Male/Male Mystery and Suspense Box Set: 6 Novellas

by Lanyon, Josh

  “Would that come as a surprise to you?”

  The old man seemed to struggle internally. He shook his head and looked away from Ryo to the swarming fish. Ryo wasn’t sure the head shake meant Tashiro wouldn’t be surprised or if it meant a refusal to answer.

  At last Tashiro said, “I know nothing of Kai’s life.”

  That was pretty sweeping. Nothing in Ryo’s background research had indicated that state of affairs. He reconsidered his original plan of attack. While he couldn’t let Kai’s strained family relationships side rail his investigation, he didn’t want to aggravate the existing tensions more than he had to. “What can you tell me about Kai’s friends or business associates?”

  Tashiro repeated, “I know nothing of Kai’s life.”

  “Would it be correct to say there’s a-a family estrangement?”

  “Hai.”

  “Do you support Kai financially?”

  “An arrangement exists.”

  “What kind of arrangement?”

  Tashiro turned his dark gaze back to Ryo. “The matter can have nothing to do with your investigation.”

  “It depends. Could someone place financial pressure on your grandson?”

  “No.” An almost rueful expression crossed Tashiro’s weathered face. “Kai’s temperament is not amenable to duress.”

  “When was the last time you saw your grandson?”

  “Three years ago.”

  Estrangement was the right word. “His ex-wife lives with you?”

  “My grandson’s wife and child live with me.”

  Ryo had the feeling the ground was shifting beneath his feet. “But…Kai…that is, the marriage was annulled, according to your…”

  Tashiro stared steadily at Ryo. It was pretty damned intimidating, but Ryo reminded himself he was a grown up LAPD Homicide Detective and not Kenji’s age. “According to your daughter-in-law, the marriage was annulled. You’re saying Kenji is Kai’s son?”

  “Hai.”

  Kai did not pay child support. That would have turned up in Ryo’s background check. Furthermore, Kenji couldn’t be more than four, five at the most, and though no expert on the topic, Ryo was pretty sure if you had children, you couldn’t get an annulment except in extraordinary circumstances—and those extraordinary circumstances would have turned up in his investigation.

  Tashiro continued to stare at him, stony and unblinking.

  Clearly, this line of inquiry was going nowhere fast. Ryo asked slowly, “Are you of the opinion your grandson would lie to protect a friend?”

  Tashiro said bluntly, “My grandson’s entire life is a lie.”

  Chapter Five

  Ryo’s cell phone rang while he was in Starbucks getting coffee. The number was unfamiliar. He scowled at it and gave the ponytailed girl behind the counter his second most charming smile as she handed over his order and narrowly avoided spilling coffee down his shirt. He pressed his phone. “Miller.”

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” a youngish male voice snarled.

  “Detective Randall Miller, LAPD. Who the fuck do you think YOU are?”

  He assumed he was intimidating some asshole wrong number into better manners, but the voice yelled back, “How fucking dare you go to my grandfather with those lies?”

  Unexpectedly, Ryo’s mood did a one-eighty as he recognized the ranting voice as Kai Tashiro’s.

  Ryo paused to hold the glass door open for a woman with a stroller and a whining toddler. The woman glared at him, and he recalled that dropping the F-bomb in Suburbia was generally frowned on. He hung around with too many cops and robbers these days.

  On the other end of the line, Kai was still giving him an earful. The words “police harassment” figured prominently.

  Ryo let the door swing shut, and strode across to his Taurus, pressing the key fob to unlock the driver door. “Are you finished?” he asked Tashiro, who had been forced to pause for breath.

  Kai got his wind back. “I haven’t even started!” he raged.

  “Look, I don’t know what you think I said to your grandfather, but—”

  It was doubtful Kai even heard him.

  Ryo busied himself securing the coffees, buckling up, starting the engine, backing out of the narrow parking slot. When there was another lull on the phone, he inquired politely, “Still there?”

  “Oh, fuck you,” Kai said bitterly and rang off.

  Ryo pressed call back and the phone rang a couple of times before it was answered and Kai said fiercely, “Don’t ever contact me again.”

