Gasa-Gasa Girl (24 page)

“If Kazzy so
chanto
, he
chanto
till the end,” said Mas.

“You think someone else wrote this note to Anna Grady?”

“And
jisatsu
note.”

“Suicide letter,” Lloyd repeated in English.

Phillip was the first person who came to Mas’s mind. And then the teenager behind the red door. Mas shared his thoughts with Lloyd.

“You think this Riley may have been the one who followed you and Mari in Seabrook?”

Mas nodded. The physical description fit, and based on the gun he’d shoved in Mas’s face, he had the temperament.

“Tomorrow,” said Lloyd, “we’ll go pay this Riley a little visit. You and I, Mr. Arai.”

T
he next morning, even before Takeo had a chance to cry from behind the bedroom door, Mas called Haruo.

“Mas, I just getsu home. Whatsu goin’ on with the dead man?”

“Two dead people now. Ouchi-
san
and a woman.”

“Woman?
Toshiyori
or a young one?”

“
Toshiyori.
Nisei. Sheezu about our age.”

“Thatsu
nasakenai
. How she die?”

“Thrown over her balcony. Seventeen stories high.”

“Catch the guy?”

“
Mada.
But soon.” Mas could at least hope. “Anyhowsu, I needsu your help, Haruo.”

“Anytin’, Mas, anytin’.”

One thing about Haruo, he knew a lot of people. To describe someone like him, the Japanese said
Kao ga hiroi
, “Your face is wide,” and Haruo’s face was one of the widest among Mas’s friends. “You gotsu any contact wiz museum?”

“Which museum, the one in Little Tokyo?”

“Yah.”

“Come to think of it, my counselor, her sista work ova at the museum. Why, Mas?”

“There’s sumptin’ I wantchu to take a look at.”

M
as was eating breakfast when the rest of the family came out of the bear’s lair and settled in the living room.

“You’ll need to stay home with Takeo today,” Lloyd told Mari, who was giving the baby his morning bottle.

“Was planning on it anyway. And I’m expecting that call back from Dr. Bhalla. What’s up?”

“Your father and I have some things to do. Then I’m going to go to the Ouchi Foundation board meeting.”

“They’re not going to let you in.”

“They’ll have to. I’m now officially on the board. That’s why Becca had to legally inform me of the meeting.”

“But they think we killed Kazzy.”

“Charged, but not convicted. Anyhow, that’s you, not me.”

Mari gave her husband a shocked look as if she were a trout pulled straight out of the water.

“That didn’t come out quite right,” Lloyd corrected himself. “You know what I mean.”

“Why does my dad have to come with you?”

Mas looked up from his bowl of dry shredded wheat, curious about how Lloyd would answer.

“I need him,” Lloyd said, “for moral support.”

M
ore than a physical place, New York City was a feeling. Mas was learning that to get around in the city, he couldn’t get too stuck on maps and street names. The best way for him was to depend on his intuition.

In L.A., this approach would never work, namely because you could start driving in one direction on a hunch and suddenly be in either Nevada or Mexico. If you took a wrong turn in New York City, you eventually hit the water, so you then just backtracked in the opposite direction. Mas relied on his inner compass to get to the red door. They got out at Times Square Station and then walked west. Mas knew that they were going in the right direction when the buildings became grimier.

“This area’s called Hell’s Kitchen,” said Lloyd after they had traveled for several blocks.

“Get hot ova here?”

“It’s not that. Actually, I’m not sure why it got its name. It used to be a real rough area, but now they are cleaning it up. Making restaurants and nightspots out of the old factory buildings.”

When Mas described the drugs that he had seen in the back room behind the red door, Lloyd nodded his head. “Your boys were probably selling Ecstasy. That’s the popular drug in these clubs down here.”

Ecstasy,
hiropon
, didn’t make much difference to Mas. Names and chemicals could be changed, but drugs had the same general effect. To give temporary sweetness to a life that was bitter and hard to take. In Mas’s case, he was lucky that he preferred the bitter to the fake sweet.

It was early morning, and that wasn’t doing Hell’s Kitchen any favors. It was like shining light in a drunk’s face: the area, rather than menacing, seemed pitiful. Pedestrians moved in slow motion, as if walking too fast would cause their heads to roll off.

They passed a couple of brick factory buildings, syringes and torn condom packages scattered on the sidewalk. Mas then pointed down an alley, toward a faded red door. “Thatsu it,” he said.

Just as Mas had, Lloyd moved the trash can next to the door and climbed on top so that he could see through the window above the door. Mas sidled up to the trash can, waiting for Lloyd’s scouting report.

“I just see a man sleeping on the couch.”

“Whatsu he look like?”

