“I thinksu I needsu to go home now,” Mas said to Haruo the next morning. He hated to admit defeat, but enough was enough.
“Mari still needsu you. Garden not finished. You can’t leave sumptin’ chutohampa.”
Half-done, so what? No different from when I came, thought Mas. He poked at the soiled bandage around his left hand. More blood had seeped through during the night.
“And whaddabout Ouchi- san ’s death?” Haruo continued. “You can’t leave dat alone.”
“Police, they figure it out. I’m dead, Haruo. Ole man. Not cut out runnin’ around in a place I have no business in.”
“ Gambare. ” Haruo tried to encourage Mas to carry on. “You tough, Mas. You the toughest guy Izu eva know.”
“Dat a long time ago.” Weren’t most of their friends one step away from their graves? Back in L.A., Mas was going to a funeral every other week. You were expected to bring koden -maybe twenty, thirty dollars-each time. These dead people were making Mas go broke. The only good thing about dying was that at least families would be returning all the money you had paid out over the years. The bad thing was that you weren’t alive to see it.
“Listen, Mas, us gardeners, we work when othas give up. Weezu the ones out there when itsu a hundred degree, desho? All otha people can’t handle it. But weezu neva give up.”
“Yah, yah,” Mas said. Haruo could be one of those silly male cheerleaders at the UCLA football games. Or, better yet, a mascot in a bear costume, constantly waving to children even though his team was getting pummeled by its rival. Mas hadn’t finished his monku, his list of complaints. “Tug wanna go to all these flowers shops. Look for dat Mystery Gardenia.”
“Let him do most of it, Mas. In meantime, you rest. No sense in gettin’ sick. Gotta lean on otha people sometime.”
“Yah, yah,” said Mas, attempting to cut the conversation short. Haruo sounded like he was going to launch into his counseling hocus-pocus. That would just make a bad mood go worse.
When Tug called later that morning, Mas was in a better mood. He thought about what Haruo had said. Gambare. Never give up. Mas wasn’t a quitter, and he wasn’t the type to let others pinch-hit for him. The police had their case, and he and Tug had theirs. The Mystery Gardenia meant something; Mas was sure of it.
They met at Happy Ikeda’s Midtown store. “Good thing I brought these tennis shoes, Mas.” Tug pointed to a pair of all-white sneakers with inch-thick rubber soles. “Lil and I got these on sale from Barstow.” Gamblers traveling to Vegas always stopped by Barstow, a desert city along Highway 15 with two sets of factory outlets. Only, in the case of the Yamadas, Barstow ’s factory outlets were their final destination, not the bright lights of Vegas.
Mas, on the other hand, had on the same pair of penny loafers that he had purchased from the now-defunct Asahi shoe store in Little Tokyo fifteen years ago. His feet were sore, his legs weak. When he walked, he cradled his injured left hand in his right. His lower back also had a kink, probably from throwing down Kazzy Ouchi’s useless son.
Happy kept immaculate records, both computerized and by hand, all of which he made available to Tug. “Sometimes the computer makes mistakes,” Happy said unsmilingly. On Thursday, there had been a delivery of fresh gardenias in a round glass bowl to a women’s luncheon at a members-only club on the Upper East Side. Some gardenia corsages for a wedding anniversary in Chinatown. And a special gardenia bouquet for a performer at the Metropolitan Opera House.
They had no luck at Happy’s and then struck out three more times at the other florists that Haruo had mentioned in his phone message. Some florists said the information was confidential, with all the executives and celebrities who were their customers. Others didn’t keep detailed records, but just mentioned that gardenias were not hot sellers in the wintertime.
The only shop left was back in Brooklyn Heights. They should have started out with that one, but they wanted to meet with Happy first in Manhattan. A mistake, perhaps, but Tug was the one who had meticulously mapped out their whole path on his AAA map like he was leading a reconnaissance offensive. Chizuko had traveled the same way, so Mas was used to following. Besides, he wasn’t thinking that straight today.
“So, Mas, you going to tell me what happened yesterday to get you so jittery?” Tug and Mas walked south alongside Central Park, its bare trees full of crows.
Mas had almost knocked down a fake plastic pillar at one shop and stepped in a planter full of peat moss in another. There was no doubt that he was shaken by the run-in with Phillip and the drug dealers. He had said nothing to Mari and Lloyd, but went over it with Haruo early this morning over the phone. Who was this hired gun, Riley? He and his gang had probably stolen the gardening equipment from the Waxley Garden, so did that mean they killed Kazzy as well? If not, why had Riley insisted it was suicide?
Mas spilled the beans once again to Tug, every single part of it, including his conversation with the neighbor who complained too much. “I don’t think Foster do it,” Mas said. “Just an urusai neighbor. A dime a dozen. Don’t think he’d kill to get his way. Type to drive people kuru-kuru-pa and make them want to shoot him.”
