Mas sipped some orange juice through a straw and bit into a cookie, one of those Danish ones that came stacked in white cupcake holders and arranged in a round aluminum tin. Actually he didn’t care much for these cookies, as he usually regularly received at least three tins from various customers each Christmas. He preferred those pastel pink, yellow, and green swirls that he bought from a Dutch bakery in Bishop on his way home from fishing in Mammoth Lakes. That was everyone’s take-home gift, omiyage, to the ones who had to stay behind in Los Angeles.
But the nurse had told him to make sure to eat and drink before he left the blood donation room. “Need to maintain your blood sugar level,” she said. So Mas dutifully poured himself a drink and forced himself to finish a flattened-pretzel-shaped cookie topped with large sugar crystals.
The nurse was pretty good with a needle. A rubber tie at his elbow, one slap on his forearm, and Mas was filling a bag full of blood. He had done this at least one time earlier, and hated the fact that his blood would be churning in someone else’s body. But this time it would be his grandson’s. Both of them had type AB; AB people could receive from anybody, but could only give to other AB types. He did feel some apprehension. “Don’t wanna hurt Takeo more,” he said to Mari. “Who knowsu with the pikadon.”
“Dad, the Bomb happened over fifty years ago. Anything you may have, you gave to me, and I’ve already given it to Takeo. Aside from Lloyd, we’re all radioactive. Haven’t you noticed that we glow in the dark?” Mari grinned. Her humor was biting, but today it made the news that Takeo needed a blood transfusion go down a little easier.
Both Mari and Lloyd didn’t trust the general blood supply and had called everyone they knew to donate. Apparently Takeo didn’t need much, but they wanted to stockpile, just in case. Mas didn’t realize how many friends they had in New York. Most of them were hakujin, with unkempt frizzy hair (gardeners or filmmakers? Mas wondered), but some were black, Chinese, Sansei, and Puerto Rican. They all bent down to hug Mari and kept an arm around her shoulder. Mas could almost see all the kimochi that was being woven around his daughter and son-in-law like bolts of fabric, cocooning them from harm. But Mas knew those cocoons, no matter how saturated with love, were still fragile and vulnerable; anyone could still tear through and reach the soft parts.
He wished that he could join in. Add to the layers of support. But it would be like ballroom dancing, or kissing. No self-respecting Kibei would partake of such practices in public. If he did, wouldn’t he just dissolve, lose control and a sense of himself? If he opened that floodgate, there was no telling how much of him would bleed out. Instead, he could help his family in practical matters. Make sure that there was food on the table, ample life insurance in case he dropped dead too early, and a house, bought and paid for. That was Lloyd’s job now, but Mas wasn’t in New York City for no reason. While Lloyd and Mari needed to keep a watchful eye over Takeo, Mas had to tend to the other matters that would keep them together.
Mas had lost track of the days of the week, so he was surprised to see a security guard, not the floppy-bow-tied receptionist in the mausoleumlike lobby of Waxley Enterprises. Mochiron. Of course. It was Sunday, not a day of work, at least for white-collar types.
Mas didn’t know what to do. This had been a waste; he should just go back to the hospital and be with his family. But he felt that he needed to get a better sense of Larry Pauley. Maybe take a second look around his office and photos of his prized Thoroughbred. Mas waited by the side of the door and saw a couple of Latino men unloading a carpet shampoo machine from a white van. They spoke a different kind of Spanish than Mas was used to, but he still could make out enough words, and, of course, when language failed, you could always read people’s faces. And one of them was obviously irritated. A third man had not shown up. Mas watched them struggle with their cleaning equipment, and finally stepped in. “ Ayuda, ayuda, ” he offered, lifting two buckets. “I go in, anyways.”
They first protested, and then shrugged their shoulders. So a loco japones was going to help them, they probably figured. What did they have to complain about?
Mas let them lead the way through the lobby, lowering his face as they passed the security guard, who obviously recognized the two regular cleaners. They entered the freight elevator, whose walls were covered with a gray padded blanket. While the elevator rose, the two men spoke to each other, talking about some local soccer tournament the day before. They stopped on the third floor, at which Mas carried out the buckets filled with rags and cleaning products.
“ Gracias, gracias, ” they murmured, as Mas hit the Up button for the regular elevator.
Getting out on the eleventh floor, Mas was relieved to see no one manning the receptionist’s desk. But as he walked down a corridor, he felt the presence of another human in the maze of cubicles. Sure enough, Mas spied hair, the color of a paper bag, frizzed out like cotton candy. As the woman rolled her chair back, Mas finally saw the rest of her. A hakujin, wearing jeans and simple striped shirt.
