The Book of the Flame

by Carrie Asai

  “I’m going!” Hiro sped though the streets of L.A., heading up into the Hollywood Hills. I braced my hands against the dashboard and prayed that whatever happened, we wouldn’t hit too hard. Hiro veered off on side streets, taking the most circuitous path he could as the car climbed higher and higher up into the quiet streets of the Hills. We couldn’t shake the SUV. With a jolt we spun onto Mulholland Drive, and soon we were taking the curvy twists at over seventy miles per hour. I squeezed my eyes shut.

  “Hiro, stop it!” I said, my voice trembling. “This is too dangerous!” I peeked out my window and a wave of nausea passed over me as I saw how high up we were. “We’re going to kill somebody if we don’t die first!”

  As if in answer to what I’d just said, I hear a loud screech and then a sickening crash from behind us. The SUV was driving in the wrong lane, and it had just forced a car into the wall of the canyon. At least it hadn’t gone over the edge. I couldn’t tell how bad the crash was because soon we’d cleared another bend and were climbing again.

  “It’ll be worse down in the city,” Hiro yelled, both hands gripping the wheel, his face contorted with the effort of keeping control of the BMW. “Rush hour traffic’s starting up.”

  “Please, Hiro,” I pleaded.

  Hiro didn’t respond, but after a second he jammed the steering wheel to the left and peeled out into a turnaround. I held my breath as he inched the BMW into a ditch. With all the scrub, it was hard to tell where the road ended and the cliff began. I had to trust him.

  The SUV sped past. After a minute Hiro backed the BMW out, and soon we were hurtling down into the city.

  “I think we lost them,” Hiro said after a few minutes. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the cool morning air whipping my hair around. “To Vegas, then?” Hiro said.

  I nodded. I really didn’t want to go back there, but it seemed like the best place to start.

  “Heaven,” Hiro began tentatively, “I want you to know that it was your heightened perception that saved us back there.”

  “That’s a laugh,” I said bitterly. “If I’d known what I was doing, we’d never have agreed to crash with Cheryl.” I shook my head. “And that whole story about her parents? I totally bought it!”

  “No—think about how amazing it is that you felt something in your sleep that you couldn’t deny—that’s what made you get up and check things out downstairs. If you hadn’t”—Hiro exhaled slowly—“they could have killed us in our sleep.”

  “You would have woken up,” I mumbled. It used to be that nothing made me as happy as a word of praise from Hiro. He was a strict trainer, and he rarely made much of small successes. But today his encouragement left me feeling flat. If my perception was so great, then why hadn’t I picked up on Cheryl’s deviousness from the moment I saw her at the diner? Or rather, why hadn’t I listened to what my sixth sense had been trying to tell me all along? I’d just stupidly ignored the signs—the flashy car, the luxury pad, the strange way she was behaving. My skills must have been pretty shabby if they couldn’t keep me from walking into a trap like that.

  I looked over at Hiro, whose hands had finally relaxed on the wheel. He adjusted his mirror. And what about Hiro’s dirty little secret? whispered a nagging voice in my head. Shouldn’t you have figured that one out for yourself, too? It seemed like my perception wasn’t very good at clueing me into things it knew I wouldn’t want to believe.

  “They’re back!” Hiro yelled, breaking my reverie. I looked over my shoulder just in time to see the SUV bounding off a side street and skidding out behind us. It was so close, I could see the driver. He was Japanese, that much I knew, but I didn’t recognize him. Hiro floored the gas.

  We barreled down West Sunset, pushing our way toward Chinatown and the freeway. A blur of traffic zipped by us as Hiro ignored the stoplights and just kept on going. We had to get to the freeway.

  Suddenly—sirens.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Hiro yelled as the police cruisers joined the chase.

