Gasa-Gasa Girl (15 page)

Mas shook his head. He’d had enough of hospitals on both coasts. He had had his share of gardening war injuries over the decades; a sliced hand was as common to a gardener as a black eye to a boxer.

Becca must have realized that it was useless to argue with Mas. She soaked a cotton ball with the antiseptic and pressed hard against the cut, making sure that it hurt. While she was wrapping the gauze bandage, the phone rang. Becca went into the room with the TV equipment to take the call. She spoke about fruit platters, cheese, and other kinds of appetizers that Mas had never heard of. The bandage still dangling down his arm, Mas walked out of the bathroom, looked both ways, and headed for the unoccupied room—the one with the old-fashioned desk and typewriter. This had been Kazzy’s office, Mas figured. A row of bookshelves lined one of the walls. A small circular table sat in the middle, while a wooden desk, looking like it belonged in the TV Western
Bonanza
, was against the wall by the window. The desk had a roll top, which had some sort of lock, but it was a Cracker Jack kind that could be jiggled open with a nail file. Above the desk on the wall was a framed black-and-white photograph of a
hakujin
woman with a broad face and laughing eyes. Mas saw a slight resemblance to Becca. Must be the grandmother, Kazzy’s mother. On a small table was the ancient typewriter, labeled Remington. Mas remembered seeing that kind of typewriter at his janitor friend’s workplace, the
Kashu Mainichi
, once the number two newspaper in Little Tokyo. Now it was number zero, because it went belly-up in the early nineties. Housed in an old factory on First Street, the newspaper staff worked amid pigeons resting on a beam near a skylight, while one of the staff members’ cats prowled on the cement floor.

For old times’ sake, Mas pressed down on one of the typewriter keys. Had to have strong fingers to type on these old machines, that’s for sure. Not like those fancy computer keyboards they had now.

He heard the front door open and shut. He walked away from the typewriter, knowing he shouldn’t have been in the room. He kept his hand elevated and waited for Becca to complete her phone call.

“Hello?” It wasn’t Becca but the old lady, Miss Waxley. Miss Waxley was probably a little younger than Mas, but she seemed from another era. She smelled like the fragrance counter of a department store. She probably used a handkerchief to blow her nose and went to the hairdresser’s once a week.

“Mr. Arai,” she said, and Mas was surprised that the
hakujin
woman had remembered his name. “Where’s Becca?”

“Telephone,” he said, gesturing with his bandaged hand toward the other room.

“What happened?” She put her fancy pocketbook down on the circular table and took a closer look at Mas’s wound.

Mas didn’t want to get into the story, but allowed Miss Waxley to grab a pair of scissors from the desk and snip the loose gauze bandage. “Sank you,” he managed to say.

They stared at each other for a good minute before Miss Waxley tried to make conversation. “Do you know that this was my parents’ room?” Miss Waxley said.

“Oh, yah?”

“In fact, the typewriter and desk were originally theirs.”

Tsumaranai.
Boring as hell to hear an old lady talk. But she had extended her friendship by helping Mas with his hand, so he at least owed her some listening time.

“My mother was housebound for years with her illness. She could putter around the house a little; even make some meals, I was told. I don’t have any memories of this house, because we had moved to Manhattan, closer to my father’s office, by the time I was one. It was a new start for our family, I guess.

“Now it’s just me,” Miss Waxley said with a weak smile.

Since everyone called the old lady “miss,” she had probably never married, figured Mas. Even though she had money, she must be lonely, all by herself. Good thing she is involved in the garden project, he thought.

Becca then walked in, freeing Mas from Miss Waxley’s stories. The conversation turned to food, so Mas excused himself, saying that he would be leaving after he put the remaining bandage roll back in the bathroom.

After closing the door of the medicine chest, Mas heard a couple of male voices through the open bathroom window. Underneath the diseased sycamore tree were Phillip and a young man, a teenager, wearing a blue knit beanie cap trimmed in gold.

“This is the last time. I’m telling you,” Phillip said. Mas couldn’t see his face, just the top of his thinning hair. He opened his wallet and stuffed some bills in the boy’s hand. “If you say anything, it’s not only my head, it’s yours, too, remember?”