“Well, how about the son, Phillip?”
“Well, I think he hire the boy to do some kind of itazura. I just don’t know what, exactly.”
“Well, Lil always tells me to get a second opinion. Maybe I’ll have a talk myself with this Phillip Ouchi.” Tug walked over to a pay phone and lifted a New York phone book attached by a flexible cord. The pages were all curled up and shrunken from repeated soakings of rain, sleet, and snow. “Ouchi Silk, Inc., right?”
Mas didn’t want to see Phillip Ouchi again, especially so soon after the incident at the factory building with the red door. He didn’t know what Tug was hoping to prove. Phillip could have contacts with other chinpira, that was for sure.
Ouchi Silk, Inc., had an office in the Garment District and then on Broadway. Tug called both to find out where Phillip Ouchi’s office was located. It was on Broadway, just south of Central Park.
Ouchi Silk, Inc., was in a modern steel building about ten stories tall. Each floor seemed a little narrower as you went higher; at least that’s what it looked like to Mas from the sidewalk. Mas tried to talk Tug out of going inside the building, but it was no use. Mas knew that during World War II, Tug had been in charge of his squad’s fifteen-pound Browning automatic rifle because of his great size. Just like in Europe, Tug was on a mission in Manhattan, and there was no stopping him.
Mas opted to wait outside. Tug must have thought Mas was losing his nerve, but actually Mas desperately needed a cigarette. Resting his tired back against a parking meter, he pulled out his next-to-last Marlboro and clicked a flame on his Bic lighter. He remembered how he once delighted Mari with smoke rings. “More, more, Daddy,” she’d beg from the dinner table. He’d let the smoke fill the cup of his closed mouth, round his lips, and then blow out perfect rings in descending size. The line of rings eventually distorted, broke down, and disappeared in a swirling tail of smoke.
Mari had also become a chain-smoker during her college years. But Mas saw no signs of tobacco in the apartment, so she must have broken the habit.
He also needed to quit someday, Mas knew. But this morning was not the day. Just for good measure, he walked the length of the block, blowing out a series of smoke rings, which seemed to hold their shape longer because of the cold air. He crossed the street. Parked against the curb in a no-parking zone was a Cadillac, the boy with the eel-like hair and red waffle-sole shoes leaning against the driver’s-side door.
“Hallo,” Mas said. What was the driver’s name again, J-O? J-Y?
“Hey.” The driver looked up. “I remember you from the Waxley House. I never got your name.”
“Mas. Mas Arai.”
“Hey, Mas, good to see you. J-E, remember?”
Mas nodded and, without J-E even asking, handed him a fresh cigarette. Mas would even use his last Marlboro to get in the driver’s good favor. “So your boss ova here?”
“Yeah, she has some kind of meeting with Kazzy’s son.” So now Phillip was working on Miss Waxley, was he? He had said himself that he wanted to stop the garden project before it bled more money. Becca, the sea urchin, and the sumo wrestler all seemed to be on the other side. Perhaps Phillip and Miss Waxley were conspiring to recruit one of the others to vote to get rid of the garden, once and for all. “You goin’ to Mr. Ouchi’s memorial service? Right after lunch.”
Mas shook his head. He had forgotten about the service.
J-E blew out some smoke from his cigarette and looked toward the Cadillac. “I wish I could quit this gig. But can’t afford to go back to taxi driving. I have a kid and all.”
“Oh, yah?”
“Ten months old.” J-E was wearing gloves again with the fingertips cut off. He dug his right hand into his coat pocket and produced a photo of a fat baby, in an oversized football jersey, drooling on a toy football.
Mas grunted. A baby was a baby, unless it was your own. Or your daughter’s, Mas added silently.
“You know who was over here, too? Howard Foster. And those other jerks, Penn and Larry. But they already took off.”
“Oh, yah.” Mas pretended not to care.
“Yeah, Waxley Enterprises’s just across the street.”
Sure enough, on the other side of Broadway stood a tall coral-colored building with lettering in gold, Waxley Enterprises.
“Those two are assholes, man. Always telling me to take them places. They know that I’m hired by old lady Waxley. She’s the ones who pays me, and they don’t tip, neither.”
Mas stared at the gold lettering on the building across from them. “You gonna be here for a while?”
“At least an hour.”
“Do me favor,” Mas asked. “If you see a Japanese ole man with white hair wandering around, tell him Izu ova there.” Since Tug hadn’t emerged from the building, he must have gotten a meeting with Phillip.
“Sure thing, Mas.” J-E nodded, the cones on his head trembling.
