Snakeskin Shamisen (16 page)

YOURSELF
, so Mas chose a small two-seater in the corner.

A glass of water came immediately, and then a laminated menu folded into thirds. Mas looked for any sign of Juanita, but the help were mostly young Latino men in white shirts and black Dockers. Before Mas could take a good look at the menu, a pile of octopus tentacles, cooked shrimp, whitefish, and scallops was placed on his table. He was ready to protest, but it was Juanita, her hair pulled back in a rainbow-colored headband and wearing a full-length red apron.

“I saw you come in,” she said, slipping into the chair across from him. “Peruvian ceviche—you’ll like it.”

Mas felt so glad to see Juanita that he almost forgot about his day’s adventures.

“I guess you’ve heard about everything,” she said.

Mas wanted to ask about her father, but didn’t want to open that door if there wasn’t good news. Juanita was at her family’s business anyway; no place for such conversations. Surely she would bring up any new developments on her own.

Mas had his own news to tell. “Buncha things happen.” He revealed that Sanjo, too, had faced possible deportation. “He gotsu lawyer, but had to get new one. Parker.”

“What do you mean?”

“Judge Parker was Sanjo’s lawyer. Same Parker wiz
shamisen
.”

“So that’s how they’re connected.”

Mas also added that Kinjo had been the informant in the Sanjo deportation case.

“That SOB,” Juanita murmured. “I wonder if he knew that Randy was Sanjo’s son.”

Well, if he didn’t before, he knows now, thought Mas, wondering if he should have even gone to the recital in the first place. “Jiro at Kinjo’s,” Mas said as an afterthought. “Tell me to mind my own bizness.”

Juanita frowned. “Kermit’s been busy. He was over here too. Asked me to drop the case completely, for Randy’s sake. It doesn’t make sense. Randy’s dead. How can anything help him now? Why is Kermit on this personal mission for us to stop investigating?”

“Hidin’ sumptin’?”

“Most definitely.”

Mas tried to dislodge a piece of chewed octopus stuck on the back of his dentures with his tongue.

“Have you run into our other friend?”

Mas frowned.

“You know, Agent Buchanan Lee.”

“Heezu at Keiro. Right before I go ova.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. Do you know that I found a tracking device on the Toyota? Lee was monitoring everywhere I went. I found the tracer in my wheel well—it was a cheap sucker. Very old-school. Looks like it could have been twenty years old. We’re in big trouble if that’s the best Homeland Security can come up with.”

Mas couldn’t understand why the U.S. government would want to invest good money in monitoring Juanita and even himself. A girl PI whose family owned some Japanese Peruvian restaurants? An old gardener? Mas knew that the most devious could be packaged in ordinary clothing, but this was a bit much.

“Agent Lee even left a message on my cell phone, saying that he wanted to talk to me. I haven’t called him back yet. I know I have to—I guess I’m scared.”

Mas peeled off some dead skin from the side of his thumb. It was a lot for Juanita to admit that she was afraid.

Juanita then quickly changed the subject. “So what would you like to order? You want fish? Chicken? Beef?”

“Beef.”

“Okay, I have the dish for you.” Juanita wrote something on her receipt pad. “And beer too, right?” She had read Mas’s mind.

The beer came first, in the form of an ice-cold bottle of Cusqueña. Mas had never had it before and sipped it tentatively. It was light, like Sapporo, with a kiss of sweetness. Mas took another swig. The restaurant was getting crowded. Even through the tinted windows, Mas could see a line forming outside. He ate a forkful of the ceviche and enjoyed the crunch of firm baby octopus tentacles, tang of vinegar, and
piri-piri
of hot sauce.
Oishii
, thought Mas. So delicious and fresh. If Mas had known that Japanese Peruvian food was this good, he would have started to eat it much earlier.

The main course was a stir-fry of beef strips, red peppers, and French fries. Mas had never eaten his fries mixed up in a main course, but he had an open mind when it came to food. In ten minutes, the plate was empty.

“So I guess you like Peruvian food.” Juanita was back with another Cusqueña and picked up the plate.

