Summer of the Big Bachi

by Naomi Hirahara

  “I felt sick to my stomach, Mas. I wanted to take those tickets back. But I couldn’t. Then I went back to that restaurant. Rat droppings everywhere. I told the owner that I would have to close them down.”

  “Howsu he take it?”

  “Not good. He said we had an agreement. I told him I’d pay for the tickets. He said that wasn’t good enough. He was going to go to my boss and report me.”

  “Whatcha do?”

  “The only thing I could do. I beat him to it. I confessed everything.”

  Mas blinked hard. He could only imagine how difficult that had been for Tug.

  “I was ready to be fired. Even warned Lil. She was plenty furious. Even said I had tainted Joe by taking him to the game.

  “So anyhows, I revealed everything. Afterward, my boss looks at me. ‘I’m going to forget everything you just told me,’ he said. He fixed it all. Gave the restaurant a temporary reprieve. Was assigned to another inspector. I got a second chance, Mas. And I never blew it again.”

  “Lucky, Tug,” Mas said.

  “Lucky nothing,” said Tug, ash white. “It was a curse. He held that over my head my whole career.”

  They had not yet completed the second six-pack when Mas sent Tug home. There was no use getting Lil even madder than she had been that day at the hospital. Before Tug left, Mas made him suck down two cups of freeze-dried instant coffee and even stuffed some old coffee candies in his pocket for the five-minute drive home.

  From what Mas could figure out from the last hour with Tug, the boy was still in trouble. The police had wanted him around for questioning. “Don’t leave L.A.,” they told him. Mas knew what that meant. They were waiting for the mistress to die. Once the death certificate was issued, they would work like hell to send the boy away.

  Tug was convinced of the boy’s innocence. Mas wasn’t as sure. But he was Joji’s flesh and blood, after all. His grandnephew. His only heir. At times at the track, Mas made a bet on a long-shot horse. Yuki Kimura was no horse, but he might as well be one since he was alone in America with only a faint promise of a three-million-dollar prize.

  Mas returned to bed for a while, but sleep would not come. Tug had said that the police weren’t sure what the mistress did for a living. And then there was the apartment manager, making comments about the men coming by. And Shuji Nakane. Where the hell was he now?

  Mas tried to slow his thoughts down. He remembered that when he mislaid something, Chizuko had always told him to travel backward. In his mind he went back, step-by-step, until he landed up in that apartment in North Hollywood for the first time. He pictured the bonsai trees lined up all perfect on those boards, the box of aluminum paper on the counter. The Casio watch. The photos pasted on the wall. One in somewhere like Hawaii, Junko with another girl, wearing leis around their necks. There had been that one with all the girls and men in suits, holding beers and smiling like at a New Year’s party. The girls had been all made-up, lipstick and eyelashes. The photo of Riki and the mistress in Vegas.

  Mas then tried to remember the mistress. Was there anything about her that could tell him who she was? The Shuji Nakane business card. Hardly any papers. And the envelope with money.

  Something then snapped on in Mas’s mind. The map in the envelope that had led him to the poker game. It had been written on some kind of blank receipt form. Probably nothing, he thought. But he got up and pulled at the pockets of his discarded clothing again. Sure enough, there it was. The map had been written on back of a receipt for some kind of business named “Chochin’s.” There was an address in Los Angeles with a zip code and phone number. One look and Mas knew where it was. West L.A. Sawtelle.

  * * *

  Mas used to get together with a Sawtelle gardener who was crazy about the game go. Mas could play go well enough; he even had a set of flat, polished stones stored in covered bowls—one black, the other white. A wooden board, which folded in half with a hinge, completed the set. The board was lined with a grid, hundreds of perfect squares, hundreds of potential moves.

  Kids like Mari thought that the winner of go was the one who got five in a row first. It actually had nothing to do with that. Go was all about territory, about closing a solid line around the other guy’s markers. The key was to set traps in unexpected places. Then, when the other guy was barely looking, you started on your plan.

