Mas never understood why people wanted to make a fool out of him. In Japanese, there were two types of fools: bakatare and aho. You called someone a bakatare if he forgot to turn off the stove so that the teakettle became bone-dry and its bottom burnt black. The same went for using an edger much too close to the sidewalk and dulling the blade.
But aho was different. You were an aho when a gas blower salesman told you a fancy upgrade was quiet as a mouse, and you believed him, only to find out the expensive upgrade was not only loud but a piece of junk, too. Sometimes you couldn’t help being bakatare, but there was no excuse for being an aho.
Detective Ghigo’s announcement about the deer hair was supposed to make Mas feel like an aho. In that sense, the detective had succeeded. Mas didn’t know why he had told the detective to take a second look. It had probably wasted some valuable time in finding clues to Kazzy’s real killer.
“That Detective Ghigo probably thinkin’ I makin’ him run around for no reason,” Mas said to Haruo on the phone that night.
“No worry, Mas. You always gotsu good hunches.”
“I tellin’ you, Haruo, that gardenia a giant one. Neva saw nutin’ so big.”
For once, Haruo didn’t interrupt, and let his friend go on until he ran out of gas.
While Mas slept in the underground apartment that night, he dreamt of deer grazing in a lush green valley and then the valley on fire, the deer ablaze.
Both Mari and Lloyd were staying at the hospital, so Mas found himself on his own again the following morning. He planned to check on the cherry blossom trees after eating a bowlful of dry shredded wheat. There was no real milk in the refrigerator except for a carton of the soy kind. Mas liked tofu in his miso soup, but stopped short of putting milked soybeans in his breakfast cereal.
The phone rang, and Mas picked it up, expecting to hear either Haruo’s or Mari’s voice. But instead it was a hakujin man with a nasal accent. “Hello, is this the Jensen residence? I’d like to talk with Lloyd Jensen.”
“Heezu not here.”
“How about Mari Jensen?”
“Sheezu not here.” Mas waited for the caller to identify himself and leave a message.
“This is Jerome Kroner with the New York Post. I really need to speak with one of them for a follow-up story I’m writing on the death of Kazzy Ouchi.”
“They not here, orai? They can’t talk to nobody,” said Mas, slamming the phone. Mas never thought much of reporters. He was used to scaring them away from his TV star customer’s property in Pasadena. These journalists were the type to lie, beg, and cheat to snap a photograph of an actor getting into his hot tub or picking up his mail. One time a reporter even offered Mas some cash to tell him who was staying overnight at his customer’s house. “Is it a woman? Or a man?”
About ten minutes later, the phone began ringing again. Mas had the good sense not to answer, but listened as the machine recorded the message. This time it was a woman with the New York Times. Why was every baka na reporter calling now? What had that Jerome Kroner said, some kind of follow-up? That meant there was something to follow up from.
No. It couldn’t be. But maybe. Mas got dressed and hurried across the street to the newsstand next to the greengrocer. Post, Post. Mas looked among the newspapers, but only saw the New York Times, Wall Street Journal. “You gotta Post?” he asked a heavyset black man in an apron.
“Right here.” The newsstand man pressed his dirty fingernail against a tabloid right in front of Mas’s face on the counter.
This a newspaper? Mas wondered. But he laid down a few coins anyway. Resting against a wall, Mas pulled at the pages as if he were shucking corn in the fields. Nothing, nothing. And then on page eight, a grainy photo of the empty pond, and then a story taking up a quarter of a page.
SILK TYCOON KILLED IN GARDEN, the headline read with a smaller headline underneath, JAPANESE COMMUNITY FEARS HATE CRIME.
Hate crime? Mas thought. Of course, the killer must have hated Kazzy, but it might not have anything to do with him being half-Japanese.
The article reported the facts: Kazuhiko “Kazzy” Ouchi dead at age eighty. Believed to have suffered a gunshot wound. There was no mention of the gun found in the trash can; the police must still be figuring if it was linked to the shooting.
Then some background on Kazzy: he was born in the Waxley House, the only son of a Japanese gardener and an Irish maid. It went on to say that he was a self-made millionaire, having learned the rag trade in the Garment District as a young teenager. Founder and president of Ouchi Silk, Inc. Survived by a son, Phillip Hirokazu Ouchi, senior vice president of Ouchi Silk, and a daughter, Rebecca Emiko Ouchi, secretary of the Ouchi Foundation.
Mas read slowly, tracing each sentence with the tip of his index finger. Then came the paragraph:
The Waxley House’s director of landscaping, Lloyd Jensen, was unavailable for comment and, according to a source, was being questioned by police.
Sonafugun, thought Mas. The news was out. No wonder all these reporters were calling the underground apartment.
The article didn’t end there. It mentioned that a homeowners’ group had organized against the planned Waxley House Garden and Museum, led by a man named Howard Foster. Must be the neighbor, Mas figured.