“Good bizness,” Mas said. He was impressed. One after another, the customers came in, ate, and left. The turnover was high—Antonio’s wasn’t a place where you took your time and relaxed in candlelight. This wasn’t for illicit lovers or big-business types. The restaurant was for no-nonsense eaters, longtime married folk who understood that a full and happy belly beat foreplay any day.

Juanita made her rounds to a couple of other tables and returned to Mas’s.

“
Chotto taigi, ne
.”

“What?”

“Tired. Youzu look tired.”

“Yeah, with my father in custody, I’ve been at the restaurant twenty-four/seven. My mother really needs my help.” She looked behind her, toward a sixtysomething Japanese woman clearing off a neighboring table.

“Mom—” she called out, getting the woman’s attention. The mother obviously liked to keep her hands busy, because she managed to stack four dirty plates and three half-empty plastic glasses in the brief moment she took to turn around.

“Mas, this is my mother, Maria.”

The mother had bright eyes like her daughter. “
Konnichiwa
,” she said, doing a little bow over her dishes.

“Her English is awful,” Juanita whispered into Mas’s ear. “You’d think after forty years in America that she’d catch on.”

Juanita shot out a string of Spanish, and her mother responded with a string of her own. Maria placed the dirty dishes on a counter and returned to their booth. She looked straight into Mas’s face and clutched his shoulder. “
Osewaninatta
,” she said in Japanese. “We could not get through this without good friends.”

Her black eyes then welled up with tears, reminding Mas of the deep sea at night. Mas felt his heart being pricked with something sharp. Here he was, so concerned about paying off his debt to G. I. that he had not felt the full pain of the people who got hurt along the way. Maria pressed down on her eyelids, releasing a trickle of tears. Then, as quickly as the few tears came, she excused herself and turned her attention to an errant busboy, letting loose another string of Spanish.

Juanita’s eyes, twins of her mother’s, were also wet with tears. “I was afraid that they would have shipped him to another state, maybe even another country. But he’s still in Southern California. Terminal Island.”

“Terminal Island?” Mas knew that the speck of land by San Pedro had once been home to about two thousand Japanese American fisherman and cannery workers and their families before the government kicked them all out a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. From then on, the island had never been home to anyone else except the military.

“The government has a holding center for immigrants there. Some say that it’s the last place in the U.S. for deportees before they are shipped out.”

What was Juanita saying? That her father was next on the list? “Youzu daddy—” Mas couldn’t help but say.

“It’s all bullshit, Mas. Luckily, G. I. has mobilized JABA members and a bunch of community groups to write support letters on behalf of my father. There’s going to be a huge article in the
Rafu
and maybe even the L.A.
Times
.”

Mas wanted to reach out and pat Juanita’s hand, say that it would be okay. But Mas didn’t do such things, and he didn’t know if everything would indeed turn out all right. Instead of verbal encouragement, Mas pulled out his wallet.

“No, no.” Juanita shook her head. “It’s on the house.”

“No, no.” Mas pulled out a couple of twenty-dollar bills and pushed them toward Juanita, who just pushed them back.

They played this game, four rounds each, until Mas finally relented. “
Orai
, I do sumptin’ for you.”

“Mas, you already have.” Juanita got up and began cleaning Mas’s table. If that wasn’t enough, she brought him a small plate of flan, his favorite, for dessert.

“So how’s Professor Howard, by the way?”

“Huh.” Mas enjoyed how the egg custard dissolved in the middle of his tongue.

“You said she helped you out.”

“She
orai
.” Mas felt awkward talking about Genessee. Juanita probably sensed his schoolboy crush, and if he verified it in any way, it would be out to G. I. and then the rest of the circuit. “She seems to knowsu lots about Sanjo’s first lawyer.”

“He’s alive?”

Mas shook his head. “But daughter is. Looks like Genessee knowsu her.”

“Do you think the daughter will be able to shed light on Sanjo’s case?”

Mas shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you think that you could find out? I know I’m imposing a lot—” Juanita’s bushy eyebrows made her eyes look even more dramatic.

“Maybe,” Mas said. That’s the most he could promise.

