There had been one thing that Mas had wanted to ask of Lloyd. “Whyzu you a gardener in the first place?” he finally asked.

“Probably the same reason why you are. I love plants, being outdoors.”

Yeah, yeah, thought Mas. That’s what the hakujin always thought. “But youzu write, desho? A type of poet, datsu what Mari said one time.”

Lloyd laughed. “That was a long time ago. I was an English major at Columbia. I considered teaching English, but got hooked on horticulture instead. My PhD is on hold right now, but I hope to go back to it.”

It was easy to lose sight of your first love, your first passion. Mas had wanted to become an engineer in Hiroshima, but over time he’d had to successively scale back his dreams. “I planned on buyin’ nursery,” he told Lloyd, “by the beach. Deal fell through, and besides, Mari and Chizuko make a big, big fuss. Don’t wanna move away from friends.”

“So you sacrificed for your family?”

Mas never thought about it quite that way. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.”

Lloyd jutted out his jaw and ran his fingers through his oily, thin hair. “Do you think the man in the Impala was really out to get you? I mean, maybe Tug got into his lane accidentally, you know. A type of road rage.”

“Hard to say,” Mas said. But Tug was convinced that they had been followed. And something else was kusai, stinky. “Youzu ever meet dis Anna Grady?” Mas asked.

“Yes, an attractive woman. But then, Kazzy always went for the pretty ones.”

It made sense to Mas that Kazzy would have been consumed by beauty. Based on the last outfit he wore alive, the shoes and the suit, he seemed like a man who needed to be surrounded or touched by pretty things. Mas was hardly tempted by good-looking packages. It was like the Japanese folktale of the Tongue-Cut Sparrow: A greedy old lady, who had savagely clipped off the tongue of a wayward sparrow, forced her way into the Sparrow World. Her kind husband, a former traveler to the Sparrow World, had brought home a great treasure in a small box. Like her husband, the old woman was offered a choice between a small or a large gift. The woman chose the larger, only to discover that the box was full of demons. In Mas’s experience, the same could hold true for beautiful women.

“Why he callsu it quits wiz her?”

“You know, that’s a good question.” Lloyd balanced his right ankle on his left knee. “It could be because he found out he was sick. Did you get a chance to read the other pages in the journal?”

Mas shook his head. After all the excitement from yesterday, reading about buying meat and cleaning house was the last thing that Mas wanted to do.

As they sat in front of the green pond, koi splattered with bright-orange, white, and black markings whipped their fins and tails toward the water’s surface. Kissing the air with the circles of their mouths, they begged for food. But Mas wasn’t about to stick a nickel in a machine that offered brown food pellets instead of gum balls. He’d leave that for lovers and children, people who thought nothing of wasting money for a bit of happiness.

After ten more minutes, it was time to leave the garden. Mas and Lloyd passed through the turnstile while Mari rolled Takeo’s stroller through an adjoining gate. They had reached the ticket booth when they saw Detective Ghigo, the flaps of his overcoat blowing back from the wind: a black crow bringing bad news. He was with another man, short and bald. “Mari Jensen,” Ghigo said. “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

In the time it took Mas to blink, a pair of metal handcuffs was fastened on Mari’s skinny wrists.

“Whatthe-” Mas felt like someone was peeling away at his heart.

“Get the hell away from my wife!” Lloyd went for the bald detective, but Ghigo stopped him.

Mari’s eyes widened like those of a squid waiting for its head to be lopped off. Her skinny legs were planted next to the stroller. No set of handcuffs was going to keep her away from her son.

“Itsu suicide,” Mas blurted out, even though he didn’t believe it. “Ouchi- san killsu himself.”

Ignoring Mas, Ghigo recited some police language in Mari’s ear, including something about murder and a lawyer.

“We callsu Jeannie,” Mas declared.

Mari nodded. “And get Takeo right home.”

The attorney, Jeannie Yee, didn’t waste any time. She was at the front door of the underground apartment soon after she had stopped to see Mari at the police station. “It’s all circumstantial evidence,” she said after she settled herself on a chair in the kitchen.

Mas looked blankly at Jeannie. Instead of a suit, she was wearing a plain white shirt. A plastic headband kept her thick hair away from her face.

Jeannie tried again. “I mean, they have the gun-which, by the way, they did trace to the half-rate production house that Mari had worked for-and they have the bullet-”

“Bullet,” Mas couldn’t help but murmur.

“Yes, the bullet. Aren’t you the one who found it, Mr. Arai?”

Lowering his head, Lloyd squeezed his wedding ring tattoo. “I had to turn it in, Mr. Arai,” he finally said. “They would have found out sooner or later.”

Inu. Dog. Cheat. How could he sell out Mari like that? Mas felt his whole world turn. Had he misjudged Lloyd that badly? He had given that bullet to Lloyd because the son-in-law was the main man in his daughter’s life. It was his responsibility to keep his family safe.

He wasn’t supposed to give it to the authorities. Perhaps Lloyd was tired of Mari, had a woman on the side. Did he want Takeo to himself? If that was his plan, it wouldn’t happen without a fight from Mas.

“Look, guys, we have to focus here.” Jeannie spread her fingers on the surface of the table. “Apparently an anonymous source has been feeding Ghigo information. First someone called about Lloyd having an argument with Mr. Ouchi, and then made mention that Mari had filed a complaint with her independent filmmakers’ union that Kazzy had been sexually harassing her.”

“Who told Ghigo that?”

“That’s the thing,” Jeannie explained to Lloyd, “it’s a-non-y-mous. Ghigo doesn’t even know. They used a voice-altering device, so we don’t even know if it’s a man or a woman.”

Mas was surprised that Jeannie had so much inside information. So was the son-in-law. “Ghigo told you that himself?”

Two pink marks like those atop baked rice cakes appeared underneath Jeannie’s eyes. “Yes,” she said, and then attempted to change the subject. “Is there anyone who would be out to get you or Mari?”

“Who are we? Nobodies. We have nothing,” said Lloyd.

Mas grunted in support.

Lloyd raised his head. “Why would anyone think that we would be any kind of threat?”

Mas pushed his tongue against a space in between the roof of his mouth and his dentures. “Phillip, the son, he no good.” Didn’t want the garden in the first place, wasn’t that what he had said?

“Yup, Ghigo’s looking into that.” Again, the girl lawyer seemed one step ahead. “These charges against Mari won’t stand up. No judge wants to waste the taxpayers’ money going through with this. This won’t go past a preliminary hearing.” Jeannie shot words like machine-gun fire throughout the room. “They just need someone to hang the crime on, since it’s gotten so much media attention.”

“Media? You meansu Post?”

“The Post started it, but now it’s beginning to get some national news coverage. You have to admit that it has a sexy angle: business tycoon killed in a Japanese garden in New York.”

Mas saw nothing sexy in that, especially since he was the one who had seen the dead body.

“They are playing it as a hate crime, and that’s the last thing the NYPD or the tourist industry wants. They need to arrest someone, quick and fast. With Mari’s connection to the gun, she’s a logical suspect.”