Members of New York City ’s Japanese community expressed concern that the killing could be linked to a recent spate of vandalism to the garden. “There’s been animosity toward the Japanese for decades,” stated Eddie “Elk” Mamiya, at the New York Japanese American Social Service Center. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Mr. Ouchi’s death was indeed a hate crime.”
Mas tore out the story and smashed the rest of the paper in a trash can. He needed, more than ever, to get back to trees and plants. As he approached the Waxley House, Mas noticed that the sycamore tree out front seemed diseased, its distinctive patchwork bark funny-looking in some places. Mas was partial to sycamores, since many of the tall, giraffelike trees graced his neighbor’s yard in Altadena. Every winter, the sycamores would shed their huge leaves shaped like giant outstretched hands. Mari had loved those leaves and collected them in scrapbooks and even played in piles of them, L.A. ’s version of snowdrifts. Even though they were a hassle to rake, Mas couldn’t bear to curse them.
Mas walked over to a branch, touching an area that seemed to sink in. Piece by piece, like shedding different shades of old green and brown paint, he peeled away the layers of bark. Sure enough, the wood beneath was bluish black, a bruise that signaled serious sickness. The limb would have to come off for the tree to survive.
So now it wasn’t only the cherry blossom trees, but also the sycamore. The whole garden was in trouble.
Mas went straight to the front door and knocked. He didn’t want to let himself in if he didn’t have to; he, Mari, and Lloyd were in enough hot water as it was.
The door opened, revealing the full figure of Becca Ouchi. She was dressed in a tight brown turtleneck sweater and a pair of pants that ended just below her knees. Mas could see that she had a good set of daikon ashi, Japanese white radish legs that bulged out unapologetically. That must have come from the part of her that was Japanese. “Mr. Arai,” she said, “oh, hello.”
Becca’s earlobes were clear of any jewelry today. Circles hung from underneath her eyes like cocoons; the woman looked as sick as the sycamore outside. “Are you here for the meeting?”
Mas didn’t know of any meetings, and didn’t care to. Meetings were for wasting time, created by and for high-tone people to justify their existence. Mas instead got right to the point. “You knowsu your tree gonna die?”
“Which one?” Like a mama bear hearing her cub’s cry, Becca snapped out of her personal despair.
“Sycamore out front.”
“Sylvester? What’s wrong with him?” Becca’s ample breasts shook in all directions as she rushed down the steps to the ailing tree. She gingerly traced the black bruise that Mas had uncovered. “Shit,” she said. “The canker’s come back.”
Mas tried to ignore the fact that the woman had named the tree and was referring to it as a real person. Mas had run into some of these kuru-kuru-pa customers during his forty-year career who acted as though blood, instead of sap, were pumping through an oak or elm. And, of course, there were those activists who chained themselves to tree trunks or lived in tall branches like the Swiss Family Robinson to make a point that nature needed to be saved.
All nuts, Mas thought, and now he had one more to contend with.
“That branch gotta be cut, or itsu gonna spread all ova.”
“Lloyd had that tree on antibiotics all summer.” In response to Mas’s frown, Becca added, “You know, antibiotics. Medicine to fight off the infection.”
“No kind of medicine gonna save that tree. Gotta saw it off.” Luckily, the branch was still young and stood only about three feet high from where it was connected to the tree. If Mas had a ladder, he could handle it on his own.
As they discussed various options, a man dressed in a black suit appeared from the house and stood at the top of the front steps. His face was as matte as the surface of a new frying pan. He had black thinning hair and a charcoal smudge of a moustache. “Is everything all right, Miss Ouchi? It’s five to ten; everyone should be coming soon.”
Becca nodded. “The foundation’s lawyer,” she whispered. Mas pursed his lips. New York City seemed full of attorneys.
“Just have to take care of some garden business; I’ll be right in,” she called out.
Mas wished that he had his own tree pruner and saw, one that he had inherited from an old Issei gardener who had learned his trade from an Uptown boardinghouse. Uptown was now present-day Koreatown in Los Angeles, full of indoor golfing ranges and restaurants. At one time, Uptown had been the gathering place for Japanese immigrants, many of whom had picked up the gardening trade. Even the Japanese church in the area had a stained-glass window with the image of a push lawn mower, a nod to the profession that had kept parishioners and the church well fed and clothed.
But the pruner and saw, as well as a dozen other tools, including his beloved Trimmer lawn mower, had all been stolen from his truck last year. He learned to make do, as he would today.
Mas followed Becca through the back gate. The yellow police tape was still around the dry pond, but it looked like most of their investigative work had been completed. “They got most of it done yesterday,” Becca said. “Guess they were afraid it was going to rain.”
They walked over to the wooden toolshed in the corner. Becca pressed down on a metal latch to open the door. As with most other toolsheds, the wooden shack was dark and damp. But while the ones in L.A. were ripe with the scent of mold and other growth, the Waxley toolshed was devoid of anything living, a freezer for dead equipment.