Mas walked across the street, trying remember the sumo wrestler’s full name. Larry something. Larry Perry. Larry Ball. What the hell was it? Something with the letter P. Pauley, like UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion basketball arena.
He entered the building’s lobby, which reminded him of a deluxe funeral home’s mausoleum. Everything was dead quiet and empty, other than a coffin-shaped desk in the middle. On one side of the granite wall was a list of departments and floors. Mas took out his reading glasses and looked at the directory in the lobby for a good ten minutes. Finally the receptionist, wearing a blue blazer and a floppy striped bow tied underneath the collar of a crisp white shirt, left her coffin desk and came to Mas’s assistance. She told him that Larry Pauley was vice president of public relations on the eleventh floor. What was public relations, anyway? Well, Mas was part of the public, so perhaps Larry would make time for him.
Mas took an elevator to the eleventh floor, where another receptionist sat. Too many women sitting in comfortable chairs doing nothing, thought Mas. “Mr. Larry Pauley,” he said.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked.
Mas shook his head. “But very important.”
The receptionist took down Mas’s name (she asked for the spelling three times) and then relayed it to someone over the phone. Like a secret password, Mas’s name opened a door. The receptionist told him to go through it to a hall to the left.
The whole office looked like a maze for rats, cubicles in the middle stuffed with people, papers, and computers. Mas knew that those in the center were the actual workers, while the ones in the outer offices were the queen bees. That’s the way it was for insects and employees, Mas figured.
Larry Pauley had a corner office that overlooked Central Park. From eleven floors above, the trees looked like dried-out shrubs ripe for a bonfire.
“Mr. Arai, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Larry spoke easily, words dripping out like oil from a leaky engine. How was it that this big shot in New York City was talking to Mas like he was an old friend?
Larry wasn’t wearing a jacket, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his beefy biceps. Mas noticed the edge of a tattoo on his left arm. It was one thing for Lloyd, a miserable gardener, to have a wedding ring tattoo, but quite another for a vice president of a company with two sets of receptionists to be marked on his arm muscle. Mas could smell blue-collar, and that’s where this Larry Pauley came from.
To see that Larry himself might not be as high-tone as his corner office gave Mas added strength. “Came about Takeo,” Mas explained.
“Your grandson.”
Mas nodded. “Izu afraid of all dis board thing. Don’t want my grandson to be mixed up with dis mess.”
Larry’s eyes gleamed like charcoal briquets ready for a steak barbecue.
“Is that so, Mr. Arai?”
Before Mas could respond, a thin man knocked on his half-open door. “Mr. Pauley-” he said, and then noticed Mas. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had a guest.” He handed Larry a Styrofoam box-lunch?-and then at least a half dozen shiny gold strips of paper. Even though Mas hadn’t seen them before in New York City, his gambling instincts kicked in. Lottery tickets.
Mas never played the lottery in California. The odds were too big. Sure, some fools told him, you’ll never win if you don’t try. But these guys tried every week and had nothing to show for it. Mas thought the poker tables were a safer bet, where you relied more on your wits to get ahead.
Larry quickly took the lottery tickets and slipped them into his top desk drawer as the male clerk left. It didn’t look good for a big shot vice president to play a fool’s game. “Please have a seat,” Larry said, extending his huge palm toward a black leather chair held together by metal bars. Larry sat behind his mahogany desk, his Styrofoam box on the desk’s top right side like a postage stamp on a letter.
Mas instead circled the office once around. He stopped at a framed oil painting of galloping horses and glanced at a collection of commemorative beer steins with various logos of racetracks from around the nation.
“Like horses?” Mas asked.
“Just a little hobby.”
Mas pointed at a beer stein decorated with purple San Gabriel Mountains, horses, the smiling face of Laffit Pincay, Jr., and the words Santa Anita Racetrack. “Have dis one at home,” he said. Mas was partial to Pincay; he had made at least five thousand dollars by betting on the jockey throughout the years.
“You’re a track man, too, Mr. Arai?” Larry’s voice went up an octave higher.
Mas nodded.
“Here, let me show this to you,” Larry called Mas over to his desk. Mas edged behind Larry’s chair and almost choked on his strong cologne. A man would only soak himself in fake scent to mask his natural bad skunk smell, Mas figured. With a clear view of Larry’s wide forehead, Mas noticed a funny scar just below his receding hairline. A result of a childhood accident or a more recent incident? Mas didn’t want to ask.
Larry took out a file from his top drawer and opened it to the centerfold. A beautiful black racehorse, its coat and muscles taut and shimmering in the sun. It had a necklace of roses tossed over its neck and a jockey at its side.
“Good-lookin’ horse,” Mas managed.
“I’m buying her next week. Her name’s Last Chance.”
