by Diana Renn
Mitsue and my dad start walking to the exit. The train slowly pulls away. As the car passes, I notice a man’s face that seems familiar.
“Reika, look! See that gray-haired guy in the train, about five rows back from the Yamadas? Reading manga?”
Reika looks. “Yeah. What about him?”
“He looks like that bathing yahoo from room nine!”
“The tattooed guy whom the okami-san banished?”
“Exactly! Reika, I’m almost sure that’s the same guy.”
We jog a few yards after the train, trying to glimpse him again, but the train picks up speed and we lose him.
We stare at each other. “It could be him. Following the Yamadas to the museum,” I say.
“Or maybe you’re just being a little bit paranoid,” says Reika.
“Maybe.”
Mitsue, in her plum kimono, turns to find us. “Girls! This way!” She points to the exit.
“We could ditch your dad and Mitsue. Make a run for it,” Reika suggests. “Get to the museum and see the van Gogh unveiling, and warn them about the bathing yahoo, just in case that was him.”
“Run? Are you kidding? I can barely walk in this thing.” And with the split-toed socks and the wooden geta, I can only take mincing steps. “I’m going to have to totally rethink the way Kimono Girl gets around in my story. Besides, my dad will be really worried if we just disappear. Plus, if he is a yahoo after the art, he’d be pretty dumb to just walk into the museum lab. I’m sure the place is crawling with security. Agent Chang must have some backup there.”
At least slowing down in this outfit lets me see stuff I might otherwise miss. As we leave the station and walk into the city, I notice the sunset. It’s one that van Gogh would have loved to paint: the richest orange and yellows, the clouds like swirls of paint. And I notice the Kamo River, and the couples who line its banks. They sit with perfectly even distances between them, as if they all agreed to serve as units of measure.
Suddenly, the opposite bank of that river seems so far away. I wonder if I will ever sit next to a boy like that. Will I kiss someone at sunset? Will I even hold someone’s hand? The world is full of happy couples. It seems so easy for other people to get together.
Maybe Edge is sitting like that with Mardi right now, his arm slung around her shoulders. I wish he could see me now, in this beautiful outfit. Reika’s done my hair in a twist and helped me with makeup. I’m wearing contact lenses. I’m me and yet not me. I’m a different version of me. He might like what he sees.
But I can’t daydream about some faraway boy now. I’m tangled up in an art heist. The idea of trying to get Edge’s attention feels so foreign. Even the things I used to worry about, like running into Mardi and her gang in the halls, or being called Manga-loid, no longer really matter.
My dad calls to us. We hurry, as best we can, shuffling quickly to catch up.
“Stay close,” Mitsue cautions. “We are approaching the festival streets, which are quite crowded. I don’t want you girls to get lost.”
We follow Mitsue onto Shijo-dori, a wide street roped off for pedestrian traffic and vendor stalls, and merge with a river of people. The street is congested with festivalgoers. The music, flutes and bells, is droning, almost eerie. It sounds somber to my ear, yet everyone looks so joyful. People buy yakitori and mochi and balloons on sticks. Girls our age swish past us in summer kimonos, laughing, snapping pictures of each other, without a care in the world.
I scan the crowds as if I might glimpse the okami-san and Tomonori, still young, still alive, still in love. Or as if I might see Edge running to find me.
The crowds thicken. The sharp sounds of flutes, the jangling of bells, and the metallic staccato of small shime drums makes my heart beat faster. Or maybe it’s my sudden thoughts about Edge.
“Girls, you see these carts?” Mitsue points out the enormous wooden carts lining the main drag and tucked away on side streets. They look like houses with sloped roofs, and incredibly long poles—some decorated with bits of trees or ribbons. They rise two stories high or more, and glow with strings of hanging paper lanterns. “These are the yamaboko floats for tomorrow’s parade. They are hundreds of years old. Tomorrow, teams of men will take those ropes and pull these carts along the parade route, just like in medieval times. Shall we take a closer look?”