“Wait a minute,” said Becca, taking hold of a flashlight on the top shelf. “Something doesn’t look right.” She slid forward a switch on the flashlight and circled the light around the shed’s confines. “What the-”
“Sumptin’ wrong?” asked Mas, who knew well enough that something was indeed amiss.
“What happened to our new equipment?” Other than a bright-yellow plastic ladder, all the tools looked like they predated World War II. Old, toothless rakes, hedge clippers, and yes, a tree trimmer. The trimmer would have worked for small branches, but not for the large infected sycamore outside. The shovels that Mas had used a day earlier were propped against the wall, scoops up. Aiming at one of the shovels with the beam of the flashlight, Mas noted that its face was dented. What kind of force had caused that deformity? The old gardener whom Mas had met at a boardinghouse in L.A. had once told him that tools reflected the character of the gardener. It was no wonder that Mas’s tools over the years had been scratched and worn down, in some cases only held together with wire and duct tape.
“No, no, something is wrong here. I mean, the tools were in here yesterday. The day…”
The day we found your daddy’s dead body, Mas silently finished Becca’s sentence.
“Did Lloyd take some of the tools?”
“Lloyd too busy to take anytin’,” Mas said a little too angrily. Was Becca now accusing Lloyd, too?
“This is all we need. Those tools cost us two thousand dollars. Dammit. Just another thing to report back to the police. Can you see if you can make do with anything else in there?” Becca handed the flashlight to Mas and left to attend to her lawyer.
Shelves lined the shed, but toolboxes and small tools were haphazardly arranged on the dirt floor. Mas got on all fours and pulled out the toolboxes to look for a saw. His old, battered knees cut into the cold packed dirt, and Mas was ready to give up when his flashlight caught the sharp teeth of a handsaw left sideways by the door. As Mas got hold of the wooden handle, something rolled toward him like a marble. Again he guided the flashlight to get a better look. The tiny ball was no children’s toy but a dirt-covered bullet.
Mas didn’t know what to do. Should he tell Becca and the grim lawyer inside? And what did it mean in terms of Lloyd and Mari’s case?
Mas tried to slow his thoughts. What had Detective Ghigo said at the police station? That a bullet had gone straight through Kazzy’s head. But then earlier, at the hospital, he spoke about matching the bullet to the discarded gun. Had he been bluffing? There was no mention of a bullet or even a specific gun in the New York Post story. So up to now, the police might not have had a bullet. Which means they had no way to directly link Mari’s prop gun to Kazzy’s death.
The shed door must have been open, but hadn’t it in fact been closed when Mas had arrived at the garden that morning? Had the killer closed it? Or maybe someone else?
The whole thing didn’t make any sense. The neighbor said that he heard the gun go off and reported the gunshot to police. The killer must have fled right away. He wouldn’t have bothered to close the shed door.
Mas turned over different scenarios in his mind like he was throwing down dice and landing various combinations. He studied the dented shovel again. The wooden handle was especially long, maybe five feet tall. It certainly looked like the bullet had hit the face of the shovel and then ricocheted into the dirt floor.
He left the freezing-cold shed and began pacing around the pond, ignoring the yellow police tape flapping in the wind. The pond was completely empty now, so Mas could see some writing-Japanese kanji characters-carved into the cement bottom of the pond. If he’d been in a better frame of mind, he would have put on his reading glasses to make out the words. But they meant nothing to him now.
Kazzy had been around five foot eight. Since the back of his head had been shot off, the bullet would have landed up higher, maybe in the next-door neighbor’s tree trunk. The killer could have been much taller, that was for sure. Or else Kazzy could have been on the bridge, squatting down on his knees. The shooter could have aimed the gun from the side, by the edge of the pond a few feet from the back stairs.
Mas went back into the shed and dropped the bullet into his half-empty pack of Marlboros. Since the back door was locked, he made his way around to the front of the house. A mailman was walking down the stairs and Becca was at the open door, leafing through a stack of envelopes. Then she stopped at one piece of mail, letting the rest scatter at her feet like dry leaves. She hurriedly tore open the white envelope and unfolded a letter. Mas was now only a few feet away from Becca, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were open so wide that Mas could see her chestnut brown irises moving back and forth, absorbing the words on the page. Then she put the letter up to her forehead and began to scream.
Phillip was the first to respond. He came to the door, but didn’t bother to console his sister. Instead, he glared at Mas like a dog waiting to take a bite out of a person’s leg. “What the hell did you do to her?”
“No.” Becca shook her head. “It’s not him. It’s this. A letter from Kazzy.”
Phillip’s face fell. He was much skinnier than Becca and looked like the type of person who had spent his childhood sick in bed rather than making trouble with other boys outside. While Becca reminded Mas of a solid wooden post, Phillip was like a piece of flimsy carbon paper, leaving irritating marks whenever he felt pressure from the outside.
