Blood Hina (7 page)

The man waited for Mas beside another set of doors that led to the house. They were large sliding glass doors, tinted black. Why deface windows like that, he wondered. Obviously the man didn’t want the San Diego sun to damage the contents of his house.

The man slid the door open and gestured for Mas to enter first. He hesitated for a moment. But hadn’t he been the one to come knocking at the door of Hina House? Whether he liked it or not, he would have to see this through.

Stepping over the metal grooves of the door frame, Mas blinked hard—
pachi-pachi
—as he adjusted to the darkness of the space. Most likely designed to be a living room, it was long and cavernous, with a relatively low ceiling. Mini-spotlights arranged in different directions showcased—what else?—dolls. A small forest of
kokeshi
dolls, armless and legless wooden dolls, was gathered together on a low platform.

Cascading down a red-carpeted six-tiered stand was an elaborate set of
hina
dolls. As was tradition for the Hina Matsuri, the bottom row had the mini-trays of food and
tansu
, lacquer drawers; then a row of rickshaws followed by a row of male big shots. Above the dignitaries were a row of five musicians, each carrying a different instrument. And above them stood the three ladies-in-waiting, each wearing a snow-white kimono.

At the top perched the
dairi-sama
and the
hina-sama
.

These dolls looked older and more ominous than Spoon’s. Their faces the same plaster white color, this couple was outfitted with gold brocade kimonos that sparkled underneath the spotlight.

Mas felt his head spin, as if the walls and ceilings were closing in on him. He wasn’t much of a fan of dolls; in fact, many of them frightened him. At Disneyland, for example, he disliked most of the rides, but the worst one was It’s a Small World, in which you rode on a boat that took you through different countries featuring the same plastic dolls, altered only in skin color and costume. These dolls were attached to wooden sets, and they moved mechanically, their eyes choreographed to blink simultaneously. The dolls also moved their mouths to the same tune sung in different languages, an infinite loop of cheeriness. It was enough for Mas to consider jumping ship into the knee-high water. But of course, it was his daughter Mari’s favorite ride, requiring him to accompany her over and over again.

“Is there something specific that I can help you with?”

“No, just lookin’.” He attempted to stare down the emperor and empress on display. The dolls won.

“They’re fascinating, aren’t they?” The man interjected. That was one way to put it.
“Hina
. Short for small and lovely. Those are from the Edo Period, the mid-seventeenth century.”

The man gave the dolls a lover’s look. “Americans often mistake dolls for toys. But these are items of royalty—kings gave them to one another. It eventually trickled down to the masses, as these things often do.”

Hina House’s proprietor then pointed to a series of larger
warrior dolls wearing helmets and carrying arrows on their backs. “Those are the ones for Boys’ Day, but they just didn’t catch on like the ones for Girls’ Day.”

Mas nodded. He seemed to remember that at one time his own family in Hiroshima had a replica of a samurai helmet on display. And then every fifth of May, they flew five moth-eaten carp banners outside their house—that is, until World War Two killed all traditions.

The man bent down to pick up one of the wooden
kokeshi
dolls with a gloved hand. It was one of those typical types with a ball head and a long, cylindrical body. The doll had eyes and a dot for a mouth and an ink wisp of a nose. Her costume consisted of colorful stripes. “Even this simple
kokeshi
can have layers of meaning. No one is sure where the name
kokeshi
came from, but it might refer to the Japanese words for ‘dead child’ or maybe ‘extinguished child’.”

Mas moistened his lips. Even though it was warm outside, it felt like a constant breeze was tickling his neck.

“Some maintain that the
kokeshi
represents the child killed in poverty-stricken households. But, of course, the
kokeshi
could be just what it is, a souvenir from a vacation at a sulfur hot springs in the southern part of Japan.”

Talk of killing children made Mas uncomfortable, and he moved to the other side of the room, where an almost three-foot-tall kimono-clad doll was in a glass box. With a large spotlight focused on her, she appeared to be the Shirley Temple of Hina House, without the golden curls and smile.

The Hina House man had followed Mas to this side of the showroom. “That’s our star. Our Friendship Doll. Miss Tsuneo.” Noting Mas’s blank look, he continued. “You’re
never heard of the Friendship Dolls? In the 1920s, America sent about twelve thousand blue-eyed dolls over to Japan, while the Japanese sent dozens of these magnificent Japanese ones to the U.S. Actually that’s how I first got into this business. I was only a baby at the time, but my mother took a photo with me next to the Friendship Doll at the museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. Miss Kagawa was the only one that was on public display in the United States during World War Two. Most of the other dolls had been destroyed by their owners by that time.”

The lifelike doll seemed to have real hair, Mas noticed. “Looksu like she breathin’.”

“Yes, isn’t she amazing?” The Hina House man seemed to dote on the doll and even began to sing a traditional lullaby to it.
“Nen nen korori yo, okorori yo.”
Go to sleep, go to sleep.

As Miss Tsuneo’s glass eyes showed no signs of closing, Mas felt the hairs on his arm rise.
Your doll is not alive!
he wanted to yell.

The man studied the top of the doll’s head and tsked. “There’s some dust in her hair. Noriko,” he called out.

Mas was growing more fascinated by and also repelled at the man’s devotion to the doll.

A side door opened, revealing an Asian woman.

“Noriko, Tsuneo-
chan
needs some
soji.”
The man then remembered Mas and extended his arm toward him. “Oh, forgive my rudeness. This is my wife.”