“Excuse me, sir, can I help you?” she asked. Rather than afraid, she seemed curious. Here Mas’s size and age were obviously an advantage.
“Ah, Pauley. Mr. Pauley,” Mas managed to spout out.
“Mr. Pauley isn’t here.”
“Left sumptin’ in his office last time,” he said, and then charged through the door to the hallway on the left.
With the cotton-candy-haired woman practically tailgating him, Mas charged into Larry Pauley’s corner office. It was dark, but Mas could still see that the walls were empty, no painting of the galloping horses, only a clean blank space where it once was hung. Larry Pauley must have been in this office for a long time for the paint to have faded. The beer steins were also gone.
One leg of the desk had been broken and the window that overlooked Central Park was now boarded up.
“I told you that Larry Pauley wasn’t here anymore.” The woman pulled at her hair. “I guess he didn’t take leaving too well.”
By the time Mas returned to the hospital, most of Mari and Lloyd’s shaggy-haired friends had left the waiting room. Mari was walking in the hallway, carrying a steaming cup of coffee.
“Where’ve you been, Dad? I was looking for you. Didn’t know if you wanted a bite to eat from the cafeteria.”
“Howzu Takeo?”
“Good, real good. Lloyd’s with him. Tug’s around, too. I think the transfusion has really perked Takeo up. We started off with Lloyd’s supply-he gave about a week ago. Apparently, I can’t give any blood right now.” Mari’s eyes became wet and shiny. “I’m anemic, Dad. Low iron.”
No wonder Mari’s color looked bad, thought Mas. Here he thought it was just age, but it was actually some medical reason.
Mari sipped her coffee and then leaned against the wall. “Seems like I can’t do anything right for him now.”
“Youzu a good mother.”
“You think? I’m trying. I really am. Lloyd says that I’ve been doing too much. After Takeo was born, I’ve tried to slow down, you know.”
“Not be so gasa-gasa.”
“Yeah. But that’s in my genes.”
“You like your mom.”
“Actually, Mom always said that I was like you.”
Mas shuffled his feet and looked down at his loafers. Mas knew that he had to mention his trip to Waxley Enterprises. “Izu try to see Larry Pauley,” he announced. “I thinksu heezu fired.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. I didn’t get a chance to talksu to Lloyd, but I think itsu has to do wiz the books.”
“The books?” Mari looked confused.
“I checksu all the bills: don’t make sense. One lawn mower company belly-up, no around anymore. But still listed in the records.”
“What?”
“And they put down chemical fertilizer, but I knowsu Lloyd use all natural. Don’t make sense. Overcharge for bamboo. And toro, too. They pay two thousand dolla for dat. No way dat toro two thousand.”
“So you think Miss Waxley figured that out as well? Maybe he’s been doing that at Waxley Enterprises, too, huh. Maybe that’s why he was fired.” Mari furrowed her eyebrows. “Oh, I forget to tell you. Haruo called yesterday for you. Wanted our fax number. What’s that all about?”
Before Mas could explain, he felt another presence beside him. The eccentric man he had met at the church, Elk Mamiya. He was a couple of inches shorter than Mas, most likely a pure five feet tall, so Mas could see right into his magnified eyes. Little globs floated in the whites of his eyes like curds in spoiled milk. Elk must not have been sleeping well.
“Mamiya- san,” Mas said, wondering if some kind of health problem had brought the Nisei to the Brooklyn hospital.
“Heard about your grandson through the pipeline at church,” Elk said. Gossip traveled fast in New York City, thought Mas, as fast as in Los Angeles. Tug must have mentioned the blood drive to the church ministers.
“Sank you, ne,” Mas said.
Mari extended her hand. “Yes, we really appreciate your help.”
“No, no, I’m not here to give blood.” Elk shook his head, sparse tufts of white hair sticking out of his ears. “I’m here to tell you I figured it out.”
Mari crinkled her nose as if she smelled something bad.
“I’ve been doing research into this Hirokazu Ouchi-”
“That’s Kazzy’s father,” Mari said.
“Yes, an Issei, born in Nagano Prefecture. Married to Emily, an Irishwoman. Don’t you think it’s quite a coincidence that he died shortly after his wife died giving birth to a stillborn child?”
“What are you getting at?” Mari thinned her eyes.
“What I’m getting at”-Elk began to raise his voice-“is that somebody killed him off. Somebody wanted him dead, and then they killed off Kazzy.” Elk turned to Mas. “I told you, back at the church. They’re out to destroy us.”
