Authors: Sujata Massey
How could a civil servant afford an original painting by Balthus? I tried to memorize the details of the painting to check against the Art Loss Register, a website devoted to tracing stolen art. It had to be a real Balthus, didn’t it, if there was a motion sensor above the frame?
My examination was suddenly interrupted by the soft waterfall sound of a flushing toilet. Before I could change my position, a door opened halfway down the hall from me. Mr. Harada came out. As he headed toward the stairs, he caught sight of me and stopped.
I bowed, but Mr. Harada was staring intensely. I wondered whether he remembered me from the auction house, and if he had even heard anything about me from Emi.
“There are dogs up here. You must not go inside,” he said firmly.
“I was actually looking for a bathroom—”
“There is a facility downstairs,” he said stiffly. “Any of the caterers can show you.”
I was lucky that he believed that I only wanted to go to the bathroom. Quickly, I bowed my head again and apologized. Then I went into a short recitation of the words people used, at funerals, to convey sympathy for a terrible loss. At the end, I said, “I’m so sorry about your daughter’s passing. She was much too young.”
“She was our greatest treasure,” he said, keeping a wary eye on me.
“Yes, there are many beautiful things in art and nature, but nothing as lovely as a child.” After I said it, I felt a rush of pain. My private pain, the one I tried not to think about.
He nodded. “That’s right. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your name.”
He was trying to place me. I hesitated, remembering Tom’s worries about liability, but also his desire to apologize. “I’m Shimura Rei. I’m here with my family, who are connected to the
ikebana
school—”
I didn’t finish, because Mr. Harada had raised his hand to someone in the hall downstairs and moved on as if I didn’t exist.
I spent the next fifteen minutes glued to my aunt, ducking behind her every time Takeo entered the room. I noticed that Mr. Harada motioned to Takeo several times, bringing him into one circle of men after another. The two of them had a strong relationship, it was clear. I noticed the way Takeo held Mr. Harada’s arm, almost supporting him at times. Mr. Harada hadn’t been exactly warm to me, but why should he be, under the circumstances? I saw now how shaky he was, and I was glad Takeo had moved on from pursuit of me to concentrate instead on his intended father-in-law.
It turned out that I was wrong about Takeo. When it was time for my aunt, Tom, and me to locate our shoes among the dozens visitors had left stacked in the shoe cabinet, Takeo descended on me again.
“Help.” I heard his voice in my ear as I was bending to put on my shoes. As I turned to see him we bumped foreheads. It hurt, but that wasn’t half as bad as my realization that Aunt Norie was right behind us, witnessing the encounter.
“Help me, Rei,” Takeo repeated softly in English, as if to make his words less likely to be understood.
I could imagine the kind of help he wanted. Well, I wasn’t delivering it again. I jammed my feet into my shoes and launched myself out the front door. Our taxi was waiting. I planned to get into it, lock the doors, and wait for the rest of my party to assemble.
But Takeo ran out after me, not even bothering to find his own shoes. He closed the distance between us, and once we were outside the house’s gate, he grabbed my arms and faced me in the warm orange light of the funeral lanterns.
“Use some sense.” I shook off his hold. “Your fiancée is lying in a box inside the house and you’re trying to chase me down.”
“Because I need to talk to you about—what happened with Emi.”
The taxi driver had seen me, and had swung the black door open automatically for me; I bounded in, but unfortunately Takeo followed. I jumped out on the other side, so I was standing on the street, and he followed me out again.
“If you don’t want to talk here, give me your cell phone number. I’ll contact you later.”
“I don’t have one. My phone was stolen.”
“Stolen! So you’re having strange problems too.”
“I may have my own problems, Takeo, but let me tell you, they’re nothing compared with what
could
happen. We mustn’t attract attention.”
“Nobody can see with the taxi blocking us like this.” Takeo ran a hand through his hair. “It’s about Emi. I’m facing legal troubles because of the way she died, and I don’t know what to do.”
“You are?” I felt a twinge of worry mixed with guilt. I knew that the whole nightmarish scene inside had been caused by my own rash actions.
As if sensing he’d hit on something that affected me, Takeo spoke again. “We have to talk. You’re the only one who can help me, at this point.”
“All right, I’ll talk to you,” I said quickly. “But I don’t know where we could possibly meet. I can never go back to your house in Hayama, and please don’t suggest my aunt’s house, because she really wouldn’t approve—”
“If you are with your aunt in Yokohama, let’s meet at Sankei-en. Behind the big teahouse, there’s a forest trail. I will be waiting there tomorrow at eleven.”
