Anna followed Mas to the hallway, picking up her cat, Tama, on the way. “Oh, Tama- san,” she cooed in the cat’s ear. “You must be so afraid.”

“Tama, thatsu Japanese,” said Mas, who was feeling a pang of jealousy. Baka, he told himself, who would be jealous of a cat?

“Yes, I like the Japanese people. They were my first friends in this country. I trust the Japanese.”

“You ’Stonian?” Mas asked without thinking.

“Yes, I’m from Estonia. My family moved to New Jersey after World War Two. Why do you ask?”

Estonia had been taken over by a couple countries, by one twice over, isn’t that what Tug had said at the Seabrook museum? Anyone who had gone through that would be suspicious of people in power, especially those in uniform. It would make sense that Anna Grady would feel more comfortable with the people who had befriended her first. There were plenty of untrustworthy Japanese people, Mas knew that firsthand, but Anna didn’t need to know that right now.

Mas remembered the question that had brought him and Mari to Anna Grady’s apartment in the first place. “So whyzu you send him a gardenia dat night?”

“He had been coming over here regularly, wanting to talk with Seiko. She just didn’t like him at first. She said he was-what was the word she had used?-too high-tone. But we ended up getting to know each other better each time he came around. And then one day in January, it was snowing so hard, he just appeared at the apartment, his felt hat in his hands. I told him that Seiko was gone to see a friend, but he told me that he was actually here to see me.

“Then he brought out this gardenia. It was so beautiful-huge, with a wonderful smell. I told him that it looked like hope in the middle of winter. That was our first night together.”

Mas averted his eyes, as if he was watching an intimacy that he had no part of.

“I even saved the gardenia,” said Anna. “All brown and shriveled up, but I don’t care.” She went on to describe how wonderful Kazzy had been on all their dates. Mas didn’t have the stomach for such nonsense, but he knew that he had to hang in there like a dentist wiggling a rotten tooth. “We had gotten so close in a short amount of time. Kazzy even talked about marriage.”

Mas didn’t doubt it. If Kazzy had married three times, what was one more?

“But then that terrible daughter of his-”

Mas became more alert. What was that? She was talking about Becca.

“She was the one who poisoned Kazzy’s mind. She was so jealous; she couldn’t stand for another woman to be involved in her father’s life.”

Becca had just seemed like a silly female to Mas, not someone capable of any kind of poisoning, whether physical or emotional.

“You don’t believe me, do you? Well, she threatened me. Yes, she did. She even hired a private investigator to look into my past. Not only in New Jersey, but even in Estonia.”

Mas waited to see if Anna would divulge the private investigator’s findings.

“I told her that I didn’t care what she found, I wouldn’t break it off. But then Kazzy calls me. Tells me that he cares about me, but he has to end it.” Her mouth had become small and puckered. “So I sent him a gardenia last Thursday. I wanted him to remember the sweetness of our first time. But now I’m thinking that he probably used me.”

Mas pulled at one of his earlobes.

“He just wanted to see that damn journal so much.” Anna’s voice was powerful, an uppercut punch. “If he couldn’t get it through Seiko, he was going to get it through me. I was the one who Xeroxed it for him, a few pages at a time. I had to go behind Seiko’s back to do it. I felt awful, but she had already sent off a whole copy to the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles. But if they could see it, why couldn’t Kazzy? I didn’t understand.”

“You knowsu whatsu in it?”

Anna shook her head. “That journal’s cursed. You don’t want to know what’s in it.”

When Mas got home, Lloyd was still awake, his stocking feet on the coffee table. He had the television on, but he wasn’t watching it. He had been doing some heavy thinking, and wanted to hear what Mas had learned in Fort Lee.

Mas told him the whole story and then pulled out the note, folded into a small square. Lloyd unfolded the paper and read the typed message aloud:

DEAR ANNA,

UNFORTUNATELY I CANNOT MEET YOU TONIGHT.

I THINK IT’S BEST IF WE DO NOT KEEP IN TOUCH.

K-SAN

“So businesslike,” commented Lloyd. “I mean, that’s the way Kazzy was, but even this seems too cold for him.”

“Maybe because Kazzy knowsu already he gonna die.”

“That’s true,” Lloyd said. “But why didn’t Anna just hand this over to the police?”

Mas couldn’t answer that for Lloyd. He wouldn’t understand. He probably grew up learning to trust the people in power. Anna Grady and Mas knew different. That sometimes people in uniform were to be feared.

Mas silently read the note again. One thing had been nagging at him on the bus ride back to New York City. “K- san, that was on the suicide note, too. Kazzy’s MIS buddy, dis Jinx Watanabe, he tellsu us Kazzy was chanto man.”

“ Chanto, that means proper, right? Yeah, that was Kazzy, all right,” Lloyd said.

“But no chanto Japanese put ‘ san ’ on his own name.” That was an honorific reserved for other people or, in the case of Anna Grady, for cats.

Lloyd waited a beat. “That’s true. I never thought of it. Wait a minute, I have some notes from Kazzy.” Lloyd shuffled through papers on his overburdened desk and found at least six old memos. Every single one of them was typed in capital letters; every single one of them ended with one letter, a single K. No san added.

“If Kazzy so chanto, he chanto till the end,” said Mas.

“You think someone else wrote this note to Anna Grady?”

“And jisatsu note.”

“Suicide letter,” Lloyd repeated in English.

Phillip was the first person who came to Mas’s mind. And then the teenager behind the red door. Mas shared his thoughts with Lloyd.

“You think this Riley may have been the one who followed you and Mari in Seabrook?”

Mas nodded. The physical description fit, and based on the gun he’d shoved in Mas’s face, he had the temperament.

“Tomorrow,” said Lloyd, “we’ll go pay this Riley a little visit. You and I, Mr. Arai.”

The next morning, even before Takeo had a chance to cry from behind the bedroom door, Mas called Haruo.

“Mas, I just getsu home. Whatsu goin’ on with the dead man?”

“Two dead people now. Ouchi- san and a woman.”

“Woman? Toshiyori or a young one?”

“ Toshiyori. Nisei. Sheezu about our age.”

“Thatsu nasakenai. How she die?”

“Thrown over her balcony. Seventeen stories high.”

“Catch the guy?”

“ Mada. But soon.” Mas could at least hope. “Anyhowsu, I needsu your help, Haruo.”

“Anytin’, Mas, anytin’.”

One thing about Haruo, he knew a lot of people. To describe someone like him, the Japanese said Kao ga hiroi, “Your face is wide,” and Haruo’s face was one of the widest among Mas’s friends. “You gotsu any contact wiz museum?”

“Which museum, the one in Little Tokyo?”

“Yah.”

“Come to think of it, my counselor, her sista work ova at the museum. Why, Mas?”

“There’s sumptin’ I wantchu to take a look at.”

Mas was eating breakfast when the rest of the family came out of the bear’s lair and settled in the living room.

“You’ll need to stay home with Takeo today,” Lloyd told Mari, who was giving the baby his morning bottle.