Deep Purple (45 page)

Nick stood behind her as the first of the earthen clods was shoveled over her father’s casket. There were no attendants, only the two of them to mourn her father’s passing. A large wreath from Paul sat at the head of the open grave.

Head bowed, she prayed silently that her father had found his rest, that he had found her mother.

“Let’s go home, Mandy,” Nick said, his hands cupping her shoulders from behind.

“
Home?” she whispered. She turned around to face him. “I have no home!”

He looked into her eyes, as if trying to gauge the grief that suddenly unleashed her angry words. “
Your home is with me, Mandy,” he said in a gentle voice which he had never used before.

“
As your mistress?” she sneered.

“
It cannot be any other way.” He sighed. “We’ve been through this before. I will not divorce Danielle.”

She shrugged. “
It would make no difference if you did,” she lashed out, hurt. “I would never marry you!”

“
Did I ever say I would ask you?” he said, propelling her toward the limousine.

“
No,” she replied, tired now, her grief a dull ache in her heart and mind. “You never promised me anything.”

“
Mandy,” he said, taking her cold hands between his. “I once promised your father I would take care of you. And I will, if you’ll let me.”

Never once had he mentioned any words of love. She pulled her hands away. “
It doesn’t matter. There is no reason for me to stay. My father is dead.”

“
And where will you go? Do you think I’d let you leave so easily? I have only to make one call and the FBI would arrest you.”

She turned on him. “
Then make the call. I’ll go back to Poston before I become your mistress!”

He stood before her, the flaps of his jacket pulled back, his hands jammed in his pants
pockets. “It’s the Stronghold, isn’t it?”

“
The Stronghold is as important to me as your career is to you, Nick Godwin!”

His gaze burned over her face. “
You’re free to leave at any time!” he said and turned to enter the limousine.

The chauffeur dropped him
off at the capitol. When Nick disappeared up the marbled building’s steep flight of steps, she told the chauffeur, “Take me to the train depot, please.”

He looked in the rear-view mirror with startled eyes. “
Er— your luggage, Miss Shima?”

“
There is none.” There was so little that was actually hers at the ranch that it would make no difference. There was Trouble, but until she could find a place to stay, until she could take care of herself . . . yes, the mongrel would be better off with Nick. Still, after the loss of her father, giving up Trouble again was pain that actually twisted like a blade in her heart.

CHAPTER 59

A
manda had hoped to find memories of her father in Tucson. But she was wrong. After the brief hour train trip, she caught a taxi to their old house in the
Barrio Libre
only to find it boarded up—confiscated by the Federal Bank.

She felt that she was worse off than when she had been incarcerated at
Poston, for at least there she had had a roof over her head and food. And a job.

A job.

She went to the nearest restaurant, the Cushing Street Diner, bought a newspaper, and sat down with a cup of tea to look for jobs. The new Goodyear Aircraft plant at Litchfield Park outside Phoenix was advertising for women to work as riveters on the Navy plant assemblies. And the Civil Service advertised it was hiring personnel for the newly expanded Army base at Fort Huachuca. But she had no references, and she was Japanese.

An utter gloom descended on her. She drank the remainder of her tea, barely tasting it, barely seeing the newsprint before her . . . until the sentence “
Judge Craymore to Preside at Elks Banquet” jumped out at her.

Why not? Why not have a judge swea
r her in? Unless Nick reported her to the FBI there was nothing to keep her from practicing law . . . unless she counted the money it would take to set up an office, to establish a practice.

She set her empty cup down with renewed determination. There was
much to be done. First, a trip to the Pima County Courthouse.

Judge Craymore
’s secretary told Amanda the judge was still in court but should be through within the hour. Amanda took a seat in one of the wooden chairs. Every few moments she shifted uncomfortably. What if the judge refused to swear her in? Worse, what if Nick had already alerted the FBI?

Some time later, a small man in black robes swished through the outer office, and the stern-looking secretary grabbed up her pad and pencil and followed him i
nside the inner office. After a few minutes, she reappeared. "Judge Craymore will see you now, Miss Shima.”

The old man was shrugging into his suit coat when the secretary ushered her in. “
Miss Hoeffler tells me you wish me to administer the formal ceremony of admission to the bar. You have all your necessary requirements and certificates?”

“
No, your honor. My Bachelor of Law certificate is—packed away. And I was not required to take the state bar exam. But Mr. Browne, the counselor at the university, can bear witness for me.”