  “Don’t hang up,” Ryo told him.

  Gratifyingly, Kai did not hang up, though from the harsh sound of his breathing, that could change any second.

  “I categorically deny that I ever said or implied that you were involved in anything illegal,” Ryo stated. “If someone drew that conclusion, I’m very sorry.” That last part was the truth. He didn’t want to do anything to hurt Kai. But he had a murder to solve, he needed cooperation, and he wasn’t getting it from Kai.

  “Why would you do that? Why would you go to my grandfather? I’ve cooperated with you, haven’t I? Why would you tell Ojiisan about Mickey?” Kai sounded aggrieved now, which meant he was starting to wind down. “I told you we’re not involved.”

  “Then what was he doing at your place Saturday night?”

  There was a pause that lasted no longer than the time it took Ryo to wince at his own dumbness.

  Kai said in a very different tone, “Are you stalking me?”

  “Of course not. Torres is under surveillance.”

  Kai hung up.

  This time Ryo didn’t call him back. That “stalking” comment had stung. He recognized uneasily that there might be a finer line than he had realized—and that he might be over it. He knew he was obsessed with Torres. That didn’t worry him. The obsession—no, call it concerned interest—in Kai…that was different.

  He hoped.

  He picked up his partner at Mayer’s home in Silver Lake. Mayer had been out with the flu since last Wednesday though he’d managed to testify on another case in court on Friday. Ryo had nothing against Mayer, but he preferred to work alone. However, LAPD policy was everyone got partnered, so…Mayer.

  As usual Mayer was late. He came running out of the house, shrugging into his suit jacket, and flung himself into the car. “Let’s roll!”

  It was the same routine every morning with Mayer. Ryo sighed and released the brake. “How’d your testimony go with the Halpern thing?”

  “Halpern’s going to walk. How’s the Martinez case building?” Mayer waved briefly to his youngest daughter peeking out from behind the front window drapes.

  “It’s building. I’ve been looking for a way to punch holes in Torres’ alibi.”

  “I heard.” Mayer slurped his coffee. “You’re stepping on toes.”

  “Whose?”

  “Toes in general.”

  “Yeah, well some people shouldn’t go barefoot.”

  Mayer chortled. “Some people shouldn’t wear zōris.” Meeting Ryo’s blank look, he said, “What? It’s a Japanese joke.”

  “Oh. I thought it was a lame joke.”

  “No, that would be a pedi-phile joke. Get it? Pedi—”

  “What kind of a joke is it if I ram this car into that truck and kill us both?”

  “A not funny joke.” Mayer swallowed another giant mouthful of coffee. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “That’s new.”

  “About the Martinez kids.”

  Ryo grunted.

  “Follow the money trail, Miller.”

  Ryo shook his head. “It’s not the kids. I thought we agreed on that?”

  “It was somebody.”

  Mayer was a good detective, but he was preoccupied with his—admittedly high—clearance rate.

  “I know exactly who it was. So do you.”

  Mayer made a pained noise. “You’ve got Mickey Torres on the brain.”

  “He did it. You know he did it.
”

  “We have to be able to prove he did it. It has to hold up in court.”

  Ryo threw Mayer an impatient look. Ryo’s own clearance rate was nothing to sneeze at.

  “We need a different angle.” Mayer dreamily contemplated a billboard with a seven-foot tall, half-nude girl kissing a bottle of vodka. “I think we should step back. Look at it from another direction.”

  The money trail, in other words. “Fine by me,” Ryo said. He knew to pick his battles.

  They spent most of the morning doing the never-ending paperwork that made up so much of the job, reviewing notes, making calls, and surfing the web in the interests of research.

  Blood Red Butterfly Ryo keyed into his laptop. His search results included a song by an unsigned Irish grunge band, a reader of fan fiction, and first and foremost, a Wikipedia article.

  Blood Red Butterfly (血 赤 鮮血蝶 Buraddo Reddo Batafurai) is a yaoi manga series written by Tashi. The series premiered in the January 2005 issue of LaLa magazine and ran for a total of seven volumes. In North America, the series was released in English by Be Beautiful between September 2007 and August 2009 when the company filed for bankruptcy. Digital Manga Publishing later acquired the license and condensed the entire series into three volumes, published from September 2010 to May 2012. The series is regarded as a cult favorite.

