Blood Hina (5 page)

Haruo’s stingy landlord, however, didn’t let him use his phone. Instead, he had to walk two blocks underneath helicopter search lights—a nightly occurrence in this neighborhood—to the liquor store’s pay phone.

Haruo then didn’t say anything for a while, and Mas feared that his friend would break down right in front of him. But thankfully, although Haruo’s good eye was unusually shiny, he shed no tears. The pupil in his fake eye had somehow floated into its proper place for a moment. In the right light, with his head down, a stranger would not
have noticed how truly ravaged Haruo’s face was.

Mas wanted to leave, but he knew that it was too early yet. He cleared his throat. “Whatsu her girl’s story?”

“Dee? Oh, sheezu been in some trouble. Spoon been up late at night worrying about her.”

“What kinda trouble?”

Haruo rested his grizzly chin atop clasped hands.
“Maiyaku.”

Drugs? “Like
hiropon?
”

“They gotsu a lot of drugs besides heroin, Mas.”

Mas frowned. When did Haruo become an expert on drugs?

“Sheezu been hooked on cocaine. And new ones dat they stir up and cook in a house.”

Sonafagun. That explained her sallow complexion and that pierced navel. Mas knew some drug addicts in his time. Boys and even some girls who wandered amid the rubble of Hiroshima a year after the Bomb, their wasted bodies shaking from the effects of drinking gasoline and shooting
hiropon
.

“Started right after high school. Got better and then went downhill after her divorce. Went through rehab. You knowsu rehab, Mas?”

Mas sneered and said yes, even though he wasn’t sure. But from the context, he knew that this rehab had something to do with drying the girl out.

Haruo, a recent veteran of counseling, thought that people could change, be transformed. But Mas was more skeptical. Based on his postwar experiences, drug addicts couldn’t be trusted. Sometimes an old dog was just that, an
old dog. The tricks it knew would just be repeated—the bad ones more than the good.

What Mas didn’t understand was why Spoon was believing her drug-addled daughter rather than her future husband. If her faith in Haruo was so shallow, then good riddance. He even expressed that to Haruo in so many words, but his friend wouldn’t accept any talk of Spoon’s shortcomings.

After close to an hour, Mas got up and crushed the beer cans against the floor with the heel of his work boot.

“Listen, Mas, gotsu a favor to ask.”

Mas threw the flattened cans in a corner and waited.

“Spoon’s been callin’ everyone, tellin’ them don’t bother comin’ to the garden in Little Tokyo. I got a few more on my side I gotta tell—Wishbone and Stinky. Do you think you can handle?”

Wishbone and Stinky were two peas in a pod. You tell one, then you’ve told the other. Mas said he’d pass the word to them and made his way to the door.

“I’m
orai
, Mas. No worry, no worry.” Haruo was forcing a smile, but Mas noticed how the sides of his mouth were trembling. How long would it be before he was in those card clubs again?

CHAPTER THREE

M
as had half a mind to drive straight home and sit there, playing solitaire on the kitchen table. But a
yakusoku
was just that, a promise. He didn’t make it a habit to make promises, but when he did he always honored them. So he was off to carry out his mission as a messenger of bad tidings to Wishbone and Stinky.

As it was Saturday morning, Mas knew he could find them at Eaton Nursery in Altadena. Wishbone used to have his own place, Tanaka’s Lawn Mower Shop, but the property was sold to a beauty shop that only lasted a year. Now the whole building had been razed to make way for condominiums, rabbit hutches that seemed to be multiplying all over the area.

Wishbone was always chasing money, and judging from his lack of it, the chase was ongoing. That explained why he always seemed to partner with the shadiest men who traveled through their world of lawn mower shops, nurseries, and even retirement homes.