The boy said nothing. After getting his money, he walked away from the house, toward Flatbush Avenue.

As Mas quickly made his way down the stairs, he heard the jangling of a key at the front door. Slipping out the back, Mas hurried to the sidewalk in search of the teenager in the beanie cap.

There was no sign of him on Flatbush. He couldn’t have walked that quickly, unless he had taken a taxi, Mas thought. Or the underground train, a block away. Mas headed for the hole of the train station, marked this time by the letter Q in a yellow circle. He had no idea what direction the boy would travel, so he did what any betting man did in cases like this—he took a wild guess. Train going to Manhattan.

The train had already arrived, and the doors were open. Entering the train, Mas scanned the crowd for the blue beanie cap. There was no time for hesitation. Before the doors screeched closed, Mas dashed in like a cockroach seeking shelter. This time there were plenty of empty seats. Jerking left and right, Mas walked the whole length of one car. No luck. Looking through the window in the door of the adjoining car, Mas learned that he had scored a home run. In the far corner sat the teenager, his eyes closed, oblivious that he was being watched.

After entering the teenager’s car, Mas made himself comfortable in an empty seat down the same row. Phillip was obviously paying the boy off to keep a secret. But what kind of secret was Phillip keeping? Had he paid off the boy to kill his father? Mas shuddered. He hated to think that a son would go to such lengths to calculate his father’s murder.

Hadn’t that newspaper article said that Phillip was the number two man at Kazzy’s company? Mas knew many customers who had their sons working for them. More often than not, some kind of problem would come up, and eventually the son was not welcome at the parents’ house anymore.

Mas looked down the row of passengers to the boy in the beanie cap again. He could pass for
hakujin
, but Mas wouldn’t be surprised if the boy was part Asian, Latino, or even Jewish or Arabian. He had a strong nose, dark skin, and a healthy crop of black beard stubble, along with a pair of pork-chop sideburns. Mas could tell he was not
baka;
the kid had some smarts, based on the way he sat with his back straight, not hunched over, and his shoes flat on the ground.

Stop after stop, Mas waited for the boy to rouse out of his sleep. But even when the train emerged from below ground, the boy did not stir. They traveled over a bridge, its metal girders casting shadows over the windows of the train. Below was the gray slate of the river, which both comforted and saddened Mas. Some would say water was water, but Mas could feel the difference between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The Pacific had a greenish tinge, containing the promise of fish strong enough to withstand the power of sewage and other man-made pollution. The Atlantic, on the other hand, seemed to be covered with a cold, concretelike layer. Mas knew that there must be some kind of life underneath, but it was well hidden from those above sea level.

The train churned ahead to an island full of skyscrapers, a small pot full of overgrown plants. Mas glanced at his Casio watch. Already four o’clock. It would be dark soon. He regretted that he had left his Dodgers cap on the couch back at the apartment.

After a muffled message over the intercom—Mas couldn’t make out the street but heard “Times Square”—the boy finally rose. He pulled at his knit cap, as if he wanted more protection for the backs of his earlobes. As the boy scanned the rest of the people in the train car, Mas quickly lowered his eyes. No flicker of recognition. Mas, fortunately, was passed over again.

With the opening of the doors, out went the boy, Mas right behind. Tug had described this island of Manhattan as a river of people, and he wasn’t just making up stories. Even starting in the train station, the crowd pushed and pulled Mas forward, as if he didn’t need to take any steps of his own.

His hand still smarted, but
shikata ga nai
. There was nothing he could do about it, so there was no sense in crying about the pain.

As they were released outdoors, it was more of the same. A wall of cars and yellow taxicabs and then the moving force of the crowd. Mas followed the boy so closely that he almost stepped on the heels of his shoes. Normally Mas would have attracted attention, but here he was just like any other ant trying to make it up the anthill.

They walked west, below enormous neon signs and billboards; Mas felt as if he had stepped into an overbloated Disneyland that had gotten sick and thrown up on itself. But after a few blocks, there were no neon signs or tourists with video cameras. The buildings were all red brick of different sizes. Some spanned blocks—most likely they had housed some kind of factory at one time. Others were long and narrow, with the familiar crisscross of fire escapes.

