He lingered at a rack in the corner. He couldn’t even pretend that he was interested in any of the clothing, which was bright and oversized, nothing his own mother would wear. The Japanese woman, carrying a bunch of jackets on hangers in the loop of her fingers, was now one rack away from him. There were no other customers in the store.
“Kon-nichi-wa.” He bowed slightly in front of her.
The woman, whose name tag identified her as Kanako, narrowed her eyes. “Stop following me.”
“You speak English.” He was amazed.
“Fuck you.”
Kanako’s crudeness caused him to step back, almost falling into some blazers with enormous shoulder pads.
A group of five women entered the store, immediately filling the space with a frenetic, nervous energy. It was definitely time to leave.
Did Kanako notice him from the Holiday Bowl? Eric wondered as he walked outside. When did his presence enter her consciousness?
Eric was riding his bike later that afternoon when he noticed several black-and-whites were parked around the Kokusai Theatre. A crowd had gathered to check out the commotion. Eric walked his bike to the front where Charlie was standing. Yellow crime tape hung loosely over the open glass doors.
“What happened?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Charlie said.
Out in the parking lot, Sab was talking to police officers. And then other men, pulling down the crime tape, emerged from inside wheeling a gurney with a covered body. The large body weighed down the bed and one of the men seemed to be holding one of the arms in place as they eased it into the coroner’s vehicle.
Sab, who didn’t notice Eric’s presence, approached Charlie after speaking to the cops. “He was shot in the head. They think it happened on Thursday night after he was cleaning up.”
“Robbery?”
Sab shook his head. His eyes were even more bloodshot than usual. “I had all the money. Why in the hell would anyone want to kill Moe?”
Beyond the fluttering yellow tape, Eric saw the lost and found box on its side, the green sweater strewn on the floor. That box had been behind the counter, next to a large plastic container of popcorn kernels. Why would it be out like that? There was only one reason. Someone was looking for something.
When Eric got home, he felt nauseous. His brothers always teased him that he was the least street-smart boy in Crenshaw, but he knew that Moe’s murder was related to what he was hiding in between his mattress and their bedroom wall. Whoever killed Moe wanted those tapes.
The next day, Eric was walking home from Audubon Junior High School when a black car idled up beside him. He tried to ignore it but the car stayed on his heels like a hungry cat.
He glanced over to see that the driver was the angry Asian man from the theater. His heart pounding, Eric whipped around the corner, only to have the man jump out of his car to chase after him.
“Don’t make me run.” The man grabbed the collar of Eric’s jacket with his right hand, revealing, with his left, the handle of a knife in a leather case stuck between his lean stomach and pants. Eric noticed that the man was missing part of his pinky finger. He knew what that meant from watching the movie Battles without Honor and Humanity. This man was a real-life yakuza.
“How did you find me?”
“The janitor told me where you went to school.”
Moe sold him out? Eric couldn’t believe it.
“I think you have something of mine,” the gangster said.
There was no use denying it. “I’ll give them back to you.”
The yakuza grinned and began pulling him toward the car.
“No, I have to get them. Meet me at the Japanese senior center.”
“Where?”
“The senior center. Right on Jefferson.”
“Oh, you mean Seinan?” The guy seemed impressed that Eric would even know such a place existed. “In an hour then. You don’t want me to come to your house, right?”
After running all the way home, Eric pulled out the plastic bag from between his mattress and the wall and stuffed it inside his jacket. Their black Labrador barked from behind the metal fence. Eric got back on his bike and wondered if this would be the last time he would see his dog.
When he arrived at the nondescript building, the gangster was already there in his black car. It was almost five and most of the seniors had left for the day.
As soon as he stepped off his bicycle, the man was out of his car and practically pulling Eric behind a wall near the doorway of the center. Eric felt the air leave his lungs. He imagined the knife slicing into his stomach or neck. He hadn’t even thought of bringing any weapon with him, as he hadn’t been able to figure out how to use his nunchucks yet. His oldest brother did have a switchblade from Tijuana that he had been hiding in his underwear drawer. Oh, why didn’t I think of bringing that? Eric wondered.
“Hey, whatsu happenin’ here.” Hearing that familiar voice almost made Eric cry. Charlie was much older than this gangster, but he was tough. Eric remembered hearing that he had boxed with Filipinos on Terminal Island. During World War II, the government had emptied the man-made island and sent Charlie barefoot to Bismarck, North Dakota. “Dis young man is my helper. You have any problems with him, you gotta problem with me.”
Eric unzipped his jacket and the black bag fell to the ground. The gangster scooped it up like a raven grabbing its prey. He had what he had come for.
“If they aren’t in 100 percent good condition, you’ll hear from me again,” the yakuza said, before disappearing into his black car and driving off.
Eric was so shaken that he couldn’t even speak. Charlie pulled the accordion security gates closed in front of the glass door and fastened them together with a padlock, then turned back to Eric. “You be careful who you spend time with. You don’t want to end up like Moe.”
Afterward, instead of going straight home, Eric cruised on his bicycle down Crenshaw. He felt heartsick about releasing the videos into the hands of the yakuza. Where would they end up next?
As he rode his bike by, he scanned the clothing store, barely able to see above the racks. And there, the small head of the woman.
He quietly approached Kanako. “I had to give your tapes away,” he confessed.
Her eyes widened. “I’m going to take my break now,” she called out to a Black coworker. She gestured for him to follow her onto the floor of the mall in the front of an athletic shoe store.
“Now what did you say?” She folded her arms over her blouse, covering her name tag.
“I worked at the Kokusai Theatre. A man left some videotapes on the last day we were open.”
“You stupid kid. Why did you have to poke your head into this?”
Eric was confused. His mind tried to follow what the woman was saying. So she knew?
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” she said, the right side of her mouth drooping slightly.
How could he not? He was destined to be her protector. Didn’t she understand?
“How old are you, anyway?” Kanako studied him for the first time and Eric’s face grew hot.
“Fourteen.”
“You’re about two years older than my kid.”
Eric was dumbstruck. He couldn’t imagine Kanako being a mother of someone his age.
The woman’s posture softened, absorbing his surprise. She focused on his Yojimbo T-shirt that he’d purchased from a man selling bootleg shirts from the trunk of his car in the parking lot of the Kokusai Theatre. “You need to be more like him in his movies,” she said. “Mifune really didn’t give a damn about anyone.”
With that, she returned to the clothing store. Eric was paralyzed. Was Kanako right? Was Mifune just like an animal in Yojimbo, scratching his balls through his kimono? But Eric remembered the movie’s final scene: Mifune tearing through the gangsters’ bodies with the sword of a dead man. And a short knife — that’s what he used to stab the arm of the ringleader. Mifune had restored peace to that village. Whether Kanako believed it or not, the bodyguard was the hero.