Tokyo Heist (24 page)

“It is my problem. My dad’s in danger!” I feel dizzy. It’s not the
sake
this time. It’s panic. “Please. Help us.” I swallow hard. “We need someone with the right equipment to see if the van Gogh’s underneath the painting we found.”

“Okay,” Skye relents. “I do know someone who might be able to help out. A woman named Natsuko Kikuchi. I went to grad school with her. She’s a conservator at the Kyoto National Museum. I’ll call her and set something up. But you have to trust Kenji. Tell him what you found.”

Do I trust Kenji?
“You said he was a cheater,” I cautiously remind her.

“Oh, that.” Skye sighs. “Yeah, he hit on me. Maybe he’d had a beer too many after work. One slip doesn’t make him a womanizer or a pathological liar. Go easy on him. I don’t even think about it anymore.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way. Along the same lines, maybe one emotionally charged public scene with my dad doesn’t make Skye a crazed, revenge-seeking art thief. Maybe one comment about Mardi’s tastes in movies doesn’t mean Edge is in love with her. I’ve always wanted people to see there’s more to me than meets the eye, but I forgot that can work both ways. Who knows what I’ve missed by slotting people into boxes so quickly, framing them with my expectations?

“Violet, are you still there?”

“Yeah. I was just thinking about what you said.”

“Look. Adults are just complicated and, well,
weird
sometimes,” says Skye.

“That’s what people say about teenagers.”

Skye laughs. “So maybe we’re not all that different. But seriously. Tell Kenji. And while you’re at it, you might want to pass on some breaking news about Julian Fleury.”

“Julian?”

“After he quit his job at Margo’s, suddenly no one could reach him,” Skye says. “Police even got a search warrant to enter his apartment. His neighbors said he hadn’t been there for days. Then Federal agents caught up with him this morning at a real estate agency in Tacoma. I guess Kenji called in a tip about some phone number Julian had on his notepad at work, and that’s how they tracked him down there. Anyway, Julian showed up with a big fat check, hoping to buy a gallery space right by the Chihuly Glass Museum. That’s prime real estate.”

I catch my breath. That part of the investigation happened because I did that notepad rubbing, and because I gave the information to Kenji!

“It’s all pretty bizarre, since Julian’s hardly wealthy,” Skye goes on. “He’s been up to something, all right. They’re just trying to find out what.”

“I’ll let my dad know. And thanks again for your help.”

The instant I hang up, the door to the storage room flies open. The doorway frames the T-shaped silhouette of a woman in a dark blue
kimono
. For a moment I’m sure I’m looking at a ghost.

Then a light switches on, revealing the
okami-san
glaring at us.

3

0

T
he
okami-san
marches into the room, shuts the door behind her, and points to Tomonori’s painting, which we have propped up in front of an antique bureau. She says something in Japanese, practically spitting.

Reika looks terrified. “She’s going to get your dad and Kenji—who she thinks is my dad—unless we can explain what we’re doing here.”

I think fast. “Let’s let her think we suspect
her
of having something to do with the missing van Gogh. Make her nervous. Get some information.”

“What, interrogate her? She’s in charge here. We have to humble ourselves.”

“As nice as it is to follow Japanese customs, this just isn’t the time. Ask her if she moved this painting from the wall outside the
onsen
.”

Reika asks the question in Japanese.

“Hai,”
says the
okami-san
.
Yes
. Her eyes flit from Reika to me to Reika.

“Now ask her if she moved it because she was trying to keep the painting away from the Yamadas.”

“Hai,”
the
okami-san
replies again warily. Then she addresses Reika in Japanese.

Reika translates: “She wants to know why we are interested in finding a painting.”

“Fine. Let’s tell her what we think Tomonori Yamada painted over.”

“Eh? Tomonori Yamada?” The
okami-san
pounces on that name.

Reika says something in Japanese. I catch the name
van Gogh.

The
okami-san
sinks into a chair, one hand on her chest, fingers splayed.

“Ask her to tell us about this painting,” I tell Reika.

