Blood Hina (24 page)

“I need that tape,” he plainly said.

“I wanna know whatsu on it. You know dat Chuck Blanco’s dead.”

Ike didn’t seem surprised. “You don’t need to know anything. It’ll be safer for you and safer for Spoon.”

“Give him the tape, Mas,” Spoon said softly. She wasn’t pleading or begging. More like a warning.

Mas balled up his fists, grimacing as pain surged from his cut hand. He stood up. “No, you tell me first—whatsu on dat tape? My friend’s gone and I needsu to know.”

“It’s Estacio Pena’s confession.”

Mas frowned. Confession about what? That he was selling drugs out in Imperial Valley? Mas didn’t know much about American drug laws, but that had taken place close to twenty years ago. Hadn’t too much time elapsed to get him now?

“Confession that he was never going to get prosecuted for his crimes. The DEA was out to get him. Well, more than him, his father. His father ran a drug cartel that bled into California and Arizona. The weak link: Estacio Pena, the bastard son. So when Dee was arrested, the DEA approached me. They needed my help, some way to convince Dee to give Estacio up. But she told everyone that she knew nothing.
She was telling the truth, but that wasn’t going to help her case. So I told the DEA that I’d help them. That I’d contact Estacio Pena and tell him that I’d be willing to smuggle in some drugs—as long as he left Dee alone.

“So I tracked him down. He came to the house and the dolls were ready for him—just my own security plan, you have to understand. Jorg helped me through the whole thing. But as we were talking, Estacio kept bragging that he was protected. That his father had the government in his back pocket. He kept mentioning the CIA. That the CIA was looking out for his father because he was one of the rebel leaders who were going to take the Nicaraguan government down.

“I thought Estacio was bluffing, just tooting his horn as usual. But the deeper and deeper Jorg and I got into it, nothing was happening to Estacio. We didn’t make one drug run—we made seven. We gave all the information to the DEA, but somehow Estacio was always elusive. He was one step ahead of the authorities, always.

“It was the Hanley police. Practically all of them were on the take. Everyone except for Chuck Blanco. He was the only honest cop on the force. Too bad he wasn’t that smart. I’m sorry to see him dead.

“We told the DEA that we wanted out of this undercover business, but they wouldn’t let us. Said that they had enough on us to prosecute us—but for what? It was their deal, after all. They weren’t going to help us, so Jorg and I decided that we needed to take drastic steps.”

“You fake the car accident.”

Ike nodded. “We didn’t know what else to do. Estacio’s
men kept warning us that if anything happened to Pena’s son, our families would be killed. For me, it made sense to sacrifice my identity—Dee was my daughter. But Jorg—” Ike’s voice cracked. “He didn’t have to do any of it. He just did it because he was my friend.”

What happened to them afterward, Mas wondered. How could one live a life incognito after having a wife and raising a family?

“Now, I’ll need that tape.” Ike tugged at the waistline of his sweatpants and brought out a gun. It was black and had a long attachment on its barrel.

Mas did have a little experience with guns, enough experience to know that Ike wasn’t playing around.

“Put that away,” admonished Spoon. “That’s not necessary. Mas will give up that tape without any rough stuff.”

Mas removed the reel from his pocket. The ends of the brown audio tape were thin and tangled, but the meat of the recording was still intact.

Ike grabbed hold of the tape. This was the prize he had been searching for during the past week. For what? Blackmail? To ruin Estacio’s father’s political career? Or perhaps as a carrot to snag a very big and bad rabbit?

The doorbell rang.

The three of them stayed frozen in between the couch and the love seat. Who could that be?

“Spoon, see who it is.”

Spoon pulled out a plastic footstool underneath a table and looked through the peephole.

“It’s Dee.”

Mas got on his knees and angled his head so he could spy
through a decorative side window covered with an opaque curtain.
“Matte!”
He whispered for them to wait before taking action. “Someone wiz her.”

Ike hunched over next to Mas. “Estacio.” The old man then moved toward the hallway as gracefully as a cat. “I’ll be back here. Let them in.”

Keeping the door chained, Spoon slowly turned the knob. Seizing his opportunity, Estacio pressed Dee’s face into the crack of the open door, revealing the presence of a gun. “Let us in, Mrs. Hayakawa,” he hissed, “or I’ll shoot your daughter right on this welcome mat.”

Spoon’s hands shook as she struggled to undo the chain. As soon as the door was freed, Estacio pushed Dee into the house and slammed the door shut behind them.

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Dee fell into her mother’s arms while Estacio aimed his gun at Mas’s head.

“So where is it?”

Mas felt like he was in a movie. Surely this could not be happening to him, the Buckwheat Beauty, and Haruo’s fiancée right here in the middle of Montebello.

“I know you have it, old man. Klinger told my man—at least while he was alive.”

“Dunno whatchu talkin’ about.”

Estacio grabbed Dee by the elbow and pushed her down to her knees, aiming the gun at her head.

“Old lady, come here,” he barked at Spoon. She knelt down next to her daughter and reached out for her hand.

“Both of you, put your hands on your head.” Their backs toward Mas, the mother and daughter unclasped hands and complied.

“I’m sorry, Mom, I’m sorry for everything.”

“Shut up, Dee,” Estacio ordered, aiming the gun barrel at Spoon’s head. “So, old man, it’s all up to you. The longer you wait before telling me the truth, the sooner I kill one of them. First the the old lady. And then Dee.”