“Good-bye for now,” I whispered and climbed back into the taxi just as its door swung open for my relatives.
Norie immediately wanted to know what Takeo had wanted. I told her that I was too upset to talk. The driver muttered as if to himself about the crazy younger generation.
We caught our train, and an hour later we were home. It was nine o’clock. Uncle Hiroshi had come in the door a few minutes earlier and was impatient for his supper. Norie started cooking, and I used the time to ask Tom about what had happened with Mr. Harada. We were downstairs in the corner of the dining room, where I had busied myself setting the table. Tom was leafing through a fax that had come in on the telephone-fax set up on a side table.
“So, how did the apology go?” I asked.
“It was fine,” he said shortly. “He seemed more jumpy and distracted than angry. I suppose that’s natural, given the situation.”
“Did you actually admit that you were the one who said St. Luke’s couldn’t take her?”
“I told him I was in charge of emergency services that day, and the rooms were full. I said that we organized the taxi that took her to Hiroo Hospital.” Tom picked up the second paper. “Looking at this medical note, it made sense that we sent her to Hiroo. It’s one of the few hospitals in Tokyo with a unit for treating drug overdoses.”
“A drug overdose?” I caught my breath.
“Technically, she died because her heart stopped. In fact, she lost consciousness before she crashed the car.”
“Do you think it was an attempted suicide?”
“Not at all.” He swallowed hard, then went on. “There were high levels of amphetamine in her blood.”
“What kind of amphetamines?” I asked, thinking about a lot of things, all at once: how casual Simone had acted about the pills that she and Richard had shared. They hadn’t made it seem much more dangerous than a few drinks. But Emi had taken amphetamines, and they’d stopped her heart.
“An autopsy will determine exactly what it was,” Tom said. “Though chances are it will never be publicized. My guess is that it’s just a kind of diet pill that’s very popular with young women. Ephedrine, speed, maybe even Ecstasy, though that’s still more popular with foreigners.”
“I assume she was an occasional user?” I asked, thinking of Richard’s laid-back attitude.
“No,” Tom said shortly. “Her body was cachetic—the muscle mass and fat were wasting away. She’d been using for many months, if not years. And the pathology reports showed high deposits of lead—one of the by-products of synthetically made drugs like speed.”
“Lead poisoning makes it hard for people to concentrate,” I said, remembering how Emi hadn’t been able to follow a flower arranging class.
“You’re right about lead doing that, and the amphetamine itself makes people paranoid,” Tom explained. “Ironically, the effects of amphetamines, at first, make the users feel that they can perform better at work, or on tests, or even with their sex partners. Many different versions of amphetamines are popular with gay men—”
“I know,” I said glumly, thinking of Richard. I couldn’t believe he had fallen into drugs, and so had Emi—a young girl gone, the result of paranoid rage that had sent her hurtling off in the driver’s seat of a limousine, causing all manner of havoc before her heart finally gave up.
“What’s going on in this country?” I moaned. “I leave for a little while and come back and find that everyone’s gone crazy, being self-destructive—”
“It’s true that Japanese behavior has become more similar to that in your country. Amphetamines are our most abused drug. This used to be more a problem limited to the military and businessmen, but now you can buy speed pills in almost any Tokyo nightclub, and if you’re a girl, well, you often don’t have to buy for yourself.”
I nodded, thinking that this was a variation of the free drinks on ladies’ nights at bars; young women didn’t have to pay, because men wanted them to be eager sexual partners.
“Emi went to Tokyo International Girls School,” I said. “Maybe she was able to get the drug there. Although from the photos I saw of her at the house, it looked as if she’d already started to slim down while she was living in Turkey. Of course,” I said, remembering what Takeo had told me, “she went to the American school there.”
“Is that so?” Tom sounded pensive. “Yes, we have had troubles here with Americans and drugs—but you know that.” He turned his gaze on me. “You are from San Francisco, the historic center of recreational drug culture. It must have been hard for you to resist cultural influences.”
“Oh, come on. Every other person in San Francisco is an ascetic who does nothing, whether it’s drugs or meat or sugar.” I hated it when my cousin pulled a
sempai
act on me, taking on the role of boss just because he was two years older.
“Well, in any case, it is doubtful that Harada-san is going to reveal publicly the cause of his daughter’s death. On the other hand, it’s a shame that justice can’t be served,” Tom grumbled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that foreign boy we saw at the party was a dealer of amphetamines.”
