Tokyo Heist Read online

  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.”

  “Did you believe Tomonori killed himself then?” I ask through Reika.

  The okami-san, through Reika, replies, “For years, I flattered myself thinking he had killed himself because of his impossible situation. He couldn’t be a professional artist. He and I could not be together. He lived his life in a box, one that was getting smaller all the time. But as time went on, I became less certain that he killed himself because of his love for me. Maybe that was my own selfish thinking. He had mentioned, on occasion, some work he did on the side to make extra money. Something about buying art for a wealthy collector, someone he’d met through a project his company was doing for a fish processing company in Kyoto.”

  Fine Ayu Food Products. Maybe Fujikawa was involved in that somehow—either in the company or as an investor who pulled out last minute and caused the whole thing to fall through.

  Reika resumes her translation. “That collector was someone with yakuza associations, but he learned this only after he started buying for him. Then he did not wish to work for this man. But the man threatened him and said he would harm his family if Tomonori were to leave his employ.”

  Reika and I exchange an alarmed glance. So Tomonori did buy the painting on behalf of someone else. She has to be talking about Mr. Fujikawa! “Maybe the painting really is Fujikawa’s,” I whisper.

  “And that makes Tomonori really the thief!” Reika whispers back.

  “But it’s so hard to believe. He cared about art so much!”

  The okami-san continues her story, so Reika does, too. “I did wonder if he had angered this man for whom he bought art. That was the only reason I could think of why someone might have killed him. Especially so soon after his trip to Paris. But I did not dare to voice these thoughts. I was supposed to be invisible. And I also worried if I spoke up, the man he worked for would come after me. This is why I was so frightened tonight. I thought Kenji Yamada was that man, and I thought this was the time. It took me a long time—an entire fifteen-course dinner, in fact—to determine that Kenji was not this man. He did not show any signs of yakuza affiliation.”

  I nudge Reika. “But there is a yakuza here at the inn. Ask her if she got rid of him yet.”

  The okami-san looks startled when Reika tells her this.

  “She wasn’t aware the man in room nine was a yakuza,” she says. “And he’s still staying here.”

  “So Hideki didn’t tell her yet. What is he waiting for?”

  The okami-san looks hard at us. “Now tell me,” she asks through Reika. “What leads you to believe Tomonori painted over a van Gogh and hid it with me?”

  Just then I hear floorboards creaking. Footsteps pause before the door. The handle shakes. We hear a painting being lifted off the wall outside the door. A scrape as the painting is replaced. The footsteps continue on, fainter now.

  I let out a long breath. “Ask her if she’d be willing to take the painting to the Kyoto National Museum first thing tomorrow to be analyzed. Tell her what Skye’s friend can do. Make sure she knows it won’t hurt the painting just to look at through it with special equipment.”

  Reika conveys all this, and the okami-san thinks. She shakes her head no.

  “Please,” I say. “People are in danger because of this. My dad’s in danger. If Fujikawa doesn’t get the painting in three days, I could lose my dad. If there’s a van Gogh under here, it will save him. Aren’t lives more important than art?”

  As I wait for the translation and response, I blink back tears. My dad thinks art is more important than life. He’s not even too concerned about his own right now. I wanted to think art was more important than life, too. I wanted to solve this mystery and recover the art even when I knew I was in over my head. But now, the thought of losing my dad—flawed as he is—makes me dizzy. I get that pulsing ache in my chest. I want to reveal this van Gogh and hand it over to the yakuza. I want my dad to live.

  “There has been too much loss and sadness around this painting. I do not wish to be the cause of more,” Reika translates for the okami-san. “I will do as you suggest.”

  3

  1

  There is nothing like a traditional Japanese ryokan in the middle of the day for finding monk-like solitude and silence. Or for driving you out of your freaking mind.

  It’s our fifth day at the inn. Fujikawa expects the painting in two days. And we’re still waiting for the results of our lab analysis. It turns out Skye’s conservator friend, Natsuko Kikuchi, has been honeymooning in Hokkaido. When Skye finally reached her at a remote onsen and told her how urgent the situation was, she came rushing back. The okami-san left an hour ago to deliver the painting to the museum lab in Kyoto, accompanied by all three Yamadas.

  It’s been tense, meanwhile, even though the bathing yahoo from room nine was dismissed by the okami-san the morning after we found that painting. The deadline for the painting handover looms. And Hideki is acting strange.

  Hideki was definitely glad we found the painting as soon as we told him about it. But he hasn’t taken the delay in the analysis well. With every passing hour, he sounds more skeptical that the painting is the real deal. He continues to search the inn, in case the one sent to the museum turns out to be hiding nothing. He’s looked at every piece of art, including the art in two storerooms. Now he’s checking loose floorboards and feeling the wall panels. He’s almost given up any pretense of a normal vacation. His hair is unkempt, his face unshaven, his yukata stained with food and sweat. There’s a wild look in his eyes. He looks like my dad when he’s on an art-making binge. Guests are beginning to whisper.

  Meanwhile my dad, strangely, looks more and more normal. He’s started spending less time in his room sketching, and now brings a portable easel and palette outside. His skin is getting ruddy from the sun, and it glows from the daily dips in the onsen. His eyes shine a brighter blue. At breakfast this morning—which he actually showed up for on time, sitting across from me at the low table—he smiled at me. “Ohayou gozaimasu.”

  “How can you be so calm? We just have tw
o days left!” I said. “How long do you think we can hide out here before Fujikawa finds us? Finds you?”

  “I don’t know, Violet. I guess I tend to trust that this situation will work out. We probably have the painting now, so he’ll have no reason to hurt me. Anyway, you don’t hear of foreigners, especially emerging artists from Seattle, being killed by yakuza, do you?”

  “Yeah, but, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. An art gallery assistant in Seattle was assaulted by yakuza. I’m sure nobody saw that coming.”

  “We have time. The painting will be delivered. Kenji and Hideki have convinced me. Meanwhile, have you tried this miso? It’s been cooked on a magnolia leaf, over this little pot with a flame. Magnificent!” He scoops some up with his chopsticks, which he proudly mastered last night.

  While I’m glad to see my dad becoming more relaxed, a coal inside me smolders. If my dad’s not worried about his own safety, I guess he’s not that worried about me, either.

  While Hideki’s unraveling, and my dad’s having some kind of spiritual conversion, Kenji is still searching for the painting, too, just in case. But the strain is taking its toll. I worry about his health. Mitsue does, too, bringing him water, wiping his brow with cool washcloths.

  I’ve finished reading all the manga I’ve brought and all of Reika’s. Other than the electric thrum of cicadas and the scrabbling of Hideki’s hands feeling the walls outside my room, all is quiet at the Akatsuki Ryokan.

  While Reika writes poetry, I flip through my sketchbook, which I’ve neglected since the train ride from Tokyo. Kimono Girl looks beseechingly at me, one hand outstretched as she reaches out of the covered-up Sunrise Bridge painting. Finish my story, she whispers. I want to enter the teen manga contest.

  But I can’t. Not now anyway. Because another story is taking up space in my head.

  I draw the okami-san’s story in twelve panels, imagining youthful versions of her and Tomonori. It’s the first time I’ve ever attempted to write or draw a love story. And it’s a perfect explanation for how the painting could have been hidden all these years. If no one but Tomonori’s wife knew of his secret love, and if this secret love would hold on to anything he gave her, with all her heart, what better place to hide it?