  “Go, go, go!” I yelled, finding it funny, even in the middle of such a terrible moment, that Hiro had allowed himself to swear—that was a first. But it wasn’t funny for long. “There!” I shouted. The freeway entrance was just ahead. Hiro pushed the car to eighty-five, ninety, ninety-five miles an hour. He crossed two lanes of traffic and we were flying onto the ramp. And then…

  Three cruisers pulled out in front of us, sirens wailing, blocking the entrance. Hiro slammed his foot on the brake, and my body lunged forward against the seat belt as the BMW spun around and ground to a halt. A fire bolt of pain coursed through my chest as the seat belt tightened across the same strip of chest torn up by yesterday’s accident. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through the hurt. Tears seeped out from under my eyelids.

  Hiro clicked off his seat belt and put his arms around me. “Are you okay? What is it?” He put his hand on my face.

  “Fine,” I gasped. “It’s just the seat belt.” I loosened it, sighing with release as the pain ebbed. “What happened to the SUV?” I murmured.

  Hiro looked around. “Gone—they must have slipped away.”

  “Out of the car!” a disembodied voice boomed. The cops were screaming at us through a bullhorn. They’d exited their cruisers and were pointing their guns straight at us.

  “I’m tired of running,” I whispered, looking at Hiro. I’d never thought giving up would feel so good. But there was nowhere left to run to. I knew that now.

  “Get out of the car with your hands up!” thundered the voice.

  “We’d better get out,” Hiro said.

  I unlocked my door and stepped out of the BMW, hands raised above my head. Hiro did the same. Instantly the cops moved in and hurled us against the car’s hood. Hiro and I looked into each other’s eyes as they frisked us, then twisted our arms behind our backs and cuffed our hands.

  “Is that your car?” the cop asked as she led me away. I ignored her, staring instead at Hiro, who was being led in another direction. I wondered how he’d feel if he knew I was ready to spill it all. The whole story.

  “I said, is that your car?”

  I wondered how it would feel being separated from him. I could tell he was trying to catch a glimpse of me, but the cops kept him moving forward.

  The cop’s hand tightened around my upper arm. “Listen, missy—”

  “No,” I said dreamily, “it’s not mine.”

  The police shoved Hiro into the back of the cruiser. I slowed my steps, and the lady cop barked, “Get your ass moving!”

  I watched the cruiser carrying Hiro pull away. His face appeared in the rear window, and as I watched, he mouthed the words, “I love you.”

  I looked away. There’s really only one thing to say when someone tells you that.

  And I knew I couldn’t say it.

  11

  “How’d you guys score that Beamer back there?” the chubby cop asked through the grate separating the front and back seats of the cruiser. I ignored him.

  “Yeah,” the lady cop piped in, “did you rip that off in Beverly Hills or Pacific Heights or what?” They both cracked up. I closed my eyes and tried to be patient. The movies had also taught me that I didn’t have to answer. “You have the right to remain silent….” That was exactly what I planned to do, for now.

  But I already knew I would tell them everything. I would tell someone everything, that is, but I wasn’t going to waste my time blabbing to a couple of patrol cops. I watched the city float by in a darkened blur through the cruiser’s tinted window. The time for taking stock of escape routes, for noticing the way the bars between the front and back seats of the cruiser were warped around the edges, for cataloguing every twitch and murmur of the cops up front, was over. My sense of perception stank. What I’d achieved with Shigeto was beginner’s luck—any idiot could have seen the guy was terrified, drunk, a pushover. I’d bullied him. And then I’d failed where it really counted, missing both Cheryl’s bitterness and Hiro’s secrets.


  “Almost there,” Chubby Cop announced, and it sounded like his voice was coming from far away.

  I should have known it was only a matter of time before they caught up to us—if the cops hadn’t, the yakuza would have. Or somebody else. But who else? Who? All the facts I’d learned added up to create that one big question.

  Maybe it didn’t matter. I could see now what my life would be like if I kept running—lonely. Short. A continual series of missteps and failures. No, my only chance for survival was to spill the whole story. Let someone else deal with the fallout for a change.

  We rolled up in front of the precinct, a squat building made of khaki-colored brick. I’d expected something a little more elaborate—Roman columns, statues, a soaring dome—but this looked more like the library a few blocks away from Hiro’s house.