She herself resembled a
kokeshi
doll, with a small to nonexistent mouth and arms that stayed close to her narrow frame. Her mushroom cap hair was a shiny sheet of blue-black. Even though Mas was born in California, he
obviously wore some of the years that he’d spent in Japan, because the mushroom woman bowed deeply toward him.
“Hajimemashite,”
she formally greeted him.

“Hallo,” Mas said in reply.

“I didn’t get your name—” the husband said.

Because I didn’t give it
, thought Mas. But he offered, “Mas Arai.”

The husband bowed and presented a business card with both hands. HINA HOUSE, it stated.
Les Klinger
.

Mas awkwardly accepted the card and tugged at his wallet. He had an old business card somewhere in an ignored flap. MASAO ARAI. ORIENTAL GARDENING, and his phone number and home address. The card was so old that it had the old Los Angeles telephone exchange for the Altadena-Pasadena area, Sycamore for the prefix 79.

The edges were so worn that the card looked more oval than rectangular. It was all he had, so it would have to do.

As Noriko excused herself to get some cleaning products, Klinger studied the card for a while, making Mas nervous. “Gardener. A venerated profession. It’s always an honor to meet a gardener.”

Mas wasn’t sure what “venerated” meant, but he did understand “honor.” Compliments didn’t come his way very often, so he accepted the few that did, even when he didn’t quite comprehend them.

“Altadena is in Los Angeles,
ne
?”

“Near Pasadena.”

“You’ve come a long way. Surely your coming here is no accident.”

Mas regretted sharing his business card. Now this
Les Klinger had his personal information. There was no alternative but to tell the truth.

Mas cleared his throat. At least this man obviously knew some Japanese. “I lookin’ into a
ningyo
, one bought by Spoon Hayakawa.”

Klinger frowned. “Spoon Hayakawa?

Mas fished for her real given name. “Sutama.”

“Hayakawa Sutama-san, of course.” The Montebello Police Department had apparently not yet contacted Klinger, because he seemed unaware of anything negative befalling the dolls. “She had that splendid
Odairi-sama
and
Ohina-sama
. A wonderful representation of the early Meiji Period. Excellent condition. We have a few others from the same period.” Klinger moved toward his computer, but Mas stopped him and explained that he wasn’t interested in any others. “Just dat one.”

“That’s a very popular
ningyo.”
Klinger spoke carefully. Noriko had returned to the showroom with a key to open Miss Tsuneo’s glass prison. She was using a miniature duster made out of what looked like silk cloth to brush the doll’s hair. “May I ask what this doll has to do with you?”

“Spoon’s my friend’s wife.” Mas stretched the truth to earn some goodwill. “Somebody robbed it. Spoon don’t have it no more.”

Klinger’s face, which was already the hue of a manila folder, became even more ashen. The smile on his face slipped a few degrees south. He recovered quickly, but not quickly enough for Mas not to notice. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. I must emphasize that the Hina House is not responsible for anything that happens to our dolls after they are sold.”

Mas had heard that line from storekeepers before. “How you getsu them, anyway?”

“A state unclaimed property administrator contacted us. We’re the foremost experts of
ningyo
in the state, maybe in the whole nation.” Mas could hear the pride in Klinger’s voice. “The doll set had been left in a safety deposit box that had been abandoned. Banks are supposed to be more diligent in finding heirs of safe-deposit box owners, but most of those unclaimed are usually auctioned.

“We were just happy that Mrs. Hayakawa’s dolls were returned to her, but to now find out that they were stolen is regrettable, indeed. Please tell her that we certainly hope that the dolls will be recovered soon. I trust that she insured them, as we advised.”

“Insurance?” Mas never heard of people bothering to insure dolls.

“Yes, the one I advised can deal with a three thousand dollar purchase.”
San-zen doru?
Three grand? Mas thought he had misheard Klinger.

“I know, terribly overpriced, I told both of them.”

Mas couldn’t believe that anything made out of straw, wood, rice paste, and shiny fabric could command such a high price. Even Klinger had apparently been surprised.

“I know, I know. But don’t accuse me of taking advantage. There were two of them who wanted the dolls, so it was a matter of who wanted them more.”

“Not just Spoon?”

“Oh, no, it went to auction. Didn’t Mrs. Hayakawa tell you? She and another person bid on it over our website. I was going to cap it at about a thousand, but they both insisted that
I allow them to go higher. Finally, I just put out a ridiculous sum—three thousand. It would either be the one who won the auction or paid that ‘get it now’ price. Mrs. Hayakawa was the one who beat Urashima Taro to the punch.”

Urashima Taro? The Japanese version of Rip Van Winkle, the man who went to the Turtle World and partied for decades, only to return to his hometown a stranger. Mas at times felt like Urashima Taro in his home state, California, and that was without stepping one foot outside of it.

“Urashima Taro was his or, maybe her, computer name,” said Les. “Since Mrs. Hayakawa won the auction, I have no idea who the loser is.”

After leaving the dark showroom of Hina House, Mas found the sun a bit of a shock. In fact, the whole conversation with Les Klinger had unsettled him. Spoon had told him, and even the police, that the display had cost four hundred dollars. Why lie? And the sum. How in the world could Spoon have come up with that much money? Mas was so distracted that he almost rear-ended the car in front of him. The traffic snaked up a green hill that was being eaten away by new housing developments.

What kind of trouble was Haruo in? It was one thing to be accused of stealing something worth four hundred dollars, but three thousand? If found guilty, Haruo could be locked up for a very long time.

Why had Haruo gotten involved with Spoon? No one told him to get serious with a woman at his age. The more
Mas thought about it, the madder he got. Haruo got himself into this mess, so why did Mas feel like he had to get him out?