Spotless (29 page)

“Masaharu-kun, my friend and I need to talk to you. Can we go somewhere quiet, please?” I asked, gesturing to March.

Masaharu winced, his bag of tissue packs still in hand. His eyes darted to a young girl enthusiastically promoting HotHotHot Donuts in front of a nearby store, and I figured he couldn’t leave his spot without asking a supervisor first. I joined my hands in a praying gesture. “Please!”

He swallowed and laid his bag on the ground before raising his palms up to indicate we needed to wait. We watched him run toward the bubbly girl with silly pigtails, bowing at her over and over. She seemed to accept his request, and as soon as he had left, the girl resumed
hopping up and down and yelling HotHotHot’s slogan in a shrill voice. Masaharu went back to us, and he seemed relieved, but also a little sad.

“It’s okay. I’m free for the day,” he told us with a weak nod.

I guess March was a better judge of people and characters than I was, because, as we walked away with Masaharu, he figured out something I hadn’t.

“She fired him,” he whispered to me.

We were all sitting in Tsutaya’s Starbucks Coffee, waiting for our drinks. A cute waitress walked to our table and checked the names on the cups before giving me my mango passion tea, Masaharu his mocha espresso, and . . . Mr. July his simple brewed coffee.

For a minute or so, all that could be heard were low sipping sounds, until March broke the silence, looking at me as he spoke. “What did Léa tell him? Does he know where the stone is?”

I translated, and Masaharu started nodding over and over again, his eyes widening. Near me, I felt March tense in anticipation, waiting for my mother’s messenger to talk. “I still have it! I still have your box. Léa made me swear to keep it. I still have it!” he said, his hands gripping his cup tightly.

“My box?”

“She gave it to me a few days before you two disappeared. She told me she would be leaving soon and that she wanted me to keep the box for her. She said you might come back for it someday. I didn’t understand, but I owed her so much, I had to.”

I translated again for March, who leaned forward across the table, scaring the shit out of Masaharu with one of his icy bad-guy looks. “Did he open it? What’s inside?”

I translated the question, and Masaharu stared at March as if he had
grown a second head. “Léa-san saved my life! I would have never betrayed her!” he roared, all traces of fear and embarrassment gone.

I took it as a confirmation that Masaharu hadn’t opened the box and resumed questioning him, eager to discover yet another side of my mom which I had never known existed until now. “What do you mean she saved you? What happened?”

He bowed his head, averting his eyes. “When I was young . . . I wanted to become someone, to be respected. I started doing favors for the wrong people . . . I made mistakes.”

“You mean the yakuza . . . real criminals?” I prodded.

He nodded with a grimace. “I was hoping I’d be admitted to the Inagawa-kai, that I’d have a clan, a family. But one night a club that belonged to my protector got raided, and they thought I had talked to the police.”

March’s lips thinned, and I swallowed. Masaharu had no doubt narrowly escaped disaster. He went on in a tight voice. “Three men from the family came to look for me at home, but I was out. Mama Haru called me, and she was crying. I couldn’t go home, so I hid under the tunnel, in Kinshichō.”

“Where the Korean prostitutes work?” I asked, remembering the poorly lit area and those skimpily dressed girls leaning against the wall while they waited for potential customers.

He nodded again. “They found me, and they started beating me. It was already late. I think Léa-san was coming back from some shopping at Marui. She saw us and came to help me,” he recounted.

“What did she do? Did she call the police?” I felt bitter that my mom had never told me this. She had saved the former love of my life, dammit!

“No. She dropped her bag, and she ordered the man who was beating me to stop. She called him a fat pig.”

My mouth fell open, and I noticed March’s eyebrows arching in curiosity.

Masaharu went on. “He told her to go away, and she walked up to him. She said she was going to fuck him up because he was a nutless piece of shit.”

My eyes wide like saucers, I kept translating, and near me, I heard March clear his throat. I leaned toward him and whispered, “My mom wasn’t that rude. I’m sure he’s exaggerating.”

March nodded in agreement as Masaharu finished his tale. “I didn’t see everything, but she fought with them. She was much faster than these guys. She kicked two of them to the ground, and I think she pulled on the fat yakuza’s testicles really hard through his pants. He was screaming in pain. After it was over, she told them that if they touched me again, she’d tell their boss that they were violating rule number one and that they had been beaten by a woman. She said they’d surely undergo
yubitsume
over that.”

An expert at all things criminal, March, once I had translated the ending of Masaharu’s story, proceeded to give me some additional insight. “Rule number one is a traditional rule stating a yakuza shouldn’t harm a good citizen. I don’t think it entirely applied to Masaharu, though, and
yubitsume
—”

“I know.” I chuckled, wiggling my left hand’s little finger and mimicking scissors cutting it with my right one.

“Precisely.” March smiled as he finished his coffee.

Masaharu saw my gesture and nodded, as if to confirm that we had understood his tale right.