“Ah, Kazzy’s father died in the 1930s. I doubt that has anything to do with Kazzy’s death today.” Mas didn’t know why Mari kept talking to the man. It was obvious that he was not in his right mind. Mas had met his share of men who had fallen off the edge. Some had been scarred by the camp experience, others from surviving the Bomb. He didn’t know why certain people were able to piece themselves together and even flourish, while the weaker ones languished like plants without water. It was a slow death, a process that Mas preferred not to watch, because it reminded him of his own disintegration.
Mari visibly frowned, and Elk apparently noticed. “So don’t believe me. What the hell do I care?” Elk focused back on Mas. “I just wanted to warn you-watch your step. They’re watching.” With that, he left, the fluorescent lights reflecting blue on top of his bald head.
“Who was that?” Mari asked.
“Ole man from Tug’s church.” Mas was going to add that he was kuru-kuru-pa, but thought better of it. Elk Mamiya was apparently acting out of his convictions. He had come all the way to Brooklyn to protect a fellow Japanese American, and Mas should at least be grateful for that.
Tug then turned the corner, a cotton ball taped to the inside of his forearm.
“Uncle Tug, were you with Takeo?” asked Mari.
“Looking good. That’s what I told the doctor.”
“Yeah, Dr. Bhalla has been a godsend. Don’t know what I’d do without her.”
“Bhalla? No, this was a big, tall man. Couldn’t really see his face, covered up with a mask. He had a scar on his forehead.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he was with Takeo when I walked in.”
“Lloyd?”
“No, no sign of Lloyd,” said Tug. “Come to think of it, that struck me as kind of strange.”
Big and tall, with a scar on his forehead. Could only be one man. Larry Pauley.
Mari took off first, splashing her coffee onto the floor and wall. Her thin legs churned forward, her feet working so fast that her tennis shoes hardly touched the squares of linoleum floor. Mas followed through the maze of hallways and heavy unlocked doors. Women and men in pastel gowns holding clipboards watched them go-most likely not knowing if they should help or stop them.
They stormed through a wing of small rooms with large windows. Even though the door was closed, Mas could hear Takeo bawling. What did they say about parents and grandparents: that your ears became so in tune with your baby’s cry that you could hear it when others couldn’t. Takeo was lying on a high bed with metal sides, his face scrunched up and puckered like a pickled plum. Tubes were hanging loose, and the blood from the bag was dripping onto the floor. Multiple alarms sounded off in the room-some as soft as the beeping from a microwave, others as loud as the warning noise from a work vehicle backing up. Nurses and doctors crashed in, surrounding Takeo and eventually pushing Mari out of the way.
No sign of the giant gardener. Mas then spotted that the door of the bathroom was cracked open, not by a doorstop but by a size-eleven shoe, toe up. Sure enough, it was Lloyd-still breathing, but out cold on the tile floor.
With Mari and the team of doctors aiding Takeo and Lloyd, Mas ran out into the hallway of the neonatal ward. An old man, perhaps another grandfather of a broken child, was looking down the hall toward a stairway door that was swinging shut. Mas caught the door and entered the stripped-down stairway. He heard the echo of footsteps banging against metal stairs. Down, down. Mas followed the echo, his knees aching, his heels smarting, lungs low on air, until he landed up in the fancy, hotel-like lobby. Was it the tail of a white lab coat disappearing out the automatic doors?
Mas ran outside and then across the street. He wasn’t quite sure if he was heading in the right direction. But then there was the white medical jacket, crumpled on the sidewalk next to the entrance of a Chinese restaurant. Mas knew enough not to touch the jacket. He went through the restaurant, a fancy kind with tablecloths and cloth napkins. As he stared into the faces of the diners, their backs stiffened. They probably thought that he was an aging busboy reporting for the swing swift or perhaps a senile old man who had lost his way.
Mas returned to Takeo’s room, only to see his grandson cast on open seas, surrounded by doctors and nurses, their gowns the color of green toothpaste and after-dinner mints. “ Gambare, gambare, ” Mas murmured. Don’t give up. Don’t sink. Mari was constantly trying to swim toward Takeo, but the waves prevented her from moving forward. Lloyd, unconscious, was taken away on a gurney. And again, Mari was too far, her loved one unreachable. She looked as though she were underwater, and even to Mas, sounds were distorted, movements in slow motion. Before she collapsed, Tug, the tall angel, grabbed her arm, while Mas, the father, grabbed the other.
Mari rested on a couch in the waiting room, a cold pack on her forehead, while Mas and Tug spoke in the hallway.
“Couldn’t catch him. No good knees anymore,” said Mas, dejected.
Tug handed him a paper cup filled with water. “Drink this, and take a few deep breaths.”
