Blood Hina (18 page)

“So youzu the guy makin’ bids on the doll.”

Blanco frowned. “Didn’t get a chance to bid. They were already sold to Spoon Hayakawa.”

Then who had been the competing bidder? Maybe this Estacio fellow? As Mas pulled at his shirt collar, the walls of the small, wood-paneled room seemed to inch closer and closer. A ball of sweat dripped from Mas’s forehead onto his short-sleeved shirt.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that those dolls in themselves are barely worth anything. It’s not what on the outside, but the inside.”

Another drop of sweat stained Mas’s shirt.

“There’s something’s in those dolls—either money or drugs. Or maybe something that connects what happened to those two men in 1986 with Estacio Pena.”

Pushing a pair of reading glasses down on his nose, the former detective returned to his open filing cabinet and rifled through the manila folders. Finding what he was looking for, he tossed a couple of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven black-and-white photos on top of his desk.

Out of curiosity, Mas leaned forward toward the images, only to immediately regret it. One was of a burnt skeleton pinned against what looked like a melted steering wheel. The other was also a charred body, this one on the side of the road. Both photos were apparently taken at night, because an intense spotlight aimed at the once-human subjects cast menacing, ghostly shadows.

“The death of Ike Hayakawa and Jorg de Groot was no accident,” said Blanco, “at least that’s what I believe. I wanted to send for a specialist to come out from Brawley. I didn’t think the fire started from the engine. I smelled gasoline all
around the bodies. But my superiors and my partner at the time shot my request down.

“I really felt that this was either a warning or retribution, most likely from a gang. I’m not sure which it was. I went to Jorg’s son with my theory—thought he might be able to insist that it be investigated. He went ballistic on me! Said that it was an accident and I needed to leave it at that. Soon afterward I had to leave the force.”

The weight of Blanco’s pronouncements overwhelmed Mas. Was Haruo’s disappearance mixed up with drug gangsters? Mas felt his knees shake and start to buckle underneath him. He reached out to the edge of the desk to steady himself.

“You can sit down,” Blanco said, referring to a folding chair on the side. His voice had lost its initial edge, and he sounded genuinely concerned.

“I’zu go,” Mas said, tentatively loosening his grip on the desk.

“No, you wait.” Blanco sighed and returned to the window, which he hoisted open with the tips of his fingers. “Hey you, Hayakawa,” he shouted down the street. “Get up here and get your friend.”

At that point, Mas sank into the folding chair, feeling immediate relief in his knees and legs.

Within minutes they heard the
bang-bang
of footsteps ascending up the stairs. “What did you do to him?” The Buckwheat Beauty was so mad that Mas was almost flattered.

“I’zu
orai,”
said Mas.

Dee didn’t even acknowledge Mas, now making him question her initial reaction.

“I was telling your friend all about you and your boyfriend.”

“I haven’t seen him for close to twenty years.”

“But you’ve spoken to him, haven’t you? Pretty recently, I bet.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dee attempted to keep her voice steely and strong, but both Mas and the former detective picked up on a slight faltering in her words.

“Estacio’s back in Southern California.”

CHAPTER TEN

T
here was no expression on Dee’s face, aside from a rosy flush on her freckled cheeks. It was as if she had not fully absorbed Chuck Blanco’s announcement that her former lover had returned to Southern California.

“You don’t seem surprised.” Blanco articulated Mas’s thoughts.

“I’m not Estacio’s keeper. I don’t keep tabs on him.”

“But I bet he’s keeping tabs on you, to get ahold of those drug dolls.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dee lowered her gaze and fixed her eyes on Blanco’s desk. The two black-and-white photos, the ghost skeletons.

The Buckwheat Beauty dropped her mother’s car keys on the floor and covered her mouth with her hands. The room became dead quiet. Mas thought he heard a scratching through the flimsy walls. A rogue rat? Giant cockroach?

Blanco slowly removed the photos and returned them to their home in the filing cabinet. As he pushed the drawer closed, the cabinet let out a high-pitched screech, during which the Buckwheat Beauty slipped out of the room.

His legs feeling much more stable, Mas rose to make his exit as well.

“I didn’t mean for her to see those photos,” said Blanco.
“I don’t trust Dee Hayakawa, but I also don’t think she set her father on fire.”

That seemed like the most complimentary statement the former detective could say about the Buckwheat Beauty. Mas bent down and retrieved the keys. As the attached wallet flipped open, Mas remembered the group photo with Haruo. “Dis Haruo Mukai. My friend,” he said to Blanco, placing a dirty fingernail right below Haruo’s face. “Heezu missin’ two nights.”

Blanco examined the photo for a long minute. “He actually could be any of these old-time farmers around here, except for the scar, of course. We pretty much know all the Asians in the area, or at least we used to. There’s been talk of an old Asian man who’s recently been involved in the drug scene here in the Imperial Valley. They call him the Chinito. Other than him, same old, same old. So this friend of yours knows Dee?”

“Suppose to marry her motha.”

Blanco blinked. “Oh, I see,” he said.

“First those dollsu gone, then my friend.”

“He didn’t take them, did he? I mean, maybe that would explain his disappearance.”