Mas bit down on his lip. Wasn’t the dead man supposed to intervene at some point?

“So what’s it going to be?”

Estacio turned toward Mas in frustration, and his eyes widened as if he’d seen a ghost. “Shit,” he murmured, and then they heard the
whoosh-clack
sound of a noise resembling the release of a staple gun, followed by the smell of smoke. Estacio’s head slammed against the china cabinet, spraying a red halo of blood on the mint-green wall, before he slumped to the carpeted floor.

Dee screamed and covered her face. Seeking to console her daughter, Spoon wrapped her in her oversized sweater. Mas looked back at the hallway and could see right into the back bedroom. The window over the bed had been slid wide open, its screen thrown onto the floor. The curtains blew in from a spring breeze, a perfect scene of domesticity, belying the violence that had just occurred a room away.

Officers Chang and Gallegos arrived on the scene within a matter of minutes. They had received an anonymous call about trouble brewing inside the Hayakawa house. Ike had definitely come through on that.

They came in with their guns cocked and ready, stepping
around the pool of blood underneath Estacio’s body, the hole in his head releasing a busted persimmon of brains.

“Who shot this man?” Officer Gallegos asked.

“I don’t know,” Dee spoke first, and then her mother said the same thing.

Mas shook his head, too. He didn’t feel that any of them were lying. Spoon perhaps had known him at one time. Maybe Dee did as well. But the dead man who had returned home was indeed a stranger. His world had changed, and so had he.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
he police officers must have thought it best to get to the truth by dividing and conquering. They split up Mas, Spoon, and the Buckwheat Beauty in separate rooms and even the backyard to question them. Officer Chang picked Mas.

“What happened to your hand?”

Mas had forgotten all about the incident at Hina House. Was the doll man dead, as Estacio had boasted? “Tree-cuttin’ accident,” he said.

They sat in the bedroom that the Buckwheat Beauty was using. It had a futon on the hardwood floor and a guitar in the corner. Mas remembered that Dee said she was into music—in fact, that was how Estacio “Steve” Pena came into her life.

“Tell me what happened, Mr. Arai.”

Mas wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he knew there was to be no mentioning the dead man. Other than that fact, he basically reported the truth: He had come to talk to Spoon about her missing fiancé, his best friend. And Dee had come to the door with a gun pointed at her head.

“Did you know the assailant?”

Mas shook his head vigorously. No, he did not.

“Who else was in the house with you?”

“Spoon.”

“Mrs. Hayakawa?”

Mas nodded.

“And who else?”

“Dee.”

“And?”

“I dunno.”

“Then who shot Mr. Pena?”

Mas shrugged his shoulders. “I hear gun, look back, and bedroom room and window wide open.”

“Seems like you would have heard someone go through the bedroom window while you were in the house.”

“My hearing, not so good,
yo,”
Mas said. “I ole man, you knowsu.”

Officer Chang tried to suppress a smile, but the corners of her mouth tugged up, in spite of herself. She composed herself to look more serious and suspicious. “We’re having that entire room dusted for prints, so I hope for all of your sakes that we have evidence that indeed another person was in that room.”

After the interrogation by the uniformed officers, Mas, Spoon, and Dee were all told that they would have to go to the police station later to speak to detectives. And that they would all have to spend the night somewhere else, as the house would be need to be further examined for evidence. Already yellow tape was stretched across the living room, and Mas held back an inclination to gag as he saw the bloodstains splattered on a bookcase and parts of the mint-green walls.

Spoon’s eldest daughter, Debra, had arrived to take the two women to her house, but Spoon waved her off. “You take
Dee. I need to talk to Mas alone, so I’ll have him drive me.”

The Buckwheat Beauty gave Mas a quick hug before getting into her sister’s mini-van. “I didn’t say a word,” she whispered in his ear. “And I won’t say anything, either.”

Mas backed away from the girl. What was she saying? That Mas had been the gunman? That didn’t make any sense. Because first of all, if Mas had a real gun in his hands, he would have ended up shooting holes in the ceiling and the wall, rather than getting the side of Estacio’s head in one try. And second, where was the murder weapon? That kept the authorities scratching heads. Because if it indeed had been Mas, Spoon, or Dee, then where was the gun?

Mas didn’t bother to refute Dee’s contention. With policemen—both uniformed and in plain clothes—wandering in and out of the Montebello house, this wasn’t the time to make any private pronouncements. If it gave the Buckwheat Beauty some comfort to know that an older man was looking after her, then so be it. It was actually true, just that Mas had not been the one with the gun.

After watching her two daughters disappear down the street in the candy-apple-red van, Spoon lingered in front of the wood-framed house across the street. The de Groot property had a FOR SALE sign on its yellowing lawn.

There was still a spray of Estacio’s blood on Spoon’s salt-and-pepper hair and her sweater, but Mas didn’t bother to bring it up. He was sure that Spoon would hit the showers the minute she arrived at Debra’s house. And the sweater would be burned or thrown away. There was no need for any reminders of what happened today.

“Everything’s changing,” she muttered.

In fact, everything had changed years ago. Nobody wanted to admit it at the time. Now, with blood in their hair, face, and clothing, there was no denying it.

“I thought I was losing my mind, Mas,” Spoon said once they were traveling to Monterey Park. Mas thought she was talking about the gun being aimed toward her head, but actually she was talking about when she first laid eyes on Ike in this century. “I had been sleeping on the couch and then I heard something. I look and there he is, going out the door with the
hina
dolls.”