The Book of the Shadow

by Carrie Asai

  I remembered seeing the tattoo on Teddy’s arm last night. Why hadn’t I noticed it before? Well, probably because I hadn’t spent much time with Teddy, and most of the times we’d had together weren’t too up close and personal. Tattoos in Japan indicated an initiated yakuza member. It was frowned upon to get a tattoo if you weren’t connected, so it was funny to see all these people in the States with tons of tattoos all over their bodies.

  “The Yukemura family are schooled in martial street arts and aren’t above torturing their victims. Their business is very different than the Kogo family’s,” Hiro said. “Yoji is rumored to have a huge interest in drugs. He’s trying to bring the Yukemura family into the drug trade.”

  “I don’t understand why they wanted to marry us,” I said with a frown. “If their businesses are so different, I mean. Why would my father choose the Yukemuras, of all the families he had to choose from?”

  Hiro shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “But stay away from Teddy until we can find out more.”

  I agreed and stared out the window at the downtown L.A. streets. The smog was so thick that you could hardly see a foot in front of you. It looked ominous, like death waited close, somewhere on the horizon.

  My room is pitch-black. Smoke from last night’s party still smells terrible. It lingers. I can’t bear to open my eyes, but Gojo out there is making some noise.

  I roll out of bed. Bagel. I stick it in the toaster and stand, still sorta messed up from last night, staring. My kitchen looks like a bomb went off. What were those dudes doing after I went to sleep? Who the hell knows.

  I was dreaming about my dad. He was saying, Get it done. You’re not safe. I know I’m not safe, Chief. Settle down. Japan is the only place you’re safe, he said in the dream.

  Get it done, he said.

  It will mean big money.

  This is your biggest move.

  The biggest move for our family.

  Can you help me? I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  He gives me bodyguards. I get to push them around. It’s a good feeling. I get to make sure they get me what I need…a rock of this, a spliff of that, whatever. It’s all here, and I am the king of the house.

  I love the power. And I have a plan.

  I shuffle into the living room and sit down with my breakfast. Gojo is watching TV. “What is this crap you’re watching?” I say.

  “You want me to change it?” Gojo says. He’s terrified of me, I swear to God. What year was he born? Year of the Ostrich?

  I shake my head and grunt. I think back to my conversation with my father. I am oyabun; you are kobun, he told me. You do what I need you to do. You are under my control.

  Not for long, though.

  Then there’s Heaven.

  Outside that coffee shop, whoa. Never really talked to her much. Was looking forward to having her as my wife, you know, in that way that a woman is supposed to be your wife. I thought I’d probably, I don’t know, have tons of other girls everywhere I went. I’ve seen my father work a room. It comes with the business.

  But last night was something else.

  I never imagined Heaven, like, independent and stuff, but it suits her. I’d always thought she was a spoiled, quiet, surly rich girl who wouldn’t say a word unless Daddy told her she could speak. But seeing her last night—she was a regular badass. Now…flipping me, acting all tough, her body this…this sexy machine now! I like this Heaven better than the society princess. She was such a tightass back then.

  But still, I need her. I should probably get a move on before it gets too late.

  “Your father called for you again,” Gojo says, all timid like a pussycat. “He wants you to call him back as soon as possible.” Gojo is terrified of my father.

  Then I realize: The conversation I had with my father in my sleep—I wasn’t dreaming. This was a conversation I had with him last night.

  I shake my head and take a gigantic bite of my bagel. My father, when all this is over, won’t even know what hit him. “All in good time, my good man,” I say, slapping Gojo on his thigh. He jumps. “All in good time.”

  Teddy

  9

  I sat on my little bed and watched yet another hour of soap operas. I had watched so many soap operas in the past few days, the crazy plots were beginning to seem normal to me. For a few brief seconds the night before, I had seriously wondered whether Yoji Yukemura was planning to bury me alive. I’d even developed a plan of action, which in essence said that if Yoji Yukemura asked me to lie down in a coffin, I’d say no.