Close up, the float looks nothing like the Seattle Seafair parade’s tacky floats with pirates and clowns. The wooden wheels of the carts are taller than the men standing next to them, which means that the bottom of the shrine is way above my head. The sides are draped with dazzling tapestries, and atop the roof, a pine tree rises up to the darkening sky. Lanterns decorated with kanji characters illuminate the tapestry art.
The musicians, dressed in identical blue-and-white yukata, sit high in the shrine, beneath the sloped, pagoda-style roof. They play flutes, beat small drums, and pull bells on long tassels.
“This shrine honors Minami Kannon Yama,” Mitsue tells us. “Goddess of Mercy.”
“Kannon—she sure gets around. Wasn’t she at Senso-ji Temple, too?” my dad asks.
“Yes. Here, people pray for safety during tomorrow’s procession. Shall we buy some omamori amulets for good luck?”
“No thanks,” I say. “I’m still trying to figure out the fortune I got from her in Tokyo.” Not to mention the creepy note that somebody, likely Yoshi, replaced it with. I’m pretty much done with fortunes and symbols. They don’t seem to work for me.
Reika shrugs and follows Mitsue to the vendor’s amulet display.
My dad and I circle the float, marveling at the tapestries.
“Frame game.” He holds his hands up like Ls and winks at me. “Pretty amazing, huh?”
“Sure. But I’d still rather be at the meeting.”
“I know, kiddo. It’s tough. But to be enlightened by all things is to be free from attachment to one’s self and others.”
I stare at him. “Huh?”
“I’m just saying, we must live by dying, by shedding egoistic delusion and finding our natural face.”
“What are you talking about?”
He holds up his cell phone. “I finally learned how to use this thing, and I found an app that sends me a Zen saying every day. I’m learning a lot. For example—”
But I can’t hear his next words because suddenly men start shouting.
The noise comes from outside a bar a few yards away. Six men, dressed in suits, are in some kind of a shouting match in Japanese. Suddenly, one man shoves another man, and in the next moment, two men are scuffling on the ground.
“Bunch of drunk businessmen, I guess,” my dad says. “At a festival! This is crazy.”
But I notice something else. People all around us are leaving. Couples are grabbing hands and running. Parents are picking up children. One child wails for a lost balloon drifting away. His mother shushes him and holds him tight against her chest as she follows her husband. The musicians on the float have stopped playing. They’re jumping over the side. Running off.
Reika and Mitsue run up to us. “Yahoos!” Reika hisses.
“We should leave the area at once,” Mituse urges.
That’s when shots ring out. From more than one gun.
We duck, and my dad frantically gestures for all of us to hide under the yamaboko float. We cower together, pressed up against one of the big wooden wheels. I cover my face as a few more shots ring out, then peer at the alley through my fingers. No police sirens wail. In fact, two police officers are running away from the alley with the rest of the festival-goers. Finally, three men in the alley run away, and then three head off in the opposite direction. One guy clutches his side and limps. He looks like he’s been shot.
“Rival gangs,” Mitsue says in a shuddery voice. “There have been other incidents like this lately. Gang
tensions have been escalating around Kobe and Nagoya, and now, it seems, here in Kyoto.”
Mitsue is shaking. Reika is crying softly. I lean against the float, so dizzy I feel like I might pass out. I’ve never seen real guns before or heard them, except on TV. My left ear won’t stop ringing. The image of the guy clutching his side won’t leave.
“Violet, what time is it?” my dad asks.
“Twenty of eight.” My throat is parched, my voice raspy.
“Time to crash that meeting. Let’s get out of here.”
3
4
I’m guessing Mitsue told the taxi driver to step on it when she barked an order in Japanese. First, the driver gapes at us in total bewilderment, no doubt trying to make sense of us as a combination: a white girl and a haafu girl wearing festival kimonos, a gaijin man in jeans and a T-shirt, and an elegant Japanese woman in a plum kimono. But then Mitsue barks at him again, and the guy lays rubber.
I grip the seat, terrified we’re going to hit someone, and close my eyes until he pulls up, brakes screeching, in front of the Kyoto National Museum.
