The Book of the Wind Page 8

  “Katie…,” I said softly. “I think Teddy’s right. I think I’m going to have to go with him. It’s the safest thing to do right now. Believe me, if I didn’t think it was a good idea, I wouldn’t be going.” I didn’t quite believe this myself, but I had to comfort Katie somehow. Although the idea of moving filled my body with utter dread. I would have to be on the run again. With Teddy. He still scared me a little.

  “All right, let’s quit standing around, yo,” Teddy said. “Let’s bust a move.”

  I stood back up and grabbed my coat and bag, a new wave of anger washing over me. Katie and Teddy glared at each other from opposite sides of the room.

  I picked up my bag and walked to the door with Teddy.

  “Call the cops,” Teddy said to Katie. “Say that you were attacked outside your apartment and you feel really scared right now. They’ll probably be of some help. And watch your back for the next couple of days. But really, once they realize we’ve split, they won’t want anything to do with you. It’s us they’ve been looking for.”

  “Okay,” Katie said shakily. We stood in the doorway. The sun was starting to peek over the horizon. “Well,” she said to me, “be safe.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t bring any emotion into my voice. If I let anything in, it would flood uncontrollably—I’d probably start crying. So I had to stay stoic, blank. “I’ll try,” I said. “You too.”

  Katie looked quickly at Teddy and then back at me again, as if to give me a signal with her eyes. Her lip quivered. I could tell she was thinking that associating with Teddy meant certain death for me, too.

  We clomped down the stairs and into Teddy’s car. It was a BMW with plush leather seats. I sat down rigidly, looking up at the apartment complex, trying to figure out which window was Katie’s. What if Katie was right? Was if this was certain death for me?

  What if I’d made the wrong choice?

  Gojo comes into my office and lingers in front of my desk. I type on my computer for a good three or four minutes until the silence becomes unbearable.

  “What?” I snap.

  “Someone has seen your son,” he says. “I just got a call.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” I say. “Where?”

  My son has escaped. Someone must have let him out. Could it be this drug connection he has? Could it be because of Heaven Kogo? In any case, he is disloyal. Kaoyogoshi, a disgrace. He should commit seppuku if he has any morals at all.

  But he also cannot be trusted. He is a planner. He wants something of his own.

  “Las Vegas,” Gojo says. “One of your contacts there in the New York, New York casino recognized him. He was walking down the street with two other men. Looked Latino.”

  Why didn’t Gojo give me this call instead of fielding it himself? Rage runs through me. It sounds like he was walking with the Colombians. Those akuma men. Devils. Loyal to no one. Greedy. My son is greedy as well. All greedy akuma.

  “Should we send for someone to get him?” Gojo asks.

  “It is you who should go,” I say bitterly, “since you are the one who let him escape in the first place.”

  Gojo recoils. “I wasn’t!” he says quickly.

  I look at him suspiciously. “No?” I ask. “Are you sure?”

  Gojo doesn’t look me in the eye.

  “Who let him go?” I bark.

  “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “But I think he needs to come back to you. You have to make this right.”

  I turn back to my computer in rage. “Send someone out there to get him,” I say. “But not in anger. Do not have someone throw him into the back of a car but instead offer the olive branch. Just say I would like to forgive and make peace with him.”

  Gojo nods and stands there, as if he is going to say something.

  “What?” I scream.

  He jumps. “Nothing,” he says, and turns to leave.

  Takeda will come back, thinking he is in my good graces once again. And then, like a waiting tiger, I will strike.

  Yoji

  8

  As the sun began to send orange and purple streaks through the morning sky, Teddy and I drove out of Vegas. The only sound was the air whistling through the open windows.

  About half an hour in I noticed that the road signs were telling us that we were driving toward L.A. “All right, stop the car,” I said.

  “What?” Teddy said.

  “Are you insane?” I shrieked. “Are you driving us back to L.A?”

  “Yes,” Teddy said. “My dogs can help us.”