Phillip pulled the letter from his sister’s hands and went into the dining room. Mas couldn’t help but to follow. “I have Kazzy’s suicide note,” he said, handing the letter to the attorney. The attorney took out a handkerchief and grasped the edges of the paper, laying it flat on the dining room table.
Around the table were the same people who had been at the house the day before. The sea urchin, this time in a lime green shirt and blue suit. The sumo wrestler, dressed again in black. The sixty-something-year-old woman, who smelled like she was dipped in perfume. She was the driver’s boss-Miss Waxley, wasn’t it?
Mas stood behind the attorney as he read the brief letter. Looking over the attorney’s shoulder through his drugstore reading glasses, he could make out the words, all in capital letters:
DEAR BECCA AND PHILLIP,
I KNOW YOU MUST BE IN SHOCK. I’M SORRY, BUT IT’S FOR THE BEST.
K-SAN
“It’s a lie. K- san didn’t write this. He would never commit suicide. He had no reason to take his life.” Becca folded her arms over her ample chichi s and sat in a chair in the corner.
“I have to admit it’s kind of strange,” the sea urchin chimed in. “I mean, Kazzy has seemed pretty agitated these days, with the vandalism and all, but he’s not a quitter.”
“But look, it’s typed all in caps, the way he always issued his memos. Military style,” said Phillip.
The others all began murmuring their theories on why Kazzy could have killed himself. Finally, the old woman spoke. Her voice wavered like a forlorn melody from a koto, a Japanese string instrument that Haruo’s ex-wife, Yoshiko, played. “It could have had to do with his health, with his recent diagnosis and all.”
“Diagnosis? What are you talking about?” Becca stood up from the chair she had been resting in.
“Lou Gehrig’s disease. He was diagnosed last month. Didn’t you know?”
Lou Gehrig. Mas remembered that New York Yankee baseball player-hadn’t he even played in an exhibition game in Japan? Gehrig had died of a terrible disease that had weakened his legs, arms, and then the rest of his body, ending his career and life back in the late thirties.
Even Phillip looked out of sorts with the news. “Is that why Kazzy was so irritable?”
“Why wouldn’t he mention anything to his own children? And why would he tell you, Miss Waxley?” Becca asked.
“Well, you know, we had business concerns.”
“Then he would have told me,” said Phillip. “That just doesn’t make sense.”
“Perhaps he didn’t want to burden you all. Since my own mother had struggled with multiple sclerosis, he thought that I might understand something of what he’d be going through,” said Miss Waxley in the same singsong voice. “You know how proud your father was. He couldn’t bear to admit that he would never be the same. He was devastated.”
“That’s true,” added Phillip. “He wouldn’t have wanted any one of us to take care of him. He was so stubborn-what’s that Japanese word for it? Ganko?”
That Mas could understand. Any independent Nisei man-whether he be a gardener or a silk tycoon-wouldn’t want his child to help him shikko into a metal bowl or change his diapers.
“Answer me this, then,” Becca interjected. “If he killed himself, why did that gun end up in a trash can half a block away?”
Phillip’s face turned red, and the room grew quiet. Nobody had an answer for Becca. The fry-pan-faced attorney then excused himself to contact the police.
The rest of them circled the letter as if it had been written by a dead president. Only Becca sat back. Finally, Detective Ghigo appeared with the same badge dangling off his black jacket. “So what do we have here?”
“Suicide letter,” said Phillip.
“Did anyone touch this letter?”
Both Becca and Phillip nodded. Ghigo took out a small black notebook and clicked the end of his ballpoint pen. “Did Mr. Ouchi seem suicidal?”
“No,” Becca said. “Absolutely not. He didn’t have that type of personality.”
“But we just found out that Kazzy had just been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease,” Phillip reported.
“Yes, we heard that from Mr. Ouchi’s doctor. Would that be a reasonable motive for Mr. Ouchi to kill himself?”
A few people nodded, but Becca obviously wasn’t going to give up. “It couldn’t have been suicide. We found him buried under trash.” Mas cringed when Becca mentioned “we.” He wanted no part of the investigation, but it would be too obvious if he left the room now.
“Well,” said Ghigo, “it could be that Mr. Ouchi’s death and the vandalism are unrelated. I’m also following up on one of Mr. Ouchi’s girlfriends.”
“Which one?” Phillip made a face as if he were sucking on an especially tart pickled plum.
“Anna Grady. In Fort Lee.”
“Anna? K- san dropped her weeks ago.” Becca frowned. It was obvious that Becca was no fan of this Anna woman. But a lady friend-there could be some connection to the gardenia, thought Mas.
“Do you know if she took it hard?”
“She may have,” said Phillip. “I think there might have been a problem with her background.”