His sidekick, Stinky, was now working part time at Eaton Nursery, an old-time business nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. Eaton Canyon was the closest thing to Yosemite, as far as Mas was concerned. The canyon
cut through brown hills speckled with yucca plants, poison ivy, and tree poppies, its blooms like sunny-side-up eggs quivering in the breeze. Eaton Canyon felt the change of seasons more intensely than anywhere else in the valley. Wildfires eagerly lapped up the dried-up brush in the summer, while heavy rains, which would descend about every other year, accumulated in the concrete wash and sometimes overflowed into the first floor of homes. It was a wild and often unpredictable region, which mirrored the personality of the residents who’d been there the longest. They were the type who actually thought Wishbone and even Stinky, who didn’t get paid but still went into the nursery every day, were charming, believe it or not.

Wishbone was already out front with his walker, directing a worker to load some ficus plants into a truck. When he saw Mas, his pockmarked face cracked into a grin. “Thought you’d be in your monkey suit by now.”

“Yah, well, datsu why I’m here.” It was best to get right to the point. “No wedding. Cancel.”

“So Spoon came to her senses, huh?”

Why would someone automatically think that Spoon and not Haruo had called it off? Mas groused privately. His duty done, he was prepared to leave but was stopped by Stinky.

“What happen?” Stinky’s pants looked like they were hand-me-downs from a man twice his width. A worn-out belt cinched the pants high on his body, just below his chest.

“You owe me an Andrew Jackson, Stinky,” Wishbone interrupted.

Stinky hiked up his pants even higher. “You say two days. I say a week.”

“Wait a minute.” Wishbone dug into his pocket and pulled out a small spiral notebook. “Dang it,” he said, perusing its pages. “A gardener from Norwalk bet that it would never happen.”

Mas felt his stomach sink. They were wagering on when the Haruo-Spoon union would fail? His disapproval must have been written on his face, because the other two men grew quiet.

“Listen. Don’t get that way, Mas,” said Wishbone. “A full-blown wedding? At our age? Even you knew it was a joke, right?”

“No one can blame him from gettin’ cold feet,” added Stinky. “I thought he’d run after the ceremony, but it’s better to do it before, anyways.”

“Haruo didn’t do no kind of runnin’,” Mas said.

“So it was Spoon! We should have wagered on that too.” Wishbone’s face fell as he contemplated a missed betting opportunity.

“No, Spoon’s house just gotsu some trouble. A
dorobo
got into the house and took some dolls.” The minute Mas spilled the details, he regretted it.

“And they think Haruo did it!” Stinky exclaimed. “Is he gonna be locked up?”

Mas shuddered—he couldn’t let his mind go there. Haruo in jail? He’d probably smile for his mug shot and thank the jailers before being eaten alive inside.

Wishbone, on the other hand, seemed more interested in the stolen merchandise. “Dolls? These collector items?”

“For Hina Matsuri. Girls’ Day.”

“Those dolls worth anything?”

Mas shook his head. “I dunno nuttin’. Anyways, Haruo had nuttin’ to do with it.”

“You know what I hear? Haruo been going to the track, regular like.”

“That guy has a sickness, no doubt about it. Surprised you’re not able to keep him from self-destructing, Mas,” said Wishbone.

Mas’s fingers pulsed with anger for a moment. One thing that pushed his buttons was
sekinin
, responsibility. He did try to run from
sekinin
, but if it ever caught him in a corner, he never backed down. And for Wishbone, of all people, to insinuate that Mas wasn’t being a good friend was more than he could stand. “Came because Haruo tole me to. Made a
yakusoku
. And now it’s done.” Mas drew out his screwdriver from his pocket.

“Hang around, Mas. We’ll play some cards at lunchtime,
orai?
” Stinky said, cocking his ear like a mutt in the pound.

“Nah, gotta go.” No time for these good-for-nothings. Mas stuck the screwdriver a little too forcefully in the lock, so it took him a few minutes to jiggle it around until the door finally unlocked. He jumped into the seat and held onto the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles began to ache.

The more Mas thought about Wishbone, Stinky, and the gossip that would no doubt dominate the lunchtime card game, the madder he got. It was like the time Yasuko finally left Haruo after he hit rock bottom. No one at Tanaka’s Lawn Mower Shop seemed surprised. It was one thing to let a man walk dangerously to the edge, quite another for people to be entertained by him falling down.