Satisfied with these explanations, March pulled a few bills from his wallet to pay for our drinks and clasped his hands with a determined look. “Excellent. Why don’t we go fetch that box now?”

We drove back to Kōtōbashi with Masaharu so he could give me the box my mother had entrusted him with. Needless to say, Haru was delighted
to see March return, and she kept stealing burning glances at him through her lashes while we all waited in the living room for Masaharu to come back with the precious box—which he had kept hidden in his bedroom for all these years, and from what I gathered, the area didn’t exactly comply with March’s or Haru’s high cleaning standards.

When Masaharu reappeared holding a small black lacquered box, I felt my heart rate increase. The box wasn’t anywhere near big enough to contain the Ghost Cullinan, but it didn’t matter. It was a secret my mother had left for me, and this alone was worth all the diamonds in the world.

He handed me the object reverently. It had been sealed with a thin green ribbon, and Masaharu had told the truth: It didn’t appear anyone had ever undone the delicate tie. I pulled on the crumpled satin with trembling fingers and lifted the shiny black lid with the utmost care. Behind me, I could feel March and Haru bend over my shoulders to look inside as well.

I heard a long sigh—Haru’s—and a tongue smacking in irritation—March’s. They were disappointed, and rightly so. All that box contained was a thin square of white rice paper with a word and a number on it.

Miyamoto

2120

I let out a dejected sigh, and honestly, I was on the verge of giving up, but Masaharu came to the rescue. “Miyamoto is a bank, and 2120 is the safe number. Léa said you’d know the combination.”

After I had translated this to March, I gave him a desperate look. “We can always check, but frankly, I have no idea what this means, or why Masaharu thinks I know that safe’s combination.”

He gave me one of those coy little winks I liked so much. “Let’s give it a try anyway.”

I nodded and proceeded to ask Masaharu about Miyamoto Bank.
He explained to me that it was a small private bank with only one branch on the Harumi Dori in Kōtō-ku, which doubled as its headquarters. As we discussed the best way to drive there, I seized the opportunity to ask for his cell phone number and e-mail address. I intended to add him to my Facebook contacts if I survived this hunt for the Cullinan. He scribbled them on a piece of paper, which I tucked in my pocket, and I was good to go.

March wasn’t.

Haru had found a way to catch his attention. Smiling at him and dusting his jacket hadn’t worked. This, however . . . I watched in fascinated horror as she demonstrated to him a new type of remote-controlled mop that you could either pilot yourself or program to roam around your house during the day, so that your floor always remained sparkling clean. March’s gaze was locked on the plastic robot and the bright yellow mop attached underneath. His breath was a little short, and he was completely oblivious to Haru caressing his arm as he witnessed the miracle of a wooden floor mopping itself.

I had to call his name twice, and when he responded, his poker smile immediately fell in place to conceal any interest in the object.

March was in love.

With Haru’s remote-controlled mop.

We said our good-byes, and I plotted once again for March to kiss Haru on both cheeks, but this time he seemed happy to do so. The remote-controlled mop had obviously helped him see beyond any gender-related issues.

TWENTY-FIVE

Stars & Satellites

“Here’s one secret no one will tell you about getting laid after a date. DON’T TALK. Most girls blame either their looks or excessive timidity for their virginity. This is only true to an extent. These girls are also horribly annoying.”

—Aurelia Nichols & Jillie Bean,
101 Tips to Lose Your Virginity after 25

Once we were back in the car, a quick glance at the dashboard clock made it clear that we weren’t going to accomplish much more until morning. It was almost six p.m., and according to their website, Miyamoto Bank’s offices had closed half an hour ago.

“How about we get some rest tonight?” March asked as he started the engine, voicing my thoughts.

“Okay. It’s been a few crazy days . . . You need to slow down too, right?”

He gave me a surprised look as we waited at a red light. “Do I look tired to you?”

“You told that old prune of a doctor that you hadn’t slept much since we left the United States, and those bruises you got at the Rose
Paradise probably aren’t healed yet,” I explained, resting a tentative hand on his right forearm.

“Don’t worry. I’ve been through much worse.” He laughed, but I didn’t find that particularly funny.

March drove us through large streets, and as we progressed the surroundings started to feel colder—tall buildings, concrete and glass everywhere, and no one in sight. After a few minutes we passed a parking lot and a black sign that read Hotel Entrance, and I figured we had used some sort of shortcut.

A room at Tokyo’s Ritz-Carlton. I could live with that.

After he had parked, we made our way through a huge lobby that had me wondering if the floor was real marble and whether someone would throw me out if I touched those pretty Japanese paintings on the walls, or even the graceful cherry blossom branches sticking out of that big bowl-like flowerpot. Figuring that the chances were pretty high, I decided against it and watched as March leaned against a lacquered black counter and offered an impeccably dressed receptionist his most charming dimpled smile. He leaned forward to whisper in her ear—maybe he was asking for another room with bulletproof windows?