“Don’t be xenophobic,” I chided him, but not too roughly, because I had a burning question. “Tom, is there a way to find out whether the amphetamine was contaminated?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, what if it was cut with something lethal?”
“Well, she took it in a tablet form, so that seems unlikely.” Tom rifled through the papers. “No, no sign of anything but amphetamine. But as I told you, that in itself can kill.”
I nodded, but my thoughts were elsewhere. There was still a chance that Emi’s death wasn’t accidental. I remembered Takeo’s rushed words about the trouble he was in. Was he under suspicion for giving her the drug that had ended her life?
“You seem a bit tense,” Tom said. “Now I worry that I shouldn’t have told you what I know. And I want you to try to lift your mood. The bad weather must have kept you from running, but perhaps you can start again tomorrow.”
“Now that’s good therapeutic advice.” I smiled at my cousin, who was looking at me anxiously. “All right, I think I will go to Sankei-en tomorrow and run through the gardens.”
“Please telephone first to see if it is open,” Tom advised. “If there was a lot of storm damage, the place might be closed.”
“Of course,” I answered, my thoughts still on Emi, the drug, and what Takeo might know.
My departure for Sankei-en was complicated by a special delivery of a new cell phone, which came with a padded black case that, in turn, had a steel clasp attached to it. As I hooked the holder into the front right-side pocket of my hooded cashmere sweatshirt, I was reminded of a child having to wear mittens on a string.
The return address on the box was the American embassy in Tokyo. This raised all kinds of questions from Aunt Norie, so I had to embroider yet more details about my job for the Smithsonian. The phone was, if anything, more complicated than the last one I’d had, and I spent twenty minutes figuring it out while I lounged in a quiet section of Minami-Makigahara Station—not a difficult spot to find, since rush hour was over. I was all alone as I finally got the numbers pressed in correctly and heard the sound of a phone ringing in Washington.
“I’ve been going through a report on the death of the bride,” Michael said after we’d exchanged terse greetings.
“And what have you found?”
“The cause of death was never released by the hospital. Typical.”
“Actually,” I said, feeling a rush of pride, “if you’d like, I can give you some details from the medical record.”
“What?” Michael’s voice was sharp.
“You can’t tell anyone because it could get my source in trouble. But she died because of heart failure triggered by an amphetamine overdose.” I told him about what the medical notes had revealed—and what I’d figured out about her unhealthy weight loss through my conversations with Fumiko and Takeo.
“That’s good work,” Michael said grudgingly. “I don’t suppose—there’s anything else?”
Using a minimum of words, I filled him in on what I’d noticed at the Harada house—from the mysterious young man who was thrown out to the expensive Japanese pottery to the Kazu Sakurai bowl and the painting that I thought was a Balthus. I didn’t go into the business of Takeo chasing me down.
“I don’t suppose you know what paintings by Balthus sell for at auction?” Michael asked when I was through.
I’d checked out all the sales statistics that I could find on the Internet the previous evening, after Tom had gone upstairs and I’d sneaked onto his desktop computer. “One Balthus painting sold in Paris a few years ago for over two million dollars, but that was an isolated case. Since then, the paintings of his that have come on the market went in the range of six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand dollars. The Kazu Sakurai piece is in a lower range, but still very expensive—I imagine the bowl I examined would sell in the middle four figures, at least. Sakurai doesn’t have a website, but I might be able to find out more about the prices directly from his business in Kyushu.”
“I see.” Michael paused, and I heard the sound of turning pages. “The bride’s father—let’s call him Mr. Harmony—his annual salary is probably about half of what one of those Balthus paintings you mentioned cost. Do you think he’d blow two years’ salary on a painting?”
I’d once blown a year’s earnings on a
tansu
chest, but I’d resold it at profit. Maybe Mr. Harada operated in a similar way. “Mr. Harmony could buy for several reasons.”
“Such as?”
“Well, he might have inherited money, or he might have made successful investments or earned extra money from another job like consulting. I first saw him at the Meiwashima auction house, and he appeared to be known by the staff. Maybe he sells there as well as buys. He’s definitely an art connoisseur. That’s why his giving a reproduction historic piece as a gift to his future son-in-law makes no sense to me.”
“Speaking of the vessel,” Michael said, “I’m surprised you haven’t yet asked what our contacts have to say about its provenance.”
“It’s been evaluated already?” I calculated backward, realizing that the broken ewer couldn’t have arrived more than forty-eight hours earlier.
