Blood Hina (19 page)

“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

W
hat—” 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.”