Gasa-Gasa Girl (9 page)

Detective Ghigo was right behind her. “Jeannie, I’m telling you, we were just having a conversation.”

“Give me a break,” Jeannie snapped back. “You were trying to intimidate him. He has a right to representation.”

Even after he had stopped talking, the detective’s mouth was still open halfway. In Mas’s line of work, he had seen his share of stray dogs go after penned ones day after day. It was obvious that this stray, Detective Ghigo, had sniffed Jeannie before and wanted something more.

Mas stood next to Jeannie. “We gotsu to go,” he said. Tug nodded behind them in agreement.

“Mr. Arai.” Ghigo put on a fake smile. “Good to see you again.”

Mas grunted. He waited until Lloyd, Tug, and Jeannie were safely out the door before he turned to leave himself.

“Oh, Mr. Arai,” Ghigo called out, “about that flower—”

Mas stopped midstep and waited.

“Just got that lab result. The hair wasn’t human. Animal hair, most likely a deer’s. Don’t figure a deer shot a bullet through Mr. Ouchi’s head, do you?”

chapter five

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.

B
oth 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.