Summer of the Big Bachi (21 page)

 

The ramen house was crowded today. There were families with babies, teenagers dressed in black, and young Japanese men puffing on cigarettes, even though everyone knew smoking in restaurants was illegal in L.A. Keiko was sweating up a storm, her tray full of cold drinks with melted ice and a dirty dishrag.
“Ara—”
she said when she noticed Mas and Haruo at the door.

 

 

She pulled them in a corner, beside the bookcase with the fat Japanese comic books. “You hear about Junko?”

 

 

Mas nodded.

 

 

“
Hidoi, ne?
I can’t believe it. Why would anyone do that to Junko?”

 

 

“How you find out?” Mas didn’t think word would have gotten out so quickly in North Hollywood.

 

 

“My girlfriend Rumi came by my house. Her whole body shaking and wet. They had been close, like sisters. She must have gone by Junko’s and seen the police. Poor thing. It’s so scary these days. How could someone do that to Junko?”

 

 

“You got some ideas?”

 

 

Keiko frowned. “Me? You think I would know those types of people?”

 

 

“No, just wonder if Junko say sumptin’. Maybe about Haneda?”

 

 

“Well, she had enough of that guy. That’s what she told me last time I saw her. Two nights ago, in fact. She was so
kusai
drunk. I made her stay for ramen and tea before she went home. She even mentioned that she was thinking of going back to Japan. That craziness again.”

 

 

“Whyzu crazy?” asked Haruo. He spoke in a voice lower than usual, and Mas knew that he was already sweet on the ramen lady.

 

 

“Listen, when a Japanese woman comes to America, you can never go back. You didn’t know that? It’s a curse.” With the way Keiko was talking to Haruo, Mas knew she was the type of woman who unwisely dumped her insides at a stranger’s front door. “I’ve been here twenty years. Can you believe it? Seems like yesterday.”

 

 

Haruo deftly covered the edge of his scars with the back of his palm. “Where you from? Tokyo, I betsu.”

 

 

Shut up, Haruo, Mas thought silently. We’re not here for this lady. But there was no turning back.

 

 

“Yokohama.” Keiko’s face brightened for a few seconds. “My family owns a ramen house there. For
champon ryori,
Yokohama is the best.”

 

 

Haruo nodded. “Oh, yah?”

 

 

“Lot of Chinese restaurants, all crowded around. It’s really cleaned up now.”

 

 

Haruo seemed mesmerized by Keiko’s sharp red lips. The fool, thought Mas.

 

 

“Many Chinee in Yokohama, huh?” Haruo said. “Didn’t know.”

 

 

Keiko looked at Haruo a bit oddly, and Mas held back a laugh. Silly Haruo. He really didn’t know much about the underbelly of Japan— the part filled with outsiders and rebels. He was instead one of those mama’s boys who had just hung around the house in Hiroshima. Mas, on the other hand, was like a stray dog, wandering from his seven brothers and sisters into all parts of the city. He ran for a while with two Korean boys, and visited their home by some factories. It was a shantytown, with makeshift stoves and lights hanging from bare wire. Japan was like America. There were plenty of people pushed down that the mama’s boys and girls never saw.

 

 

Keiko continued, “We don’t fit in here; don’t fit in there. If you don’t go back by the time you’re thirty, it’s too late. America’s fully corrupted you. Like me and Junko. But this time around, she sounds like she’s serious. Like she has a sackful of money now. That she could finally retire in style in Tokyo, and show up all her family and friends.”

 

 

Mas bit down on his dentures. Go back to Japan, huh? What kind of money had she stumbled across? “Was she gonna go back with Haneda?”

 

 

“That old fool? Are you crazy?” Keiko’s voice came out like a slap on the face. Mas was surprised. This was a different picture than she had presented during his last visit. “She finally had enough of that man. Do you know that guy was dying?
Gan
in the lungs, I think. Said that he was going to divorce his wife and leave everything to Junko.”

 

 

“Cancer,” Haruo muttered, echoing Mas’s thoughts. Riki had looked bad, and now it seemed for good reason.

 

 

“Now she may never be able to see Tokyo again.” Keiko’s huge eyes watered, and Mas saw Haruo soften like a piece of cheese in the sun too long.