Why did everyone suspect Haruo of wrongdoing? Mas was actually starting to wonder about his friend as well. He tugged down on the bill of his cap before he went out the door.

“I’d take care, Mr. Arai. And if you find your friend around here, he should take care too. Strangers don’t do well in Hanley, as Mr. Hayakawa and Mr. de Groot found out.”

When Mas returned to the truck, the Buckwheat Beauty
was back in the passenger seat. Her eyes were red and swollen, and Mas knew she’d been crying.

“I had to come down here with Mom to identify the body,” she said after Mas climbed behind the steering wheel. “Or rather his personal belongings. His melted belt buckle. His wedding ring. They looked like they’d gone through a nuclear bomb blast.”

Mas stuck his key in the ignition and turned the steering wheel. He drove down the street, passing a taqueria and a doughnut shop. Men and women sauntered down the sidewalks as if they were ruled by a different clock than the rest of the world.

“The police said we didn’t have to see the actual body—unrecognizable. This was the first time I’ve seen those photos.”

Mas didn’t know what to think. He came to the Imperial Valley for answers, but he was only more confused. Did Dee have an angle? It was obvious that this Chuck Blanco suspected her of some kind of complicity, wrongdoing. Why hadn’t she spoken of this Estacio Pena before? Mas didn’t understand their relationship—she certainly didn’t deny knowing him in some capacity. Maybe that’s why she was sticking so close to Mas, to ensure that he wouldn’t stray too close to the truth.

“Your Mexican friend callsu you,” Mas finally said rather than asked.

The Buckwheat Beauty bit down on the insides of her cheeks. “Okay,” she finally said, “Estacio did get in touch with me after getting released. But I told him I never wanted to hear from him again. I swear. I didn’t say anything to
you because I don’t want my mother to know. She’d be devastated. I’ve never spoken Estacio’s name to her since Daddy’s death.”

“Blanco saysu your Daddy may have been killed.”

Dee’s face darkened. “He claims that some drug dealers were trying to scare me off from testifying against Estacio. Only problem is, no one was threatening. I didn’t know anything, so there was nothing to tell. And by the way, Estacio is not Mexican, okay? He was born here. His father is from Nicaragua.”

Mas didn’t care about Estacio’s personal history or citizenship, just if he was involved in Haruo’s disappearance in some way.

Mas got back on the highway. The sun was now ablaze, and the inside of the Ford sweltered like a tin oven. Sweat dripped from the heads of the truck’s two passengers. Mas finally placed his soaked cap on the seat as hot air from the open window blew on his earlobes and through his thinning hair.

The emotion of the day must have weighed heavily on Dee, because she started nodding off. It was just as well, because Mas needed to take a detour through Niland without dealing with any prying questions.

As the Ford shook from the bumps on the highway, Mas couldn’t help but be mad at Haruo for falling for this mother-and-daughter charade. There was Spoon, locking up her secrets, and there was Dee, holding back the truth. Even more than ever, Mas had to find his friend to tell him what a
bakatare
, a stupid fool, he had been.

But what if he couldn’t find Haruo? Mas desperately
searched the landscape as if the earth could talk to him. Bunches of clouds gathered above like stuffing torn out from a pillow. The skyline made Mas’s gut shrivel into loneliness. All he heard was that nature, like man, could be both beautiful and brutal.

He drove past an irrigation ditch half full of water and furrows of dirt being prepared for spring planting. He wasn’t on the lookout for fresh produce, but rocks. Rocks didn’t come easy in L.A.—not unless you were willing to shell out some serious dough. And while Mas was consumed with worry about Haruo, he’d still reserved one sliver of his heart for Genessee Howard.

The land was barren and dry, with no signs or demarcations of the farm where Mas used to work. He’d gone there with a gang of other Kibei men, those virtually without a country. They slept together in chicken-coop shacks and worked alongside Filipino men—some younger and other older bachelors. A couple of the Filipinos had even fought for America during World War Two and were citing promises from the U.S. government. “We can become citizens now,” they said, only to later discover that those promises were easily broken. All of them worked from sunrise to sunset, six days a week, but it had not been a chore for teenage Mas. He didn’t mind hard work; he actually craved it. And there was always time in between to learn to throw a football and watch the Filipino men dig underground pits for the most delicious pork barbecue.

Spying a small pile of rocks, Mas pulled over to the side of the road. He saw pieces of sandstone, jagged and broken like decaying teeth. These shards had no sense of peace or
wholeness; their place was here in a desolate and abandoned land and not in the backyard of a retired music professor seeking rest. After studying the empty horizon, Mas got back into the truck and drove home, the Buckwheat Beauty sleeping in the passenger seat, occasionally crying out unintelligibly with each unexpected pothole and turn in the road.

As soon as Mas had returned home from dropping Dee off at her sister’s house, he heard the phone ringing. Apparently one or even two days of a missing Haruo didn’t command his children’s attention, but seventy-two hours set off a red flag. Funny thing was Mas thought the daughter, Kiyomi, would be the one to come around first, but it turned out to be the
botchan
, the mama’s boy.

“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.