The
okami-san
gazes at us for a long time, searching our faces. I meet the
okami-san
’s eyes and stare right back. I haven’t come this far to let myself get intimidated. I’m feeling a wind rushing through me.
Chikara
. Confidence. Power. I sit up straighter and let it fill me.

The
okami-san
pulls up two other wooden chairs and gestures to us to sit down. Before I do so, I shove the blanket back under the door crack and turn off the light. We all sit facing each other, illuminated only by a trickle of moonlight leaking in.

In that soft light, the
okami-san
doesn’t look so scary. She speaks slowly and indicates with a graceful gesture that Reika should translate for me.

“She says she’ll tell us what she knows about this painting,” Reika says. “Since we told her why we’re looking for a lost painting here. She appreciates our honesty.”

“Arigato gozaimasu,”
I whisper, bowing my head.

The
okami-san
explains, pausing every few sentences to let Reika translate.

“The people you are traveling with did not check in with the family name Yamada
.
They used the name Ueno. So I was surprised to hear Yamada,” Reika interprets. “When the men told me they were searching for a painting that was possibly left here in 1987, I became frightened. I thought these people might be art thieves, though I did not understand why they’d be traveling with
gaikokujin
—with foreigners.

“In fact, a guest did leave a painting at the inn back in 1987. The painting you see before you. During dinner tonight I removed it from the wall until I could determine what these people might really be after. It took a great deal of time, as the person who gave me the painting instructed me to bolt it firmly to the wall, rather than hang it, because of the heavy frame.”

“Did you know Tomonori Yamada personally?” I ask through Reika.

The
okami-san
freezes for a few moments, then nods. She looks deeply sad.

“The name gave me a start when you mentioned it,” Reika translates after the
okami-san
speaks again. “I had not heard it in many years. Yamada-san—Tomonori—was a frequent guest here in the 1980s. He came here to relax and to draw. I was a chambermaid, still a young woman, and my mother was the
okami-san
. I served his meals. I set out his futon in the evenings. I was curious about the drawings in his room, and I looked at them one day. I got in the habit of looking through them every evening when I laid out his futon. Then I saw myself in them.”

The
okami-san
falls silent. I hardly dare breathe, for fear of breaking the spell. But she goes on, as does Reika’s translation.

“My mother trained my sisters and me to be invisible, as chambermaids. But my curiosity got the better of me. I confronted Tomonori. I asked him, why draw me? ‘Because, Hanae, you are as beautiful as the flower you are named for,’ he said.”

I poke Reika, and she clutches my arm. I’m sure we’re both thinking of the same thing. The woman he sketched on the two-page spread, whose kimono held the story of how the painting came to the inn. That wasn’t his wife. It had to be this woman, the
okami-san
, when she was younger. Now I see what is familiar about her. A way she tips her head and looks at us sort of sideways. A graceful flourish of her left hand.

“He asked me to pose for him one day,” Reika translates the next segment. “I knew it was inappropriate, but I agreed to it. Tomonori was compelling and very handsome. And, to be honest, I was fascinated by seeing myself on paper. I had never thought much of myself or my looks before then. It is hard to explain, but I felt as if I were coming to life on the page.

“Soon I was posing frequently. Our relationship deepened.” At this, the
okami-san
reddens slightly and looks down at her lap. “I knew he was married and had a young son. I knew he was a businessman in Tokyo. I knew he lived another life. Yet here, at the inn, it was like we escaped to another world. Our own world. Our floating world.”

I point to the woman in the pink kimono in the painting. “This is you?”