 

 

“We all knew it was a dream,” Keiko said, sniffing loudly. “But then, we all need dreams,
desho
?”

 

 

 

A
fter they left the ramen restaurant, Haruo took all the change from his empty ashtray and headed for a pay phone next to a 7-Eleven. Mas stayed in the car, squeezing and rubbing his forehead in an effort to figure it all out. Shuji Nakane, the man with the clean white business card, must have offered the lady money, and big money, too. It must have been way over the measly thousand dollars in the envelope Mas had left on the mistress’s kitchen table. What had she told him— that this Joji Haneda was a fake, like a piece of cheap metal covered with gold paint? If Nakane was going to buy her silence with dollar bills, there was no reason for him to kill her. So it must have been Riki Kimura who had done away with his mistress. Mas could picture him, his terrible brown teeth bared, knocking the lady’s head against the wall until her head split open. Mas had seen it before, more than fifty years ago. “You’re an
inu,
just like them,” one of their classmates, a star shortshop, had taunted Riki.

 

 

“Shut up, shut up,” Riki cried. Even back then, his fingers had been long and bony. Striking as quickly as a serpent, Riki wrapped his hands around the taunting boy’s throat, pressing down, closing the air passages.

 

 

“Stop, Riki-
kun
.” It had been Joji who had thrown Riki off the boy. They both were tall and thin, but the similarities ended there. Riki ran off at the mouth, talked big, but usually changed his mind when things looked bad. Joji, on the other hand, was quiet, but when he took a stand, there was no moving him.”No sense in getting in more trouble,” Joji told Riki. “It’s bad as it is.”

 

 

 

Haruo returned to the car with a sloppy grin on his face. “Heezu out,” he said. “Wishbone gotsu dis Sansei attorney. The one who helped him get redress.”

 

 

Leave it to Wishbone to hire a lawyer— particularly a third-generation Japanese American— who specialized in getting money from the government for its past sins. But crimes like murder? “Sounds like the wrong type of lawyer.”

 

 

“Well, heezu out, isn’t he?” Haruo shrugged. “I’m gonna go by Tanaka’s and get the whole story. You wanna come?”

 

 

Mas drummed his fingers against the seat’s torn upholstery. “I gotsu to borrow your car, Haruo. I can drop you off at Tanaka’s. I sure Stinky or somebody give you a lift home.”

 

 

Haruo’s good eye focused on Mas’s face. “You not gonna get yourself in trouble?”

 

 

“Ah—” Mas spit out some air, but inside he knew that new trouble was always waiting around the corner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER NINE

 

 

Mas didn’t know quite why he was heading to Ventura. He didn’t think that it had to do with either his or Riki’s confessing. Confessing didn’t change anything. Couldn’t make the past right. But Mas knew that he had to travel back— not to the beginning but to where he once saw hope and possibilities.

 

 

 

Mas had discovered the spot in Ventura during one of his fishing trips in Oxnard. He preferred ocean fishing— casting over the rough foam of the waves— to the idyllic quietness of lakes. Ocean perch, lake trout, they were pretty much the same— white meat and lots of fine bones— but at the beach you could grill your catch with the grit of sand, the hush of the sunset over the sea, and the never-ending crash of the tide, a sound that lulled and prodded Mas into getting out of his sleeping bag and unzipping his tent.

 

 

Ventura was sprawling, a city ready for something big. Mas felt it. Along the coastline were the gigantic summer homes, two-story and freshly constructed. These beaches were much cleaner than the ones down south— it was a surprise to see even a single beer can abandoned in the sand. And farther inland were the new housing developments, quaint shopping malls, all in need of plants and landscaping.

 

 

Farther north of Ventura, past Santa Barbara, was Pismo Beach. Every summer from the time Mari was six, Mas had taken the family out to the dunes for a week. Holding a sharp, long shovel, he sloshed in the surf in his rubber boots and overalls. Chizuko squatted by the yellow bucket and poked her index finger at each clam and counted quietly, while Mari created a maze of footprint patterns. Mas called her over, handed her a shovel, and pointed to the delicate air bubbles emanating from the perfect round holes in the sand.