“No, sir. I would think you know a good cookie when you taste one, that’s all.”
My reply seemed to confuse him. He was silent for a moment before he asked, “Are you entirely alone, Jonah Kirk?”
“Yes, sir. Mom’s gone to Slinky’s and I’m supposed to go down to Mrs. Lorenzo’s instead of her coming up here.”
“I have something important for you, Jonah Kirk. Very important. May I bring it down momentarily?”
“Sure.”
“There are unwholesome forces at work in this building. We must at all times be most discreet. I will not ring your bell. I will not knock. You will be waiting for me. Yes?”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“If I encounter wickedness on my way to you, I will retreat to my rooms and phone you to discuss another time to meet.”
“Wickedness?” I said.
“Wickedness, Jonah Kirk. Great wick
edness.”
30
I waited at the front door of the apartment, which I’d unlocked and opened just a crack. Peering through the gap, waiting for my co-conspirator, I was taken by surprise when suddenly he appeared from my left, having come down the back stairs instead of the front, as quiet as a cat.
Mr. Yoshioka smiled at me through the gap, and I let him into the apartment. He was carrying a brown-paper shopping bag with cord handles, which he put down next to the door as I closed it.
“How are you this afternoon, Jonah Kirk?”
“Kind of scared, I guess.”
“Scared? Frightened? Of what?”
“Whatever great wickedness you’re going to tell me about.”
“You already know the great wickedness. It is Miss Eve Adams.”
Something about the tailor was different. Although this was a holiday, he still wore a suit and tie, but in spite of all his talk of wickedness, he seemed more relaxed than usual.
“You also said there were ‘unwholesome forces at work in this building.’ ”
“That again is a reference to Miss Eve Adams and to those who are in league with her.”
“Who’s in league with her?”
“Different people come and go. I hear their footsteps overhead, muffled voices, but I never see them.”
“Has she been in your apartment again?”
He looked as solemn as if he were at a funeral. “Yes. She left another photograph.”
“Of the second tiger screen, of the court lady carved in ivory?”
“It is not a Polaroid. It is instead a page torn from a book, a photograph of Manzanar.”
I remembered from our conversation over tea. “One of the places you lived in California.”
“A photograph of the gates to the place where I lived.”