Riley’s face looked sheepish and, for once, more his age.

“For my girlfriend’s dad. She wanted it as a birthday present. I guess he likes to garden.”

Lloyd lowered the gun. “Well, I guess we’ll hang on to this right now. You return the equipment back to the garden, and we won’t tell anyone that you stole it.”

“So when can I have the gun back?”

“We’ll see,” said Lloyd. “We’ll just see.”

Mas didn’t think that it was a good idea for Lloyd to go into the Ouchi Foundation board meeting with a gun in his pants pocket, but there was no stopping him now. Lloyd was pretty quiet and reserved for a hakujin, but now an aggressive part of him-maybe a past generation of hunters who wore coonskin caps-was coming out. Men like Tug and Lloyd, with their sedate, decent exteriors, had pushed down their dark sides for so long that their primitiveness was more concentrated and pure and, as a result, more dangerous. When their anger was unleashed, you had to take a step back and stay out of their way.

As they approached the Waxley House, Mas was shocked to see the state of the sycamore. Someone had taken what looked like a chain saw to the poor tree. Stripped of branches on the right side, it seemed as though it could topple over at any time. Perhaps that was the state of the Waxley House as well.

Mas followed Lloyd into the house and then into the dining room. The fry-pan-faced attorney sat at the head of table. Becca was at his right and Phillip across from her. Miss Waxley’s back was toward them, and to her right was Penn Anderson, his orange hair uncharacteristically drooping down like a wilting plant. To her left was Larry Pauley, who looked like something wild had been unleashed inside of him. He wore a wrinkled long-sleeved dress shirt over a pair of jeans ripped at the seams.

Phillip was the first to say something. “It’s not right for him to be here.” There was an annoying thin shrill to Phillip’s voice. “His wife has been charged in my father’s murder. There’s a huge conflict here.”

“Don’t talk about me like I’m not in the room,” Lloyd said. “I have every right to be here, according to Kazzy’s will.”

“Kazzy’s not around now. We’re the board, and we should decide,” Phillip pushed back.

“Did they decide that the garden should be destroyed?”

Becca, who had been nervously fingering one of the three earrings dangling from her earlobe, became alert. “What?”

Lloyd laid his cards on the table. “You paid a teenager to vandalize the garden.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Phillip stood as straight as one of the shovels in the toolshed.

“Some kid named Riley.”

“Riley?” Becca asked. “Didn’t K- san fire him for stealing from the company?”

“Listen!” Phillip exploded, the volcano finally erupting. “Our father was pouring millions into this place. It didn’t make any good fiscal sense. Ouchi Silk is on the brink of bankruptcy. Who wears silk anymore in America?”

“So you hire a criminal to deface our garden.” The siblings were going at it-two crocodiles facing off, their tails whipping back and forth.

“There was no stopping Kazzy, Becca. He was like a man possessed. He had to restore this whole place like he remembered it, sixty years ago. Why? Mr. Waxley is the one who kicked him out of here in the first place.”

Miss Waxley then reared her head and joined the fight. “I won’t allow you to talk that way. Our family is the one who gave Kazzy his start. Our foundation, don’t you forget, has also poured good money into the garden. My father was just trying to get Kazzy on his own two feet. And look what happened! Perhaps Kazzy owed his success to my father.”

Before the two families clawed each other further, Lloyd stepped in. “I didn’t come here for this. All I want are the financials.”

The group stared at Lloyd, trying to comprehend what he had just announced. Penn looked like he was going to dissolve into his chair, whereas Larry seemed to rise up, an obake coming back from the dead.

“If I’m officially on the board, I want to see the financial statements,” Lloyd repeated.

“What?” Penn followed Larry’s lead and stood up as if he were a marionette whose strings were being lifted by his puppeteer.

“The quarterly statement since the foundation was created. Tax filings, et cetera.”

“That’s not going to happen. You have no right to any of those documents,” Larry said, pointing an overstuffed sausage-shaped finger at Lloyd.

“That will take some time to photocopy,” said Becca.

“Well, then let’s start off with the past quarter.”

Becca glanced at the attorney, and he nodded his head. She disappeared, and Mas could hear her shoes clomp up the wooden staircase. The phone rang, and then, a few moments later, Becca came down. “It’s Mari,” she told Lloyd. “She says it’s an emergency.”

Lloyd left the room, and Mas felt desperately uncomfortable. Becca, Phillip, Miss Waxley, and Penn had all positioned themselves in different corners, like the same poles of magnets repelling each other. Larry, on the other hand, planted himself right in front of Mas. “You two aren’t going to get away with this,” he said. Larry’s breath was warm and kusai, like Mari’s old dog Brownie when he was sick with distemper.

It was just business records; why was Larry so concerned? Mas didn’t back down, and stared back at Larry’s face. The vein underneath the scar on his forehead pulsed, making his flesh look like a crawling spider.

Lloyd reappeared and asked Mas to meet him outside. His eyes were moist, and in the hazy sun, his pupils resembled the broken patterns within a kaleidoscope. “Takeo needs a blood transfusion. I need to go to the hospital now. Can you wait to get the financial statements? We’ll call you at the apartment and tell you what’s happening.”

Mas nodded.

“And put this”-Lloyd slipped something heavy into Mas’s coat pocket-“in a safe place. But no target practice, okay?”

“ Orai. ”

“I’ll tell them what’s going on.”

“I wait here,” Mas said. Lloyd went back into the house and then reemerged, gripping Mas’s shoulder briefly before he headed for the sidewalk.

A few minutes later, Larry stormed out, almost knocking Mas down from the porch-a giant bowling ball crashing into a lone pin. He uttered no threats or apologies. He moved quickly and forcefully down the walkway and up the sidewalk. If Larry was indeed a gambling man, he would seek relief at the tables or racetrack, Mas figured. The problem was that Larry was already acting like a gambler on the losing end of a bet. That kind of transparency would lead to further losses.

Becca came out with a stack of papers in a manila file. Mas took them without saying thank you or good-bye. He wanted to get away from the Waxley House as soon as he could.

Back at the underground apartment, Mas had to find a hiding place for the gun. It was so beautiful, Mas wanted to keep stroking it, but he didn’t have time to be an aho. He first put it in the bottom desk drawer. But wasn’t that obvious? Next was a drawer in the bedroom underneath Lloyd’s boxers. Another stupid idea. Finally, Mas decided on the okome canister on a shelf in the kitchen. There wasn’t that much rice left, but enough to cover the gun. Mas pushed down on the tin cover, hoping that out of sight meant out of mind.

Next Mas had to contend with the papers, an inch thick. He arranged the financials in piles. This was a familiar task, as he met with his tax man, a former gardener, once a year before April fifteenth. Before their meeting, Mas would sort out receipts, check stubs, and invoices, attach related pages with paper clips, and calculate the totals with an adding machine Chizuko had bought from a now defunct discount chain called Fedco.