  “Are you completely brain damaged?” I said. “We both had to flee L.A. Did I tell you that someone burned down the place where I was staying? Did I tell you that I have nowhere to go in L.A? Did I tell you that if I had known this was where we were going, I wouldn’t have gotten in the car with you?”

  “Look, don’t freak,” Teddy said. “I promise you you’re gonna be safe. And anyway, Vegas is lame. I’m glad to be outta there.”

  “But we can’t go to L.A.!” I said again, panicking. “There’s no one I can trust there!” I thought fleetingly of Hiro. “Turn the car around. Let’s go back to Vegas. We can hide in a hotel and think.”

  “No can do,” Teddy said. “I’m over the whole Vegas scene. I had to split.”

  I read between the lines. Teddy couldn’t go back to Vegas. He probably did have massive gambling debts. Maybe something even worse than that.

  Rage bubbled up inside me. So the attack in front of Katie’s house had really had everything to do with Teddy?

  But wait. They wanted me. They’d followed me.

  But Teddy seemed to think the attack had something to do with him.

  But then…he’d scared them away with his gun.

  God, I was confused.

  What was I doing in this car?

  “So, what, have you pissed off Diego and Pablo or something?” I asked. “Are they drug dealers?”

  “No,” Teddy said, too quickly. He was lying. There was fear in his voice.

  We sped along the straight highway, headed toward L.A.

  “Listen, I really think L.A. is the best for us right now. We can lay low in this place my buddy’s got, figure out what’s what, then maybe get out of the country,” he said.

  “Haven’t you heard me at all?” I said, my voice rising to a higher pitch. “I think this is a bad idea.” Then something horrible occurred to me. “Is this…is this just some plot to marry me again?”

  “Well,” Teddy said. My heart pounded. Oh my God. This was what he was planning. Oh God, get me out of this car! “If you think about it, marrying would solve everything. It could buy us some time.”

  “No!” I shrieked. I clutched the door handle. “God, I knew you were too good to be true! Like, you’d got all like good-hearted and everything, and maybe you had a little moment of weakness or morality or whatever when you got me out of the marriage a couple of weeks ago, but obviously that was just temporary insanity, is that it?”

  “No…,” Teddy said.

  I kept going. “You haven’t changed one bit, Teddy. You’re still bugging me about the same stuff! ‘Buy us some time’? What does that even mean? How would that buy us some time?” I sighed.

  “Look, we won’t have to act all husband and wife and shit,” Teddy said. “And I didn’t give you the 411 on that kidnapping for my own good—I did it for you. But Heaven…this is really the way out for us. Otherwise we’ll just be on the run…until they find us.”

  “Oh my God, you are so frustrating!” I said, screwing my eyes up in rage. “Do you know something that I don’t? Do you know who is looking for me?”

  “No!” Teddy said. “All I’m saying us, if we got married, I’d be in good with my dad again, and he’d give us a lot of Yukemura protection. Nothing could hurt us.”

  “Great,” I said. “That’s really comforting. Yukemura protection. I’ve heard that I can get Kogo protection, too. It sounds very reassuring.”

  “It really wouldn’t be t
hat bad. I could try to make it as comfortable for you as possible. You’re my girl, Heaven. I’m lookin’ out for you.”

  I balled up my fists. I never, ever wanted to be a yakuza wife. No way. Especially a wife connected to the Yukemura family—thieves, pimps, drug runners, embezzlers, killers.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I still can’t agree to it.”

  “But I’ve proved my loyalty to you, Heaven,” Teddy said. “Yo, this isn’t for the cash! This is for something more!”

  “Oh, that’s not a tiny little bit of why you’re suggesting this?” I said angrily.

  Teddy didn’t say anything.

  I sighed loudly and searched through my bag for an aspirin. “Please. If you really care about me, drive me anywhere but L.A. Honestly. Can you please do this for me?”

  Teddy didn’t say anything for a long time. The road signs for L.A. were coming faster—it looked like we were only about an hour away now. Plus the clock said almost nine—peak rush hour. The traffic had slowed down. I swerved my head around to see if we were being tailed. In the daylight Teddy’s BMW would be easy to spot.