When he finally left the restaurant, the sun had already sunk, and the lights in the parking lot gave the tops of the cars a yellow-green sheen. Dinnertime launderers, perhaps desiring clean underwear above food, had started to claim laundry carts and washing machines. Amid the scent of stale powder detergent, Mas fished out his screwdriver and opened the door of the Ford. He wasn’t going to worry about his non-monetary debts and IOUs anymore. To hell with the personal checks and balances of favors that all self-respecting Japanese kept in the backs of their minds. This didn’t have to do with any sense of obligation; Mas needed to make things right just so he wouldn’t have to see any more women cry.

chapter ten

He began the next morning with a drive to Frank’s Liquor Store to use the pay phone.

“Phone not working again?” Frank asked, sticking his head around a stack of newspapers.

Mas grunted. He needed to get his phone untapped, but he didn’t want to burden Juanita further. In the short run, Frank’s was a good enough option. Mas went inside the store to buy a pack of Juicy Fruit gum and get change; he couldn’t have Frank keep subsidizing his phone calls. Genessee must have been a morning person, because she answered the phone at its first ring.

They spoke for a few minutes, and then Mas hung up the phone and waited. He watched two stray dogs cross the street. They seemed oblivious of the cars traveling toward them, other than the pads of their paws working the concrete as fast as they could. The oncoming cars slowed. Another day of life for the mutts.

The phone rang, and Frank stuck his head out again, curious.

“Hallo,” Mas answered, and listened. Olivia Feinstein, the daughter of Sanjo’s first lawyer, had agreed to meet with him Saturday morning.

M
as went to his only customer that day—Mr. Patel in Arcadia. Mr. Patel had one of those newfangled mansions that was built on a lot that had once held a ranch house. But somehow the builder had preserved the old landscape, with a bottlebrush bush on the side and clumps of birds-of-paradise in the front. Per Mr. Patel’s request, Mas had also constructed a rock garden next to the birds-of-paradise, creating a Japan–meets– South Africa kind of look. As Southern California had become overdeveloped, rocks had become expensive and hard to come by. For Japanese community gardens, the gardeners had gone to various dry washes and old mines in pickup trucks, hauling boulders into truck beds with rope. But the authorities were cracking down on rock grabbing, so now you had to pay a pretty penny for jagged pieces of granite. Mas had purchased the rocks for Mr. Patel’s garden at a local quarry that also sold headstones and Chinese statues.

“What’s going on with your friend’s case? You know, the one whose throat was slit?” asked Mr. Patel. He was taking his prune-faced Shar-Pei out for a walk, and the dog was sniffing the leg of Mas’s jeans.

“Police dunno yet. They don’t take nobody in.” Mas put on his gloves and pulled out some wilted stalks of the birds-of-paradise, their once-proud headdress of orange and purple now shriveled and brown.

“Well, I hope they catch the guy. Soon.”

Mas nodded.

After Mr. Patel’s, Mas went home, took a shower, and drank a Budweiser. He knew that it was early to be drinking, but somehow the Cusqueñas yesterday at Antonio’s had gotten his taste buds craving beer. He thought one would be enough, but he went ahead and had another. My lunch, he thought, and laughed. His face grew hot and he opened the front door, hoping to catch some kind of breeze. But the air was warm and still, even oppressive. Earthquake weather, Mas thought. The worst
jishin
that he had ever been in was the San Fernando quake in 1971. The Northridge earthquake some twenty years later was bad, but he, Chizuko, and Mari had felt the 1971 more. Dishes came crashing out of cabinets, and Mas bounced back and forth from the hallway walls as he went to collect Mari from her bedroom. Her bedside lamp had been knocked down, and she was sitting up in bed, her eyes wide-open with fright. “Daddy,” she cried, and held on to his shoulders when he scooped her up from her tangled sheets. That might have been the last time they embraced like that. It took Mas going to New York City to mend their broken relationship. Now Mari was trying to let bygones be bygones and forge a new way of interacting.

