“Did he show up at your house?” Clement asked.
Mas told him no.
“It was a pupil-free day at my school,” Clement explained, “so I went to the racetrack to talk to his old cronies. They said they’d seen him wandering around the track last week, but he didn’t seem to be placing any bets.”
The son had covered the same ground as Mas had two days ago, but with a much bigger payoff. Clement was a P.E. teacher and basketball coach at a local high school and was apparently quite adept at moving around. He also, unfortunately, had more practice in chasing down his father during his more desperate days. And the search this time hadn’t ended with the track.
“Also spoke to Taxie this morning. I heard about that retired guy who was found dead at the market,” said Clement. “You don’t think that incident has anything to do with my father, do you?”
Mas didn’t answer because there was no definitive answer to give.
“He wasn’t at work again. My father’s a lot of things, but he always shows up for work. Even when he disappeared from the house for weeks, he always made sure his customers were taken care of.” Mas heard a slight tenor of desperation in Clement’s voice. Normally it would have annoyed Mas, but today it came as a relief. Someone else was worried about Haruo. So when Clement asked to meet Mas at the flower market the next morning for a late breakfast, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.
Chizuko had been a kyoiku-mama, an education mom who stayed up with Mari as she labored on her homework. Mas himself had never been much of a student. But some of Chizuko’s passion must have rubbed off on him over the years, because he knew he had to do some homework before meeting Clement the next day.
For instance, had Haruo possibly stolen the dolls? If he had, where would he have sold them? He figured a downtown pawnshop would have no idea what to do with Japanese dolls.
As he was mulling this possibility over a hot bowl of instant ramen, he read the latest issue of The Rafu Shimpo newspaper. And there, hidden underneath the column, “Horse’s Mouth,” was an announcement that a ningyo exhibition was coming this weekend to Little Tokyo, compliments of the nation’s only certified Japanese doll-making instructor. Any teacher, or sensei, worth her salt would be at the community center gallery all day and night to make sure that every detail was attended to. It was not guzen, a simple accident, that he’d come across the article. To have that plus Clement’s involvement was a trace of good news in days of bad.
Mas’s hunch about the sensei’s work ethic was on target. When he arrived at the Little Tokyo community and cultural center, which incidentally housed the Japanese garden where Spoon and Haruo were supposed to have had their nuptials, a roly-poly Japanese woman shaped like a Russian nesting doll was in the gallery. Her dolls were already on display, but the glass doors were locked, so when Mas rapped on the surface, the sensei almost swirled around in a full circle in surprise.
Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo had recently experienced a facelift, with new businesses catering to a young, hip, tattooed crowd, but there was still a less-moneyed edginess to the area, which, like fog, was most apparent late at night and early in the morning.
The sensei furrowed her brow as if to discern whether Mas was friend or foe. He was glad he’d showered before coming and had applied Three Flowers oil to the furrows of graying hair on his head.
“Nandesuka?” the woman asked in Japanese through the locked glass door.
“Chotto,” just a “little” thing, Mas needed to say. Mas knew this was woman’s talk, but here in the United States, men often mixed male with female expressions. Made sense, as the mamas were often the ones controlling all the talk in the American households.
The mention of chotto did its magic. The sensei unlocked the upper deadbolt, but her face was still guarded.
“Youzu numba one sensei in ningyo, eberybody say.”
Hearing number one, ichiban, was a salve to the woman’s ego. She bowed to receive the compliment and stepped back to allow Mas inside the gallery.
“Sugoi,” Mas said, gazing at the assortment of dolls. He was not exaggerating. He was truly impressed with the riches on display. The realistic face on a young kimono-clad ingénue, the young daimyo during the samurai times, the long-haired Ainu girls in simple embroidered costumes.
“I make them all by hand,” she said proudly. “Six thousand strands of silk thread applied with a needle.” She pointed to the Ainu dancers.
Mas thought his work as a gardener was tedious at times. But doll making put his efforts of detail to shame.