“Actually, he looks kind of familiar. Brown hair, pork-chop sideburns—you know, like Elvis.” Lloyd told Mas to knock and call the teenager over to the door. Mas didn’t know if this was a good idea, but he complied.

Mas hammered the door with his fist.

There were noises of someone moving around in the room and then a shuffling of feet.

“What?” A voice slightly muffled by sleep, yet still undeniably male and young. “Who the hell is it?!”

Mas placed his mouth near the crack in between the door frame and the door. “Mas Arai. Itsu Mas Arai.”

“Who?”

“I was here dat day. Wiz Phillip Ouchi.”

Mas grimaced as he saw Lloyd reach for the metal light fixture above the door. Who did he think he was? Yojimbo? Some lone-gun bodyguard?

Mas could hear the locks being loosened.

The door opened a crack, just enough for Mas to see Riley’s bloodshot eye, and then
BOOM!
Lloyd’s long legs smashed open the unlocked door, knocking Riley down onto the floor of the back room.

Lloyd had landed on Riley’s legs, and now his long fingers were around Riley’s thick neck. Mas looked around the room, and he grabbed the first weapon he could find, a state-of-the-art hedge clipper, and pressed down on the handle so the clipper’s metal jaw opened.

Riley was gagging as Lloyd pressed down on his Adam’s apple. “I want you to stay away from my wife. And the rest of my family.” Riley pulled at Lloyd’s arms—the teenager had more muscle, but Lloyd had more heart. Lloyd’s hands remained in their position underneath Riley’s chin.

Riley coughed and strained for air. He desperately exchanged glances with Mas, who knew that this
hanatare
, a runny-nose punk, wasn’t worth killing. In fact, the boy was literally a
hanatare
, because two lines of snot were streaming out of his nostrils.

“I thinksu you betta let him say sumptin’,” Mas told Lloyd.

As soon as Lloyd let go, Riley dropped his head, gulping down big breaths. He coughed, letting strings of mucus fall to the floor. “This is screwed, man. I didn’t mess with your wife.”

“You know who I am.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen you at the garden.” He bent down again, and then made a sudden move for the cushions on the couch. Lloyd beat him to it, and a gun clattered onto the ground. Mas scooped it up, and before he knew it, he was pointing it at Riley. Mas had held guns before in his life. One was a distant relative’s shotgun in Watsonville. When they weren’t harvesting lettuce or picking strawberries, Mas went with a second cousin to shoot at geese, ducks, and pheasant at a nearby farmer’s ranch.

And later, in Texas, as Mas traveled to different labor camps during tomato season, he had an opportunity to handle a coworker’s pistol, which they took turns aiming at empty beer cans. That was a wild gun, whose force bruised Mas’s hand in spite of the thick calluses that padded his palms like gloves.

But this gun’s handle was as smooth as polished stone. It was compact and neat, a streamlined weapon that any man would be proud to own. Lloyd must have felt Mas’s excitement, because he gently took the gun from his father-in-law’s shaky hands and held it in his own.

Riley knew he was really beat this time, and leaned back against the wall.

By now, Lloyd had noticed the expensive garden equipment lined up on the other side of the wall. “You ripped us off. That equipment is from the Waxley House.” Lloyd held the gun tighter and aimed it toward Riley’s head. “You’re the one who killed Kazzy.”

“Listen, listen.” Riley raised his hands. “I explained that all to Phillip. I found the guy there. He was already dead, okay? I saw the gun and I was going to keep it, but when I heard the cop cars, I threw it in the trash can down the block. I wasn’t paid to deal with that.”

“Why were you in the garden in the first place?”

“Phillip paid me to vandalize the garden, that’s all. I don’t know what the hell why. Maybe he was getting back at his dad, okay? I used to have an internship at his company. Phillip would come in, thinking he was all that, and then the old man would overturn his decisions. Maybe he was sick of it, I don’t know. Anyway, I got in a little trouble—borrowing too many office supplies—and I got fired. Then, out of the blue, Phillip calls me. Says that he has a little job for me to do. It was easy. Just go to the Waxley House late at night a few times and make a mess. Dump trash. Tear down the branches. I was doing that kind of stuff in junior high.

“But killing Kazzy—that’s not anything that Phillip proposed. And I wouldn’t have done it if he had. I have a good thing going here. I don’t need to kill people to make money. I just have the gun for protection.”

“How about the equipment?”

Riley’s face looked sheepish and, for once, more his age.

“For my girlfriend’s dad. She wanted it as a birthday present. I guess he likes to garden.”

Lloyd lowered the gun. “Well, I guess we’ll hang on to this right now. You return the equipment back to the garden, and we won’t tell anyone that you stole it.”

“So when can I have the gun back?”

“We’ll see,” said Lloyd. “We’ll just see.”