Japantown (5 page)

Even as I recognized the cunning of the maneuver, I was powerless to stop it. The knife swung harmlessly past my throat and carved an arc in the air between us, then dropped down and swept across my right thigh, chewing a long gash through my Levi’s and the flesh underneath. I grunted in pain and my leg buckled. I hobbled away, putting vital space between us as swiftly as I could. Blood oozed from the wound.

Sheer genius. The secondary strike was assured if the first missed, and designed to cripple. The next pass would be the death blow.

I edged back as my assailant charged in low for a finishing gut shot. I stepped left, then feigned a half-kick with my weakened leg, an aggressive move he wouldn’t expect. He hesitated and I slapped the knife hand aside, connecting with a solid jab to the jaw, managing to put some weight behind the blow. He winced and stepped away. A fortuitous strike on my part. And pure luck that I connected at all. Hamstrung, I was overmatched. I could slow his advance but not stop him.

Homeboy paused, disdain in his eyes. “You’re fast, asshole, but not fast enough.”

“Stay away from my place.”

Indecision played across his features as he considered how much more pain I’d be able to inflict before he could penetrate my defenses. We both knew he could advance on me, given enough time and no witnesses. But he held off, restrained by an unseen force.

He waved the knife. “Cute daughter you have. Maybe I should try slicing her up.”

“Leave her out of this.”

“She’s in it. Way in it. And so are you. More than you know.”

He dropped back, the weapon covering his retreat, then disappeared around the nearest corner.

Enraged, I wanted to race after him, but blood flowed too freely from the gash in my leg. Unthreading my belt, I strapped it around my upper thigh to stem the bleeding. Had Homeboy connected with the first swipe, blood flow would have been the least of my worries. His fighting skills were unlike anything I’d ever encountered and it was a minor miracle I was still standing.

By all rights I should be dead, and in a less public place, Homeboy would have succeeded. Although my unexpected resistance had deterred him today, his threat suggested his retreat might have been tactical rather than permanent:
She’s in it. Way in it. And so are you.

CHAPTER 7

A
HIGH-PITCHED
scream greeted my return.

Jenny rushed forward and threw her arms around me. My blood-soaked jeans had triggered her panic, the makeshift tourniquet and limp sending her over the edge. She buried her face in my stomach and sobbed. Her body shook. I wrapped my arms around her. Each cry tore at my heart.

“I’ll be all right, Jen.” When I tried to pry her arms from my waist, she pressed her face deeper into my belly.

She raised bloodshot eyes to my face. “Are you going to die?”

“Of course not.”

“Does it hurt?”

“No. It just looks bad.”

I led her to the couch, and we sat down together. Her cheeks glistened. I took her hand.

“It’s my fault, Daddy.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because I told you about him.”

“He’s a stranger. You
should
tell me about him.”

“But—”

“Listen to me. You didn’t put him outside our door. You didn’t cause him to attack me. You did
nothing
wrong.”

“But what if—”

I squeezed her hand. “We’ve talked about this before. Sometimes things we don’t like happen. We can’t hide from them,
especially
the ones that scare us.”

Jenny’s tear-filled eyes clung to my every word. What I left unsaid was Homeboy’s unexplained threat.

I said, “Good or bad, the world keeps on spinning, right?” I paused, waiting until Jenny acknowledged our private refrain with a nod. “Sometimes the world gives us bad, like Billy’s broken arm or Mrs. Kelter’s asthma. But we also get the good, like Lisa’s birthday party last week or our trip to the aquarium.”

Jenny nodded, pushing out her bottom lip in reluctant agreement. “And sometimes we get good
and
bad, like Mommy leaving?”

“Yes, exactly. The fire took her, but Mommy still loves us and watches over us. When the good hits us, we soak it up. When the bad strikes, we learn from it and move on.”

Jenny chewed her bottom lip. “I don’t want you to leave, Daddy.”

“I plan to stick around for a long time, Jen,” I said, addressing the hidden concern behind her plea. “Believe me.”

She raised her eyes to mine. “Why do you always do scary things? Like Grandpa’s work?”