“They’re still working on it in the lab, but I’ve already heard that your theory will likely prove correct.”
“Well, thank you very much.” This was an understatement. I was relieved to know that I was right, and that I hadn’t caused a major loss to international art history.
“You’ve done fine so far,” Michael said. “It must be around nine in the morning there. What’s on your agenda today?”
“Tak—Mr. Flowers—wants to meet to talk about something. Legal troubles, he said.”
“Well, hold his hand if you must, but don’t lose track of the final objective. And don’t get embroiled with the Japanese police, okay?”
“I won’t even ask a cop for directions. And what’s this about the final objective? I believe that I’ve delivered what you wanted. I should be on my way home now.”
“I’d like to keep you around for a while. It seems to me there’s something going on with the late bride’s family and all their art. I want to know more about the painting, so I can check it against international police records.”
I had written a full page of notes about the Balthus, as well as some of the other paintings and artwork. I relayed all the information in detail, then told Michael good-bye as the train rolled in. While using a cell phone was not illegal on trains, it was strongly discouraged—this meant I’d probably be the only person talking in the car, providing an earful of entertainment for whoever could pick up whatever language I was speaking. Until Michael and I developed a new version of pig latin, I was staying off the phone on trains.
It was this Japanese understanding of the importance of peace and quiet that had led to the establishment of Sankei-en, a lush walled garden in north Yokohama. Tomitaro Hara, a nouveau riche businessman who’d made his fortune in the early nineteenth century, had given his estate grounds so that the public could admire acres of purple iris each spring, followed in turn by cherry blossoms and azaleas. These flowers were out of season now, and the garden had suffered damage in the typhoon. Whole trees had been ripped out of the ground, and at the teahouse Takeo mentioned, the windows had been blown out. A crew of workmen wearing split-toe rubber boots were putting in new windows as I passed by. They called out a warning to me about the trail beyond being blocked. I pretended I didn’t hear and continued on.
I’d expected Takeo to be waiting for me, but he wasn’t there. I waited a full fifteen minutes before he showed up, looking unlike himself in a Tokyo Giants baseball jersey, oversize cargo pants, and a backward-turned baseball cap. He’d added sunglasses for good measure.
“Did those workmen talk to you?” he asked, shooting a look over his shoulder.
“They told me the trail was blocked,” I said.
“Apparently it is. So why don’t you proceed out by yourself over to—the pond where the irises bloom? I’ll join you there a few minutes later.”
I wasn’t used to Takeo being as nervous about observation as I was, but these were hard times. I walked back toward the workers and held open the park map, consulting it as if I didn’t know the gardens well. I strolled on to the pond. The iris had already bloomed and were just neatly tied bundles of dull green, but the pond was full of geese, which immediately left the water to surround me.
“I have nothing,” I told them in both Japanese and English, but they remained around me, stubbornly calling, until I remembered a piece of cookie wrapped in a napkin at the bottom of the backpack and distributed it. But that only set off more excitement, keeping me busy until Takeo arrived.
“These geese are driving me crazy, and I’m tight on time, Takeo. Let’s get to the point, okay?” I spoke while making useless shooing gestures with my hands.
“So, what’s your next thing, a jogging date?” Takeo looked skeptically at my black yoga pants and tank top, over which I’d layered a hooded zip-front gray cashmere sweater, then sighed. “If only my life was simple.”
“No, jogging was my cover to get away from my family. Though you look like you’re off to a baseball game, not very smart because I don’t believe the Giants ever play this early on a weekday morning.”
“There are people who dress like this,” Takeo grumbled. “In any case, I don’t want to look like myself. The police might be following me.”
“Why are the police concerned about you?” I was almost afraid of the answer. Takeo had slept with me because he hadn’t been in love with Emi. Her death would have freed him. The facts laid out baldly looked bad for him.
Takeo swallowed hard, looked down, then looked up at me again. “Drugs. Emi actually died from a drug overdose. The police think that because I was the man with her, I gave her the drugs.”
“Well, you knew what she was doing, didn’t you?”
He looked at me warily. “What do you mean?”
“Did you see her take the pills?”
He shuddered, then nodded. “It happened very fast. She swallowed three pills in the house without even taking water. I tried to stop her, but it was impossible.”
I remembered Takeo’s arms around Emi. What I’d thought was his effort to comfort her might have really been an attempt to stop her from taking the drugs—if he was really telling me the truth.
“So you knew she was using drugs. The obvious thing would be to tell the police.”
