Blood Hina (26 page)

“You gotsu money to gamble?”

“It was fun because we always would win. Casey gave us the winning ticket to trade in. All we had to do was sign for it with an address and fake social security number. We’d get five bucks a ticket for our trouble. It was nice to be a winner for once. Even though it really only lasted a few minutes.”

Mas traced the lip of his Clippers mug attached to his dashboard. What had Casey been up to? He thanked the man for the information and pulled out a five-dollar bill from his pocket. He could not offer the man the fleeting experience of being a winner, but cash was still cash.

As he entered the market, he saw a series of signs printed
out from a computer taped on the columns throughout the second floor. “SPECIAL MEETING. UPSTAIRS CONFERENCE ROOM. MANDATORY FOR ALL TENANTS.”

The conference room, as it turned out, was really an old storage area. Boxes of green foam oases for flower arrangements were stacked against one wall to make way for at least a hundred metal folding chairs. Only about a third of the chairs were filled—so much for mandatory.

In front of the small crowd was Roberto, only he looked nothing like the same Roberto. He was wearing a pin-striped suit, for one thing, with an official-looking ID card around his neck.

Mas remained in the doorway but had already been spotted by the speaker. “Mr. Arai, please join us.”

A bit confused, Mas took a seat on the end of the row toward the back. Not only did Roberto look different, he sounded different as well.

“My name is Bob Sanchez, and I’m an investigator with the IRS,” the speaker announced to the crowd.

“The IRS?” someone said in back of Mas.

“I thought he was from El Salvador.”

“Yeah, well, turns out he’s actually from El Sereno,” another replied, referring to a small Los Angeles community just southwest of South Pasadena, not far from Mas’s neighborhood.

This crowd didn’t appreciate being duped and expressed their disapproval by folding their arms and looking away while this Bob Sanchez spoke.

“The IRS is committed to cracking down on all tax
violations, and this year we have been targeting gambling winnings violations. You know that all gambling winnings are fully taxable and must be reported on your tax return. You cannot claim winnings that are not yours and receive a percentage of the winnings. That’s like receiving someone’s wages that are not yours so that person doesn’t have to pay tax on the money. This is fraud and is fully prosecutable under law.

“Now, we are fully aware that there was an organized operation here in which the homeless population and others were recruited to get around the paying of taxes. This is illegal. Let me state this again: This is illegal.”

Mas finally grasped what Sanchez was saying. The IRS had caught wind of a scam being generated by someone connected to the market. And that person had to be Casey.

“With the recent discovery of a dead body in the market, we are very concerned that this scheme may have gang-related connections. So we would implore any of you who might know something to come forward.”

With the mention of “gang,” the room buzzed with talk. Could Casey’s racetrack scheme have larger implications? After the mandatory meeting had officially ended, most of the people quickly left the room. Mas attempted to leave, too, but the IRS agent hooked him by tapping on his shoulder.

“I’m worried about your friend Haruo,” Sanchez said. “I had confronted him and I believe that he was moving closer to helping us. The day I spoke to him was the day that he disappeared.”

“You tellsu police?”

“Yes, our departments are working together on this. I
hope we find him very soon—alive, of course.”

Mas stumbled out of the concrete room, feeling sick to his stomach. It looked like Haruo was getting ready to snitch. Is that why he’d been kidnapped? If he’d been in cahoots with Casey, did that mean he’d experienced the same fate? Had he also been discarded in some back alley in Skid Row?

“Mas, still no Haruo, yes?” Felipe, the owner of the massive Rose Emporium, was getting on the escalator down to the sales floor. “Come, come to my stall and I give you some bread and free flowers.”

Mas didn’t know what those things had to do with making him feel any better, but he didn’t have the energy to refuse. He followed the energetic rose wholesaler down the escalator to his stall.

“Haruo’s children are very concerned. To offer a ten thousand dollar reward, that is impressive.” Felipe checked the moisture in one of his flower displays.

“Honto?”
Mas first responded in Japanese and then quickly corrected himself. “Really?”

“Mas, you haven’t been reading your
Rafu
, have you?” Taxie said, waving a copy of the Japanese American daily newspaper in Los Angeles from the next stall. “It even made it in the
Times.”

Taxie, in fact, had a whole stack of newspapers featuring Haruo’s scarred face on his work table. How appropriate that his mug shot would be used to wrap cut flowers.

Felipe was about to grab a couple of long French baguettes next to his cash register when he got sidetracked by a noise from the back. “Oh, those cats, how did they get in here again? Making so much noise this week.”

Mas narrowed his eyes. They were the same alley cats that were regulars in the parking lot.

“Whatsu ova there?” Mas gestured toward a door about three feet high next to the Rose Emporium stall.

“Oh, that’s the dungeon. It’s just storage for the market. Why do you ask?”

Mas ran toward the elf door, his movements scattering the two cats behind plastic containers filled with flowers.

“Somebody, open dis door.”

“What’s wrong, Mas?” Taxie walked out of his stall.

“Haruo, Haruo, you in there?” Mas placed his ear on the door. Was it his imagination or did he hear something?