I took a deep breath. Brodie Security was my father’s parting gift to me, and mainly because of the wrongheaded estrangement that was partly my doing, I chose to carry on what he’d started. As a posthumous tribute to what he had created. It didn’t make much money, but I liked the idea of continuing what Jake had begun. But if my work was going to brand Jenny with psychological scars, I’d have to reconsider. I already had one strike against me: nine months ago I’d been pummeled pretty badly by the yaki boys and come home with souvenir injuries that had sent Jenny into a tailspin of worry about losing her one remaining parent.

I said, “If it ever gets really bad, I can quit, okay?”

“Really?” Silence. Then: “Is your leg going to be okay?”

“Yes. Your dad’s tough. Are
you
going to be okay?”

“Well, if you are, then I am too.”

Jenny smiled through her tears, then flung her arms around me once more. I embraced her, soaking up the warmth of her tiny body, amazed all over again at how big a part she played in my life. I’d do anything for her. I wanted to shield her from the world’s harshness, from the brutal fact that a stranger could step in and alter our lives. But I could hardly deny the limp or the blood. The world kept spinning.

“Let’s get you ready for school,” I said. “It’s nearly time.”

“Okay.”

We talked as she dressed. She chatted excitedly about her upcoming field trip to Mount Tamalpais. I helped her on with a fresh pair of jeans and her favorite T-shirt with Day-Glo butterflies fluttering over Day-Glo flowers, then nudged her out the door to summer school, where I hoped playground activities would remove any last strain of the morning’s trauma.

But behind Jenny’s breathless buoyancy I saw hints of a lingering anxiety just under the surface. With her mother gone, she fretted about me, and this morning’s incident gave new credence to her fears.

Even leaving aside Japantown and Renna, I wondered if Brodie Security and what it stood for was driving a wedge between us as it had between my parents. Wedded to his growing enterprise, Jake often neglected his duties at home, something I told myself I’d never do to Jenny or Mieko with any undertaking. Yet in the wake of my father’s death, I felt a strong desire to keep his namesake firm alive. The people at Brodie Security had mattered to my father, and they mattered to me.

But Jenny mattered more.

Which only complicated things. I had my promise to Renna to consider as well, not to mention the lingering mystery of the kanji—and where it might lead.

CHAPTER 8

D
RIED
blood had caked around my wound, the textured denim of my Levi’s acting as a natural compress to stem the bleeding. Gingerly, I stripped off the pants, washed the gash, and assessed the damage. Homeboy had barely made contact, but even so, the blade had sliced through cloth and muscle with ease. Had I been wearing a lighter weave, the knife would have met with less resistance and penetrated deeper and that would have mandated a hospital visit. As it was, I escaped with an eighth-inch-deep cut running across the meaty part of my quads for a good two inches. I’d be limping for a few days.

A trip to the doctor would cost me a dozen stitches and a fee I couldn’t afford, so I swabbed the wound with disinfectant, dressed it with a gauze pad, and taped the leg. Next, I rang the building superintendent and alerted him to Homeboy’s intrusion. He said he would canvass the residents for further information and get back to me.

I’d already asked Lisa’s mother to drive the kids to school. As soon as Jenny walked out the door, I’d followed up with a personal call to the principal, giving her Homeboy’s description and requesting that she keep Jenny in the classroom after school until Mrs. Meyers, myself, or my shop assistant, Bill Abers, came to collect her. Once Jenny’s safety was covered from all angles, I limped in to Brodie Antiques at nine a.m., bandaged, unfed, preoccupied, and toting the tea bowl.

Bill Abers said, “Ach, early today.”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“You do look snookered.”

“Snookered hardly covers it.”

“How about the wrong end of an elephant stampede?”

Abers was born, raised, and chased out of South Africa.

“That bad?”

“Bumps and bruises, laddie. Something’s knocked you cross-eyed and I’m not talking about the limp.”

“There’s no hiding from you trained observers.”

Bill and Louisa Abers had been liberal-minded Caucasian journalists in Pretoria, South Africa, in the days of apartheid before the wet ops began. They were passionate about ending the regime’s racial suppression, which made them as rare as an elephant with three tusks. Then trouble blew into town. Agents for the ruling party bombed their small press, so they went to work for a competing rag with connections and assurances of a safe berth. One day when his wife was on her way into town to buy a summer blouse, her sky-blue Chevy Jeep exploded. Most of the pieces were never recovered. The event still haunted him. Now in his late sixties, Abers had a weathered face, troubled brown eyes, and a vigorous crown of snow-white hair.

