‘Jesus, Rink! It’s your dad we’re talking about here. I want to avenge his murder as much as you do.’
Chapter 4
‘I’ll wait outside, Rink. I think it’s important that you speak with your mom alone.’
‘She’ll be glad to see you, too.’
‘I know, but there’ll be time for that later. You need to speak with her in private. There’s something she wants to say, but my guess is it’s for your ears only.’
I watched as Rink headed into the intensive care unit, then went to stand in the parking lot, kicking my heels against the kerb while I killed time. The hospital, considered one of the finest public hospitals in the US, nestled at the foot of Potrero Hill in the city’s Mission District. I didn’t doubt its reputation. Now that the early mist had burned off, I was happy to feel the Californian sun on my face, but that wasn’t why I chose to wait outside. I preferred things that way.
Though I respect doctors, nurses, in fact everyone in the medical profession, I hate hospitals. For me a trip to a hospital usually means that I’m injured, or someone I care for is hurt, suffering illness, has already perished or soon will. The smell is often enough to cause a negative reflex surge inside me, but then it’s been said that the olfactory sense has the greatest memory. It isn’t so much the antiseptic smell that raises my gorge but the underlying odour of pain. It’s a distinct aroma that has dogged my memories most of my life.
Visiting the hospital this time there was one thing that made me grateful, and that was the fact that Rink’s mom was on the mend, her injuries not as life threatening as we’d first feared. She had suffered blunt force trauma, most probably from the barrel of a gun, but thankfully she’d been struck a glancing blow. It had been enough to rip her scalp, to scar the bone beneath, but not split her skull completely. The blow had knocked her unconscious, left her with concussion and a throbbing headache, but nothing lasting. The surgeons’ greatest fear was that there could be an internal bleed, but MRI scans had shown her brain to be uninjured. Their second fear was that the elderly lady’s underlying health problems might kill her.
For some years now Yukiko had been suffering cardiac problems, and the concern was that her failing heart might not be strong enough to sustain her recovery: particularly when she was told her husband had died. Yet Yukiko had surprised us all and was much stronger now. Probably the relief of seeing her sole surviving child by her bedside helped. Yesterday, when Rink had made off from the hospital, Yukiko had looked at me and I had recognised terror in her face. She had outlived her husband, and two children; she did not want to outlive her youngest boy. She had made me swear that I’d bring him back safely to her. I’m glad that I was able to do that and to give her some comfort.
I hoped now that Yukiko would repay that debt by telling Rink the truth about who had murdered his dad.
I waited an hour.
When Rink was a no-show I feared that he’d sneaked off again on another uncharacteristic rampage. But I was doing him an injustice and so I waited some more.
Another hour later Rink finally approached. Since flying in we’d hired a rental car, and without looking at me he headed directly for the silver Chrysler. I fell in step with him, arriving at the car at the same time.
I leaned on the roof of the car, caught my friend’s eye. ‘Well?’
‘She’s doing fine. The doctors say she’ll be able to go home in a day or two.’
‘That’s good,’ I said, and meant it. ‘But that’s not what I asked.’
Rink nodded me inside the car. I’d have offered to drive, but things were usually this way with us. Rink didn’t trust me to stay on the right side of the road. Ordinarily he’d make some jibe, but not now. He started the car and pulled away, and he didn’t have a destination in mind judging by the way he paused at the exit. Finally he took a left, for no other reason than that it was as good as any direction.
‘She swears she doesn’t know who killed my dad.’
We’d been there when a detective had attended her bedside and recorded a statement. Yukiko had related how she and Andrew had been wakened by a noise and her husband had gone downstairs to investigate. She had followed him down and seen a man in black standing over Andrew, a gun in his hand. The man had his back to her and she’d taken the opportunity to arm herself with a plant pot. The trouble was he’d heard her approaching and had struck her unconscious. That was all she could recall, despite all the detective’s attempts at teasing further detail from her. That was when she’d mentioned some trouble with Chaney and his friends and suggested that he might have had something to do with her husband’s murder. The detective had noted her words down, then left, and Yukiko had drifted into a fitful sleep. A few minutes after that and Rink had slipped away. At first I’d thought he’d snuck off somewhere to be alone, to grieve in private, and I gave him some space. But that only lasted until Yukiko had woken from her sleep and asked for him.
‘Do you believe her?’
Rink nodded. ‘She told me that she mentioned Chaney to the cops because she thought he deserved extra notice from them, but that was all. She was also about to say something else but her nurse came in and she clammed up. Though I tried to press her on it afterwards, she wouldn’t say anything. She changed the subject, started making preparations for my dad’s funeral.’ There was a hitch in his voice at the end, so I allowed him a moment or two of reflection.
‘She doesn’t know who killed your dad, but she knows why.’
Rink turned to me for a second and I barely recognised him.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s what I figure.’
‘So why won’t she tell the cops? Why not tell you?’
‘Giri.’ Rink looked at me again and this time his face was set in stone. ‘My mom is a firm believer in the old ways.’
Giri. I turned the Japanese phrase over in my mind. It was a concept rather than a single word, and one I was familiar with. Not that it was a phrase easily translated in the West. Some have said that it means ‘duty’ but it goes much deeper than that. It is better defined as ‘moral obligation’, or a debt of gratitude where self-sacrifice outweighs the pursuit of happiness. Basically, Yukiko believed she owed someone her silence, and fulfilling her obligation won out over bringing her husband’s murderer to justice. Sometimes giri has been called the ‘burden of obligation’, and I could see that it was true in Yukiko’s case.
‘What about the giri she should show towards your father?’ Immediately I wanted to retract the question. ‘Shit. Ignore that, Rink. That was pretty insensitive of me.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, without expanding on it. I wasn’t sure which of my statements he was agreeing with.
Hitomi Yukiko’s parents had been Japanese, staunch traditionalists raised in a land that was still governed by an emperor, whose rule was defined by a static feudal order that had existed in Japanese society for centuries. Even when they had moved to the US the Hitomi family had continued to abide by these ancient values, and had passed them down to their girl child. Even Rink, raised in the US, with a Scottish-Canadian father, held strongly to some of his grandparents’ teachings. I knew what was going through his head: if anyone held a burden of obligation to his father, it was he. By default that burden extended to me and I’d do everything I could to help my friend repay it.
‘So what’s the plan?’
Rink concentrated on the road ahead. It was probably so that I didn’t see the tears in his eyes. ‘As soon as the police release his body I’ll see to my father’s funeral. Then I’ll avenge him.’