The Emperor of Any Place (33 page)

Now, we’re getting to it: the point of this whole little scene. The point of the locked doors and the single light on. The whole thing was staged.

The gun lazily shifts in Griff ’s hand.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Evan.

Griff raises an eyebrow. “You’re not much of a liar.”

“If that’s a compliment, thank you.”

“It isn’t a compliment. You
are
a liar — you’re just not good at it.”

“Okay. That’s fair. And that gives you the right to enter my room and go through my stuff?”

Griff freezes for a millisecond — just enough for Evan to realize he’s surprised to have been found out. Surprised that Evan had been home earlier. He shakes his head, and he sighs with a clear note of contempt. “My, my, my,” he says. He looks down at the gun in his hand. He slips his finger onto the trigger. “I’d really appreciate it if you would just lighten the load on your conscience and tell me what the hell you’re up to.”

“I’m about up to here,” says Evan. He’s holding his palm at eye level.

Griff holds the gun up to the light, closes one eye, looks through the rear sight. Then he holds it out for Evan’s benefit. “See this trigger guard here? See how big it is? That’s because Japanese soldiers who’d been fighting up there in Manchuria complained about not being able to fire when they were wearing bulky gloves.”

Then just like that, Griff points the gun at Evan.

“What the fuck!”

“When I ask a question, I’d appreciate an answer.”

Evan backs up. “There’s no bullets in it.”

“Good eye, soldier. And you’re
almost
right. There are no bullets in the magazine. But there is one in the chamber. And from this distance, it only takes one.”

“Come on, Griff. This is fucked! Put it down.”

“Are you going to talk to me?”

“Put that thing
down
!”

Griff lowers the gun, but he doesn’t take his finger off the trigger. “I don’t want you taking off on me, you hear?”

Evan just stares at the gun, and Griff chuckles.

“Do you really think I’d have aimed it at you if it was loaded?” he says.

Evan looks at him and nods.

“Shows how little you know me.”

“This is what I know,” says Evan. “You are totally insane.”

Griff aims the gun at the lamp and pulls the trigger.
Click.
He looks back at Evan, one eyebrow raised, and cocks his head to one side. “Not quite totally,” he says. “But it’s just as well you think I am insane. Might help you to make up your mind about filling me in.”

Evan backs up. There’s a big old chair in the corner of the room — he feels it against the back of his legs and almost falls but resists, steadies himself with a hand on the chair’s arm. “Okay,” he says. He takes a deep breath. “Leo called asking if Dad had received the book. I didn’t know who he was, so I didn’t tell him Dad was dead. I started reading the book. And the next time Leo called, I told him the truth. That’s when he told me about the letters from your lawyer and he wouldn’t tell me anything more.”

A grunt of scorn explodes out of Griff ’s mouth. “God, I hate a liar.”

“It’s not a lie.”

“I’m beginning to think I might shoot you, after all. I’m sure there’s some ammo around here somewhere. Twenty-two mil, is what I need.” He smiles. “You might remember how I said I never forget a caliber.”

Evan shrieks — surprises himself, but not Griff.

“They don’t have capital punishment up here, from what I can tell. Hell, I’m so old, I’d be dead of natural causes before any court could condemn me.”

“What do you
want
?”

Griff stares at him with loathing in his eyes. “I want to know what this Leonardo Kraft fellow and you are cooking up.” He pauses. Evan says nothing. “So?” Griff lazily moves the gun around in the air, watching it the way you might watch the head of a cobra dancing for a snake charmer.

“I told you the truth. Leo refused to give me any info, once he found out about Dad. And I don’t really care if you believe me.”

“I’m willing to believe what you just said. But I can tell that you know more. I’ve done a fair bit of interrogation in my life, and I can always tell when someone is withholding something on me. Ya hear?”

Evan nods. His mouth is dry. He swallows. “I need water. I need you to put that . . . that thing back where you found it. I need for this not to be happening in my father’s bedroom.”