  Inside was a different story—exactly what I’d expected from an L.A. police station. Chaos reigned. Some cops milled around drinking coffee and ignoring stacks of paperwork, while others led a steady stream of perps in handcuffs toward the reception area. A bum yelled at a cop, whose face grew redder as he tried to take the guy’s prints. I wondered briefly what the bum had done, then craned my neck to stare at a seven-foot drag queen with the most cleavage I’d ever seen. I stopped and gawked as an officer dragged her toward the fingerprinting desk, but Chubby Cop passed me off to the lady cop and I quickly lost sight of Miss Thing.

  Here I was just another criminal.

  I caught a glimpse of Hiro being led away. The lady cop tugged me over to the front desk, where a female booking officer came out from around the counter and emptied my pockets.

  “Name?” she asked.

  “Heaven Kogo,” I said, taking in my surroundings. It really was like in a movie. Maps of the city lined the walls, along with pictures of wanted criminals and missing children. I stared at them one by one—yep, there I was. It was the same picture they’d shown of me on the news a month or so after the wedding disaster. I still didn’t know who’d leaked the fact that I was missing back then. My father had told me it wasn’t him the last time I’d seen him.

  The booking officer froze. “Say again?” she said.

  “Heaven Kogo,” I said patiently. “I’m up there on the wall.”

  “Hank,” called out the booking officer to a cop seated at a desk just under the bulletin board where my picture hung. “Bring me that poster.”

  “Which one?” he yelled.

  “Heaven Kogo,” she said, eyeing me. Hank unpinned the flyer and brought it over.

  “You changed your hair,” Hank commented, staring at me, then back at the flyer. The picture had been taken about two years ago. It was incredible how much younger I looked. My hair was long, and sunglasses sat on top of my head. My face looked rounder, and you could just see the straps of my bikini. The shot on the poster ended at my shoulders, but it had been enlarged from a bigger picture, which I remembered Katie had taken of me out by the pool. My face was blurry.

  The booking officer opened my wallet and pulled out the fake ID Cheryl had gotten me back when we were still friends. “Heaven Johnson?” she said, raising her eyes. I shrugged. “All right,” she said. “Hank, call Detective Wachter. He’s going to want to deal with this.” She moved me down the counter and the lady cop undid my handcuffs.

  They let me wash off my hands after the printing (that ink really stuck); then the lady cop led me down the hall to an interrogation room. I sat down at the metal table, cuffed again, and she left, banging the door closed behind her.

  The room was cold. No windows, and a long mirror on one side that I knew must be one-way glass. I looked around for a camera. Yep. There was one up in the corner. One light hung down from the ceiling, casting a sickly glow.

  After a few minutes the door opened and a tall, thin man wearing rumpled brown slacks and a white oxford shirt entered. His face was tired, and I guessed he must be about thirty-five—he looked like someone who didn’t sleep very much.

  “Hi, Heaven,” he said. “I’m Detective Wachter. Karl Wachter.” His eyes were very light blue. Fine lines showed around his mouth when he smiled. I decided his face looked kind.

  “Hi,” I said, shifting in my seat.

  “I thought you might be hungry,” he said, placing a bottle of water, a Coke, and a muffin on the table in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I said. He nodded, then came around behind me and unlocked my cuffs.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Much,” I said, rubbing my wrists. I stretched my arms above my head and opened the bottle of water, gulping it down, then sank my teeth into the muffin—blueberry. I chewed on it gratefully. I was starving, as usual. I tried not to fantasize about how good a plate of eggs and bacon would taste.

  Detective Wachter sat down and arranged a tape recorder on the table in front of him. “So I’m sure you know we’ve been looking for you?”

  “I saw my picture on the news a few months ago,” I said through a mouthful of muffin. A few crumbs flew out of my mouth. “Sorry,” I said, covering my mouth with my hand. “I’m really hungry.”

  “It’s okay.” He smiled. “Here’s what we’re going to do: You finish that up, and then I’m going to ask you to start at the beginning.”

  “What’s the beginning?” I said, covering my mouth this time.