Pico shot through the crowd and returned with a set of keys on a large metal ring.

“Hayaku hayaku.’
Hurry, hurry. Didn’t matter if Pico didn’t understand the words. He certainly understood Mas’s tone.

The door creaked open and the light, a bare bulb covered in spider webs, was snapped on. On his side lay Haruo Mukai, his hands and feet bound with duct tape. The miniroom smelled like urine, but who cared about a little
shi-shi
at a time like this. Most of his mouth had been taped down too, except for one open corner that allowed for a large straw from a supersized 7-Eleven drink. Haruo’s eyes were closed, his eyelashes caked down with dried mucus.

“Haruo, Haruo.” Mas struggled to tear the tape from his friend’s mouth while Pico worked on his hands. A scab was left on a small bald spot on the front of his head. His lips were completely dehydrated, skin flaking off like the whites of a freshly peeled orange.

Slowly Haruo’s good eye opened. “Mas.” His voice was faint yet still audible. “Took you long enough.”

Casey had told Haruo that he was just locking him up for a couple of days. “I’ll call Taxie on Friday,” he told him. “Just need the extra time to get out of L.A.”

Haruo had promised him that he wouldn’t tell a soul. He wouldn’t breathe a word about how Casey had taken him and two homeless men to the track two times a week to claim winnings that weren’t theirs. But Casey didn’t believe him. He pulled Haruo by his hair, dragged him into the back of a van, bound Haruo’s legs and hands, and finally delivered him into the tomb of the empty market.

“Casey knew that I couldn’t do the cheatin’ no more,” he said to Mas as they waited for the paramedics.

“No
shinpai
, Haruo.” Do not worry. No sense in confessing when you were half dead. Someone had laid down a tarp onto the cold cement floor and Mas, Taxie, Pico, and Felipe had lifted Haruo out of the dungeon into the bright lights of the market.

“Haruo!”

Mas at first didn’t recognize Spoon because she was wearing a bright-orange cardigan and her hair was cropped short. She pushed her way through the men to get to Haruo’s prostrate body.

“Youzu glad to see me?” Haruo asked.

Spoon didn’t verbalize a yes or no, but hid her face in his bony chest. “When you’re all better, we’re getting married,
first thing.”

Haruo grinned, his dried-out lips bursting at the seams. “Izu got be kidnapped more often.”

Haruo was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital, just west of downtown L.A. He was in the Japanese wing, which served sticky rice to anyone interested, Japanese or non-Japanese. Only family was allowed in his room, which meant Clement, Kiyomi, and her husband, and even Spoon. But not Mas.

Mas was taking out his screwdriver on his walk back to the Ford when he noticed a figure smoking underneath one of the lamp posts in the hospital parking lot.

“Your friend’s doing all right?” the dead man asked.

“Weak from no food, five days. But heezu gotsu soda at least. Casey no want to kill him. But youzu almost did.”

“I didn’t touch the man.”

“But you killsu Casey.”

Ike looked shocked. “I’ve always thought that I was an excellent judge of character. In fact, my superiors have been impressed by my uncanny intuition. But I must say that I underestimated you, Mas. You’re definitely smarter than you look. Even the police believe that Estacio Pena killed Casey for a past deal gone wrong.”

Ike was letting Estacio take the fall for Casey’s execution. In light of all the trouble Estacio had caused, Mas shouldn’t have cared. But he believed that each man should answer for his own crime.

“I’m leaving the country, so I thought I’d just check in
with you one time.”

“Japan?” Mas asked.

“South of the border, that’s my home now. That’s where my wife lives. And our two sons.”

Mas’s eyes grew big. Spoon’s husband was
toshiyori
, as old as Mas and Haruo—no, even older—but he was still
iki-iki
, energetic and virile enough to start a second family. Maybe living undercover did that for a man.

“I didn’t tell Spoon. I didn’t have to. She’s a smart woman; you can’t pull any fast ones on her.” Ike adjusted his tinted glasses. “I just don’t want Dee to know. Not any of it. She’ll think that she caused all of it.”

But she had, hadn’t she?

“The truth is that I’m addicted to taking on different identities. If I had to be Ike Hayakawa my whole life—”

“Youzu the Chinito.”

“I guess that’s what they’re calling me now. I’m getting way too old for any of this. I plan to get out of this undercover business next year.” The dead man dropped his cigarette onto the concrete parking lot. “The thing I regret the most is dragging Jorg into all of this. Lying and pretending wasn’t his thing. He wasn’t suited for this type of life. It must have been the stress, because he started forgetting things, or repeating the same thing over and over. I took him to a doctor—it was early-onset Alzheimer’s. I got him into the best facility in Phoenix—at least it was warm—and even saw him from time to time. He kept telling me that we’d be safe because the
hina
dolls held our secrets. And yes, he called them
hina
. Even though he didn’t say too much, he had a facility for languages. Anyway, he told me that if Estacio Pena dared to
do anything to our families, he’d expose him, his father, and the government. I asked him continuously where the dolls were, but he wouldn’t tell me. ‘You’re not the only one with secrets,’ he told me. He thought that he was being funny. Jorg had his own sly humor.”