“As I told you, they think I was her supplier. Of course you know I’m not.”
“Okay, I believe you. Then who could it be?”
“No idea.” He shook his head. “Maybe one of her high school friends. There were always a lot of friends stopping by to visit her, or she’d drag me to those ridiculous clubs in Roppongi. I didn’t realize she was taking anything until after the
omiai
was set. Then it was too late.”
“What do you mean, too late? Better to break an engagement than a marriage.”
“Well, I didn’t realize it was—serious. A lot of girls take these pills as a diet thing and for energy. I thought that after the wedding, either she’d stop taking them on her own or I could convince her to do so.”
He was in a dreamworld. I said, “Let’s get back to the accident. She was high—”
“Well, yes. She drove like someone who was crazy, I guess because of the drugs and also not really knowing what she was doing—I’d been trying to steer myself, but I wasn’t able to change our course toward the shop, and we hit.” He bowed his head. “It was actually my fault.”
“But not the death,” I said, trying to console him.
“Oh, but it was.” Takeo’s expression was anguished. “I didn’t mention the drugs to the paramedics. And I asked them to send her to St. Luke’s because your cousin’s in the emergency room there, and I thought that when it came out about the drugs, he’d be sympathetic and figure out a way to help without getting us into trouble.”
“Oh, my God. You were behind that decision to go to St. Luke’s?” I was stunned.
“Yes. I made a mistake.” Takeo’s voice was bitter.
“Why didn’t you go along in the helicopter? I saw you going off with the police instead, when I was watching the news broadcast.”
“They demanded that I go. They wanted all the details of the accident, who was driving and so on. And the reason I’m late is—just this morning, new police officers came to my apartment. They’d found out from the doctors at the hospital that she’d been on amphetamines, and they wanted to search both my apartment in Tokyo and the house in Hayama.”
“Did they find anything?”
“In her handbag, she had a lipstick case containing some tablets. I immediately took a drug test.” Takeo looked at me steadily. “I tested negative, which should have been enough, but they’ve been questioning me about my friends in the environmental protest movement, insinuating that I run around with criminals.”
“Have you gotten your family lawyer involved?” I asked. The way things worked in Japan, connections and backroom talk were everything.
Takeo’s voice was deadly quiet. “If I talk to that lawyer, it means he goes to my father. If my father catches a breath of scandal, he’ll take away my right to run the Kayama School. I’m thirty-one, Rei. I’ve worked all my life to run this school, and I—I was going to be able to do so much more for Japan—”
“That’s right. You were about to become the son-in-law of the minister for the environment, and you were going to influence government policies on land and pollution.” I remembered how ambitious it had all seemed, a few days ago. Now it just seemed sad. “And speaking of Emi’s father, I think—I think you must still have an ally. Certainly, Kenichi Harada would want the fact that his daughter died from amphetamines to remain quiet.”
“I went to the house early yesterday, before the memorial, and we talked. He wanted to know if I’d known, because he hadn’t. I told him how I thought it was a phase, and how very sorry I was not to have been more—active—about stopping things.” Takeo put his head in his hands.
“Was he angry with you?”
“He was upset, but he told me, in quiet strong language, that he wants nothing to be known about what happened. While I was there he telephoned the detective in charge of the case to reiterate the point.”
“Well, that should take care of the problem—”
“It won’t. The detective in charge said he wouldn’t expose the cause of Emi’s death, but he is trying to identify whoever provided the drugs, as part of a larger crackdown.”
“Do you know anything about the young man who was thrown out of the funeral?” I asked.
“The foreigner with the curly hair?” Takeo sounded pensive. “I know I’ve seen him before. I didn’t make the connection that he knew Emi until the funeral. Who is he?”
“I have no idea. We should find out. Perhaps that’s the drug connection.”
Takeo shook his head. “You, not me. I don’t want to implicate anyone falsely. I mean, if you knew what I’ve had to say already to protect you—”
A light flashed, startling the geese, who rose up in a mass flurry. Caught off balance, Takeo pitched forward. I reached out my arm to catch him, but his weight caught me off balance and we both tripped into the pond.
The water was only about knee-high, but cold.
“It looks like I’m the one who needs protection,” he said. I laughed, because I couldn’t help myself. The situation was so ludicrous.
“Yes. I once had a much better time with you underwater in Hayama. Remember?” Takeo asked as we stepped back up onto dry land.
“Yes, I remember.” I paused. “But you know, it can never happen again. I don’t want it to.”