Spotless (39 page)

“What is it?”

March sighed.

Antonio laughed, and then proceeded to explain to me that March’s little shopping spree in Minas’s shop had resulted in his acquiring the latest trend in real toys for real boys. Coming straight from Ukraine, the AZ 504 was some huge high-tech bazooka with a digital aim, complete with real-time detection of your targets, and a cool app that posted a status update on your Twitter account, saying “BOOM!” every time you fired it. March wasn’t on Twitter, but Antonio was, and the souvenir of the two rockets that destroyed Dries’s living room probably still rest among billions of other tweets.

There were a ton of questions I wanted to ask, starting with who was “ViktorDasButcher53,” but March reminded me that we were on a “tight schedule,” as he liked to say, and we hastily said our good-byes.

No, Antonio still didn’t get to keep the bazooka, even after he begged.

With March momentarily defaulting on his principles and allowing himself to drive like Steve McQueen, we reached Kōtō-ku in record time. We both agreed that while my dear daddy was neutralized for now, it was preferable that we find the real Cullinan and deliver it to the Queen
before
Dries tested his own stone and discovered he had a
promising future in budget jewelry. March did stop at a few red lights, though, perhaps to comfort himself a little.

Nostalgia started swelling in my chest when I looked through the window to see that we had passed the Sumiyoshi station’s entrance. The bright yellow signs, the escalators, everything was the same as I remembered. Once we were out of the car and walking down the Yotsume Dori, surrounded by low buildings, colorful shops, and the peaceful hum of the city, I contemplated forgetting about the Cullinan to just take a stroll down memory lane. I felt March’s hand on my shoulder, and I wondered if being here brought some memories of his own.

The tiny, tree-lined street where my mom and I had spent our last months together came into view. People still parked their bicycles wherever they could, and air-conditioning units disfigured every single house. I guess that, much like the Lions, those were a “necessary evil.” Fall in Tokyo was rainy, but okay; by July, however, the heat and humidity would become stifling. We strolled up the alley leading to the house’s entrance, sandwiched between two brick buildings, and I squeezed March’s arm. There’s only so much doubt and stress a girl can take; I needed him and his calming presence.

Masaharu had been right: Watanabe-san needed to take better care of his properties. The house was even more dilapidated than the last time I had been there. The brown tiling protecting its facade was half gone, the garage’s doors seemed to have disappeared at some point, and the wooden stairs leading to the first floor looked like they might collapse any second. We made our way up, each step creaking ominously under our weight, or maybe mostly March’s.

It feels a little weird to knock on the door of a place you’ve lived in before, realizing that now you’re a stranger, and you don’t have the keys, boo! That feeling was only exacerbated by the fact that no one was answering. March picked the lock—well, technically, he broke the door. It was made of light, cheap plywood, with a low-grade lock that the right amount of upward pressure destroyed completely.

I still believe that the disaster awaiting us inside this house was a sign of Raptor Jesus trying to tell March that he needed to go easy on Joy and me because there were worse dumps on earth than our apartment. My nostrils flared as I scanned the place and tried to find my old bearings. Kimchi doesn’t lie. Korean students definitively lived there, as evidenced by the strong smell of cabbage and garlic permeating the air. I feared I would lose March if someone opened that vintage green fridge.

He seemed pretty rattled already, standing in the middle of that forsaken living room, his fists clenched so hard the knuckles had turned white. I observed him as his gaze traveled from the old stove covered with a thick layer of black and brown grease to the overflowing trash can, before lingering on the dried lettuce leaves and the corn flakes scattered at the feet of a dusty dining table.

I was worried, terribly worried.

A faint rustling sound came from what had once been my room, and March reacted instantly, storming into the small space, gun in hand. There, on a camp bed, a young Asian guy appeared to be waking up. His face was covered in zits, and his tangled hair was dyed green and blue. He gave us a bleak stare through heavy-lidded eyes until he registered the gun. Then he screamed, raising his hands in surrender.

March glared at the devastation that most people would otherwise refer to as a male student’s room, and his eyes fell on a crumpled schedule pinned to the wall. Half of the annotations were either in Japanese or in Korean, but the ones in English were pretty explicit. It was 5:35, and that guy should have been in English class. His lips pursed in aggravation, March aimed his gun at the Korean. “Go to class. Now!”

God, it still made me shiver when he raised his voice, even if it wasn’t me who had scattered lettuce everywhere and skipped English. It might be too much information, but when the guy scrambled to grab his Converse and backpack before dashing out of the room in tears, I noticed he had pissed himself a little. We heard him wail all the way down the stairs, and after he was gone, I started searching around the
room for my nightingale flooring. When a faint whistle under the bed answered my efforts, I struck a little victory pose and smiled at March.

“Can you remove it?”

He knelt by my side and produced the incurved knife he had concealed under his pant leg. My heart raced as I watched him work on freeing the incriminated floorboard. It came loose with a cracking sound, and I think we both experienced the same kind of epic disappointment when the missing floorboard revealed . . . nothing. Just smooth concrete. Had I been wrong? My brain was running wild while March stared at me, his blue eyes begging me to come up with a new idea.

I couldn’t find any. It made perfect sense for the stone not to be hidden here. After all, had Watanabe-san decided to change the flooring, the Cullinan would have immediately been discovered.

My neurons were stalling.

Thank God March’s weren’t. I could tell the difference between real and fake diamonds.
He
could tell the difference between concrete and well-disguised plaster.

I watched as he used his knife to stab the smooth gray surface and created a deep dent. He let out a little huff of satisfaction and set about destroying what was, in fact, a thick layer of plaster mixed with some fine gravel to imitate the surrounding concrete. After a few minutes, the black blade of his knife hit a hard obstacle, which nearly caused him to lose his grip on the weapon. I knelt by his side to get a better view of his little excavation job, and soon March held in his left hand some kind of ugly, plaster-covered rock that seemed a little bigger than my fist.