Last Chance. Not much of a name, thought Mas. But maybe it had some special meaning for Larry. Mas knew that some gamblers just went for the names of horses, whichever one gave them a tingle of hope and possibility.
Larry closed the folder and Mas finally sat down in the leather chair, safely escaping Larry’s scent. “Anyway, you were talking about your grandson?” Larry said.
Mas swallowed and prepared to cast his line. In lake fishing, you waited to see ripples on the surface of the water. Mas thought he saw some movement in Larry’s mind, and lowered the bait. “Yah, Waxley Garden. Don’t think Takeo should be involve-too danger, you knowsu, with Mr. Ouchi’s death and all.”
“I understand, Mr. Arai. I completely understand.”
“So I’m tellin’ Lloyd and Mari, get Takeo outta there.”
“I think it would be for the best.” Larry smiled wide for the first time for Mas. His smile was a dazzling white, as if he had used a bottle of Clorox to bleach his teeth. The cologne, the white teeth, what was real about Larry Pauley? Mas thought that it might lie in that hint of a tattoo.
Larry went on to say that he would be more than happy to assist Mas in any way, because it was Takeo’s welfare they were thinking about, yes? Mas nodded like a Tommy Lasorda bobble-head doll, a big grin pasted on his face. He was glad there were no mirrors in Larry’s office, or else he would be making himself sick at this point. Larry didn’t want Takeo and probably Lloyd to have anything to do with the garden. The question was, why? Larry finally said that he had another appointment to go to, so Mas rose from the chair.
“Youzu goin’ ova to memorial service?” Mas asked.
“Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it,” said Larry without a tinge of regret.
Before Mas left the office, he turned to Larry. “Mr. Ouchi not a track man,” Mas stated more than questioned.
“Kazzy? Are you kidding me? His Highness would never rub elbows with commoners.”
Mas went back to the sidewalk, only to find the Cadillac gone. Tug was not around, either. A few minutes later, Tug appeared. “You didn’t tell me that Mr. Ouchi’s memorial service is today, Mas.”
“Yah, I forget.”
“So Phillip was in a rush to leave. He was pretty upset to hear that I was a friend of yours. I told him that I meant no harm, that I was sorry about his father’s death. He didn’t look too good.”
Tug explained that Ouchi Silk was on the fifth floor of the metallic building. “I think they are downsizing, because half of the offices were vacant. They must be having economic troubles.” Mas remembered how Tug’s son, Joe, was going through the same thing at his job back in California. This downsizing was an epidemic.
“ Warukatta. Sorry I putcha in a bad position.”
“No problem, Mas. That’s just part of the job.”
What job? Mas wondered. Since retiring, Tug had devoted himself to fixing broken objects in his house and Mas’s. It was obvious that he was now trying to fix broken people.
Even on the train ride back to Brooklyn Heights, Tug wasn’t acting himself. A man entered the train car holding a carton of chocolates. Mas didn’t give it a second thought. Everyone was selling something in New York, and subway passengers were a captive audience. Even the homeless stood up in the train car, sharing their woes and tribulations so eloquently that Mas was almost moved to place a buck in their empty hats. Almost moved, but not quite.
Now the chocolate seller was making his spiel. “My church is hoping to get your support. We are a small church, no building to speak of, but we have the spirit inside of us,” he said, pacing the length of the car and holding up 100 Grand and Nestlé Crunch bars.
The man was selling a load of garbage, but Mas was surprised to see Tug taking two dollars out of his wallet and giving it to the man for two 100 Grand bars. Tug handed a candy bar to Mas.
“Could be poison, Tug,” Mas warned.
“Let’s live dangerously,” Tug said, tearing off the wrapper.
“ Orai, ” said Mas. He sensed that Tug, away from Lil for the first time in a long while, was transforming into a rebellious teenager. There was a Japanese term, heso magari, that mothers called such children. Heso meant belly button; magari, crooked. In New York City, Tug’s belly button was moving away from the middle.
“Go for broke,” Tug said before taking a large bite.
The 100 Grand bars didn’t kill them, but gave Mas a mean stomachache. It was from not eating all day, Mas figured. And at least the stomachache somehow lessened the pain in his hand and lower back. Tug had purchased a fancy Brooklyn Heights map and had highlighted their path to the last flower shop, one with a fancy French name.
“This place reminds me of Paris,” Tug said as they neared the corner storefront. Sometimes Mas took Tug for granted and thought of him as a simple man whose most worldly adventures went as far as discovering cockroach infestation in an all-you-can-eat buffet. But Tug had actually been to exotic places like Rome and Paris, Mas had to remind himself.
The shop was painted a golden yellow, with upside-down bouquets of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling like whisk brooms. On the floor sat cement angels and rabbits in between baskets of ribbon and vases of pink and lavender tulips. A fresh-faced girl stood behind the counter, her blond hair tied back in a high ponytail.