  “Okay. I got an idea. Why don’t we go to Joshua Tree?” Teddy said finally. “It seems totally remote. We could check into a hotel.”

  “Joshua Tree?” I asked. Wasn’t that the name of a U2 album?

  “It’s this totally dope park near Palm Springs,” Teddy said. “It’s far enough away from L.A. and it’s mad private. I heard Beyonce and her crew went there like two weeks ago. We could max and relax, you know? I honestly don’t think anyone’s going to be searching for us at Joshua Tree. It’s too romantic for anyone to guess.”

  I was quiet for a moment. If the place was anything like the U2 record, it would be paradise. Katie and I used to listen to the album relentlessly—especially “Bullet the Blue Sky” and “With or Without You.” We listened to it as much as we listened to Dave Matthews’s Crash and the second Coldplay CD, A Rush of Blood to the Head.

  Maybe if we went to Joshua Tree, I could figure out a foolproof way to get the hell out of here.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go. Do you know how to get there?”

  “Yeah!” Teddy said. “It can’t be too hard. I mean, I’ve seen a ton of road signs for it.” He seemed positively ecstatic. “Really?” he said. “You’ll really go?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It sounds better than L.A.”

  “Wicked,” Teddy said, smiling. I smiled, too, weakly.

  We drove up to a hotel outside the red, rocky entrance. From the outside, the park looked gorgeous. The hotel sign said Eden Hotel. A smaller sign said This Way to the Spa.

  Spa. That was a word I hadn’t heard in a long time.

  I sat on one of the lobby’s large leather sofas while Teddy asked about room availability. He walked back to me, grinning, holding a key. “We’re in luck!” he said. “They had a room. A cancellation.”

  “Great,” I said. I looked around the lobby. It was like a beautiful lodge—all woodsy and warm, with brightly patterned pottery and blankets. The air had a bit of a chill to it; there was a fire in the corner.

  “So…you want to go for a drive or what? See the park?” Teddy asked.

  I looked down at myself. What I really wanted were some new clothes and a bath. I was still wearing the ridiculous tube top Katie had given me for the club. I didn’t even have the shirt I’d worn on the bus to Vegas—Katie had put it in her bag, and we’d forgotten it in the rush to leave. I frowned. Katie had promised to lend me some clothes. We’d forgotten to do that, too.

  I spied a sign saying Boutique and an arrow. At the very least, I needed something more normal to sleep in, especially if I was going to be in the same room as Teddy. “I’m going to just go into this shop for a minute,” I said. “But then, fine. Let’s look at the park.”

  “Sure, okay. Whatever,” Teddy said. He was being very conciliatory, probably because I’d agreed to come to Joshua Tree with him. He probably couldn’t believe it. She’s going along with my plan, I imagined him thinking.

  Oh, maybe I was just being paranoid. Maybe Teddy wasn’t that sinister and sneaky. But why else would he be so psyched that I was in this hotel with him?

  Unless…

  I walked into the boutique. I bought a T-shirt for sleeping and underwear but then realized I was much lower on cash than I’d thought. I didn’t want to blow all my money on clothes if I’d have to escape. Great. I’d have to spend the next who knew how long in this slinky tube top.

  Teddy raised his eyebrows provocatively at the sight of my new underwear through the clear shopping bag (totally nonsexy stuff: basic white cotton underwear) and led me back to the car. I was dying to see what the park looked like. He gunned the engine and we rolled slowly to the entrance.

  “It’s ten dollars to get in,” the woman at a little kiosk at the gate told us. Darn. I reached for my wallet—another expense I hadn’t thought of—but Teddy stopped me. “I’ll get this,” he said, shelling out a twenty.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. We drove on.