All of the others stared at Phillip. His talk about “background” reminded Mas of omiai, the Japanese-style arranged marriage in which one’s past was examined with a fine-tooth comb. Mas’s marriage to Chizuko, in fact, had been omiai, but Chizuko’s family must have used a comb with missing teeth in looking into Mas’s past.
“I don’t know too much about it, but Becca knows, right?” Phillip said.
“I really don’t have many details,” mumbled Becca, but somehow Mas knew that she was lying.
“How did they meet?” Ghigo asked.
“Wasn’t she living with some woman that Kazzy knew from a long time ago?” said Phillip.
“Her roommate’s mother used to be a maid here in the Waxley House with our grandmother,” explained Becca.
“That’s right. They all hooked up after K- san started these renovations,” said Phillip.
“Detective, I really don’t think this woman had anything to do with Kazzy’s death,” Miss Waxley said. “Kazzy had a lot of woman friends. A bit of a ladies’ man, I hate to say.”
Becca lowered her eyes.
“Well, we’ll check her out, just in case.” Detective Ghigo’s gaze then fell on Mas. “Mr. Arai, what a surprise to see you here again. Didn’t know that you had any business with the Ouchi Foundation board.”
“He was here to look after the trees,” explained Becca. “But his family now plays a role on the board.”
The sea urchin began to cough; it was obvious to Mas that he wanted Becca to stop. She caught on and looked awkwardly at Ghigo and the attorney. As if receiving a baton in a relay race, the attorney turned to Mas, then cleared his throat and continued Becca’s train of thought. “In the event of Mr. Ouchi’s death, he named a successor to the board,” he said to Mas.
“Yah, yah, so?”
“That person is Takeo Frederick Jensen.”
Nanda? Had Mas heard correctly?
Ghigo was also surprised. “You mean the baby?”
“Now, we haven’t verified if this is legal,” said the sea urchin, pulling at his orange spiky hair.
“Are you saying that the Ouchi Foundation contests the will?” asked Ghigo.
“No, it’s just that we only heard it earlier this morning. How can a baby be a member of the board?” continued the sea urchin.
“Well, K- san ’s will instructed that Lloyd would assume the position until Takeo became of age,” said Becca.
The sumo wrestler sucked in more air into his immense lungs. Sitting down, he seemed taller than Mas standing up. “It’s craziness. Utter craziness. I want our attorneys at Waxley Enterprises to take a look at that will before we do anything.”
“Excuse me if I sound uncultured,” interjected Ghigo. “But why do you care who’s on the board? How much money do you get?” Mas listened intently. He was wondering the exact same question.
Miss Waxley laughed, covering her mouth with a hand dotted with age spots. “Quite the contrary, Detective Ghigo,” she said. “You are usually expected to give money when you’re named on a board.”
“So who cares who’s in and who’s not?”
“The board decides the future of the garden and museum,” explained Becca. “If the board votes to shoot the project down, it’ll eventually die.”
After forty-five minutes of this incessant talking, Mas had to leave. He felt bad abandoning the sycamore, but he figured a few more days of being attached to its infected limb would do no extra damage.
The route back to the underground apartment was remembered by Mas’s legs, which automatically carried him past street signs, bus stops, bakeries. He turned on Carlton and unlocked the gate and door of the apartment, and was greeted by the friendly smell of cooked green onions, fried bacon, and soy sauce. Fried rice, the way Lil Yamada had taught Chizuko to make it when she first arrived in America. It had become Chizuko’s specialty dish, now reprised in Brooklyn.
Mari had returned without Lloyd or Takeo, but with two other guests-Tug and his daughter, Joy.
“Mas, old man, we were wondering where you were,” said Tug, getting up from his chair at the kitchen table, which had been moved into the living room. Mari smiled and scooped a serving of fried rice from a wok onto a plate in front of an empty chair. Her hair was wet, freshly washed. In fact, her whole spirit seemed freshly watered. She told him what he had already sensed: Takeo was doing much, much better, and would be released from the hospital after undergoing a few more tests.
Before he took his seat, Joy acknowledged him. “Mr. Arai, I haven’t seen you in ages. Maybe even ten years.” Joy didn’t mention Chizuko’s funeral, but that had been the last time, they all knew. Joy had the same moon face, and wore a dark-blue kerchief over her head. Her hair lay in two long braids, like those women in Hong Kong kung fu movies, except the right one was dyed bright pink and the other electric blue. When Mari was a teenager, she often said that Joy had “tight eyes,” claiming that she herself found that kind of thin eyes attractive.
“Yah, long time,” Mas replied. He couldn’t believe that this two-tone-braided girl had been close to becoming a full-fledged doctor after completing her residency in South Carolina. He had once viewed her as being quiet and bland, like a boiled egg, but it was quite obvious that her shell was now broken.
“Well, Dad,” said Mari, pulling out a chair for Mas, “tell us where you’ve been.”
