by Diana Renn
“That sucks!”
“I know! Anyway, I just got your news, and that picture you sent me. Good work, finding Tomonori’s ayu drawing. That’s his signature in the corner.”
“What about that file-box label? I’m wondering if that’s the box of old blueprints where Kenji first found the portfolio of van Gogh drawings.”
“There is a year on the label. 1987.”
“That’s when Tomonori bought the van Goghs!”
“I know, right? And the label on the box translates to something like ‘Fine Ayu Food Products.’ It sounds like the name of a company.”
“So Tomonori probably didn’t hide the van Gogh drawings in some random file box.”
“He was very deliberate. The ayu on the picture he left in his briefcase must have been a clue to the drawings hidden in that file box. I bet wherever he hid the painting connects back to the ayu clue, too.”
Next, I tell Reika about the conference call. “It’s kind of weird that Hideki hosted this conference call and not Kenji. I mean, it’s Kenji’s art that got lost,” I say.
“Well, Tomonori was Hideki’s dad,” Reika reminds me. “Even if the art is Kenji’s now, he’s probably next in line for it, after Mitsue. It makes sense he’d want to be involved. Though it must be painful for him, all this talk of his dad, who, like, died when he was a kid.”
“Yeah, I can see that. But here’s what’s really freaking me out.” I tell her what I overheard Kenji saying about my dad. “Reika, I don’t know if Fujikawa’s going to accept cash instead of a painting on July eighteenth. I’m really worried something is going to happen to my dad! He said the gaijin artist would be ‘erased.’ That can only mean one thing.”
Reika is silent for a moment. She lets out a long breath. “July eighteenth. That gives us ten days to find the painting. I’m going to search online, right now, for Tokyo businesses that have ayu in the name. First thing tomorrow, you start searching that art storeroom for anything, uh, fishy.”
Fishy! I think of the Hiroshige ayu print by the storeroom door. Mitsue said the print has been there for a long time. Decades. Maybe the Hiroshige ayu print is a clue! Woudn’t it be amazing if the painting was hidden in the very storeroom where I’m working for eight hours every day?
“Should I warn my dad? Even though he said not to get involved in the case again?”
“How can you even ask that, Violet? If someone wanted to kidnap or kill me, I would want to know. Absolutely. Tell your dad.”
* * *
I DECIDE TO tell him at dinner, since we’d made plans to meet up at the hotel restaurant. I get a table and wait. A half hour passes.
I pull up my email on my dad’s cell phone and scroll down my inbox. I skip updates from manga and anime forums and a message from my mom that I can’t even bear to read right now because I miss her so much. There’s no message from Edge, no grateful response to my warning. Either he didn’t get the message yet or he’s still really mad at me.
The only other new message is from Jerry at Jet City Comics.
HEY, VIOLET. I NEED YOUR MAILING ADDRESS SO I CAN SEND YOUR FINAL PAYCHECK. I ASSUME, FROM YOUR ABRUPT DEPARTURE, YOU WILL NOT BE PICKING IT UP IN PERSON. I’M SORRY YOU QUIT. I DIDN’T SEE THAT ONE COMING. YOU COULD HAVE AT LEAST GIVEN NOTICE. I GUESS YOU HAVE YOUR REASONS.
I WAS THINKING ABOUT THOSE DOODLES OF YOURS. NOT THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN DRAWING WHEN YOU’RE ON THE CLOCK. BUT YOUR STUFF’S PRETTY GOOD. THE SEATTLE ASIAN ART MUSEUM IS SPONSORING A MANGA ART CONTEST THIS SUMMER FOR TEENS. I’M ATTACHING A FLYER. I GUESS MAYBE YOU ALREADY KNOW ABOUT IT. BUT IN CASE YOU DON’T, HERE IT IS.
WELL, I GUESS THAT’S IT. SAYONARA, AS YOU ALWAYS SAY, AND GOOD LUCK AND ALL THAT. JERRY.
A manga art contest. That would be an amazing opportunity, if I weren’t totally consumed with trying to find lost van Goghs and save my dad’s life. I glance at the flyer, wondering if I could ever have enough chikara to finish an episode of Kimono Girl and enter it in the contest. Then I check the time.