  Cheryl popped her head in the room. “You want any microwave popcorn?” she asked. I wondered if she thought it was strange that I hadn’t changed out of my pajamas in the last seventy-two hours. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Really, who was she to judge my lifestyle choice?

  I shook my head. “Nah,” I said. I was pretty sure there was still some popcorn somewhere in my pajamas from the day before. I glanced at the magazines lying on the ground. Which one did I want to read next? I leaned over and the magazines that had been resting on my stomach all slid off onto the floor. I lay there for a few moments, upside down, suspended, too lazy to even pull myself back up. I didn’t know what I wanted to do next.

  It had been four days since the incident with Teddy. Ever since then I’d been too petrified to leave the house. After Hiro escorted me home, I slept a dreamless sleep. I had horrible fears of being attacked in the middle of the night. I scoured the Internet printouts from Life Bytes for any clues I might have missed about yakuza, my father, or Yoji Yukemura. Cheryl’s old roommate had owned the computer and had taken it with him, so I was out of luck if I wanted to go online now. I had to use the info I’d already gathered. Naturally I was dying to look up stuff on Teddy. I could have gone to the Echo Park branch of the L.A. library, but I was too scared. My research would have to wait.

  Mostly I’d been spending the last few days just staring at the wall, too frozen to do anything at all. I hadn’t even dreamed of looking for another job, although Hiro had suggested it might be a good idea. Money would become an issue. I only had a few hundred dollars to my name, and it would be rent time before I knew it. I was screwed.

  I listened to the lulling sound of Cheryl’s popcorn maker and closed my eyes. Suddenly I saw Teddy in front of me. He was huge and hulking and wearing only little boxer shorts. His ropy muscles rippled and danced, ready to tear me apart. He was covered in tattoos. “It’s time, Heaven,” he said. He spoke in a low voice like Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. “Your father can’t take care of you anymore. I’m here for you now.” He began seductively crawling toward me on the bed. He took my foot in his hand and began to slowly caress it, using soft but sure movements. Then his hand ran up my ankle, to my calf, toward my knee.

  I slithered off the bed to the corner of the room. “What do you want?” I said. “Go away.”

  Teddy laughed and pulled out a giant pill. It was the color of jade. “Here, take this,” he said. “It will make you forget everything.” His arms and legs slowly turned into tentacles.

  I screamed and woke up.

  Sweat covered my head and arms and back. Cheryl poked her head in my door. “The phone’s for you,” she said. She took a look at me; she must have heard me shrieking. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I gasped. “Bad dream.” Cheryl handed me the phone. My heart pounded. What if it was Teddy? I looked back at Cheryl. “Who is it?” I whispered.

  Cheryl shrugged. “Some girl,” she said. “She didn’t say.”

  Oh. Okay. Not Teddy. “Hello?” I said.

  Karen’s voice came on the line, rushed but trying to remain calm. “Heaven, it’s Karen. Can you get over to Hiro’s? There’s been an accident.”

  An accident! “Is he okay?” I whispered.

  Karen spoke evenly. “Yes, he’ll be fine. But he says he wants to talk to you.”

  “I’ll be right there,” I said. My nerves stood on end. What could have
happened to him? Thank God he was all right! I took extra precaution leaving the house. I put all my hair into a hat I found at the top of Cheryl’s closet. I added sunglasses and Hiro’s jacket.

  “Bye,” Cheryl called on the way out. She sounded a little confused—probably wondering why the hell I was so on edge and in such a hurry—but I didn’t have time to explain. Even if I’d had the time, I couldn’t tell her the truth.

  Something about Karen’s voice had disturbed me. If Hiro was okay, why did she want me to trek the whole way over there? I wondered if Hiro had been attacked again. A horrible sinking feeling grew in the pit of my stomach.

  I made it to Hollywood in record time, zigging and zagging to Hiro’s house. It was the first time I’d been back in almost a week. I remembered when I’d left: our strange, awkward dance at the door, my fear of making it alone in the world. Of course, I still had that fear. But I hadn’t imagined that the first time I would be back at Hiro’s house would be to see how badly someone had hurt him. My heart ached. My greatest fear was to see Hiro hurt because of me. Now it seemed to be coming true.