Mas took off his jacket and started from the beginning. He mentioned the sycamore, but quickly went on to the suicide letter and conversation at the Waxley House. Mari kept interjecting, filling in Mas’s blanks. The sea urchin, Penn Anderson, worked with Phillip at Ouchi Silk, Inc., while the sumo wrestler, Larry Pauley, was a senior vice president of Waxley Enterprises, which donated money to the Ouchi Foundation. And Miss Waxley was the only child of Mr. Waxley, and chairman emeritus of the company.
“Who is this Waxley fellow?” asked Tug.
“The late, great Henry Waxley?” Mari said. “He started Waxley Enterprises, a shipping company, before World War Two.”
“Oh, yeah, wasn’t there a biography that came out recently?” recollected Joy. “Sounds like he was a real SOB. A control freak, right?”
“Joy.” Tug frowned and wiped his beard of any stray grains of fried rice. “He was a successful businessman.”
“No, Mr. Yamada, Joy’s right,” said Mari. “I heard Waxley was a hard man to deal with. Actually, Kazzy was no better.”
Mas didn’t know why these daughters had to warukuchi so much. Warukuchi literally meant bad-mouth, and they were freely talking bad about men two and three times their age.
“Kazzy was lecherous, Dad,” Mari maintained. “A sukebe. He even propositioned me when I was four months pregnant with Takeo.”
“What an asshole.” Joy tossed her blue braid behind her shoulder while Tug took a big swig of water.
“Maybe youzu get it wrong,” Mas countered.
“No, Dad, I didn’t misinterpret that. It was pretty clear what he wanted.”
The four of them became quiet. Mas didn’t know whether to be happy that Kazzy was dead or to view his daughter as being shinkeikabin, too sensitive. He watched Mari circle the table, collecting dirty dishes, until she stopped at his side. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she then recalled. “Haruo left a message on the answering machine. Wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about.”
After she took the dishes to the sink, Mari turned the dial counterclockwise on the aged answering machine.
“Mari, don’t you think it’s time to go digital?” said Joy. “Damn, girl, you guys live like you’re just out of the eighties.”
“What can I say? Lloyd and I are old-school.”
“More like prehistoric.”
Mas waved the girls to be quiet as he positioned his ear toward the machine’s speaker.
It was indeed Haruo, first breathing hard like he had run up a bunch of steps to make this call.
“I gotchu Mystery Gardenia, Mas. Call me as soon youzu getsu dis message.”
Mas looked at Tug and didn’t waste any time. Since Haruo had been up for his graveyard shift, he was probably already in bed, wiped out from the day’s activities. But Haruo wasn’t the type to mind if anybody interrupted his slumber, especially if it meant that someone out there needed him.
Haruo answered after the sixth ring. He had indeed been sleeping, but Haruo being Haruo, it didn’t take him long to start talking, his words dribbling out like a steady rain.
“You be proud of me, Mas. Izu found your Mystery Gardenia.”
Haruo’s search actually began in the Flower Market, where he now worked part-time, a concrete refuge in downtown Los Angeles amid wandering transvestites, fenced factories protected by coils of barbed wire, and refrigerator box after box (apartments for the homeless). Inside, on the first floor, however, were rows and rows of blossoms-either grown locally in Southern California or imported from Latin America and Asia. Haruo always spoke about how he loved the scent of flowers. Like Mas, he had survived the Bomb, but unlike Mas, he always talked about sweet smells, whether they came from a garden or a woman’s kitchen. The Bomb might have destroyed Haruo’s face, but his nose was as strong as ever.
Haruo worked for his friend Taxie, an old-time chrysanthemum grower. They had an established routine. From two o’clock in the morning, Taxie was the front man, greeting the customers and showing them their flowers soaking in water. Haruo, on the other hand, worked in back, toward the cash register. He was the one who wrapped the dripping bunches in sheets of old newspaper and carried the flowers onto their customers’ metal carts.
Mas thought it was well and good that Haruo was making some extra cash at the Market, but he had some concerns as well. The Market was rampant with gamblers. The game of choice was liar’s poker, in which men brought out dollar bills from their pockets and wallets and gambled off of the bills’ serial numbers. This wasn’t the best environment for a recovering ex-gambler like Haruo, and Mas sometimes wondered when his friend would succumb to the temptation. But today was no day to go into a man’s addiction.
“So whatsu the Mystery Gardenia?” asked Mas, hoping for a short explanation.
“You knowsu Kanda Nursery? Only gardenia grower in Market. Roses, carnation, they all come from Latin America, yo, but gardenia plants, they have mushi, whatchacallit, worms in soil. No out-of-country gardenia allowed. So Kanda doin’ good.”
Mas knew about the nematodes, wormlike parasites that could burrow near the roots of gardenia plants. The greenhouses of Kanda Nursery must be either north in Ventura County or south in Orange County, he thought.
