'd you feel about them?" Benny asked him.
"How do you think I felt? I hated their guts."
"What about the Japanese who were interned stateside?"
"Apples and oranges," Fidelio said. "Those people weren't Japs, they were Americans. Not to mention that a bunch of their kids died fighting for this country."
Benny didn't know if everybody was as forgiving as Fidelio.
"Your brother Oscar think the same?"
Fidelio shrugged. "Ask him," he said.
"All right," Benny said.
"See, the news stories about Bataan didn't start coming out until later, because of wartime censorship, but I see where you're going with this. You want to know if there were any hard feelings. Were people in the camps mistreated?"
If their treatment wasn't inhumane, it was still demeaning. They lost their possessions, they were separated from their families, they were herded together into tarpaper shacks. Maybe he was fishing in the wrong pond, but Benny was still fishing.
"Thing is, there were casualties after the fact too," Fidelio told him. "Three-and-a-half years on rice and rat meat, it takes a toll. Some guys got home, they died the first year back. They never recovered. And their families see what it did to them? Yeah. somebody might hold a grudge."
Or want to make it look that way, Benny thought.
New Mexico boys had taken a disproportionately high hit. There were a lot of names on war memorials, some commissioned by the state, others put up with private contributions in smaller towns like Truchas and Alcalde.
Oscar Ramirez lived in Truchas, between Española and Taos, but he worked at Los Alamos, the Hilltop, local people called it, or simpler still, the Labs. The place had outgrown itself twice over from its early start in '43, when it was known as Site Y, and security had been so tight it didn't exist on paper.
These days, instead of Quonset huts and barbed wire, it was closer to becoming an actual town, with public schools and paved roads and open access. Many areas were still, of course, highly restricted, and the military presence was significant, but Benny met Oscar in an ordinary coffee shop.
"What do you do here?" Benny asked him.
"Maintenance," Oscar said.
Well, that covered a multitude of sins. Benny knew better than to inquire further. Even a janitor had a clearance, on the Hilltop. You mopped up secrets.
"I talked to your brother Fidelio, down in Santa Fe," Benny said. "He bought me a beer at the VFW."
Oscar nodded. He wore Coke-bottle glasses and a wary look.
"You were a guard at the internment camp during the war."
Oscar nodded again, but was obviously puzzled.
"I wanted to get a handle on what it was like, the internal dynamic," Benny said.
"The who?" Oscar asked.
"How it was, who did what, the general climate. Was there any prejudice, was there any sympathy? What was the demeanor of the Japanese? Were they resentful?"
"They played a lot of softball," Oscar Ramirez told him.
Which is what Emily Minamoto had said. "They any good?" he asked.
"Yeah, they were real good. They could hit it over the fence. We'd go pick up the ball and toss it back to them. They only had the use of one."
"So your relationship was friendly, more or less?"
"Why not? They were mostly teenagers, and old farts."
"What about their families?"
"What families?" Oscar shook his head. "The camp in Santa Fe was segregated. Men only."
"What happened to the women and kids?"
"No idea," Oscar said.
Benny digested this. Emily hadn't told him she'd been sent somewhere else. "Tell me about the Nisei brigade," he said.
"Army recruiters came in. Anybody who was draft age jumped at the chance, same as I would have."
"Bother you?"
"Bother me, why?"
"You were Four-F, poor eyesight. They fought in your place, a bunch of Japs."
"You trying to piss me off?"
"I appreciate what happened to your brother."
"You don't have a clue," Oscar said. He stood up.
"You know a guy named Takeshi Minamoto?" Benny asked.
"Tashi? Sure," Oscar said. "He's a fruit farmer. Me and some of the other kids, we used to help him with the peach harvest, we were fifteen, sixteen years old. Hard money, but we worked for it."
"He was in the camp."
"What are you getting at? They said he was an enemy alien, which is baloney. He broke his ass, dawn to dusk."
"He got shot dead in Santa Fe the night before last."
"What?"
"I want to find out if it's racially motivated."
"And you're coming to me?"
Benny was beyond embarrassment. "Give me something, Oscar. So far, I've got nothing."
"I told you, there's nothing to get."
"I don't buy it," Benny said. "If you and your brother harbor no ill will toward the Japanese, you must be the only two guys this side of Tokyo."
"Get lost," Oscar said, and walked away.
The MPs stopped him on his way out of town and escorted him to the provost marshal's office.
"What's your business here, Sheriff?" the major asked him.
"It's not Army business," Benny said. "All due respect."
"With all due respect, that's my decision," the major said. "I'm responsible for security on this installation."
Benny thought about whether to play it hard or easy. "Take me into custody, you feel you've got the authority," he said.
"Let's not be hasty," another voice drawled.
The soldiers jumped to attention, and Benny turned. It was Groves, in the flesh, in uniform, all three stars.
"You're like the clap, Benny, you're hard to get rid of, but I'm i
n your debt," the general said. "Care to tell me how I can help?"
"It's not a security question," Benny said.
"Even better," Groves said.
They stepped outside, onto the porch. The afternoon was clear and hot, the sky cloudless, the air still and dry. Benny rolled a smoke. The post CQ was just across the street from Fuller Lodge and what had once been known as Bathtub Row, where the senior Manhattan Project scientists and their families, like Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty, had been quartered.
"Have you thought about the consequences?" Benny asked.
"You mean bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki?" Groves shook his head. "It ended the war. You know what kind of casualties we would have taken if we'd had to invade the Home Islands? The Japanese would have fought to the last man, woman, and child."
The estimate, Benny had heard, was that the U.S. would have suffered a million dead.
"You know, the object was to beat Hitler to the bomb," the general told him. "More than a few of the men who worked here were German refugee Jews. They understood it was a real danger. But after Germany surrendered, the air went out of their tires, and some of them, Oppenheimer included, didn't think there was a practical use for the weapon."
"Obviously, you disagreed."
Groves gave him a level look. "I hope you're not going all gooey on me, Sheriff," he said.
"No, the Japanese had to be beaten, one way or another."
"What are you doing here, Benny?" Groves asked.
Benny told him about the murder victim, Tashi Minamoto, and the Ramirez brothers.
"You think it goes back to the Jap relocation camps?"
"My guess. Bad blood."
"They got a raw deal."
"Why weren't Germans and Italians interned?"
"You're being naive," Groves said.
"Okay, it was about the Yellow Peril," Benny said.
"There was a war on," Groves reminded him.
"The war's over."
"Maybe not for everybody," Groves said.
"That's my point," Benny said.
"I understood you the first time."
"What are you doing here, General?" Benny asked.
"Taking a victory lap," Groves said.
"You deserve it."
"I do," Groves said, with a wry smile. "But the plain fact is, I've made a lot of enemies. I'm resigning from the Army."
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 12/01/12 Page 14