Tug licked his lips. “Let me take the lead on this,” he said. Mas clutched his belly, happy to oblige.
“Hello, can I help you?” Even though it was past lunchtime, the girl was enthusiastic. Must be new at this, thought Mas.
“Ah, actually, I was referred to you by Happy Ikeda, you know, of Happy’s Floral Design in Midtown?” Tug said.
The girl looked blankly at Tug. Mas guessed that Happy’s name didn’t have much weight in the fifty-and-under crowd.
“Anyway, I know that you order Mystery Gardenias from California. San Juan Capistrano, in fact.”
“Oh, yeah.” The girl became more animated. “They are so beautiful. Gigantic ones.”
“Yes, well, I know that this is a strange request. But do you have records on who bought any of those gardenias on Wednesday, Thursday?”
“Why?”
“Well, you see”-Mas cowered to see what Tug was going to come up with next-“we’re investigating a murder.”
“Murder?” The girl looked him up and down. She seemed to take note of Tug’s well-kept beard, his button-down shirt, the casual yet expensive designer jacket his kids had most likely purchased him for Christmas. Good thing she couldn’t see Tug’s bargain tennis shoes. Then her eyes moved to Mas.
Tug quickly displayed something from his wallet. “I’m an investigator,” he said, and then pointed at Mas. “This is Inspector Arai. From Japan. He doesn’t speak much English.”
Mas was ready to protest, but then thought better of it. Tug was pretty sly when he wanted to be. This way Mas didn’t have to open his mouth and make fools out of both of them.
The girl waited.
“Kazzy Ouchi,” Tug said. No reaction from the girl. “His death was in the paper.”
Unfortunately, youngsters didn’t read newspapers, much less the Post tabloid.
“Anyway, he has international connections. Both here and in Japan.”
“Wow,” the girl said, her mouth partially open, revealing chewed gum on her pink tongue.
“So, I’m sure that you would want to assist in the investigation.”
“What does this have to do with gardenias?”
“One was left at the crime scene.”
“How do you know that it was a gardenia from our shop?”
“Forensics,” Tug said. “We have advanced research laboratories.”
“Well.” The girl played with the keys of her computer, which probably doubled as the cash register. “I’ll have to check with my boss.”
“There’s no time for that,” Tug said. His voice took on an official tone like workers at government offices. Even Mas jumped slightly, recalling the way he had been treated at the Department of Motor Vehicles and Social Security offices. After forty years of loyal work with Los Angeles County, Tug had fully adopted the required attitude.
The girl looked confused and bit the side of her lip.
“I wouldn’t want to come here with a warrant. That would cause all sorts of problems for your boss.”
“Well, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to just look.” The girl finally caved in.
“A delivery to Kazzy Ouchi,” Tug said quickly, so as not to lose momentum. “ Prospect Park.”
The girl’s nimble fingers tapped the keyboard.
“Yes, there was a delivery to Kazzy Ouchi on Thursday.”
“From whom?”
“Somebody named Anna Grady.”
Anna Grady, thought Mas. Kazzy’s ex-girlfriend.
“Wait a minute. I remember this. I took the order over the phone.” The girl continued staring at the computer screen.
“You have her address?” Tug asked
“Yes, Fort Lee, New Jersey.”
Tug stepped behind the flower shop girl and noted the address in a small spiral notebook he kept in his shirt pocket.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to something on the screen.
“Oh, she wanted a note with the gardenia. That’s right. I remember now. She kept changing it. She finally came up with this.”
“‘Meet me in the garden at eight tonight,’” Tug read out loud.
Mas forgot that he wasn’t supposed to know English. “Thursday?” he reconfirmed.
The girl nodded her head. “Yes, last Thursday. Is that important?”
“Thursday the day Kazzy shot dead,” Mas said as they walked toward the underground apartment. “Girlfriend somehow connected.” Tug’s feet were swollen in his new tennis shoes, so he trudged behind Mas, a few steps back.
“Yes, I was thinking the same thing.” Tug stopped at the corner and leaned his hand on a neighboring brownstone. “My feet are aching, Mas. How are you holding up?”
Miraculously, Mas’s hand didn’t smart anymore, and even his stomachache had gone away. Mas figured that he had extra-strong white blood cells, perhaps enhanced from the radiation of the Bomb.
He told Tug that he could soak his feet in Mari and Lloyd’s bathtub, for which Tug seemed eternally grateful. “I’m getting tired of Joy’s brown water,” he explained.
As Mas opened the gate and door of the underground apartment, he remembered a moment at the flower shop.
“Whatsu dat ID you show the girl?” he asked Tug.