“Well, anyways, I go ova to Kanda’s stall and talk to the son. Good thing I brought ova donuts one day at the Market. He rememba and then make time for me. I tell themsu they gotsu the biggest gardenias I ever seen. He tell me about their special Mystery Gardenia. Thatsu whatchu call dat type, you knowsu, Mystery Gardenia. Ship all ova the country, I think. I tellsu them about the gardenia you lookin’ for. ‘No way,’ he say. ‘No way you can find who grow dat flower.’ But I tellsu him how big and beautiful you say it was. So I guess heezu gotsu some hokori.”
Mas knew that if you complimented a man on what he grew or made with his hands, you had a friend for life. Although Haruo didn’t have a lot of common sense, unlike Mas, he had smarts on how to get along with people.
“Then he tellsu me, ‘You go with my dad to ranch.’ The father turns out to be Kibei, Mas, just like us. Name Danjo. Skinny guy, as skinny as a broom. But mouth, okii, so big thatsu you could sweep a whole day’s worth of leaves in there. Born in Riverside, but spent time in Tottori.”
“Yah, yah,” Mas said impatiently. He didn’t have time to hear Danjo Kanda’s life story.
“Anyhowsu, the nursery in San Juan Capistrano. You knowsu, the place where the birds come.” Mas had heard that swallows were supposed to visit the quaint town every spring. He didn’t know if the story was fact or fiction, but he wasn’t surprised to hear that Haruo had been charmed with the idea of a cloud of swallows descending on the town’s old mission every March.
“I tellsu you, datsu a nice place. Cool. Not far from ocean. I’m thinkin’, when I retire, I should move to dis place,” said Haruo, knowing full well that retirement would never be in the cards for either him or Mas.
“So I get out of truck and see greenhouse, four of them, plastic, all lined up. I tellsu you, Mas, smellsu so good, like a ladies’ cologne. Then when I go in, smell like wax. Danjo’s wife doing hand tailorin’, you knowsu, put flower in wax, then cold water.
“I go ova, take a closer look. I rememba whatchu say about flower, hair in the middle. Then I checksu what she doin’, and then I shout out, ‘Thatsu it, thatsu it.’ I solve Mas’s mystery.”
Haruo took a deep breath and then spoke so loud that even Tug and the two girls could hear. “They use shuji brush for the wax. Hand tailorin’. Those brushes gotsu animal hair, Mas. You get me?”
Mas nodded. He was familiar with hand tailoring, as he had some friends up in Mountain View, not far from San Francisco, who were in the flower nursery business. Apparently the pollen from the gardenia flowers got on ladies’ fancy dresses, so they dipped the half-open flowers in warm wax to seal the pollen. But Mas remembered seeing it done by hand, no brushes.
“And they gotsu New York customers,” said Haruo, who proceeded to read off a list of five flower shops in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The effort Haruo expended to recite his story had taken its toll. Afterward, he seemed to deflate like a punctured balloon, and weakly excused himself to finish out his sleep.
“What’s shuji?” Mari asked after Mas hung up the phone.
“You know, Japanese calligraphy. Didn’t you take it in Japanese school?” Joy took the end of her pink braid and mimicked a brushstroke on the kitchen counter.
“Must have missed that session.”
As a teenager, Mari regularly ditched her Saturday language classes, opting instead to smoke cigarettes three blocks away on a corner of Koreatown. Mas had seen her one Saturday on his way to a customer in Hancock Park.
“What’s this about the animal hair?” asked Tug.
Mas explained Detective Ghigo’s identification of the deer hair on the gardenia flower.
“Makes sense,” agreed Joy. “Those Japanese calligraphy brushes are usually made of deer hair. Some use goat, horse, or even raccoon. But your regular Western brush is either synthetic or made of hog or sable hair.”
Mari laughed. “Wow, you belong on Jeopardy!, girl.”
“Well, brushes, they’re my tools of the trade now. Anyway, you’re the one who went to Japanese school for thirteen years. You should know all that cultural stuff and at least a thousand kanji, right? In my measly two-year experience, I barely got through katakana and hiragana.”
In Japanese, there are three levels of writing: two phonetic versions, katakana and hiragana, and then the highest level, kanji, modern-day hieroglyphics. All three types could be traced back to the Chinese.
Mas had no trouble remembering katakana and hiragana -there were only about forty symbols in each-but kanji, numbering in the tens of thousands, was another matter altogether. Over the years, Japan had simplified kanji, but Mas was actually more at home with the complicated versions issued during the Meiji Era in the late 1800s. Kanji after kanji had been drilled into Mas’s head by a fierce junior high schoolteacher until school was eventually canceled during World War II. Mas sometimes felt that he belonged more to the era of Meiji, “Enlightened Rule,” than today’s era, Heisei, or “Peace Everywhere.”