The museum, an enormous brick building with classic architecture, resembles a fortress. “And of course it’s closed,” my dad moans, pushing the front door.
Mitsue manages to reach Kenji on his cell phone and tell him what we just witnessed. A security guard comes to the door and escorts us to the Conservation Center.
Kenji greets us first. He speaks with Mitsue in Japanese, softly, and then gives her a quick embrace. Then he asks if we’re all okay.
“Been better,” my dad says. “A little rattled. We wanted to get out of the streets.”
“Of course.” Kenji shakes his head in dismay. “I am terribly sorry you had to witness such a frightening event. Kyoto used to be so peaceful, and now gang tensions have spilled over here. Well, follow me to the lab, where everyone is now assembled.”
In a lab in the next room, Agent Chang, Hideki, the okami-san, and a Japanese man and woman I’ve never seen are already seated in folding chairs around a covered easel.
Agent Chang and the man come over to us. She greets us and introduces the stout, somber-faced man as Inspector Mimura.
I look at Kenji, confused.
So does my dad. “I thought you didn’t trust Japanese law enforcement. You know, because of the risk of media leaks or internal yakuza connections. What gives?”
“When we heard that Glenn was directly threatened in the ransom note, and the safety of an American—and children—was at stake, we had to make other decisions.” Agent Chang glances at Reika and me. “The situation had to be monitored. My team has worked with Inspector Mimura, and he is absolutely trustworthy. I insisted on his presence this evening.”
“I can understand,” Kenji says. “I only wish my nephew felt the same. He is firmly against Japanese authorities getting too close to the situation. He doesn’t want to risk Fujikawa seeking revenge.”
I glance at Hideki, slouched in his folding chair, staring stony-faced at the covered easel. For some reason I think of a sulky child. I figure he and Kenji have had some words, and Kenji’s put him in his place.
The Japanese woman comes over to us now, and Inspector Mimura introduces her as Kikuchi-san, Skye’s old friend. She doesn’t look like someone whose honeymoon was abruptly interrupted. She’s dressed professionally in a business suit, her hair neatly pulled back in a ponytail, her makeup impeccable.
“Please, call me Natsuko,” says the woman, shaking our hands in turn.
Sitting in a chair, still as a statue, is the okami-san. She wears street clothes, slacks and cardigan, not the special ro-kimono uniform I’m used to seeing her in. She looks tense, with her legs crossed and her purse clutched to her chest. She nods a greeting as we take our seats.
Inspector Mimura stands before us. “Thank you, everyone, for coming here this evening. First, we have some important news. Thanks to the efforts and bravery of these two girls,” he says, glancing at Reika and me, “and thanks to Glenn-san’s timely communications with the FBI, we are closing in on Hiroshi Fujikawa, one of Japan’s most notorious gang bosses. Three days ago, thanks to your tips, we apprehended two of his henchmen, Shinobu Nishio and Kazuo Uchida, at the Canadian border. They were trying to cross into Canada, hoping to fly to Tokyo from Vancouver. They were taken into custody yesterday.”
Reika squeezes my hand. “Nice work,” she whispers.
“And there is more news from the American front,” Agent Chang says. “When interrogated, Uchida and Nishio confessed that they had consulted with Julian Fleury on several occasions. They paid Julian for information about the van Gogh drawings. They also paid for information related to the painting. His lead on the painting, of course, was false. But for a while, Uchida and Nishio were happy to pay for Julian’s tips. In fact, they were so convinced that Skye had taken the painting to Glenn’s house, and put it in one of his art studio cabinets, that they broke into his house to search for it.”
My dad’s eyes widen. “When was that?”
“The day of your art show reception. Around four in the afternoon.”
My dad looks at me in awe. “You were right!” he says. “So it wasn’t petty vandalism!”
My mind is buzzing. I always felt there had to be a connection between the Yamadas’ break-in and my dad’s broken window. Now I understand how that window, that rock, led back to Julian. Motivated by greed, he’d sent those guys following a trail of crumbs that led there.