Mas kept on wheezing, and Tug theorized that perhaps decades of smoking were finally taking their toll on his health. If Mas weren’t so worn-out, he would have snapped at his friend. He didn’t need useless health advice when his daughter had almost passed out, his grandson and son-in-law attacked. Lloyd was now conscious but being X-rayed to make sure that his brains weren’t scrambled from the blow to his head.
Both Detective Ghigo and Jeannie Yee were now on the scene. Ghigo said that they had an APB out for a dark-haired man named Larry Pauley. But hair could be colored and IDs falsified; Mas knew that much. And besides, had Larry been behind the shooting of Kazzy Ouchi? His style seemed more rough-and-tumble, while Kazzy’s murder had been more calculated, with an attention to details.
Mas and Tug made their way to the waiting area. Jeannie paced the linoleum floor, her heels clicking, kachi-kachi, like the red and blue castanets that children pressed together while dancing in circles at the summer Obon festival at the Pasadena Buddhist Church. Instead of a shimmering waterfall, Jeannie’s hair was uncharacteristically mussed up, a blue jay’s nest. Funny that both she and Ghigo would show up at the hospital together, thought Mas.
“We’ll pick him up,” said Ghigo. “He had a large amount of money recently transferred to his personal account. He and Penn Anderson were using the Ouchi Foundation to embezzle money from Waxley Enterprises. Using their own business contacts as vendors, overpaying them, and pocketing the extra.”
“The police traced the anonymous calls back to Penn,” explained Jeannie. “He had a voice-altering device. He’s been feeding all this information about Mari and Lloyd to divert attention from the missing money. He made such a production of hiding his identity that it seemed obvious that he was hiding something. I guess that it didn’t hurt that he had been double-crossed by Larry. He’s admitted the embezzling, and is willing to testify against Larry. He just doesn’t want to be associated with any murders or attempted murders; he’s said that’s all Larry’s doing.”
“I need to see my son.” Mari removed the ice pack from her head and tried to lift herself up from the couch.
“You hear docta; Takeo orai,” Mas said. “Sleepin’ now. Needsu his sleep.” Ghigo had ordered two police officers to keep watch in front of Takeo’s room.
“Yes, Mari. You need to rest a little. They could get you a hospital bed.” Tug placed his huge hands on the top of the couch.
Mari shook her head. “I can go over to Lloyd’s room and keep him company.” Lloyd had a mild concussion. He’d been knocked out by a fire extinguisher. He hadn’t seen his assailant, unfortunately, but several security cameras got pictures of Larry-his mouth covered with a mask, but that medical jacket, soaked in the scent of a designer cologne, had plenty of dark hairs. Good thing that Mas had pointed it out to the police.
“Maybe, Dad, you can get a few things for me from home?”
Mas nodded.
As Ghigo and Jeannie moved over to have a private discussion by a magazine rack, Tug clapped his hands together. “Well, good thing, Mas, the mystery’s solved. It looks like that Larry Pauley killed Mr. Ouchi.”
But Mas wasn’t in a celebratory mood. He was far away, looking beyond Tug, toward the darkness of the street through the hospital windows.
It was past midnight before Mas reached the underground apartment, but people-some alone with their heads down, others in pairs making loud noises-were still walking the streets. You could never feel lonely in New York City, thought Mas, wondering if that was one of its main charms.
After he entered the apartment, he turned on the lamp. White papers littered the front of the fireplace. Dorobo, thief, thought Mas. He slowly retrieved them, realizing as he did that they were actually a product of the fax machine. With the help of his reading glasses, Mas arranged them in order. The first page stated, FAX COVER SHEET/Kinko’s. Kinko? Sounded like a strange Japanese name. But then Mas remembered that name on storefronts all throughout Los Angeles. A chain of photocopy services.
Underneath Kinko’s was another name: Haruo Mukai. So Haruo had come through again.
There were three additional pages. All were from Asa Sumi’s journal, although the script looked a little different. Instead of the neat hatch marks that could have been made by the end of a sharp knife, the handwriting was rushed, fluid like running water. The entry was dated February 20, 1931. Yesterday was my last day at the Waxley House, it began. Even to think of it now, tears are running down my face. The morning began as usual, preparing fresh bread, jam, and fruit for breakfast. But no one came down. I wondered what was wrong, and then I heard Ouchi-san call my name. Mas kept reading, sometimes unable to make out certain words, but continuing, knowing that something important was contained in there. He read the entry five or six times to let its weight settle in his gut.
Kazzy hadn’t been killed to cover a man’s greed, but a daughter’s scorn.