  PLOT:

  (See also: List of Blood Red Butterfly characters)

  In 17th Century feudal Japan, Oniji Zenji is a much-adored actor in the yarō-kabuki. Zenji is an onnagata, a male actor who impersonates women. Known as the “Blood Red Butterfly,” he is also the protégée and lover of powerful Lord Hishikawa Hino. A rift comes between the two men when Zenji witnesses Hino's murder of his rival Lord Sayama. Later he meets and falls in love with the legendary samurai Kato Kiyomori who has sworn to avenge the murder of his master, Lord Sayama. Kiyomori uses Zenji to gain access to Lord Hishikawa even though he has fallen in love with the young actor. The plot fails and Zenji turns against Kiyomori. Eventually the lovers are reunited, but circumstances arise to separate them again. Through the course of the seven volumes Zenji and the outlawed Kiyomori are often lovers and usually enemies as dramatic political events revolve around them. In the final pages of the last volume the two men write death poems pledging their eternal love for each other and commit ritual suicide.

  “Holy shit,” Ryo muttered.

  “You say something?” Mayer looked away from his laptop.

  “Uh…no.” Ryo stared at the webpage before him. Disturbing much? Surely the fact that Kai could come up with a plot this melodramatic and tragic indicated a not so healthy psyche. Did he maybe imagine himself and Torres inextricably bound in a doomed Romeo and Julio scenario whereby they both ended in a blaze of gunfire or a drive off a rooftop?

  Whatever happened to just writing about high school vampires?

  Mayer, now buzzing from his third cup of coffee, said, “I say we go talk to Graciela. She’s not married. No steady boyfriend. She doesn’t have any kind of alibi for the night of her mother’s murder.”

  “Who the hell would have an alibi for three o’clock in the morning? In my opinion, having an alibi is suspicious. I say we go roust Torres again and see what shakes out.”

  Mayer gave him a narrow look. “Is this some kind of an Asians versus Latinos thing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If I didn’t know better, I might think it’s personal with you and Torres.”

  “What can I say? I take strangling little old ladies personally.”

  “Come on, Miller.” Mayer shook his head.

  “She stood up to that thug,” Ryo said shortly. “She had the guts when no one else did. And she died for it. No way am I letting Torres walk.”

  “I know, but you can’t let it get to you. We can only do what we can do. We’ve got other cases sitting here. This isn’t like you.”

  Ryo muttered, “Maybe she reminds me of somebody.” Yeah. He hadn’t really considered it before, but maybe that was part of it. Not that Esther had been in any obvious way like Obaachan, except in that surprisingly stern moral fortitude, that spine of titanium that made backing down from the truth a physical impossibility. The world needed more people willing to do the right thing, not fewer.

  Mayer cleared his throat. “Okay, well… But there’s still such a thing as innocent until proven guilty. Remember due process? We don’t have anything on Torres. So for now we have to focus our energy on the other players.”

  “How about this? You go talk to the son and daughter and I’ll go pound on Torres’ door. Just so he knows we haven’t forgotten him.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so, Mr. Personality,” Mayer said. “If anything, I go talk to Torres and you talk to Gracie and Oscar. But I say we stick together. The last thing the department needs is another harassment charge.”

  Ryo closed his laptop. He felt unsettled and worried after reading the Wikipedia article. Maybe it was silly, but he had an almost superstitious feeling that time was running out. Not for him, not for his case. For Kai. He pushed his chair back from his desk. “Then saddle up, amigo, because I’m going calling on Torres.”

  * * * * *

  They tracked Torres down to the Taco Bell on Pico where he and his compadres were enjoying the fine cuisine while scaring the shit out of the middleclass clientele by their mere raggedy-ass presence. Counting Torres, there were five youths—maybe Sotels, more likely just wannabe Sotels—and two chicas. The girls looked borderline underage, though it was hard to tell beneath the glitter eye shadow and weirdly outlined lips. Torres was the oldest of the bunch, which Ryo figured told a tale. Why wasn’t he hanging with the real hombres? Didn’t the wolf pack want him back?