The sensei explained how she mixed a pulverized oyster shell powder from Japan with fine rice gruel to make her clay. With this lightweight clay, she formed the face with her fingers, and when it hardened, she chiseled the surface with delicate knives and other tools.
What if she made a mistake and created a face she didn’t quite like? Would she abandon the project or start all over?
The sensei puckered her ample lips. “Oh no, kawaiiso.”
She would feel too sad to destroy the misshapen face. This sensei was cut from the same cloth as the strange proprietor of the Hina House. Not only had the dolls taken on physical human form, they also had emotions and personalities.
Mas approached one of the dolls, which sported fringes of eyelashes that no doubt the sensei had fastened one lash at a time. “How much?” he asked in Japanese.
“Sell? Oh no. I cannot sell.”
“You neva sell?”
“Well, one time, ne. This Beverly Hills woman came to one of my doll shows. Offered eight thousand dollars.”
Mas straightened his back. Sonafagun. He thought Spoon’s three thousand was exorbitant, but eight thousand? The sensei explained that the doll had been large—the hakujin seemed to think the bigger, the better. But that one sale was an anomaly.
You see, she said, rather than being tanoshimi, an enjoyment, doll making for her was racked with kurushimi.
Suffering? Mas widened his eyes. In all his seventy-odd years, he never thought a hobby could engender such pain. He himself was drawn to gambling because he loved that soaring shot of excitement, the blinding bolt that hit the bottom of your spine and spread up to your skull. Yes, when you drew bad cards or made a bad bet, your emotions went downhill, but you always believed that your luck would change. In fact, chronic gamblers quickly forgot their losses, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t bother to return to the tables.
“Kurushii,” the sensei repeated. The birth of the dolls, like children, was marked by suffering. But it was precisely that suffering that made the dolls so precious.
Mas asked about hina dolls, which apparently fell in a different category than the kind of dolls she made.
“If you want to know about hina ningyo, then go to San Diego.”
“Hina House,” Mas said.
“Hai, hai.” The roly-poly woman rocked her head. If anyone wanted information about a hina doll in the mainland United States, the first place anyone would go would be there.
Mas kept that in back of his mind as he drove a few blocks south to the flower market. He wasn’t sure what he could say to Clement. In fact, he hadn’t seen the son since Haruo’s divorce a couple of decades ago.
Even back then, Clement wasn’t one to mince words, and that hadn’t changed. “I don’t hate my dad,” he said. “I just blame him for breaking up my family.” He took some vigorous bites of his pancakes and swallowed. “I was still in high school, you know. I saw what the gambling did to my mother. My sister was shielded in some respects. I’m the one who had to pick up the pieces. That’s why I had to go to community college first for a couple of years and went into education instead of getting into something more lucrative.”
So was the son saying teaching PE and coaching wasn’t his first choice of a profession? With his boxy shoulders and strong arms (inherited from the mother and not the father, for sure), Clement was built to use his body, not his head. Mas couldn’t imagine what other line of work he could have
pursued.
“But I’m still not saying that I hate him,” he repeated while Mas added more ketchup to his scrambled eggs.
Since it was Saturday, the small coffeehouse attached to the market was not that crowded. It only seemed that way, compliments of mirrored panels along the south wall. So the men in the two booths in the back magically doubled without two times the noise. Fine with Mas, who was having some problems with his hearing of late.
The west side of the restaurant, in contrast to the flower market’s main sales floor, was full of windows, making Mas feel a little more human. With the one exception of sitting inside a Las Vegas casino for hours on end, Mas usually wilted unless he had the sun on his back for at least a good portion of the day.
Clement continued on with his list of things his father failed to do. Mas didn’t know how this was going to help them find Haruo, but if he had to swallow this bitter pill, he would. Eventually sensing the presence of someone standing beside them, he welcomed any kind of interruption from listening to the litany of Haruo’s sins.
