Inside the shops, the umbrella makers cut bamboo handles, glued paper to spokes, and painted designs. Customers haggled with clerks and departed carrying portable shade to protect themselves from the afternoon sun that rained heat upon the city. Sano and a squadron of detectives left their horses outside the neighborhood gate. They walked up Umbrella-maker’s Street, jostling past an itinerant tea seller. Sano stopped a boy who toted a load of bamboo poles and asked, “Where can I find Yuka?” The boy pointed down the block. Sano looked, and saw what he at first thought was a little girl wielding a straw broom, sweeping debris out of a shop. He led his men toward her, and closer appraisal showed her to be a diminutive woman, dressed in a faded indigo robe and white head kerchief. When Sano called her name, she stopped sweeping and lifted a round, pleasant face to him. Brown spots and faint wrinkles on its tanned skin marked her age at some thirty-five years. Sano observed that she seemed in good health, and certainly not on her deathbed, as her daughter, Mariko, had told Madam Chizuru.