“Julian Fleury has confessed that he did receive payments for information,” Agent Chang continues. “Furthermore, the police report he gave at the hospital after his assault was not entirely true. A security camera from outside a bar in Pioneer Square showed that he destroyed Mr. Marklund’s paintings, in the alley behind the Margo Wise Gallery, before Uchida and Nishio arrived and assaulted him.”
My dad closes his eyes and presses his hands to his temples. For a moment, it looks like he’s praying. “Jesus. He trashed my paintings with his own hands. Why would he do that?”
“He got scared,” Agent Chang replies. “He knew he was in over his head. Uchida and Nishio were trying to get their hands on the van Gogh painting, based on all his false leads. He felt he was being followed when he left Glenn’s house. Apparently, they had the idea that he would be delivering the van Gogh painting to them personally. Which, of course, he couldn’t. His lies had to come to an end. He wanted to make the yakuza think that he had been intercepted in transit, and that somebody else stole the van Gogh. They didn’t buy it. He is now being charged with conspiracy to commit a crime, as well as property damage.”
I let out a long breath, letting this information sink in. So there hadn’t been a reason to warn Edge about the yakuza on the loose. They hadn’t seen us filming back in Seattle, and he was probably never in danger. I feel a little ridiculous for dashing off that email now. But I also feel relieved, knowing Edge is totally safe.
Now Mimura holds up a yellow-and-red courier envelope. From it, he removes a single piece of crisp, white stationery, with a few lines in kanji characters typed on it. “Here is the latest correspondence from Fujikawa-san. It was sent to Kenji at the Akatsuki Ryokan this morning.” He reads it first in Japanese, then in English. “‘I have received intelligence that you are in Arashiyama. What a lovely time of year to be there. I hope that while hosting your American guests you have found some time to locate my painting. I have business scheduled in Kyoto, at the Gion Festival, this weekend. I can easily make a side trip to Arashiyama to collect my property in person.
“‘However, the last time I made arrangements with you, you attempted deceit, with American agents in hiding. Therefore, this time I will receive my painting on the Katsura-gawa, since there is no place for people to hide on the river. Bring the painting to the ukai show at seven tomorrow evening. Hire a boat. A colleague o
f mine owns a snack-vending boat. We will come by your boat to collect it. I would strongly urge you to come alone. My enforcers will be alert to the presence of any undercover agents you might wish to bring. Remember, if I am deceived again, the gaijin artist will be erased. This is your second chance to comply. And your last. I look forward to seeing you on the river. Hiroshi Fujikawa.’”
The room falls silent for a moment as everyone lets the words sink in.
All I can think about is the gaijin artist being erased, and the “source.” Someone told Fujikawa that all of us were here. I don’t know how Yoshi would know this, but I can’t think of who else could tip him off.
“That guy has some nerve,” my dad says. “How can he think these paintings are his?”
“Actually,” says Agent Chang, “some documents have turned up at an appraisal firm in France. In March 1987, an appraiser in Tokyo did in fact authenticate the drawings and the painting as van Goghs. However, the appraiser indicated in his personal notes that the client, Tomonori Yamada, paid the equivalent of twenty-five thousand dollars to devalue the art, and to destroy any documents related to the appraisal. The appraiser took the fee and kept quiet all these years, mostly out of fear of retribution. But he also kept the documents. I came to Japan to confirm this information.”
“So I guess that means Fujikawa really is entitled to the painting,” I say slowly. And Tomonori Yamada was kind of a criminal himself, I add in my mind. I think of the impish, gap-toothed boy in the photo. That boy did not look like a future art thief. But what else could he be? Yes, Fujikawa is a gangster, but he paid for that art. It doesn’t seem right for Tomonori to have hidden it away.
“That remains to be seen,” says Agent Change. “We’re looking into sales records from this Paris dealer. Some of his art has turned out to have falsified documents attached, indicating that thieves have tried to leak looted art back on the open market through him. Since these van Goghs were unsigned and not known to the world, it’s very possible the dealer did not know what he had. But Fujikawa might have had his suspicions. And Tomonori certainly had more than an inkling that the paintings were valuable.”