He then thought about Juanita, her father, and her mother. The parents’ home government had sought to spit them out, while their new country had tried to trample them. But the Gushikens had gamely fought back. Hanging on to their heritage, they had created a market for octopus ceviche and beef-and-French-fry stir-fry in Hollywood. Now the government was trying again, but they wouldn’t succeed if Mas had anything to do with it.

M
as signed in at the front desk of Keiro as he had done two times before:
M. ARAI
. Under “Person Visiting,” Mas wrote
Tanaka
, for old times’ sake. Luckily for Mas, there must have been a couple of Tanakas, because the receptionist waved him through.

Mas crept into Gushi-mama’s room, but he quickly discovered that he didn’t have to this time. The roommate was sitting up, knitting in bed. The mattress beside her, Gushi-mama’s, was stripped, without any sheets, blankets, or pillows.

Mas licked his lips. Surely the stripped-down mattress was not what he feared. But then, Gushi-mama was 106. Each additional day of living was a miracle when you were that age.

“Arai-
san
,
desho?
” The roommate’s voice was barely a whisper, like wind between two rocks. If you weren’t listening, you’d think the sound might be a figment of your imagination.

“Are you here for Gushiken-
san
?” she asked in Japanese. The roommate’s face was still pinched like a pigeon’s, and her small, beady eyes were magnified by her reading glasses, but today, instead of having a grayish tint, her skin looked healthier—even her cheeks were pink.

Mas nodded, waiting for the worst.

“She’s in White Memorial. She stopped eating, so they had to hospitalize her. Feed her from tubes,” she continued in Japanese.

“Sheezu sick?
Byoki
?”

“Probably
sutoresu
.”

“
Sutoresu
,” Mas repeated. Stress. From what? Mas’s visits? Had Agent Lee returned?

“She’s been having a lot of visitors. You, the Chinese man, and then Tanaka-
san
’s friends.”

Wishbone? “He don’t have no
tomodachi
,” Mas murmured to himself.

“One was a Kibei. I didn’t catch his name. But the other was Yoshimoto-
san
. I think you may know him.”

Mas almost laughed at Stinky being referred to with the honorific of “
san
.” Stinky was no
san
, or even a
chan
, usually used for children, or
kun
, for boys. He was a chump who deserved no sign of respect or affection.

“Arai-
san
, may I say something to you?” The roommate’s voice was less tentative this time.

Mas braced himself. He deserved anything the roommate wanted to throw at him.

“Everything seemed so quiet and calm before you arrived. Breakfast, lunch, dinner—everything predetermined and set. Dependable. And then you came to visit Gushiken-
san
, and from then on, people not acting themselves. Fighting. Asking questions. Soon we don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”

Mas hung his head.

“I just wanted to say something to you—”

Mas hardened his gut for the hit.

“
Domo arigato
. Thank you so much.”

Mas was glad that he was a tiny bit drunk, that his face was already flushed red with alcohol. Otherwise, receiving her thanks would have been too unbearable. He understood what the pigeon lady was saying. Having nothing to do all day, being comatose mentally and emotionally, wore on the body. Involvement with the outside world meant inconvenience, irritation, and frustration but, like a spur digging into a horse’s side, made everything move forward.

So while Gushi-mama had been down, the roommate had come to life. Mas knew that the pigeon lady didn’t hold any ill will toward Gushi-mama; it was just that the monotony of life had conquered her, beaten her into a robotic pulp. But now the pigeon lady was breaking free. Perhaps Gushi-mama had sucked all the life out of the room, not leaving any for her roommate. With Gushi-mama gone temporarily, the roommate was growing her wings. When Gushi-mama returned—and Mas was pretty sure that she would—she would have a fight on her hands. But fighting would be good for both of them and would most likely restore Gushi-mama’s appetite.

When Mas was waiting to sign out at the reception desk, someone grabbed his elbow. He turned to see the bespectacled face of Lil Yamada. She was wearing a gray smock and a huge name tag that had her name in both Japanese and English above a smiley face. “Hey, I saw that you were here.”

“Who tellsu you?” Mas couldn’t help being a little paranoid.

“You had signed the book,” she said. “But Wishbone’s not here. Hasn’t been for days.”

Mas felt his face grow hot. It
would
have to be Lil who uncovered his duplicity.