  Mas drove out west on the Santa Monica Freeway, then down on the dreaded 405. He hated that side of town. Cars were almost piled upon one another. Some were going to the airport; others, who knew where. Traveling on the 405 from the Santa Monica was like risking a bad sunburn. You didn’t want to stay out there too long.

  Mas got off the short stretch of the 90, went on the Marina Freeway, and then finally drove into the Sawtelle District. It had changed a lot. Instead of sleepy storefronts, there were new mini-malls full of fancy cars. Bookstores and video rental places with neon Japanese signs. Sawtelle had moved up in the world.

  Chochin’s was on the edge of the business district, between the new and the old. The building itself looked kept up, but it seemed like it was one foot away from tumbling into nothingness. For one thing, there was no sign. Not anywhere. Second of all, there were no windows.

  The parking lot was virtually empty, aside from a beat-up Chevrolet with a tarnished hardtop, and a white Acura. Mas opted to park across the street, near a new mini-mall. He cautiously approached the nondescript building, glancing through the glass door. Dark. All he could make out was a stand with a display of fake flowers.

  He had heard about these hostess bars but had never gone inside one. They were reserved for big shots from Japan, or the sukebe rich ones over here who liked to have a pretty woman with their beer and sake.

  Women had never been Mas’s weakness, even during his younger years when his hair was black and full. Mas liked a different kind of excitement, which involved dice, money, and cards. Gambling, that’s what pulsed through his veins more than any other kind of lust. He couldn’t imagine paying money for young girls to sit down and talk to him. A waste of time and a waste of money.

  But he knew plenty of other men with different tastes and passions. Riki Kimura, for example, who probably chased everything that he couldn’t have. It didn’t surprise Mas that Chochin’s would be one of his L.A. hangouts.

  A mailman, wearing a light-blue shirt and gray shorts, approached the nondescript building. “It’s closed until five, I think,” he said, pushing some letters through a slot in the door.

  Mas grunted and shoved his hands in his pockets. Last thing he wanted to do was make small talk in front of a place like Chochin’s.

  The mailman was tall, with gray hair everywhere, from the top of his head to his arms and knobby legs. “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know what kind of establishment this is, would you? Recently got this route, and I tell you, I sometimes see some pretty women coming out of this place.”

  This mailman had too much time on his hands, Mas figured. Living off the energy of other people’s lives, instead of finding it in his own. “Dunno,” Mas said, and left for Haruo’s Honda. As he passed the parking lot, two girls came out of the back door of the building. One was so thin that she barely filled out one-half of her leather miniskirt. Mas couldn’t make out the other girl, only that she kept her head down like a sick animal. As they proceeded to a red Corolla next to the sidewalk, the thin girl stroked the other one’s back. It was obvious that the one hunched over was upset, even crying.

  Mas slowed his gait and snuck a look, a long one this time. He had seen the sobbing girl before. Her skin was white and smooth as a newborn’s, except for two red marks on her cheeks. His mind flipped back in time. Keiko’s ramen house, he remembered. It was the girl with the tadpole eyes, except now they were almost swollen shut from despair.

  Mas got back into the Honda and then traveled east along the Santa Monica Freeway. The downtown skyscrapers were barely visible in the late-afternoon smog, and Mas knew he had one more stop to make. The Empress Hotel, i
n Little Tokyo.

  There was nothing imperial about the Empress Hotel. In fact, they should have called it Hole Hotel or Dirty Inn. Even Mas himself felt apprehensive about entering a place that rented rooms by the week. He had a friend who had once lived in such a place, years ago. One of the hotels was being closed down, and Haruo and Mas had gone down to help him. He had had a stroke, and couldn’t walk so good, and the manager had just left him out there on the sidewalk. All the electricity had been turned off, and the remaining residents, all kuru-kuru-pa, wandered around the hallways like ghosts. They had little grip on reality, but enough so that they could at least cash their social security checks and buy food in the grocery store. Within weeks they, too, would be loaded into trucks and deposited into the heart of skid row.