Even the smells became more pungent. They were a mix of smoke, grime,
shikko
, and peppery spices. The boy turned off into an alley in between two factory buildings, and Mas hesitated. Alleys in any city were dangerous places. Perfect locations for broken bottles and broken bodies. As far as Mas could tell from peeking from the corner, there were no bodies here. Just a few vegetable crates and a rubber trash can.

The boy knocked on a faded red door and was let inside. Mas thought about what he wanted to do next. A pigeon flew from one fire escape to another on a building facing the other side of the alley. Mas approached the building and put his ear to the red door. He heard the healthy pitch of young male voices. So the boy was now among his peers. What was Mas going to do next?

Mas felt like an
aho
again. Wasting time wandering around Manhattan when there was plenty to do at the garden. Then he noticed light coming from a lone window about ten feet from the ground. Couldn’t hurt just to take a look.

Mas balanced one of the crates on the rubber trash can. Holding on to a pipe alongside the wall with his good hand, he lifted himself onto the trash can and then one more step up on the crate, blackened by mildew and other decay from the water and snow. The wood slats were starting to come loose from the frame; Mas knew that he would only be able to stay on his unstable perch for a few minutes.

Still hanging on to the pipe, Mas lifted his body so that his eyes were at least an inch above the window frame. There were five good-for-nothing boys drinking beer, some of them guzzling the foreign kind that Lloyd liked. They sat sunken in couches and stuffed chairs around a low table. On the table, besides the dozens of open beer bottles, were packages of pills. On one corner were stacks of money.

Throughout the years, Mas had seen his share of changes. Computers. Telephones that could float around without a cord. Cars that ran on electricity. But some things never changed, in particular a man’s lust for drugs and sex. Back in Hiroshima right after the war, it had been
hiropon
. Heroin. Mas had watched one orphaned buddy after another fall to its temptation. If it wasn’t
hiropon
, then it was alcohol that was actually meant for cars. Teenage drunkards—all
chinpira
, would-be gangsters—burned their insides drinking that stuff, but apparently in a strange way it also eased the pain in their heads.

Mas didn’t know what
chinpira
of today had to be sorry for, but he had seen enough. The crate underneath him was ready to crack open, so he lowered himself onto the lid of the garbage can. As he jumped to the ground, he heard a slight sound, the crunch of gravel. An arm went around his neck and tightened against his throat.

Mas struggled to breathe. Feeling a surge of adrenaline, he instinctively bent forward and let his attacker flip over his back as easily as a sack of rice. Luckily it wasn’t the pill-popping teenager in the beanie. Mas would have had no chance against that power. Instead, it was Phillip Ouchi, a weed of a man.

Phillip remained on the soiled concrete, shocked and maybe even dismayed that he had been overturned by a seventy-year-old man. Mas knew that he might try something again, so he grabbed a loose wooden slat and waved it, nail side down, in front of Phillip’s face.

“What do you hope to achieve, Mr. Arai?” Phillip asked, breathless, but with the same nasty attitude he’d shown at the Waxley House.

Mas tightened his grip around the slat with his right hand, while his bandaged left hand pulsed with pain—probably all the extra blood and excitement churning through his body.

“Hey! Hey!” Phillip suddenly called out.

Now, what was the sonafugun trying to prove? Mas then heard the squeak of a hinge and the opening of the door behind him.

The five
chinpira
, including the one with the beanie cap, circled Mas and Phillip. The beanie cap boy had a gun in his hand, and the tallest guy of the bunch had brought out some long and skinny object—perhaps a lead pipe to beat Mas?

“What’s going on here, Mr. O.?” the beanie cap boy, obviously the ringleader, asked Phillip, who was now struggling onto his feet.

“This man followed you from the Waxley House. I trailed him the whole way here.”

“So what happened, you tripped?”

Phillip said nothing and looked down the length of the alley.

“Dang, I think the old man knocked him down,” one of the teenagers spit out, and then all of them began laughing.

“He looks about a hundred years old.”

“Seventy,” murmured Mas.

“Excuse me?” The beanie cap boy raised his gun to Mas’s chin. The nozzle felt cold and smelled smoky, as if it had been fired recently.