“Hey, Mas.” It was the Buckwheat Beauty, looking much more rested (probably from all that napping in the car). Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she was wearing a T-shirt much too big for her body—most likely her sister’s.
“Hallo,” Mas greeted back. Even though they had spent the whole day Friday together, he still didn’t expect Dee to be so friendly. He then remembered Clement and offered nameless introductions: “Dis Haruo’s son. Dis Spoon’s daughter.”
“Oh,” they both said, averting their eyes.
What had contributed to this mutual shyness—that they’d came so close to becoming stepsister and stepbrother?
“Well, anyway, I saw you when I was getting some coffee, so I thought I’d say hi.…”
Before Dee could leave with her takeout coffee, she was approached by a man from one of the back booths. His thinning blond hair was so light that it was almost invisible. Standing at least six feet tall, he had a thick neck and chest, accentuated by an undersized green polo shirt that read, “DE GROOT’S BIRDS OF PARADISE.” It might as well have read, “JORG DE GROOT’S SON,” because it was clear who he was.
“What the hell were you doing in Hanley yesterday?” he asked.
Dee frowned, squeezing her paper cup of coffee. “And good morning to you too, Geoff.”
How did Jorg’s boy know about their investigative trip? Dee must have spilled the beans to one of her coworkers, Mas figured.
“My mother’s scared shitless because of you.”
“Well, sorry to hear that, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Chuck Blanco was killed last night. Not sure exactly how—the police aren’t saying—but it happened right inside his house.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
What—” Dee set her coffee cup on the edge of the table at the flower market cafe. “I don’t believe it.”
Mas’s heart pounded fast and furious. How did Geoff de Groot even know about Chuck Blanco’s demise?
Once Dee composed herself, that was her question as well.
“How did you hear this?”
“The Hanley cops called us. Apparently my mother was the last person Blanco talked to over the phone. He wanted to know why you were in Hanley with some old Japanese guy.”
Mas felt his stomach turn, once, twice, and then three times over. He hoped Geoff wasn’t looking at him now.
“We were looking for my mom’s ex-fiancé. He’s missing.”
“And you think he’s over in Hanley? Why?”
“It was just a lead, okay. I was just trying to find out the truth. And trying to find those dolls.”
“And so where are those dolls, Dee?”
“What are you trying to say?”
“You know what I’m saying. What pawnshop are they in now?”
“I didn’t take them. I’m trying to find them, dammit.” Dee balled her fists, and Mas winced at the faint yet distinct scars on her lower arms.
“Nice cover, Dee, really nice. I like your new superhero identity. Even my mother halfway believes you’ve gone straight. But not me. I know better.”
“You know nothing about me. You haven’t said two words to me since I’ve come back.”
“What’s there to say? How long is it going to be until you’re back on Skid Row, begging for dime bags? How long will it be before you break your mother’s heart again?”
The men in the back booths had now turned completely around to witness de Groot’s drubbing of Dee. Pico’s face—still no Roberto—was as rapt as if he was watching a prize boxing match. Even the Asian waitresses peered out worriedly behind the pastry display, perhaps imagining dishes flying at any moment.
It was no surprise when their harsh exchange escalated into an obscenity-laden shouting match. Mas thought he should do something, but luckily Clement stepped in.
“Okay, okay.” He stood up and spread his thick arms out as if he were a referee. His intervention silenced Dee for a moment but seemed to further aggravate de Groot’s son.
“You know this woman? My father died because of her. That was twenty years ago. And now my mother has to still suffer because of her gangster friends.”
Dee pulled Geoff away from their audience. She lowered her voice, but Mas and Clement could still hear their conversation. “I had nothing to do with that crash. My father died too, you know.”
“But why were they down there in the first place, Dee? Your empty head has never put that together. There was no need for them to be in Imperial Valley. They were on a drug run—to protect you, get that ex-boyfriend off your back. Your dad, always the John Wayne, the man wearing the white hat. And my dad right beside him because he didn’t know any better.”
“You have no proof.”