“Listen, Mas, can I speak to you for a moment?” Lil motioned to a small room across the way.

That tone of voice was familiar. Usually what followed was
Mas, we’re going to have to let you go
or
Mas, we like you, but we’re just cutting back on our unnecessary expenses
.

As Mas followed Lil into the room, which turned out to be a supply closet, she said, “I’m worried about you, Mas. So is Tug.”

“I’m
orai
.” Mas banged his chest a couple of times. As healthy or
genki
as a person could be, standing next to boxes of tongue depressors and adult diapers.

“No, it’s this Yamashiro case. I think there are some very unseemly people involved.”

“Whatchu mean?”

“A government agent’s been coming by to talk to Mrs. Gushiken. I think he’s bothered her so much that he made her sick. And he’s been asking questions of a lot of the other Okinawan residents here. He even came here today, you know.”

Mas nodded.

“The administrator had to ask him to leave.” Lil adjusted her eyeglass frames. “Your name has come up, too, Mas.”

“Oh, yah?”

“Yes, as a person to watch out for. I told them that I knew you, that you were a close family friend. I told them that I’d talk to you.”

Who were “them”? Mas wondered.

“There’s been another man, named Saito, who’s been causing a lot of trouble too. You know, Wishbone’s friend.”

So this other so-called friend was named Saito.

“Anyway, they’ve been calling it a
yogore
epidemic. You know,
yogore
—”

Dirty scum.

“I mean, I didn’t mean you, Mas.” Lil blushed, desperately trying to rewind her comment.

But it was too late. And besides that, it was true. If there was a king
yogore
, Mas would have a decent chance at winning the title.

“
Orai
, I gotcha, Lil.”

“Mas, I really didn’t mean—”

Mas left the supply closet for the door, but was stopped by the receptionist. He was young, probably a fourth-generation Japanese American, a Yonsei. “Sir, we need you to sign out.”

Mas found his name and signed. As the receptionist took care of a phone call, Mas quickly glanced at the names on previous sheets. He traced his dirty fingernail down the column that stated “Person Visiting.” Gushiken, Gushiken—there was Buchanan Lee, and then S. Yoshimoto. And after that, having signed in two days ago, was another name, the Saito Lil had mentioned, written above a scratched-out name. Who’d cross out their own name? Even Mas wouldn’t have any problems writing “Arai.” He looked closely at the scratch marks. He could at least make out the second-to-last letter. It was definitely a J.

S
tinky lived on a street in Altadena called Calaveras, which apparently meant the skulls and skeletons that danced around during a Mexican holiday, according to one of the day laborers whom Mas had once picked up on Pine Street. It was appropriate, because when Stinky and his wife, Bette, had first bought their house, in the sixties, it was a skeleton of a home. The house was obtained during a fire sale; a big chunk had burnt down when a piece of bread got stuck in a defective toaster. But due to Bette’s enterprising spirit, the home began to get more meat on its bones year after year, until by the eighties, it was downright pretty. Bette had also tried to work her magic on Stinky; he had proved to be a harder challenge. Most recently, she had been able to get him elected to the presidency of the Crown City Gardeners’ Association for two terms. (He ran unopposed the first time; his opponent died before the election the following year.) Crown City was the old name for Pasadena; Mas wasn’t quite sure why it had been called that, but being the home of the Rose Parade and its beauty queens, it wasn’t much of a stretch to connect Pasadena with royalty.

Mas parked the truck on Calaveras, right across from the Yoshimoto house. They had redone the sloped driveway, and it looked like the shutters were being repainted. Mas climbed up the driveway, impressed that all the cracks had been covered over. The Yoshimotos had a huge jacaranda tree with invasive roots that seemed to push up the ground within a ten-foot radius.

Bette must have been waiting for a delivery, because she opened the door before Mas had a chance to ring the bell.

“Mas, how are you doing?” she asked. Bette was a small, compact woman shaped like missile ready to be launched. She had no waist to speak of, and no
oshiri
, or rear either. It was surprising that her pants could stay on her body—perhaps that’s why she always wore a black leather belt that looked like a man’s.