Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [33]
But Little Japan was no more, and the once-tight Nikkei community scattered all over the county. Johnny’s father went to college, on to medical school, and then set up a successful practice in Pacific Beach.
He always thought his son would join the practice and take it over, but Johnny had other ideas. Young Johnny was always a little different from his siblings—while he dutifully fulfilled the stereotype of the diligent Asian student, Johnny preferred action to academics. He got through the school day to get to the baseball field, where he was an All-City second baseman. When he wasn’t on the diamond, he was in the water, a hard-charging grom ripping waves. Or he was in the dojo, learning judo from the older Japanese men, Johnny’s one real bow to his heritage.
When it came time for Johnny to choose a career path, he had the grades to go premed but went prelaw instead. When it came time to go to law school, Johnny checked out of that wave. He dreaded more hours at the library, more days behind a desk. What he craved was action, so he took the police exam and shredded it.
When Johnny told his father about his decision to become a cop, his father thought about the police who had led his own father in handcuffs through the streets of downtown San Diego, but he said nothing. Heritage, he thought, should be a foundation, not an anchor. Johnny didn’t become a doctor, but he married one, and that helped to ease the sting. The important thing was that Johnny become a success in his chosen field, and Johnny rocketed through the uniformed ranks to became a very good detective indeed.
His connections to the Japanese community, though, are tenuous. He retains enough Japanese to be an annoyance in a sushi bar, he goes to the Buddhist temple with less and less frequency, and he’s even missed one or two of the monthly visits to his grandfather at the old farm. It’s just the way things are in this modern American, Southern California life. The Kodanis are just busy people—Beth puts in brutal hours at the hospital and Johnny works his files like a machine with no off switch. Then there’s all the stuff with the kids—soccer games, Little League, karate, ballet, tutoring sessions—it’s small wonder there’s little room in the schedule for the old traditions.
Now the good detective opens the cheap, lightweight sliding door, which reveals a narrow closet. No clothes on the wire hangers, no shoes on the floor. A woman’s suitcase—more of an overnight bag—is set on a freestanding rack, and now Johnny goes through it. A pair of jeans, a folded blouse, some underwear, the usual assortment of cosmetics.
Either Tammy Roddick wasn’t planning on being gone long or she didn’t have time to pack. But why would a woman contemplating suicide pack an overnight bag?
Johnny goes into the bathroom.
It hits him right away.
Two toothbrushes on the sink.
One of them is pink, and small.
A child’s.
25
The girl walks on the trodden dirt path on the side of the road.
Her skin is a rich brown, her hair black as freshly hewn coal. She trips over a brown beer bottle that was thrown out the window of a car the night before, but she keeps walking, and as she does, she fingers a small silver cross held by a thin chain around her neck. It gives her courage; it’s her one tangible symbol of love in an unloving world.
In shock, not really sure where she’s going, she keeps the ocean to her left because it’s something she recognizes, and she knows that if she keeps the water to her left, she will eventually reach the strawberry fields. The fields are bad, but they are the only life she has known for the past two years, and her friends are there.
She needs her friends because she has nobody now. And if she can find the strawberry fields, she will find her friends, maybe even see the guero doctor, who was at least nice to her. So she keeps walking north, unnoticed by the drivers who rush past in their cars—just another Mexican girl on