“
I see,” Judge Craymore said, rubbing his chin as he looked at her thoughtfully. Could she blame him for not believing her? “Shima . . . is that a Japanese surname?”

Dear God, would it all begin again? "Yes, your honor. For the past ye
ar I have been in a war relocation camp. That’s why I’ve been unable to take the oath of attorney. But I have recently been released on sponsorship.”

She stood straight now before his desk, bracing herself for another refusal. The judge leaned back in the
large leather-upholstered chair. "You've got grit, young woman.

Was that a negative or positive statement? The palms of her hands turned clammy. The judge leaned forward now and picked up the telephone. “
Get me the dean at the university,” he told his secretary.

“
Have a seat. Miss Shima," he said, replacing the receiver. “I hope I’ll have the confirmation within a minute.”

Even the minute seemed like an hour, and she jumped when the telephone shrilled through the office. “
John!” the judge said heartily. "Glad to talk to you! Need you to verify a Miss Amanda Shima’s law credentials for me.”

She closed her eyes, her heart barely beating as she held her breath in suspense. The judge cradled the receiver. “
Raise your right hand and repeat after me. Miss Shima."

Her hand slipped up. She could not quite believe it was really happening to her after all these years. “
I, Amanda Shima, do solemnly swear:

“
I am a citizen of the United States, and owe my allegiance thereto; I will support the Constitution of the United States and of the state of Arizona; I will maintain the respect due the courts of justice and judicial officers; I . . .”

There was more, but she could not remember it all as she left the county courthouse in a daze. With her swearing-in her bitterness at t
he War Relocation Authority fell behind her. There had been too many people who had helped her to let what happened at Santa Anita and Poston stand in her way . . . Mr. Browne, Larry, Kathy, and now the judge.

She stood at the corner of Pennington and Chur
ch streets, where once had risen the adobe wall that fortified the Old Pueblo, and tried to think what next. She was an attorney now . . . without an office.

And that was next. She took a bus to her old bank and asked to see a loan officer. The balding man
looked askance when she informed him she wanted to borrow some money. "I’m sorry, Miss Shima, but certainly you must realize that we cannot just hand out money without some sort of collateral.”

She smiled sweetly. “
How about the two hundred and thirty-seven dollars of mine which your bank has frozen and the household furniture and the laundry equipment the federal government has stored in a warehouse?”

The loan officer gulped. “
Well, you see . . . uh, governmental policy forbids us to touch any such—confiscations—until the orders are listed.”

He was as uncomfortable as she was frustrated. “
But that is my money! And my belongings!”

But, of course, the man was right. She might as well be jobless, for all the good her admission to the bar did her. She rose from the chair, defeated. “
I am sorry. Miss Shima,” the man said to her bowed head. “If only you had some other collateral or someone willing to co-sign the note with you.”

She looked up. “
But I do,” she said slowly, as the idea occurred to her. “Will the President’s economic adviser do as a cosigner?”

“
The President of the United States?” the loan officer croaked. She had to smile. “His economic adviser, Paul Godwin.”

The loan officer cleared his throat. “
Can you be reached by telephone? It may take some time to get through to Washington.” She gave him the name of the Parkview Hotel, which had at one time been an opera house. It was near the courthouse, and she figured that since it was an older hotel, the cost of a room would not take too much from the twenty-four dollars she had remaining in her purse.

All night long she kept waking, expecting to see Nick hunched over her, expecting
to hear an FBI agent knocking at her door. It was the longest night she could remember.

The next morning she stepped out of the shower to find the telephone ringing. Grabbing up a towel, she ran across the room, afraid it would stop before she picked up th
e receiver. “Miss Shima?” It was the loan officer.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “
Yes?”

“
Your loan has been approved,” he said, his voice awed and respectful. “We can have a check waiting for you whenever you’re ready.”

Amanda found a small,
narrow office in an adobe structure on Court Street next to the old IXL Lodging House. In the 1880s the lodging place housed many business and professional people, especially attorneys, but now it wore a rather run-down appearance. Still, the single-windowed office she leased was inexpensive and was partitioned off so that she could put a cot and a two-burner hot plate in the rear, which would serve as her domicile until she could build up her practice.

She was able to purchase a desk and an old bookcase fr
om a car dealer who was going out of business. In the bookcase she installed her reference volumes, the
Corpus Juris Secundum, American Jurisprudence
, and the American Law Reports. She was ready to begin practice—but had no clients.