“Yes,” Reika translates as the
okami-san
smiles. “This was our happiest evening together. I slipped away from the inn with him and went to the
ukai
show.” The
okami-san
frowns, and Reika—unconsciously, I think—frowns, too, before going on. “Of course, that was all an illusion. The next day, he went back to Tokyo. I received an angry letter in the mail the next week, from Tomonori’s wife. She had seen her husband’s sketchbooks, and found repeated images of me, with my name written there, and a business card for the
ryokan
. Most Japanese women know when their husbands have affairs, she said in the letter, and they just look the other way. But she was not going to do that. Not when the family business, and her son’s future, was at stake. She said she destroyed the journals and sketches she found. Tomonori would not be returning to the
ryokan
, and I must not communicate with him. She had threatened to leave him if he saw me again. Divorce would cause public scandal at a terrible time, just as the Yamada Corporation was expanding overseas. ‘You will not steal my husband from me. We will all put this affair behind us,’
she said.
‘We will erase it. It never happened.’”

The
okami-san
dabs at the corners of her eyes.

My own eyes are watering. I know what it feels like to have a relationship erased. With a blank stare. Or with an accusation, hurled in fear.

“I was hurt, of course,” she continues through Reika. “Hurt that Tomonori gave in to his wife’s demands so readily. Hurt that our dream world disappeared in an instant. But I did not wish to cause trouble for him. If he truly loves me, I told myself, he will send a message. And our love will live on, growing more powerful, if only in our hearts and minds.

“You see, many Japanese people have a certain vision of love. They believe impossible love is the strongest type of love there is. Now I suppose I see it differently. Now I can see I have lost all those years. In my faithfulness to the ideal of impossible love, I have lost the chance to love anyone else in reality. I have even lost the chance to become a mother.”

“So you never heard from him again?” My God. This is the saddest story I’ve ever heard.

The
okami-san
shakes her head after Reika conveys my question. “Only once. He came here to the inn in the middle of the night. He knocked softly on the door and called my name. My room was near the door, and I was awake anyway, watching a dragonfly trapped in a paper lantern, and thinking of Tomonori. So I heard him and I came to the door, afraid that my mother or sister would answer the door instead. ‘You cannot stay here,’ I told him, speaking through the crack in the door. ‘Your wife is very angry. I cannot cast more misery upon your household.’ He looked agitated. He was frowning, not smiling. He was not himself. In the moonlight, I could see the sweat on his forehead. I wanted to throw open the door and wipe it away. I resisted.

“He held up a large package wrapped in brown paper and said it was a parting gift, something he had made. ‘The frame is heavy,’ he said. ‘You must affix it firmly to the wall.’

“I thought he had lost his mind. He had traveled all the way here from Tokyo, in the middle of the night, just to give me an unwieldy picture? To talk about frames? Without one gentle word, without one tender look? I refused to take it. I told him to take his picture and go.

“But he practically snarled at me. ‘You must take this gift, Hanae! You must take it immediately! People are waiting for me. I cannot stay long here.’ He glanced behind him. He was acting very strangely. I looked into the darkness behind him and saw no one. I could not understand his extreme agitation. I was angry that his distress didn’t seem to have anything to do with me or our situation.

“I heard my mother stirring in her room, so I reached for the package and grabbed it. It was very heavy. I nearly dropped it. Tomo’s fingers brushed mine as he passed the package to me. Only after I had the package with both hands did he look into my eyes. ‘Good-bye, Hanae,’ he whispered. ‘You are the woman who stole my heart. I am so glad you did. Nothing that happens will ever change that.’ He leaned in as if to kiss me. But the heavy package I still held was awkward—he could not get close—and then a rustling in the bushes startled us. It was only a cat. Tomonori turned away and ran to the river, where I saw him get into a waiting boat.

“I was so dismayed by this visit, and his confusing behavior, that I slid the package into the back of a closet and did not open it. Two weeks later, I heard Tomonori Yamada’s name again. In the newspapers. He had committed suicide off a Tokyo subway platform. The paper showed a picture of his shoes neatly placed on the platform, beside his briefcase. I wept in my room for hours. Then I took out that package. I ripped off the tape, tore off the brown paper. It was the painting you see here. He had sent me the message I’d hoped for. I had been a fool, I thought. The painting was about me and our love. Since then, I have displayed it near the
onsen
, where all guests must pass by, so that his work may be seen. My mother died without ever knowing that the painting was not just an anonymous gift from a grateful guest. Our story has been hidden for all these years.”