Griff seems to consider each item on this list of conditions. Nods. Then he reaches down to the floor where an old oil-stained rag sits in a shoe box. He bends over, wrapping up the Nambu carefully, and nestling it in the box as if it were a baby.
He acts more tenderly toward that gun than he does to his grandson,
thinks Evan. But then, guns don’t talk back to you; they talk for you: quite a difference. And then, just as the last flap of cotton folds over the thing, it hits Evan where he’s seen the gun before: in one of the drawings by Benny Yamada, the soldier parting the bamboo.

“That’s Ōshiro’s gun.”

Griff looks up from where he has just placed the top on the box. “It is.”

“You . . . you took it from him.”

“I did.”

“After you killed him,” says Evan.

He doesn’t care anymore — he has to say it.
You want some truth, old man? Well, there you go.
He feels this wave of euphoria overcome him, like when you finally throw up although you’ve been trying not to. He can feel a taste in his mouth as foul as vomit.

Griff looks him up and down, but when his gaze comes to rest, the contempt of moments earlier has lost some of its bitter edge. “Is that what happened?” he says, and it strikes Evan as odd that there is no challenge in the question. He wasn’t asking if this was what Evan thought. It was as if he didn’t know what happened himself.

Evan fills a tall glass with water at the kitchen sink. He joins Griff in the dining room. Griff has poured himself a scotch. They sit across from each other. Evan sits in the same seat where he sat across from his father in this very room, watched him slide a narrow ship into a bottle and pull the strings that raised the masts and sails. And as he went about this harmless pursuit, this hobby of a lifetime — making models with loving details, making small what was large, making a toy out of what had been an instrument of war — Clifford had told him that his own father was a murderer. And Evan had thought it was just his father blowing smoke. Just caught up in this huge hate-on that he couldn’t seem to escape.

Eighteen days ago.

He looks at the man, tries to measure his state of mind, what he might do.

“So,” says Griff.

He is resting his elbows on the table. He looks tired. Not so tired you’d want to try anything silly. Weary but wary. Evan searches for that questioning look he’d seen in Griff ’s eyes in the bedroom, but no. It’s gone. He may be tired and old, but he’s battle ready.

“So,” says Evan. “What I think happened is this. While you were gone from Ōshiro’s fort, when you went back down to your boat — after you’d delivered the picture with the treaty in it — this phantom storm came along, and Ōshiro, up in his tree, was struck by lightning.”

Evan takes another long drink of water, one beady blue eye on his grandfather.

“You’re really beginning to piss me off,” says Griff.

Evan puts down the glass, wipes his face. “Only just beginning? I got the feeling I’d been pissing you off ever since you stepped inside this house.”

“Just give me a straight answer, like a man, will ya?”

“No. You’re the one who should be doing the answering,” says Evan.

“You think?”

“Listen. What do you want me to say? This isn’t anything to do with me. I’m not about to phone the newspaper or something. I’m not about to call the cops. Why do you even care what I think?”

Griff looks down at the table. Evan watches him, sees his left hand trembling, again, involuntarily — some kind of palsy. Watches how Griff covers it with his right hand, as if to hide it. It isn’t just nerves.

“I do care what you think,” says Griff, his voice low. “Why do you suppose I was trying to hold up the publication of this damned book?”

“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?”

“So you
believe,
but you don’t
know.
Those fellas out there in California: Kraft’s son, Leonardo, and this Yamada crony of his.” He looks up. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t know anything about their plan.”

It’s no use faking it anymore. “I figured it out,” says Evan. “Leo wouldn’t talk, but he happened to mention he’d e-mailed my dad.”

“‘Happened to mention,’” says Griff derisively.

“Happened to mention,” says Evan again. “I looked in Dad’s e-mail, saw you’d erased whatever it was he sent. So I accessed the server and read about the idea for the graphic novel. That’s the truth. Take it or leave it.”