Joy, the daughter of two Nisei, had probably felt like a fish out of water during her two years of Japanese school. Most of the students during Mari and Joy’s time had at least one parent direct from Japan. To hear words built from the sounds a, i, u, e, o would be as natural as drinking water to them. But there apparently was a price to be paid for knowing Japanese so well. To be American, Mari told Mas one time, meant that you knew only one language: English.
“I was jealous of you,” Mari said to Joy. “Lucky girl, that’s what I was thinking. You could go to sleepovers and watch Saturday-morning cartoons like the rest of the kids. No one would think of you as an FOB.” FOB, Mari had used that term a lot in high school, Mas remembered. Now, what did it mean? Fresh Off the Boat, Asian immigrants like Chizuko and other so-called newcomers.
“But now, see,” Joy argued. “‘Made in Japan ’ is cool. Video games, manga, everyone is getting into it.”
“That’s what Lloyd says, too. But he doesn’t understand that it wasn’t cool when we were growing up.”
“Well, he’s a white guy. What do you expect? They can go crazy for geisha and samurai, but it ain’t gonna change the color of their skin.”
“Joy-” Tug called out sternly.
Mari sat frozen, her mouth partially open, her tea mug steaming in her hands. Even Mas was surprised by Joy’s harsh tone.
“I’m sorry,” Joy said. “You know I’m just teasing you.”
A friendship that went back to preschool obviously counted for something, because Mari shrugged her shoulders. “Just wait until you get serious with someone, Joy,” Mari said. “I’m going to give you such a hard time.”
Joy exchanged a look with her father and retreated like a hermit crab into its shell at low tide. Mas didn’t understand what was going on with Tug, Joy, or Lil, for that matter. Tug had explained that Lil couldn’t come to New York City because she had to babysit their son Joe’s children. But the grandchildren had never stopped Tug and Lil from traveling together to Mount Rushmore and Branson, Missouri. Why, all of a sudden, would it prevent Lil from coming to the East Coast?
Tug slipped the end of his pipe into his mouth. Mas knew that Tug had no intention of lighting his pipe; it just felt good to bite down on something at times like these. Tug seemed deep in thought for ten minutes straight. When Joy pulled on her coat to leave, Tug finally spoke. “Heard of some of those flower shops Haruo was talking about, Mas. Have a friend who’s a florist. I saw him at church last Sunday. I’ll make sure he’s going tomorrow. So, how about it, Mas-you game to go with me?”
Mas dislodged a piece of bacon from underneath his lower denture. The last place he wanted to spend his Sunday morning was cooped inside a Christian church or even a Buddhist temple. But if that’s where the answers were, that’s where they had to go.
“You guys aren’t playing detective, are you?” asked Joy. “You better just leave that to the cops. No telling what kind of trouble you can get into. This is not Pasadena. It’s not even L.A. ”
Normally Mas would have agreed with Joy. But things had changed for Mas recently. He had been running away from life, from the Bomb, for more than fifty years, but finally he’d had to face his past; in the same way, he had to find out who had killed Kazzy Ouchi, or else the future sequence of events would ball up into a boulder, sending them all off the edge.
With that the Yamadas left, soon followed by Mari, who went to relieve Lloyd at the hospital. Mas was drying off a glass when Lloyd returned. As Lloyd sat drinking one of his dark foreign beers, Mas quietly told him that Takeo had been named the new member of the Ouchi Foundation board. Lloyd was not surprised. “I knew that,” he said. “Kazzy did mention to me that when he died, Takeo would be next in line. We can help guide the future of the garden and the museum. Not be just hired hands anymore.”
Mas pursed his lips. What would Detective Ghigo call this? A damn good motive.
“No matter what Kazzy thought of Mari and maybe even me,” explained Lloyd, “he really adored Takeo. I don’t know why. Maybe he saw himself in Takeo. He was always worried about Takeo’s health, especially lately. All that stuff about Lou Gehrig’s makes sense. Maybe he knew that he wasn’t going to be around that long, and wanted to make some sort of amends.”
Mas pulled out the newspaper article that he had torn from the Post. “You see newspapa?”
Lloyd nodded, taking another swig from his beer. “I’m still trying to figure out where that reporter got his information. I wanted to return his call, but Jeannie advised me not to. It’s so frustrating; I want to defend myself, but I can’t. So far, I’ve been able to keep this article away from Mari-not to worry her, you know. And I erased the phone messages from those reporters. But I’m sure she’ll hear about it, sooner or later.”
As Mas listened, he tried to figure out if his son-in-law was hiding anything. This was his grandson’s father, his daughter’s husband. That counted for something. After half an hour of watching the news with Lloyd, Mas went for his jacket, hung over a chair, and took out his pack of Marlboros. He then gently tipped the cigarette pack onto the surface of the coffee table and watched as the bullet rolled and finally stopped in front of where his son-in-law sat.