Nearly an hour has gone by. Still no dad. I can’t call him; I have his phone. Thinking he’s been hurt or worse, I dial the Yamada office’s main number. After a confusing exchange with a receptionist who can’t understand a word I’m saying, someone puts my dad on the phone.
“Violet? Is that you?”
“You’re still at the office!”
“I got a second wind and lost track of time. I’m on a roll, I think. How about you order some room service? I’m going to stay on a bit later.”
“But I have to—”
“I’ll catch you at breakfast, okay, Violet? We’ll get some omelets in the hotel.”
“Omelets. Awesome.” I punch the END button. Here I am trying to save him from becoming an omelet at the hands of a greedy gang boss, and he can’t even make time for a meal with me. Remind me, why am I doing all this for him? I’m so depressed, I can’t stand the thought of staying in this hotel restaurant alone.
I think of my fortune from Senso-ji Temple. The lost article will be found. Could that mean the painting? But when? Where? By whom? You are soon to cross dark waters. Yikes. That sounds like death. But maybe it’s travel. Maybe I already crossed, flying over the Pacific Ocean. Person with open heart await. It’d be good if that person showed up soon.
“Anytime now,” I say aloud.
But except for Yoshi at the hotel bar a few yards away, drinking a beer and watching a ball game, I’m totally alone. Not even my bodyguard cares to dine with me.
I check email again. Still no word from Edge. He’s either so busy with camp or with Mardi that he hasn’t checked his email, or he hates me so much he deleted my urgent message. Or he’s beat up and lying in a ditch. Or worse.
I go back to my room, order a sushi boat from room service, and eat the whole thing while watching J-pop videos on TV. I can’t understand one word of the songs. I’ve never felt so alone.
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, Yoshi takes a break from his bodyguard-slash-babysitting gig while I’m on the clock with the print-measuring project. Mitsue starts me off with a portfolio of kabuki actor prints. They’re playing samurai warriors, facing off, brandishing swords. Their faces convey intense concentration and smoldering rage. Their taut bodies are coiled springs, poised for action.
Satisfied by my measuring skills and progress, Mitsue eventually leaves the storeroom to work on setting up the gallery show.
Alone at last, I look around the storeroom. And now I remember how in Vampire Sleuths 29, Kyo and Mika found somebody’s will in the false bottom of a drawer in an antique cabinet. I gaze at the cabinet-lined walls. Could any of them have a secret panel concealing van Gogh’s lost painting?
There are twenty cabinets in all, a mix of modern metal and antique-looking wood. They’re all filled with large files and solander cases of prints, watercolors, and calligraphy scrolls. I flip through the files and then inspect the bottom of every drawer and the back of each cabinet, feeling around for false panels. This is not glamorous work. I’m no action hero. I sneeze a lot and get paper cuts. I feel as far from Kimono Girl as I can get. I figure at the rate I’m searching, I’ll probably find the painting about ten years from now. And I don’t have ten years. I have ten days before something really bad happens to my dad, and possibly the rest of us.
I need more information. Mitsue said van Gogh’s other three Japanese paintings now hang in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. I go to their virtual gallery and check the dimensions of van Gogh’s other Japonisme paintings. Roughly two feet wide by three feet tall. Moon Crossing Bridge should be of similar size if he meant it to be in the same series.
Then I measure all the cabinets, noting which could conceal a canvas that size. I’ll only search those, to save time. I keep my eyes peeled for ayu. Maybe Tomonori cut a fish pattern into the wood of a cabinet or etched fi
sh into the metal.
I glimpse Kenji and Hideki only once, when I leave for lunch with Yoshi. They’re walking briskly through Mitsue’s museum, conferring in low voices. I jog after them, hoping to ask if they’ve heard from the letter writer yet, if he’s accepted their offer of cash. But Hideki, noticing me nearby, shoots me a dark look that makes all my courage drain away.
“Violet-chan, I am sorry,” Hideki murmurs when Yoshi and I run into them again at the elevator. “I am so distracted today. I thought you were one of our office girls wanting something, and I could not be interrupted at that moment.”