“Oh.” Tug smiled. “It was my old health inspector badge. Just covered up the side that said Department of Health.”
Mas laughed and let Tug into the underground apartment. He pointed through the bedroom to the bathroom and then checked the refrigerator. Empty, aside from a half-empty carton of soy milk and various bottles of mustards, sauces, and pickles. Luckily, in the freezer was a plastic bag of leftover rice. As he heard water running in the bathtub, he brewed some green tea and microwaved the rice. He poured the steaming tea over the rice in two rice bowls. He was delighted to find a small bottle of umeboshi on the refrigerator door shelf and floated a couple of the red pickled plums in his rice concoction.
Tug walked barefoot through the house, leaving traces of water on the hardwood floor. When he saw the rice bowls, his eyes crinkled in a smile. “ Ochazuke, ” he said. “Just like home.”
They slurped down the rice and bit into the pickled plums.
“You think you could live in a place that has no Little Tokyo, Japantown, or J-town?” Tug asked.
“I dunno,” Mas said. “How about you?”
Tug shared that he had been in New York three times, the first time after he had been honorably discharged from the Army in 1946. Instead of heading straight back to what was left of the farm in San Dimas, California, he spent a good two weeks with his Army buddies near Spanish Harlem on Riverside Drive, where most of the Nisei had congregated during the war. Some were college students, and others became two-bit international traders dealing in cheap china figurines or silk. A group of them went dancing at the Ninety-second Street YMCA with Nisei girls wearing their hair rolled up on the sides (Tug, of course, never forgetting about Lil, who was back in Los Angeles with her folks).
“I tell you, Mas, I felt like a country boy.”
“Well, where you from, pretty inaka back then. Nutin’ there.”
“That’s true,” Tug said. “Those New York Nisei, something else, I tell you. Risk takers. Big dreamers. But you know me, Mas. I’m not much of a gambler. All I wanted to see were green fields, foothills, and San Gabriel Mountains.”
Mas spit the plum seed into his fingers.
“But they think we California Nisei are small-minded, boxed in,” said Tug.
“Maybe.”
“So what if we are a little stuck in our ways?”
Mas agreed with Tug. The West Coast Nisei had more to fight against; hadn’t the Yamadas themselves had to reinvent themselves after they lost the chili pepper farm? They never regained their prewar success.
As Mas washed the chawan bowls, Tug sat on the couch and was rewriting Anna’s name and address on another piece of paper when Mari entered the apartment.
“Lloyd told me that he would stay overnight at the hospital,” she said. Looking over Tug’s shoulder, she read, “‘Anna Grady.’ Sounds familiar. Wasn’t that Kazzy’s ex-girlfriend?”
Mas nodded.
“I never met her, but Lloyd has. Kazzy even told Lloyd that he was thinking of marrying her. Why do you have her address?”
Mas let Tug tell the news. It had been his fake ID, after all, that had forced the hand of the flower shop girl. “It turns out she sent Ouchi a flower and a note that she wanted to meet with him at the garden the night he was killed,” Tug announced, wiggling his toes.
“The gardenia,” Mari murmured, and Tug nodded again. As Mari listened to the whole story, Mas saw a familiar look of determination on her face. “Lloyd will be with Takeo. I say that we go over there and talk to Anna Grady.”
“I’m kind of worn-out, Mari,” Tug said. “How about tomorrow?”
“This can’t wait.” Mari was driven to find the answer. “How about you, Dad? Ready for a bus ride?”
Mas had taken the bus a few times before in Los Angeles, but that was when it had been known as the RTD, not all the fancy names it was called today. Now in Southern California there were bright-red buses called Rapid; small buses, which just circled downtown L.A.; and sky-blue buses, which traveled all the way to Santa Monica, just blocks away from the Pacific Ocean. Even Pasadena had a free bus line, with vehicles elaborately painted with images of jazz singers to prove that the city had some culture. It was as if you needed to trick people to ride the bus.
Mari claimed that the New Jersey Transit was the fastest way to travel to Fort Lee, New Jersey, from Manhattan. Fort Lee sounded like an old military unit, a fortress made of wooden logs and manned by soldiers wearing moccasins and carrying rifles.
They took the underground train to the Port Authority Terminal on Forty-second Street, and from there a bus. The bus looped south and then traveled north, passing the bare gray trees of Central Park and the tall, high-tone apartments on the west side of the avenue. The sun was going down, but instead of the spectacular sunsets of smog-tainted Los Angeles, the grayness just got darker, like a shade being pulled down.
Several blocks later, the scene changed to dilapidated houses and a starkness that stripped Mas’s heart.
“ Columbia ’s not far from here,” Mari said.