  The park was beautiful. The day had passed quickly, and the sun was dropping as we were driving in. The rocks were this gorgeous purple hue and the cactuses made arresting silhouettes in the sky. I couldn’t even compare it to any movie or thing on TV I’d seen before. All I could think of was Joshua Tree, the U2 album, running in a constant loop over and over and over again in my head. Come to think of it, Katie and I had listened to Joshua Tree the day I’d found out I was to marry Teddy.

  What a day that had been. My father had told me curtly over lunch. He’d taken time out of his busy schedule to have some sashimi with me, alone. Well, wait. Mieko was there. That’s right. She sat quietly next to us, daintily eating her miso soup (she never ate much more than miso soup), not making a single sound. And my father said to me, completely deadpan: “We have found a match for you.”

  He explained who Teddy Yukemura was: a businessman from L.A. “A businessman?” I asked. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I do not appreciate your disobedience,” Konishi said. “This is a good match for you. He is a member of the Yukemura family.”

  That name sounded familiar, but I didn’t know why. “Do you have a picture of him?” I asked. My father shook his head.

  “He will be coming to Tokyo in a week’s time to meet you.” At that, he made a motion to get up from the table. Mieko sat there, her hands clasped together, a smug, infuriating smile on her face.

  Had there been talk then that the marriage was a “business decision”? I couldn’t remember. Of course, maybe if I’d listened a little closer, perhaps I would have picked up that my father and the Yukemuras had struck a deal to marry me off. The thought of that was even more chilling than the idea my father was simply sticking to traditional Japanese ways.

  “Does Ohiko know?” I asked my father as he stood up to leave.

  “I have just told him,” he said, smoothing down his expensive pants. “But you must not disturb him. He is training with his sensei right now.”

  “Isn’t this kind of important?” I demanded. “Why isn’t Ohiko sitting with us, discussing this, too?”

  “This does not concern your brother,” my father answered sharply, and left.

  The next day, Ohiko was gone. And then the next time I saw him was the last day of his life.

  I’d fled upstairs and Katie and I had listened to fast, guitar-jangly stuff—The White Stripes, The Donnas, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I turned up the volume even though my father forbade it. I felt like smashing things.

  Oh. And Mieko had said something strange at that lunch, too. She’d smiled and said, “Heaven, your life will be far better with Takeda.”

  She’d looked like she had something up her sleeve. If only I could go back and pay closer attention to Mieko. There had been something so sinister and suspicious about her, but I couldn’t quite figure out what.

  “Isn’t this beautiful?” Teddy said, jerking me back to the present. The sky had faded
to a light lavender. The sun was sinking below the rocks.

  As I looked at the scenery and thought about how much my life had changed, I began to feel a strange twinge. A twinge for Hiro. My love for him felt stronger than ever.

  “It is beautiful.” I sighed.

  Teddy turned to me. “This could be really good for us. Don’t you think we’d be a good couple?”

  I didn’t answer, pretending to be totally absorbed in the landscape. I couldn’t just marry Teddy. That would be a betrayal to Hiro somehow.

  But wait. He’d told me to forget him.

  What if I called him? Didn’t this qualify as danger? I was stuck in a car with Teddy Yukemura. There had been another attack on my life. So my mission was about forgetting him. Why couldn’t I say I was having trouble with my mission, please call to discuss?

  I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. Hiro had helped when I’d had trouble with other missions. That was what he was there for. He was my sensei.

  Okay. I would call him later, when we got back to the hotel. But…but what if he was really serious about this mission? What if he wouldn’t take my call?

  I’d give him a time limit to call back. Forty-eight hours. That seemed like enough time for him to think it over, then decide. Two days. I breathed in and out. If he didn’t call me in two days, I’d know that I had to continue this struggle on my own.

  The sky was completely dark now. “You want to get some eats?” Teddy asked me. “I think I saw a restaurant in the hotel.”

  We headed back to our little bungalow of a hotel room. Teddy opened the door. “Yo, yo, yo!” he said.

  The room was amazing. It was candlelit, with large windows and a luxurious bed. All the colors were calming earth tones, and it smelled lovely. To the left, I could see a gigantic bathroom with an enormous tub.