  The girls were talking too loud and laughing too much, the boys offered the usual swaggering sideshow of obscenities and raucous laughter. That all died away to sullen mutters when Ryo, flanked by Mayer, walked over to the center tables they had commandeered.

  “Hey, look who’s here!” Ryo said to Mayer.

  “Mr. Torres. And friends,” Mayer responded. “How’s the food?”

  “Not so good, now that you’re stinking up the place,” a chubby youth in a camo T-shirt and red bandana responded.

  Close up, Ryo could see that Torres looked like he’d been in a fight. There was a cut above his right eye, a bruise on his cheekbone, and one of his eyes was swollen shut.

  “What happened to you? Another welcome home party?”

  Torres lifted his lip in a contemptuous curl, and said nothing.

  “You can’t just hassle us for no reason,” one of the girls piped.

  “I don’t know. Assault and battery seems like a good reason,” Mayer replied. He looked at Ryo, waiting for Ryo to take lead in the questioning.

  “Nobody filed a complaint,” Torres growled. He picked up his super-sized Pepsi and pursed his lips around the straw. There was something about a bad guy drinking soda pop through a straw that sorta defused the menace. But Ryo’s smirk was wiped away by the sight of the fresh ink on Torres’ hand. A large red butterfly, still crusted with the dots of Torres’ blood.

  Ryo stared at the tat and a bad feeling spread in the pit of his stomach. “Or maybe your boyfriend said no?” he suggested, silkily.

  As insults went, it was really pretty routine. Inflammatory, provocative, sure. But nothing out of the ordinary in the exchange of civilities between cops and crooks. No, what changed it from routine to dangerous was the fact that it was true—at least the part about Torres having a boyfriend. What changed it from routine to dangerous was Torres’ reaction. It was too raw, too revealing. He shoved the table back, sending the chicas and chalupas flying. The girls squealed as the drinks spilled across the table. The boys began swearing and squaring up.

  “Don’t do it. Don’t be stupid,” Mayer warned them.

  Ryo never took his eyes from Torres. Torres was the color of old ivory. His eyes were black with rage. His hands twitched by his sides like a gunslinger in
the Old West. If he’d been packing, he’d have pulled his weapon. The fact that he wasn’t packing, was a surprise.

  It surprised everyone, including his home boys. But that was the least of their surprises, because Torres had given himself away with that naked reaction. Torres knew it too, belatedly. Ryo wasn’t the only one observing shocked realization dawn in that fraught, frayed, pause, wasn’t the only one who saw it in the hard, young faces watching Torres struggle not to betray himself.

  If there was ever a moment when Ryo felt sorry for Torres, it was then.

  Torres managed a laugh. “I know what you want, chapete.” His voice was thick. “It’s not going to happen. You’re not busting me on a two four three.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ryo told him. “When I bust your ass it won’t be for assaulting a police officer. And when we lock you away this time, you’ll stay locked away.”

  Torres was still and silent, leaving it to his sidekicks to bluster and posture as Ryo and Mayer walked out of the restaurant into the parking lot.

  “Are you out of your goddamned mind?” Mayer said furiously, as the glass doors swung shut behind them. He threw a quick look back at the building. “I thought we were going to question him.”

  “What question do you think there’s left to ask?”

  “Great! So what were you trying to do there? Start World War III? What do you think would have happened if they’d thrown down on us?”

  “Who? Those wankstas? No way.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Ryo shrugged. Yeah, he did know that. Unlike Mayer, he’d grown up in this town. He knew the cowboys from the Indians. But Mayer was right. Ryo could have handled that better. He’d been knocked off-balance, his guts in knots the instant he’d spotted that red butterfly tat. He wasn’t even sure why. So Torres had a butterfly tattoo? He was covered in tattoos. What was one more?

  But that tattooed butterfly mattered. Ryo knew it did.

  Mayer was still fuming. Seeing the shrug, he said, “You’re too damned cocky, Ryo. You keep pushing buttons and some day you’re going to open a fucking trap door!”