  I felt a heaviness in the air. I was sure someone must be lurking behind a bush or a tree, but I cased the area before going in. No one.

  I pushed open the door, out of breath. Hiro lay in the middle of the room on his back. For a moment, all I saw was blood.

  Oh God, no. I thought I was going to pass out. Hiro was bleeding to death.

  Then I refocused and blinked, walking into the room. Karen stood next to Hiro, poking around. When she saw me, she rushed over. “Hey,” she said. She gave me kind of an awkward look. I realized I hadn’t really spoken to her since I’d abruptly split from her apartment. Now that Hiro and I were training at other locations besides the dojo, I never ran into her anymore. She looked like she was searching for an explanation as to what was going on.

  I looked down at Hiro and felt a rush of relief. He wasn’t bleeding to death; his head was wrapped in a red towel. Clearly a steady diet of daytime TV was making me insane. Maybe I should start watching CNN.

  Hiro’s eye was purple and swollen shut. There was a little blood around his mouth. He saw me and smiled weakly. “Hey, Heaven,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  Karen bustled into the kitchen and reappeared moments later. She ran up to Hiro with some kind of ointment and started to dab at his eye. “Infused comfrey oil,” she said. “This should make the swelling go down.”

  Hiro winced; the strong-smelling oil must have stung. “Teddy found me.”

  “Teddy!” I gasped. “What do you mean?”

  “Who’s Teddy?” Karen asked.

  I gave Hiro a wary look.

  Hiro looked at her and then at me. “Karen, would you mind excusing us for a minute? This is something I need to talk to Heaven about alone.”

  Karen looked a little cautiously at Hiro, then at me. She screwed the cap back on the salve and brushed her hands on her jeans. “Sure,” she said breezily. “In fact, I was thinking about going for a run.” God, she was so adult. If I were in her situation, I would probably have thrown a fit. Goes to show you why Hiro was going out with her, I guess.

  “Sorry,” I said, and made a sympathetic face.

  Karen smiled tightly, then went into the other room and quickly changed into running tights. She had an amazing body. She found her running shoes in the front room and tied them on. “Sorry about this,” I said again.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I know you guys have some stuff going on. You want me to pick up anything for lunch?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m fine.” Truth was, I hadn’t eaten in who knew how long. The thought of food made me queasy.

  “Hiro, do you know where my blue running shirt is?” she asked.

  Hiro pointed to his bedroom while still in the prone position. “In there,” he said.

  I wrinkled my nose. Even in the crisis at hand, I couldn’t help thinking, She’s keeping stuff at his house! What’s next?

  I scowled. Stop it, Heaven.

  Karen closed the door, smiling sweetly at both of us. I turned back to Hiro. “I am so sorry,” I said. “What did Teddy do to you? How did it happen?”

  Hiro waved his hands for me to stop talking. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. I actually found out some amazing stuff.”

  “But your eye…,” I started.

  Hiro shook his head. “It doesn’t really hurt. But listen. Teddy Yukemura tracked me down while I was on my bike earlier today for work. He was all puffed up about it, said he’d been following me for a while before he actually was able to tackle me.”

  “How did you know it was him?” I asked. I tried to remember if Hiro had ever met Teddy. I didn’t think so.

  Hiro laughed. “He told me his name outright. And he fit your description. Thuggish, tall, hunched, looks ready to beat someone up. Dyed blond, slicked hair, sort of smart-looking beady little eyes. Anyway, I was coming around this sort of dead-end street corner, and all of a sudden this guy comes lunging at me and pushes me down.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. This was all my fault. I put my head in my hands.

  “Heaven. Pull yourself together,” Hiro said. “I’m fine. Let me finish my story. Teddy got in a couple of good punches, but I was able to get him into a headlock. After that, I was able to find out some interesting stuff.”

  “Really?” I said, sort of excited, sort of nervous. “What?”