Mas felt his mouth go dry. So they had spent thousands of dollars on a university in this neighborhood? “So youzu still like New York,” Mas stated more than questioned.
“Can’t go back to California. I know that the weather’s so much better. But we’ve become New Yorkers. And besides, we couldn’t afford any place in Los Angeles, either.”
You could live with me, Mas impulsively thought, and then took back his silent offer. What kind of baka idea was that? He was fine by himself, letting dust settle on his furniture and bowling trophies. Keeping his refrigerator stocked with just necessities: Budweiser, jalapeño peppers, hot dogs, eggs, ketchup, and kimchee. With Mari’s family there would be soy milk, tofu hot dogs, yogurt, cantaloupe, apples, strained spinach, and carrots. He would have to put away all his fishing hooks and lines, and smooth circular go game pieces, which could get lodged in a baby’s throat.
The bus passed over a massive bridge, woven bars of the metal laced together to hold the weight of fifty-ton trucks. This was nothing like the wimpy two-lane “suicide” bridge in Pasadena, held up by delicate arches. The Pasadena bridge was a favorite in cheap movies and television shows, but had no other real purpose, except for once serving as the diving board of the brokenhearted beaten down by the Depression in the thirties.
Finally they were dropped off at an open plaza boasting a concrete monument, as big as a celebrity’s headstone, with the message WELCOME TO FORT LEE.
Mari opened up her map. “Anna Grady’s apartment is not far from here. You up for walking half a mile, Dad?” They passed a quaint business district with outdoor cafés, more streets, and then came upon a tall high-rise.
“This is it,” Mari said.
While Waxley Enterprises had a receptionist with a striped bow, the high-rise had a full-fledged security guard wearing a uniform and even a holster fastened around his bloated belly.
Mari licked her lips and went to the counter with a sense of purpose. “Hello,” she said. “We’re here to visit Anna Grady.”
The security guard had them sign a piece of paper fastened to a clipboard. He then picked up a phone and mumbled something into the receiver. “Who are you?” he asked, not bothering to consult his clipboard.
“Mari Jensen and Mas Arai,” said Mari. “We’re friends of Ms. Grady.”
Mas held his hands awkwardly at his sides. He was ready to get kicked out, and instead the security guard nodded his head. “Take those elevators. Seventeenth floor.”
Mas was amazed at how they could get clearance so easily. They didn’t even know what Anna Grady looked like.
“Can’t seem scared, Dad. Have to act like you belong.” That was easy for Mari to say. She had a college degree worth thousands of dollars from a fancy university. Even though she was small, she walked like a person twice her size, as if she dared anyone to question her right to be anywhere.
The elevators opened to a long hallway and a line of doors. Which door? It was as bad as a game of roulette. Some guys claimed they had a system to win, but Mas knew it was just a guessing game. Before they had a chance to try their hand, a door opened on the right-hand side. A Japanese American woman of around seventy stood in jeans, sweatshirt, and slippers. Her graying hair was neatly arranged in a chawan -style cut, shaped as if the barber had put a giant rice bowl on top of her head. Mas thought that hairdo had gone out of style in the seventies. “So you are friends of Anna?” the woman asked.
“Yes, I’m Mari, and this is my father, Mas.”
The two of them made quite a pair, Mas then realized. Both just a little above five feet tall, who would think that they were flat-out liars?
The chawan -cut woman, who introduced herself as Seiko Sumi, Anna’s roommate, gestured for them to come in. The apartment was airy; a sliding-glass door in the living room opened out to a balcony crowded with ferns and other houseplants.
“Anna was resting, but she’ll be out in a moment. She’s had a difficult day. A close friend of ours passed away, and we went to the memorial service this afternoon.”
Mas stared at Mari, but she instead was focused entirely on Seiko.
“Sit down, sit down.” She gestured to the couch. As Mas and Mari complied, Seiko began to ask, “Now, how do you-” Mas cringed as he prepared to hear the dreaded question.
“You have a lovely apartment,” interrupted Mari, leaping to her feet.
Mas took a quick look at the living room. Reminded him of any other Nisei house. Some Japanese sumi-e paintings of jagged mountains. A Japanese doll wearing a bright kimono in a glass box. A couple of papier-mâché tigers. Somebody there was obviously born in the Year of the Tiger. Mas followed Mari as she examined a special glass case in the corner. It looked like some kind of mini historic display with an old nursing uniform, old books, and a badge that read Seabrook Farms. Mas faintly remembered a gardener mentioning that he had worked back East on Seabrook Farms during World War II.
“Seabrook Farms,” Mari said. “I was the videographer for the fiftieth-anniversary reunion event.”
“Oh, really? My mother was in Seabrook-she worked in the infirmary. She died some years ago, but I know that she would have loved to go to the reunion. Quite an event, I heard.”