Would Spoon and her daughter really report Haruo to
the police? Why should Haruo be framed this way? He hadn’t stolen those dolls. And while Haruo maybe could be seduced to the poker table, he never was an out-and-out thief,
dorobo
. (Mas conveniently forgot that Haruo had stopped making payments to his
tanomoshi
, informal Japanese bank club, when his gambling problem was in full throttle.)

Anyway, if Haruo had stolen those dolls, whom would he have sold them to? He didn’t have contacts with wealthy collectors. Mas knew that people these days were selling all sorts of things on the computer, but the most high-tech item Haruo owned was maybe a solar-powered calculator that he’d gotten free at a community health fair in Little Tokyo.

The whole thing stunk, and Mas regretted that it began with Spoon. She seemed innocent and sweet, but maybe she was actually a confection that had gone bad. Was there any way Mas could reach the Hayakawas before the police did and convince them not to saying anything about Haruo? Maybe Haruo was ready to give up and say,
“shikataganai,”
but Mas wasn’t going to be so accommodating.

He headed directly to Montebello, which practically was a straight shot on Garfield Boulevard, past a closed bowling alley that he’d occasionally frequented, past Hong Kong cafes, Vietnamese newspaper offices, and Chinese supermarkets.

Mas finally reached Spoon’s street. The house was locked up tight, its eyes to the outside world, the windows, closed and draped. No amount of rapping on the door or pushing on the doorbell resulted in evidence of a human presence inside.

Did the
dorobo
just come through the unlocked front
door? Mas wondered. Or was the thief able to pry open a window? Mas traced the outside of the window frames. The old peeling paint on the sills seemed to have been in the same sorry state for many years. Maybe a back door or other opening?

Mas didn’t think twice about pushing open the gate to the backyard. After all, yards were his domain. And Spoon’s was apparently the last stop for wounded plants, most likely rejects from her plant delivery business. There was a Japanese maple with burnt-out leaves, hanging on bare branches like dead spiders. Hydrangeas with strange yellowish foliage. Even a cactus with a middle so soft that it was practically collapsing into itself. Mas saw no evidence that anyone was attempting to restore the health of these plants. The backyard was the last way station for reject plants—a shelter where neglected trees and bushes spent their last days.

Mas couldn’t help pulling out a few dead branches and stems from plant containers as he walked to the house. After brushing the dirt from his fingers onto his jeans, he studied the back windows and jerked on the security gate door to see if it remained locked. Pretty tight, he thought. Not so easy to for an amateur
dorobo
to break in and out.

A dog barked a few doors down, most likely sensing a stranger’s presence in the neighborhood.
Yakamashii
, thought Mas. Too noisy, foolish dog. He checked around the air-conditioner unit connected to the living room wall when he heard behind him, “Hold it, police.”

The words clanged in Mas’s head, which was feeling quite hollow right now. Then a feeling of dread seeped from his head to his gut. No, this couldn’t be happening. This was
a bad dream.

“Put your hands in front of you, palms up.”

Mas slowly began to turn, but the woman’s voice became more forceful and louder. “Hands in front, palms up.”

Mas shot his arms in front of him as if he were one of those comic sleepwalkers in cartoons. He angled his open palms so they faced the sky. He felt a gentle hand pat his sides, his pant pockets, and finally his legs. Mas was thankful that he had left his screwdriver in the unlocked trunk.

Another female voice, this time speaking a language other than English. Mas thought he recognized the tones and rhythms from the Chinese television programs he flipped through on his way to find his Japanese soap operas on Sunday evening.

“Can’t speak Chinese,” Mas interrupted. “I’m Japanese.” Well, really he was American-born, but this was no time to split hairs.

Mas was allowed to finally face his captors. He was surprised. They were two uniformed policewomen, looking as young as teenagers. The first had a boyish haircut but an unmistakably feminine face, while the Chinese one had long hair that was clipped back in a ponytail. Why would their parents allow them to do such dangerous work?

“My friend Haruo lives here,” Mas explained. “Well, gonna live here. Well, was gonna live here.” The police officers frowned, trying to make sense of Mas’s story. The Chinese policewoman asked to see Mas’s ID, and he quickly located his driver’s license.