  He parked the Honda at the meter in front of the boarded-up chop suey restaurant. How many times had he, Chizuko, and Mari eaten off their thick ceramic plates? The entrance to the Empress Hotel was on the side, up a narrow flight of stairs. When Mas got to the top, he saw two men, a black man and what looked like a Chinese, sitting on the second flight of stairs.

  Mas moistened his lips. “You knowsu Yuki Kimura? You knowsu where he stays?”

  “That young guy with red hair?” asked the black man.

  Mas nodded.

  “Three doors down.”

  The lights in the hallway seemed to have been burnt out. So much darkness inside, while sun beat down on the sidewalk below. Finally reaching room 7, Mas rapped at the door softly.

  No response.

  “Kimura,” he said, now knocking harder.

  Either the boy wanted to avoid any visitors or he had left the hotel.

  “Somebody’s in there,” the black man reported from the end of the hall.

  Mas could wait no longer. He twisted the door open, and saw a body covered with a blanket. “Kimura-kun,” he said louder.

  The body moved and then turned toward him. The hair, instead of red and spiky, was wavy and dark brown. The face, instead of tanned, was round and pale, with freckles. The eyes were familiar. Mas had seen those eyes before.

  “Yes,” the woman said, sitting up. “What is it?”

  Mas blinked hard. She first looked like any Japanese woman in her seventies. But as soon as she spoke, Mas could instantly see the remnants of the past. Akemi Haneda.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Are you looking for my grandson?” she said, now in Japanese.

  Mas felt like his whole body was shaking, as if his bones were connected only by a skinny string. But when he looked down, his arms, legs, and feet were perfectly still.

  Akemi stood up. Her hair was a rich shade of brown, like good soil, instead of speckled gray and white. The face was made-up, even in this hole of a hotel room. The clothing comfortable, yet well made, with fine stitching. She even smelled sweet. It was obvious. Sometime during the past fifty years, Akemi Haneda had become a high-tone woman.

  “Ah, mistake. Wrong room.” He retreated back into the darkened hallway. He passed the two men, still sitting on the stairs, and then finally stumbled into the street. How could Yuki just leave his grandmother alone in such a place?

  Mas bought a Coke from the video store next door to buy some time. He waited thirty minutes and then an hour. Soon he couldn’t stand it anymore and went back upstairs. He knocked on Yuki’s room, first a couple of times, and then one more round.

  “Who is it?”

  Mas coughed, and then it came out, clear and loud: “Masao, Masao Arai.”

  It was quiet for a full minute. The door creaked open enough for Akemi’s eyes to study Mas. “I knew a Masao Arai once,” she said.

  Mas nodded. “Izu that one, Akemi-san.” After Mas spoke her name, Akemi finally opened the door wider. “Excuse the room,” she said, and then gestured toward the bed. “Here, please sit down.”

  Mas felt his knees grow weak and complied. The bed was mushy like mashed potatoes. The bedspread reeked of something old and unwashed. Why were they staying in such a no-good place?

  Akemi eased herself into a rickety chair next to the bed. Her feet dangled; Mas noticed that her stockinged feet were not flattened down with hammer toes and blemished corns. She had obviously not spent her life toiling in fields or other people’s homes. Akemi smiled so wide that Mas could see the gold on her molars. “I frightened you, it seems like. I guess you couldn’t recognize me like this.”

  “Your eyes. Your eyes are the same.” They were large for a Japanese, double-lidded, and lined with long eyelashes. Only the lashes weren’t as full as they used to be, and the eye color seemed a little dull, but it was indeed the eyes of Joji Haneda’s older sister.

  “Masao Arai, it’s really you. Yuki mentioned that he had met you. It’s so good to see you.”

  It was apparent that the boy had said nothing about blaming Mas for sending him to the mistress.

  “You look the same, Masao-san. Little gray hair, a little more weight. But it’s definitely you.”

  Mas didn’t know whether to speak English or Japanese. He couldn’t stay with one language, and did what he always did, mixed it all up. “So, ne, itsu been long time, Akemi-san.”

  “What happened to you? We left Hiroshima for a couple of years right after the war. I never was clear on where you were.”

  “America. Came in 1947. Been here ever since.”