“I saw the money with my own eyes. Stacks of bills, must have been hundreds of thousands of dollars. My dad didn’t mean for me to see, to know. But I did. And you know my dad, he wasn’t one to say two words to anyone, including me, but he told me that he and Uncle Ike had a job to do. That I needed to trust him and not say anything to anybody. And that I was in my twenties, a man now.” The large man’s voice cracked, causing Mas to look up in surprise. “It was almost as if he knew that he was going to die soon.
“So even after they were killed, I didn’t say anything about the money. I wasn’t going to let anyone think Dad was some sort of criminal. I knew he had his reasons. But now when my mother comes to me all upset because some lowlifes are harassing her, I can’t keep quiet. This has to stop. You tell your boyfriend and his homies or whatever you call them to back off or I’ll go after them myself.”
Dee stood frozen, much like the way she responded to her confrontation with Blanco. Mas began to notice a pattern. At the beginning of a fight, the Buckwheat Beauty was as hot and fiery as a coal-burning train engine, but then she inevitably lost fuel, stopped in her tracks, and hightailed it in the opposite direction. And here she did it again, as she turned and escaped through the street entrance of the coffeehouse.
Just able to see the top of her head through the windows as she ran north, Mas wanted to go after her. But his more Japanese male side kept him tethered to his chair. After all, what did he know of Dee Hayakawa? Yes, they’d spent a good amount of time together yesterday, and he’d experienced her softness and vulnerability. But he didn’t surrender all the reservations he had about the girl. Haruo, after all, had been the main purpose for their long drive to Hanley, and they’d returned empty-handed. Until Mas dug out the truth of Dee’s connection with this Estacio Pena, her actions remained suspect.
De Groot’s son, whose knotted hands had been on his belt the whole time, lowered his arms, as if his gun fight had ended. He shook his head and rejoined his breakfast mates.
Clement, meanwhile, had pushed away his plate, and Mas felt like doing the same. The conflict had robbed them of their appetite. “Do you think my father’s caught in the crosshairs of this?” Clement murmured. “I mean, wha
t kind of family was he marrying into?”
“Sheezu orai. Just sick in a way.” A little like your father Haruo and his gambling byoki, Mas thought to himself.
“I’ve spoken to the police about my dad’s disappearance, and some officers may be coming to the market to do some interviews. They want to talk to you again to go over some facts.”
Mas readily agreed.
“Kiyomi and I plan to offer a reward. I’m prepared to do anything, even hire a private investigator.”
“You gotta do whatsu you gotta do,” said Mas, both relieved and a little hurt that Clement wasn’t acknowledging his own detecting efforts. But Haruo was more than three days missing, and Mas was certainly shaken now to hear about Chuck Blanco’s death. This was no time for shiroto, amateurs. It was time to bring in the professionals.
Mas sat by himself at the table for another half an hour, picking at his cold, ketchup-smeared scrambled eggs and rubbery sausage. He thought maybe if he waited long enough, the Buckwheat Beauty would reappear. She hadn’t done anything drastic, had she?
Mas couldn’t believe that Chuck Blanco had been killed apparently only a few hours after they’d seen him face-to-face. He couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible. After all, it was his idea to go to Hanley. But the town did have a few remnants of the Wild West. Couldn’t it be that the attack on Blanco had nothing to do with their visit?
Haruo’s son was gone, leaving a crisp twenty-dollar bill to cover both his and Mas’s breakfast. Normally Mas would have objected and insisted on paying the entire bill instead. But that morning’s excitement had distracted him from his sense of propriety.
Soon after Clement had left, so did de Groot’s son. Geoff de Groot had been rough, too rough, thought Mas. Sure, Dee’s former connections had been kitanai, downright dirty, but she was making herself over. At what point could a person finally let go of how she used to be? And when would people allow her to do so? Dee’s and de Groot’s absence now cleared the way for gossip of the most vicious kind—tall tales that took place in lawn mower shops, nurseries, and backroom poker games.
Blood Hina Page 13