“That’s okay.” In the elevator, I’m aware of him standing behind me, and aware of how Reika would kill to be in my shoes right now, standing so close to this handsome guy. I breathe in the subtle scent of Hideki’s cologne and decide that maybe it’s not so weird that Hideki would mistake me—with my pale skin and frizzy hair—for a Japanese office girl.
Yoshi and I have lunch at the nearby noodle shop. I wolf down my udon and still have twenty minutes left of my lunch break. Yoshi’s absorbed in some game on his cell phone. In my sketchbook, I start drawing Kimono Girl, but for some reason I end up sketching a dragon. One side is beautiful, shiny scales and elegant features. The other side is scarred. Studying the drawing, I realize Hideki’s not so different from me. He, too, didn’t know his dad well. He, too, looks for his dad in art.
I turn to a new page and sketch myself presenting Hideki with the painting. “Thank you! This means the world to me!” he says while Reika, in the background, looks on.
I slam the sketchbook closed, feeling silly for drawing such a crazy thing. “Ready?” I say to Yoshi, nodding to the door. I have to get back to work. My real work. Searching for van Gogh.
* * *
“ANYTHING?” REIKA ASKS when she calls me that evening on my dad’s phone.
“Just a handful of paper cuts from portfolio edges. You?”
“I couldn’t get much done. I had a big exam at Japanese school. But I did spend my breaks on the student lounge computer, looking for Tokyo businesses related to ayu. It’s taken me a while to go through the links. I speak Japanese way better than I can read. I’m pretty slow, and I have to use a dictionary all the time. But so far I’ve found six restaurants, two English language schools, a massage parlor, and the Ayu Beauty Salon.
“Anyway, when I called all these places, I found out none of them even existed back in 1987. I’ll keep looking. I did find out something interesting in a link to an old newspaper article, though. A short one, so I could get through it at lunch. The Yamada Corporation got contracted years ago to build a fish-processing plant. It was called—get this—Fine Ayu Food Products.”
“The name on the box in Kenji’s office! Tomonori hid the van Gogh drawings in that box!”
“Right. The investors pulled out, and the Yamada Corporation lost the contract before construction could begin, though I guess they already had the labels for the file boxes printed. I thought it was interesting that this big contract fell through in 1987. Same year that Tomonori bought that art. Same year that he killed himself. Maybe the ayu drawing was a cryptic suicide note. Maybe he did something to mess up that deal, and he couldn’t recover from the loss.”
“You think he’d kill himself over a fish-processing plant? That is completely sad.”
“It’s possible,” says Reika. “Japanese salarymen have a lot of pressure to support their families and save face and all that. It could have been a major blow. But I do think it’s a clue to the drawings as well. Which means the ayu drawing has got to be a clue to the painting. I’ll keep doing ayu Internet searches and calling businesses with that word in the name.”
“We should find out where the fish plant was supposed to be built. Maybe the painting’s hidden in a building on that site.”
“I’ll look for that, too. By the way, did you tell your dad he’s in mortal danger?”
“Yep,” I lie. “We’ve got a ton of extra security in the lobby now.” I’m too embarrassed to tell her I didn’t see my dad at breakfast today, either. He worked so late last night he overslept.
It’s seven when I get off the phone with Reika, and I figure my dad’s pulling another late night. I call the main number, and once again he apologizes and makes excuses and promises we’ll have breakfast, for real. “Whatever,” I sigh. I decide not to tell him about the threat hanging over his head. He already sounds like a nervous wreck and is losing sleep over this mural. Telling him he’s in danger is only going to make things worse.
I scan the room service menu and order a forty-dollar hamburger. I don’t know why I’m craving American foods. I’m actually getting sick of sushi and rice.
While I wait, I take out my sketchbook. A piece of paper flutters out from the back. A block of gray pencil rubbing with white letters showing through.
*PICK UP SUIT!*
CALL MOM
KAZOO 6:30
2535554612
It’s like finding an artifact from an ancient civilization. This is the notepad rubbing I did from Julian Fleury’s pad, back when I had no idea real live bad guys were after Kenji. Bad guys so creepy they would beat up Julian and cause him to quit his job. I use the note as a bookmark now, to separate my sketch notes on the case from my unfolding Kimono Girl story.