Mari nodded. “Five hundred people. They have a museum, you know.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve even donated some of my mother’s belongings to them.” The chawan -cut woman paused, her eyes darting from Mas to Mari. “Well, you know Anna was there in Seabrook, right? My mother got to know her when Anna was in the infirmary, recuperating from chicken pox. Newcomers aren’t exposed to the same diseases as we are.”
“Ah, of course-” Mari stumbled on her words.
Seiko’s eyes thinned. “How do you know Anna again?”
Mari seemed to know that they couldn’t keep playing this game. “I really don’t know Anna,” she admitted. “I’m really sorry to have deceived you. My husband actually has met her. He worked on Kazzy’s new garden.”
Seiko’s mind seemed to be percolating. “But you weren’t at the memorial service.”
“Our three-month-old son has been ill. We’ve had to be at the hospital.”
“What is your name again?” Seiko asked.
“Mari Arai-well, Jensen now.”
“Jensen.” The tone of Seiko’s voice was sharp, like a bird whistle. “Is your husband Lloyd Jensen?”
Mari nodded.
“I read about him.”
Mas felt like folding his hands over his eyes. It was over.
“I don’t know what you want with Anna, but I’m sure that she won’t want to see you. She’s gone through enough already.”
The door to one of the back bedrooms opened. A hakujin woman who looked like an older version of actress Ingrid Bergman in the movie Casablanca stood in the doorway. A calico cat slithered through the woman’s legs. “Tama,” she called out. Mas was surprised. Tama was a Japanese name meaning “ball,” the same meaning as the name Mari. The cat sniffed at Mas’s right jean leg and then opted to go into the kitchen.
Anna took a step forward. “What’s going on, Seiko?” Mas couldn’t help but notice that she was shaped like an old-time Coca-Cola bottle. In spite of her being at least sixty, the woman’s figure was good, especially her legs. She must have known that, since she was wearing a skirt cut above the knee.
“These people lied to get in here. I’m going to call the security guard downstairs.” Seiko headed for the telephone in the kitchen.
Anna looked confused, afraid to move.
“Please, just a few minutes of your time, Ms. Grady,” Mari implored. “We know that you sent Kazzy a note to meet him the evening he was killed.”
“How did you-” Anna said, and then shifted gears. “I’ve already spoken to the police.”
She spoke as if she was holding something in her mouth, and Mas detected a slight accent. Maybe this Anna Grady was not from America.
“But did you talk to the police about the gardenia?”
Anna’s blue eyes desperately searched for her roommate.
“Security’s coming,” reported Seiko, appearing from the kitchen, not a strand in her chawan haircut out of place.
Mari placed her business card on the couch and pulled at Mas’s jacket sleeve. “We didn’t mean to cause any problems,” she said. “But call me if you change your mind.” They quickly walked out the apartment into the hallway. Mari rushed to the elevator and furiously punched the Down button. Luckily there were two elevators, and the one that opened first only had a woman with a child in a stroller. They slipped in, and as the doors closed they heard the next elevator ring to announce that it was on its way.
They had effectively eluded the sole security guard and practically ran to the bus stop in the open plaza. Fort Lee looked nothing like its name, but Mas felt that they had dodged some serious bullets at the high-rise. He had no intention of coming to Fort Lee again.
The ride on the bus back to Manhattan was quiet. Mas dozed off as soon as he settled in a seat next to Mari. Transferring to the crowded subway at Port Authority, Mas and Mari had to grab on to a pole and stand. It was obvious that Mari had been thinking this whole time.
“I have a friend, a professor, who helps out at the Seabrook museum.”
Mas tried to follow Mari’s thinking. “You think this Seabrook has sumptin’ to do with Kazzy?”
“Well, I’m going to e-mail him when we get back to the apartment and see if he knows anything about Anna Grady.”
Mas was dead tired by the time they got home. He didn’t bother to take a bath or change out of his jeans and sweater. He was, in fact, dreaming of cats, the Japanese kind with no tail, when he felt something pull on his shoulder. “Huh-” He looked up from the couch to see Mari in a flannel nightshirt. “Whatsamatta?”
“My friend already e-mailed me back.”
Mas made two fists, one with his good right hand and the other with his bandaged left hand, and tried to rub the sleep from his eyes. “Sumptin’ on Anna Grady?”
“Nothing on her, but listen to this: Kazzy went to the Seabrook museum six months ago, asking to see some documents on Asa Sumi.”
“Who dat?”
“Seiko Sumi’s mother.”
“Huh?”
“Anna Grady’s roommate.”
Mas’s mind couldn’t catch up with Mari’s words.
“I don’t know what’s going on with those two roommates, but it’s worth looking into. Do you know if Tug still has his rental car?”