  “And you’ve never gone back?”

  Mas shook his head. “Neva.”

  “Just like me and America. Until now.”

  It was strange to be just talking to Akemi, answering normal questions with normal answers, when nothing was normal at all. Akemi should not be alive. But here she was, unblemished, unscarred, perfect.

  “So you know my grandson—”

  “Yuki, yah, met him at the medical exams.”

  “Didn’t mention anything specific to me. But then, he hasn’t explained much of anything since picking me up from the airport.” Akemi pressed down on the side of her eye with her fingers, which were bent like old nails. “Maybe you know—what kind of trouble is Yuki in?”

  “Trouble?”

  “Well, I know he’s supposed to stay in Los Angeles for some reason. He’s had trouble with women before. Is it about that?”

  Mas pulled at his pockets. So Akemi hadn’t heard? Mas didn’t know how much to reveal. Riki Kimura. The mistress. Shuji Nakane.

  “Yuki didn’t tell me much at the airport. He doesn’t want me to worry, but I can handle it. You know, Masao-san. You know how much I can take.”

  Mas gritted down on his dentures. Akemi hadn’t changed. Even back then she hadn’t minced words. Being marooned in Japan for half a century hadn’t softened her one bit.

  “You know that we Hanedas are a stubborn people. He tries to hide the worst from me, but I won’t give up.”

  Mas remained silent. “We Hanedas,” she had said. Nothing about Kimuras.

  Mas felt his body go limp. “Itsu a girl,” he finally said. “Girl from a hostess bar. Sheezu hurt bad, Akemi-san.”

  Akemi’s face fell. Outside the grimy window, Mas could see a homeless man digging through the trash. “What connection did they have?”

  “No connection. Little, at least.” Mas failed to mention that he had been the one who had sent the grandson over to North Hollywood. “Just wrong place, wrong time.”

  “So Yuki’s a suspect.”

  Mas nodded. “I guess so. But no arrest. Yet.”

  “Yet.” Akemi seemed to take in that word like the edge of a razor blade.

  “Dis guy I knowsu gotsu him a lawyer. I’m sure heezu gonna be orai. The girl gonna wake up and clear him.”

  Akemi quickly got up from her chair and adjusted her hair in the mirror. She picked up a pocketbook from the corner. “You ready?” she asked.

  “Huh?” Mas remained sunken on the mashed-potato bed.

  “Take me to the lawyer.”

  After making a call to Tanaka’s, Mas learned that the attorney was based in downtown L.A., in th
e center of skyscrapers and gridlock. The attorney’s name was G. I. Hasuike, which didn’t make a good first impression on Akemi. “G. I.—what kind of name is that?” she said, still clutching her pocketbook.

  They parked in an underground lot on Wilshire Boulevard. It was one of those that were dark and made of cement yet still charged as much as a hotel room.

  G. I. Hasuike, Attorney-at-Law, was on the eleventh floor. The building was not shiny and modern like the other ones on the block. It was blocky and square, with corners that collected dust and dirt. A simple brown door, processed wood, held G. I. Hasuike’s shingle. The second T in ATTORNEY was missing, spelling AT ORNEY. At least that’s what Akemi pointed out.

  The receptionist at the front desk was Sansei, about Mari’s age. She was heavy and breathed hard even though she was sitting like a stone Buddha. Her desk was empty, aside from a telephone, memo pad, and a skinny water bottle. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

  “I’m here from Japan.” Akemi spoke like a TV newscaster, and Mas was surprised. Her English was perfect, as if she had never left Los Angeles. “This is regarding my grandson, Yukikazu Kimura. I need to speak to Mr. G. I.”

  “Well, he’s with a client now. And he’ll be taking a deposition in an hour.”

  “I’m sure he can fit us in. We’ll wait.”

  The receptionist looked annoyed but didn’t move from her chair. She lifted the phone receiver, pressed a button, and spoke a few sentences before looking up at Akemi. “Have a seat.”

  After about ten minutes, a man on crutches emerged from one of the back offices and exited through the front door. The Buddha woman then nodded. “You can go in now.”