I’ll tell you what: I had no regrets at the idea of surrendering it to the Queen. The real Ghost Cullinan was even less sexy than its replicas. I thought of Dries. What was it he had called March, back in Ōtemachi? “Poor fucker . . .” How fitting. Dries was a poor fucker who had risked everything for one big chunk of what was likely synthetic corundum.

March put the floorboard in place, wiped all the dust with one of the Korean student’s pairs of freshly laundered boxer shorts before throwing them in the guy’s laundry basket, and insisted that we clean the Cullinan in the sink before leaving.

I sat on a chair in the living room and watched him scrub off the plaster under a trickle of hot water. He had requisitioned the Korean student’s toothbrush for the job, and the sight of the clean and shiny stone seemed to progressively relax him, a peaceful smile creasing his dimples. Once he was done, I brought him another pair of boxer shorts from the Korean student’s chest of drawers to dry the Cullinan with, since my cleaning expert deemed those rags lying near the sink too dirty for the job—even I agreed that he was right on this.

We used a third and last pair of underwear—pink kitten-printed—to wrap the stone in and left the house. On our way down the narrow alley leading to the street, I saw March fish for his cell phone in his pocket—to inform the Queen his mission was a success, I guessed.

He never made that phone call.

When we reached the sidewalk, there was a monstrous black Bentley limo blocking the road and attracting curious glances from the passersby on the Yotsume Dori. A group of awestruck schoolgirls tried to stop to take some pictures, but they were politely invited to get lost by a row of suits-clad gorillas barring the small street’s entrance with two black Mercedes sedans.

They didn’t seem to pose an immediate threat, and March showed no sign of tensing: I made a silent guess that I was about to make the acquaintance of his mysterious employer. I held on to his arm as one of the Bentley’s rear doors opened in a silent invitation.

“Is it gonna be okay?” I whispered as he helped me inside.

“Yes.”

I climbed in and sat on one of the black leather couch-like seats with March, still gripping his arm. On the other side of the car, sitting
on a similar seat, was a woman in a gray dress, deeply engrossed in an issue of
Elle
. She was flanked by two guys wearing expensive-looking dark suits who were staring at us. Our host closed her magazine with slow, deliberate movements, placed it on her lap, and when she raised her head to look at us, my breath caught in my throat. I knew those red lips. I knew that single pearl and the long black curls framing it.

Guita. The nice cat-lady from the Bristol was the Queen.

And she read
Elle
!

She tucked a strand of shiny hair behind her ear and gave us a warm smile. “Good evening, Island. I’m happy to see you again. How have you been?”

Kidnapped by a professional killer, tied to an operating table by a creep you hired, put in the trunk, handcuffed, shot at . . . Why do you ask?
That’s what I wanted to say, but my balls of steel appeared to be unavailable at the moment. “Great . . . thanks,” I said lamely.

She responded with a satisfied nod. “Glad to hear that. You’ll have to excuse me for imposing. I was getting a little impatient.”

“We can perfectly understand.” March nodded with a courteous smile before extending the underwear-clad diamond for one of her bodyguards to take. The burly blond guy leaned forward and grabbed the stone before passing it to the Queen. She unwrapped the Cullinan and pinched the pair of pink boxer shorts between two delicate fingers, holding them in front of us questioningly. I averted my eyes, and March had the good grace to clear his throat in mild embarrassment.

“Logistics issues.”

Guita gave the garment to the blond man and inspected the stone, caressing its cool surface slowly. “Dearest March . . . do you ever disappoint?” she asked in a velvety voice.

March answered her compliment with a cocky smile. “I try my best not to.”

“Seems like you’re even better when I don’t pay you.”

I jumped a little at her words and stole a glance at March. He looked uneasy. “Wait a minute! You get a
two-pound
diamond, and you’re not gonna give him his paycheck? What the—”

His hand covered my mouth before I could call her a cheap bitch, and she broke into a crystalline laugh, revealing sharp incisors. “What paycheck are you talking about, darling? March collected a favor from me. There’s no way I’m paying him a single cent for this. It’s entirely his loss.”

I felt March’s hand leave my mouth, and I looked back and forth between him and Guita. “You . . . didn’t hire him?”

March looked like he wanted her to leave it at that, but from what I gathered, no one was supposed to snap at the Queen or, worse, interrupt her when she spoke.

She shrugged. “Not exactly. He heard through the grapevine that the Board was interested in you, but I already had Rislow—still can’t believe that pathetic skunk betrayed me, mind you. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter! Anyway, guess who contacted me to ask that I let him ‘assist’ Rislow?”

I didn’t answer her riddle, because there was no need to. March had requested from Guita the right to get involved. In his own clumsy way, he had been trying to help me from the start, to fix the mistakes of the past, knowing he wouldn’t make a dime. The sheer enormity of the news hit me like a punch in the face. Paulie, Kalahari, Ilan . . . I now understood their behavior, all those little remarks.

I wasn’t March’s client.

I had never been.

My eyes bored into his, trying to read him. He seemed unhappy that Guita had revealed his dirty little secret, almost like he was ashamed of it himself. Part of me wanted to claw at his face for having scared the living shit out of me, for having first chosen fear and confrontation as a means to obtain the truth.

I had trusted him so much.

Goddammit, I
still
trusted him, even after yet another lie. I looked down and balled my fists until my knuckles hurt. I couldn’t meet his eyes yet.

“Are you gonna kill Dries?” I asked Guita.

“Do you even have to ask?” She looked at March as she said this, and I shivered. I wasn’t certain I could handle the idea of March being sent to kill my father . . . kill his own mentor.