Not true. There was Bet
ty Yasaki, whom she had promised to represent in a suit challenging the War Relocation Authority. Knotting her long, heavy hair at her nape and donning the one suit she had, the blue serge one, Amanda set out on her first day of practice for the courthouse, feeling slightly elated.

It had taken twenty-five years of her life, but she had finally become an attorney. She only wished her father had lived to see the signman hang out her shingle before her office.

A. SHIMA

Attorney-at-Law

But what she wanted most to complete her happiness, the Stronghold, she did not have. And, familiar as she was now with the law, she dismally accepted the fact that her chances of ever taking her case to court and winning were nil.

At the courthouse she filed the writ of habeas c
orpus on Betty’s behalf and filled out all the many legal forms that had to be signed. While she was there a blustering old man in overalls stormed in to protest the citation he had received for double-parking his produce truck.

“
I would be glad to represent you in court,” she told him.

The old man removed his battered straw hat. "You a lawyer?”
he asked, his skepticism showing in his squinched eyes and jutting, gray-stubbled chin.

“
Yes, I am."

He shifted his quid of tobacco. “
A lawyer woman don’t know how—”

“
I shall easily win your case for you,” she coolly pointed out, “because the city will erroneously feel that no preparation will be necessary against a female attorney.”

The fanner
’s jaws halted their chawing. His squinty eyes ran over her as if she were an old mule he was about to purchase. “All right, gal.”

Since she had no other clients, she spent every waking hour poring over her casebooks that next week. Her days took on a reassuring routine. She rose at seven, coffee heated on the two-burner hot pla
te, a sponge bath from the small porcelain sink; then, at eight, she opened the outer office and sat at her desk, studying until noon, when she broke for a sandwich and usually a stroll through Tucson’s old streets. The evenings were the loneliest for her. She read until her eyes hurt and her brain was numb. Yet sleep was forever in coming as she tossed on the narrow, uncomfortable cot.

She won the case for the farmer on a minor technicality
—the officer who had issued the citation had listed the farmer’s commercial truck as only a pick-up. But from that one case she received two more—the fanner's sister-in-law, who wanted a divorce, and the parents of a student athlete injured in a football game, who wanted to sue the school district for damages.

She was bus
ier now, and she liked it that way. She had no spare time to think. She fell asleep at night, exhausted. Her routine was broken as she went into her second month of practice by a telephone call. “Amanda?” It was Paul! “How is your practice going?”

“
Fi—fine,” she stuttered. “Thanks to you. Where are you calling from?”

“
Washington. I’ve been wanting to call sooner, but as usual the President has had me on the run.”

“
Paul, I can’t thank you enough for cosigning the note. I promise—”

“
Amanda—it was a purely selfish reason on my part.” He hesitated, then said, “There was another reason I didn’t call sooner. When you were at Poston, I wanted to arrange your release, but Nick let me know he had staked his claim. I’ve been waiting to see if it was really over between you two.”

“
There never was anything between us,” she said flatly.

“
Amanda . . . I’ve got a weekend off coming up. Will you be free? I’d like to see you.”

“
That would be wonderful, Paul.”

After she replaced the receiver, she sat looking at the telepho
ne, trying to sort out what lay behind Paul’s call. Could it be possible that Paul Godwin was interested in her?

She dressed carefully, for Paul had said he wanted to take her out to eat. She wore the same blue serge suit but softened it with a pale-blue f
rothy blouse she purchased out of her first wages as an attorney. And rather than knotting her hair, she let it hang sleekly, framing her face in a very feminine style.

When the doorbell rang, her stomach dropped in nervousness. She opened the door. Paul s
tood there, tall and striking, with that dignified manner he had about him. She held out both hands to clasp his. “Paul,” she said warmly. He had always been kind to her.

He took her hands and pulled her to him, kissing first her forehead, then her lips, s
oftly, gently. The kiss left her stunned. Paul wasn’t a big brother. He was a man. He put her from him. “You’re beautiful, Amanda.”

She smiled, suddenly shy.

“Once, Nick told me that in you was refined the best of the American and Oriental characteristics – the tremendous combination of Western drive and daring and Eastern spirituality.”

Instantly, she was suspicious of what Nick
’s motives had been. “I don’t want to hear about me. It’s not often a commoner gets to talk with someone of the hierarchy. I want to hear what Eleanor wears to bed and if FDR truly has a mistress, and—”