  “Well, how about the night of the wedding?” Detective Wachter suggested, tapping his pen softly against the table. I was glad someone like him was interviewing me. It would make telling my story a whole lot easier. “One other thing,” he said. “I’m going to have to tape this.”

  I choked a little on my muffin. “I don’t understand—this isn’t a confession.” I swallowed. “Is it?”

  “No. Although there is the matter of the stolen BMW.”

  “But we had no choice!” I said. “When those guys attacked us, we had to get out of there and—”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Detective Wachter soothed. “We’ll get to that later. I’m taping you for your own protection, just to make sure we have a record of your story. And to make sure we have your story straight.”

  I wavered. Suddenly the reality of telling the authorities what I knew was overwhelming. It meant that I’d be telling them about the Kogos’ dirty little yakuza secret. It meant that I’d no longer be in control of what happened next.

  But wasn’t that what I wanted?

  “So the night of the wedding,” Detective Wachter prompted, pressing the red “Record” button.

  I stared at the tiny silver recorder. Yes. That was what I wanted.

  “It kind of starts before that,” I said, taking a swig of Coke. “And it’s a really long story.”

  “I’m a good listener,” he said. “Try me.”

  “Well,” I began, “it started back in Tokyo when my father told me I was going to marry Teddy Yukemura….”

  It took longer than I thought to tell it. As the words poured out of me, I watched the detective’s face, wondering if he believed them—they sounded strange even to me. I couldn’t help imagining what I’d have been saying right now if things had been different, if my father hadn’t arranged the marriage with Teddy—would Ohiko still be alive? I wondered if I’d have been living at the compound back in Tokyo, still basically clueless—useless. Or maybe the forces that had pursued me since then would have found their way into my life anyway. You can’t escape your destiny, after all.

  When I got to the part about Teddy’s death, my voice stuck in my throat.

  “They—they shot him…,” I stammered. “I just keep thinking about how the last time I said anything to him, I was angry—I was yelling at him to help me.” I looked at Detective Wachter’s understanding eyes. “I didn’t know he’d been hurt.” I gulped. “And now he’s dead.”

  Detective Wachter looked puzzled for a second. “I’m sorry to make you go through all this,” he said, “but can you tell me when was the last time you saw Teddy?”

  “They threw him out the window,” I said flatl
y. “Or maybe he jumped. He was bleeding.”

  “So it was in Tijuana?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you see the body?” Detective Wachter asked.

  “No,” I said. “It was gone when they led Hiro and me downstairs. Those people are animals.” I took a sip of water. “Yoji didn’t believe Teddy was dead.”

  “Wait—you talked to Yoji Yukemura?”

  “Sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself.” I continued my story, explaining how Hiro and I had escaped into San Diego and telling all about how Shigeto had led us to Yoji. I sketched out the conversation with Yoji, leaving out what had happened between him and Hiro before we left. I didn’t want the police to get the wrong idea about Hiro.

  Detective Wachter clicked the “Off” button on the tape recorder and cleared his throat. “Let’s stop there for a second,” he said. “There’s something you need to know.”

  I stared at him. “Is it about my father?” I asked, my voice shaking. I’d had no news of him since leaving for Vegas—he might have finally awakened from his coma or he might be dead.

  “No, it’s not that,” he said. “Teddy Yukemura is alive.”

  “What?” I gasped, stiffening in my chair. “That’s impossible. I’m sure he went out the window!”

  “Yes, I know. But you yourself said there was no body when you and Hiro came downstairs. Our agents have seen Teddy here in L.A.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Teddy wouldn’t have bailed on us like that. He cared too much about me.”

  “I’m sorry, Heaven, but it’s true.” He flipped open a folder and pushed it toward me. Inside was a stack of glossy black-and-white surveillance photos. Teddy walking into a nightclub. Teddy talking to a Hispanic man outside, their faces serious. Teddy and several other men getting into a car together. “These were taken last night at a club in North Hollywood—Autovox.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, staring at the pictures as if the answers were hidden somewhere inside them. I was so happy that Teddy wasn’t dead…but how could he have left me that way? “He was all bloody…,” I protested. “I saw it.”