Griff glances at him, under hooded eyes. He nods. “Okay. So they offered me money to give them the rights to put out this comic book. I don’t want their money. They think I’m some old fart who doesn’t care any longer. That’s what I hate. I do care.” He looks up. The blue of his eyes is watery with that milky patina Evan hadn’t noticed until they were up in his father’s room. It’s as if age has caught up with Griff at last — as if it is accelerating at a pace and the man is only one step ahead of it.

“They think they know what happened, but they’re wrong. Just as you are.”

“That isn’t what you said upstairs.”

“What did I say?”

“You asked me if you killed Ōshiro. Like you weren’t sure.”

And there it is again, the hesitant, almost vulnerable, look. Evan stares at his grandfather, feels as if he’s seeing something of him — the real him — without all the bluster and spite. Just a sliver, like when a person opens an apartment door and they’ve got the chain lock on. All you see is this inquiring eye with a bit of fear in it.

Griff takes a sip of his drink and grimaces as if it wasn’t what he’d expected. As if someone had filled his glass with some awful medicine.

“Are you trying to tell me you didn’t kill Ōshiro?”

Griff hesitates. Shakes his head.

“What does that mean?”

“It means . . .” Griff shakes his head again. He swallows, straightens his back. “What if I said to you: trust me.”

“Why? Why should I?”

Griff takes another drink. As soon as he lifts his right arm, his left hand slips off the table into his lap where a person couldn’t see it tremble.

“In the marines, you learn to trust your buddy. There’s this saying that the most important man in the world is the one standing beside you, and, goddammit, you have got to believe that. Believe it with your whole heart.” Griff smacks himself in the chest with his fist. “Your life depends on that guy beside you thinking the same thing.”

“The same thing,” says Evan.

“Damn straight,” says Griff, and all the macho bluff is back.

Evan frowns. “You know, that’s the problem.”

Griff rolls his eyes heavenward.

“No, listen to me,” says Evan, poking the table with his finger. “You don’t trust anyone who doesn’t think exactly the same as you do. You don’t trust Leo or me or anyone to listen to you with an open mind.”

“Open? My, my, son. You think you’re up to that?”

He sits back in his chair, waggling his head around as if trying to get Evan in focus. “You’ve been brainwashed from birth by your father to detest the likes of me. To hate the very ground I walk upon. Don’t say otherwise! From the moment I walked in your front door, it was as plain as the nose on your face.”

Griff tips an ice cube into his mouth and crushes it with his teeth, with his eyes all the while on Evan. And Evan can’t help wondering if this is to show off a full set of teeth — teeth that he could eat you alive with, if he wanted to. He wonders if Griff ever does or says anything that isn’t meant to intimidate. And yet there was that glimpse . . .

“You’ve got a belly full of half-truths in you,” says Griff, “and you seem to be satisfied with that — with half the story.”

“Well, enlighten me, then. Trust me.” Evan pounds himself in the chest, aping the old man. “What’s stopping you?”

The air is filled for one long moment with no sound at all. Then Griff clears his throat, places his glass down on the coaster, and stares at it.

“Because what really happened isn’t believable, Evan,” he says without looking up. “I am not going to try to tell people something they won’t believe — that I do not . . . that I . . . that I can’t quite believe, myself.”

Evan has this odd feeling that the whole conversation just got away from him. As if he fell asleep at some critical exchange and has no idea what Griff is saying anymore. “Yeah,” he says. He scratches his head with both hands. “But . . . but the thing is, because you won’t tell them, Leo and Benny Yamada — won’t tell them
anything
— all they can think is that you’re guilty.”

“I know,” says Griff. “I know what everything points toward. In the one communication I sent to them, I said as much. ‘I know how it looks, but I would like you to believe otherwise. I would like you to take it on a soldier’s honor. I do not wish to say anything more on the matter, and I do not consent to the publication of a comic book or a movie or any damn thing else that suggests otherwise.’ That’s what I told them. And I reminded them that the property was mine. Those diaries. I found them. I only lent them to Derwood. Legally, they haven’t got a leg to stand on.”