  “First off, Teddy has done some thorough searching for you. He thought about where you might go in L.A. and then canvassed Ohiko’s friends in the area that you might have sought out. He came up with only a few. I was one of them. He was pretty cocky about all this detective work, even while in a headlock.”

  “Not surprising,” I muttered. Teddy seemed to be the cocky type.

  “Anyway, he’d been following me for a while. Didn’t find my neighborhood but found what I looked like, traced me to my messenger job. Followed me all around the city; I guess he got a bike. Saw me go into a warehouse the other day in downtown L.A. Then saw you go into the same warehouse. Remember that day?”

  I blinked, in shock. Teddy had been watching us.

  “He added it up. We were hanging out together. He didn’t know why. He wanted to know what we were doing together. He thought we were dating or something. That’s the way he said it: ‘What do you want with Heaven? Why are you taking her into warehouses? Is that where you get with her?’ He was insanely jealous.”

  I thought about this for a second. “Wait. Teddy put two and two together on Sunday?” Sunday was the day we’d trained in the warehouse; Saturday was the day Teddy and I’d had our showdown in front of Life Bytes. It was Wednesday.

  Hiro looked up at the ceiling. “That’s right.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Does that mean that whoever staged the attacks on us—which were, when? About a week ago? Whoever that was couldn’t have been Teddy. He didn’t know where you lived at that point. He didn’t know we were hanging out together.”

  “Maybe,” Hiro said. “But who knows what kind of line he was feeding me? I mean, he could say anything. He says that he found me through my messenger job, but he might have found me long before that or through my address. Who knows? He could’ve had guys staked out around here looking for you and me together, just in case. I don’t trust him for a minute. Anyway, the best part is what he said next,” Hiro went on. “So he asks why we’re hanging out. I say that I’m the one asking the questions, not him. So then he says he intends to marry you, and no one can stop him.”

  I nearly screamed. “Marry me?” I said. “He still thinks he’s going to marry me?”

  “That’s right,” Hiro said. “He thinks I’m getting in the way. That’s why he wanted to rough me up. He’s dead set on marrying you. He also mumbled something about money. And his father. Like money he’ll receive or something. He was pretty much ranting and raving at that point, so I couldn’t make much sense of it. Then I knocked him out a
nd took off.”

  I thought about this. “Teddy was going to receive money for marrying me,” I said out loud. “That sounds likely. From what I know about the yakuza, anyway, usually every deal they do is for money. And that includes deals of marriage.”

  “Yeah, he was definitely saying something about money,” Hiro said.

  “And Teddy, well, Teddy loves money,” I said. “Ohiko used to tell me stories about him back in Japan. Everyone knew that while he was in school, he was this big-time gambler. He set up a little casino, people said, in the back of his house. Not that Ohiko went or anything. The thing was totally crooked. But I thought it was just, you know, kids being stupid….” Itrailed off. Teddy had yakuza written all over him, even as a kid. I was sure he was into drugs as well. Plus I remembered Ohiko talking about how Teddy was addicted to shoplifting from some of the high-fashion boutiques and record stores, even though he had more than enough money to pay for things. Teddy was made for a life of crime.

  And if Teddy had money coming to him, he’d stop at nothing to get it. Which explained why he’d been looking for me at Life Bytes. If he needed to marry me, he’d need me alive. “Maybe he’s not a threat,” I said.

  “Unless he’s bluffing,” Hiro said.

  “Yeah, true. But this marriage scheme for money seems more like him. I’m glad you were around to ‘get in the way,’ ” I said, laughing awkwardly at my own joke. God, if only Hiro were an actual threat to my singledom! I squared my shoulders. “Although, of course, I would have never wanted you to get beat up or anything….”

  “Please,” Hiro said, sitting up. “I just hope it helped some.”

  “Definitely,” I said warily.

  We stared at each other for a couple of seconds. I wondered what Hiro was thinking. What a mess I’d gotten him into. I felt a strange tingliness running over my body. Hiro had gotten beat up for me! He was helping me through this! I wanted to give him a big hug but wondered if that would be strange. I did it anyway. I threw my arms around him. He laughed a little shakily and put his arms lightly around me.