“What’s with the leg anyway?”

“A minor run-in.”

Abers scratched the morning stubble he often neglected to shave. “Just so you know, I shuffled the ukiyo-e prints. They’ve been stagnant the whole summer.”

“Good thinking.”

We carried a wide range of Japanese antiques: woodblock prints, scrolls, ceramics, and furniture for starters. Most of the stock was affordable and spoke of far-off lands and long-lost times in a way few items could. In a way that brought richness to my life and, ideally, to my clients’.

The ukiyo-e were a case in point. Even though the genre did not occupy one of the higher tiers in the Japanese art world, the prints were a great entry point. People loved them. To a new client, I’d mention some of the provocative highlights of the Japanese woodblock’s colorful past: its dalliance with legendary sumo wrestlers, larger-than-life Kabuki actors, and graceful courtesans of the old pleasure quarters; the oppressive shogunate government it mocked with sly innuendo and veiled farce; the subtle influence the genre cast over Gauguin, Degas,
Toulouse-Lautrec, and van Gogh, among others. Along with their new possession, I wanted people to walk out the door with some knowledge, and their lives somehow fuller.

Abers said, “I framed the new Hiroshige print too. Take a look when you have a chance.”

“Will do.”

I made a move toward my office at the back of the shop.

“Now’s a good time,” he offered.

Abers had instincts I encouraged. He had a head for the business and it was only when he was absorbed in the art that the gloom that clung to him lifted. Without Louisa, he had lost interest in nearly everything. He left journalism, traveled the world looking to make sense of the anguish that continually churned his insides, and eventually settled in San Francisco, because she was a city with a “sparkle in her eye.” One day he showed up on my doorstep, and before I knew it, he had taken over in the way a very determined stray cat might. He charmed clients old and new and brought in fresh ones. He knew art and he knew people.

Until last night, Abers and I had shared only an abiding interest in beautiful objects and the sudden loss of our wives. With a jolt I saw another link: my wife may have also met with a violent death. Only a few strokes of a kanji stood between us having a third biographical fact in common.

I tapped my upper thigh. “Maybe later, all right?”

“Sure, lad. But keep your eye on the ball. Our stock’s stagnating.”

The truth of his words struck a tender spot. If we didn’t ring up some sales soon, we’d be selling from the sidewalk. The antiques business paid the bills and left me with enough spare change every month for a few pints of Anchor Steam. The PI sideline in Tokyo was nearly as lucrative—there I had twenty-three employees to pay.

Abers shrugged and turned away. I knew he would work out his frustration by polishing a newly arrived pair of traditional
tansu
I’d purchased from my main Kyoto connection on my last trip to Japan. The best tansu were hefty chests of drawers decorated with superb ironwork and lacquer, the finish drawing out the grain of the wood and giving the piece a final coloring that ranged from a soft woody beige to a dark brown, or even a rich reddish brown.

Abers got to it, while I closeted myself in the back office to tackle my email. My office was carpeted and encompassed a desk, a file cabinet, a leather armchair for guests, and an adjoining sitting room where I could close deals in private.

The shop itself was located west of Van Ness on Lombard, part of a major byway that threaded its way through the Marina District and the lower edge of Pacific Heights, then out to the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County to the north. Everyone shopped in either the Old Town stores below Lombard or the upscale ones above it. Both were higher-rent districts. Only motels excelled on the commercial thoroughfare where I’d opened Brodie Antiques. But the affluent drove by daily, as did the moneyed of Marin and beyond. My business needed exposure and word of mouth, not walk-in traffic, so I settled on this busy thoroughfare, and slowly Abers and I were building a clientele.

By ten o’clock, I’d finished answering my email. I noted with pleasure that the owner of three Buddhist temple statues from Ibaragi had accepted my lowball bid for the lot. As Abers had a knack for selling the alluring icons, keeping him supplied with new pieces was an ongoing challenge.