I read over Kimono Girl so far, surprised that the story and art aren’t so bad. And even Jerry said my stuff was really good. Good enough to enter a contest? I’m not sure.
But if I entered the contest, I might at least finish my story. My brain clicks into gear. Within minutes, I’m drawing fresh panels and continuing KG’s adventure.
* * *
WE LAST SAW Kara Mirant, in her human form, in her Belltown conservation studio.
Kimono Girl was hiding outside, watching her every move through the window. She’s been observing the Cormorant’s daily routines for a week now, waiting for a good chance to get into that office. She’s seen enough suspicious behavior—like the Cormorant moving a wrapped canvas around from time to time while talking on the phone—that she is convinced the stolen van Gogh painting, Sunrise Bridge, must be inside. Today she’s come to liberate it. Concealed in the folds of her kimono is a sword in a sheath. An antique samurai sword that she’s “borrowed” from a woodblock print she slipped into at the Seattle Art Museum. A handsome warrior in the print loaned it to her and gave her some lessons on using it.
A woman enters Kara Mirant’s office. She opens a portfolio with a stack of Japanese prints. When she goes outside to her car for another portfolio, a breeze stirs the prints and they scatter. Flustered, the woman gathers them up. KG seizes the opportunity. She folds the right side of her kimono over the left and jumps into the nearest print.
Concealed in the print carried in by the woman, KG enters the Cormorant’s office.
The print KG hides in shows two women walking through snow, toward an orange pagoda in the woods. KG appears as a third woman, walking a few feet behind them. She strikes a pose similar to theirs. She watches. She listens. Back in the office, the Cormorant and the client discuss levels of damage and costs of repair.
After a while, KG’s legs start to cramp from holding an awkward pose. She lurks there, waiting for the Cormorant to finish her meeting and for the client to leave. Then she can come out of the print and look around the studio for that painting. But the longer she waits, the more the studio seems to blur and fade, as if layers of glassine—now resembling sheets of ice—are piling up, screening her off from the real world. She panics. This is the longest time she’s stayed hidden in art. What if the enchantment of the robe wears off? What if she can’t get back? She grips the handsome warrior’s sword, hoping its energy will give her strength.
KG summons all her strength to stay focused on the world outside the print. She fears if she blinks she will lose the connection to the outside
world. Already she can hear the conversations of the two women in the print more clearly than those in the world outside. A crow caws, and it’s not in the Cormorant’s office. It’s up in a tree in the print.
A face looms through the misty layers. The Cormorant. “Hmm. I don’t remember a third woman in this print,” she says to the client. “This must be quite rare. I’ll have to look into it.” Her gaze lingers on KG but finally passes over.
The client leaves the office.
Soon after, there is a knock at the door. In comes Sockeye, in his human form.
KG’s eyes are burning from trying to keep her focus on the outside world. She can just make out the outlines of the Cormorant and Sockeye as they look at something on a drying rack across the room. She strains to hear.
“What do you mean your buyer fell through?” snarls the Cormorant. “After all the work I’ve done to keep this painting concealed?”
“Concealed? What do you mean? You’ve destroyed it!” says Sockeye.
“I have not. I painted over it in acrylics. They won’t bond to the oils. And I have a special solvent that will remove them without a trace. But that solvent has to be applied within two weeks. And I don’t want this thing hanging around here, with or without the over-painting. The police have already come by once to sniff around.”
“I’ll find you another buyer. I can swing a more lucrative deal. Just give me a little more time. I won’t let you down. Look, can I buy you brunch? Tell you what I have in mind?”
“Brunch? I guess,” says the Cormorant. “I’m hungry. But understand, this is not a date.”
Thought bubble rising up from Sockeye’s head: Just give me one chance. . . .
The two of them leave. KG crosses the left side of her kimono over the right, telling it to take her out of the art. She lands in the studio. At last she is alone, free to look around. She runs over to that drying rack to see what the Cormorant and Sockeye were arguing about.
