“You shot him? Hetta, you shot a rat inside your house? Are you insane? Haven’t you ever heard of rat poison? You can’t shoot things anymore. There are laws. I’m sure of it.”
“Oh, fooey. For crying out loud, I have a right to...oops, I do believe sirens approacheth.”
* * *
The police were less than pleased, even though I had registered the gun several years before and my carry permit was still up to date. They gave me a warning about discharging a weapon within the city limits, to which I said, “You have got to be kidding me. We’re talking Oakland here.” They didn’t find me at all humorous and called Animal Control to pick up the rat carcass. Had to be checked out for rabies, they said.
“Biggest friggin’ wharf rat I’ve ever seen,” said the Animal Control officer as he bagged the rodent’s remains. “Must ‘a hitched a ride in one of them Jap cargo crates.”
I was cleaning up rodent blood when one of Oakland’s finest said, “Nice head shot, ma’am. You know, though, what with you living alone and all, you might consider getting a dog.”
So I did. Or rather, he got me.
And today marked the Fifth Annual Raymond Johnson Coffey Adoption Bash and Weenie Roast. Most likely our last.
Mr. Fujitsu’s hairless Chihuahua, Pancho-san, took the “Homely Hound” award, as always. His prize, a scoop of liver and cheese ice cream from Doggie Delights in the People’s Republic of Berkeley, almost cost Bunnie Adams’s sweet, but dumb as dirt golden retriever her “Best Behaved” trophy when she tried to nose in on Pancho-san’s treat. At the last minute Miss Goldie Manners remembered hers and backed off, but RJ streaked in for the steal. Pandemonium was narrowly avoided when Dr. Craig launched a scattershot of minty biscuits.
Mr. Fujitsu and Dr. Craig’s sig other, Raoul, discovered a common interest when they spotted my ancient Japanese tansu chests. Raoul, an antiques dealer who in a former life was a farm boy from Marfa, Texas, speculated perhaps my underwear resided in Mr. F’s Samurai ancestors’ furniture. It wasn’t an interest in my underwear they had in common, though, but rather a passion for things Japanese.
They inspected the shoji blinds in the dining room, checked the quality of the rice paper, and made some suggestions for repairing those doggy nose holes with paper butterflies. Then Mr. Fujitsu zeroed in, you should excuse the expression, on my Pachinko machine, a cross between pinball and slots.
Lights flashed, bells rang, and curses and whoops filled my office as the elderly man showed off skills indicating a misspent youth in Tokyo’s Pachinko parlors. He emptied the machine of tokens in record time. As I was reloading, the key hanging from my neck swung forward and clinked against Mr. F.’s glasses. He was squatting on his haunches, giving me instructions at the time, and almost tumbled onto his butt. Pushing himself up, he grabbed the key, taking little consideration that it was still attached by a chain around my neck.
Inspecting the only physical evidence I had left to prove Hudson Williams, the jilting scoundrel, ever existed, Mr. Fujitsu sucked his teeth. “You big drink,” he said with a grin.
“Pardon?”
“Whiz key?”
I was at a total loss. After living in Tokyo and working with an all Japanese staff for two years, I thought I could figure anything out, but Mr. Fujitsu could still throw me on occasion. This was one of them. We looked to his wife, Mariko, for help. She fingered the key, trying to read the inscription.
“Ah. Loyal Clown,” she explained. Her husband nodded and smiled in agreement.
“Loyal Clown?” I asked.
“Hai. Clown whiz key.”
Call me stupid, but I didn’t get it. It must have been obvious, for Mariko took me by the hand and led me to the bar. She rummaged among the bottles and came up with a purple bag. “Whiz key.”
“Crown Royal, Hetta,” Jan said impatiently. “And I thought you were a linguist.”
“Mariko, are you saying this key is a bar key?”
“Hai, Hetta-san,” she said. I took off the key, and she squinted closely at the tiny Kanji lettering. “Key Noturu Crub, Loppongi.”
The Key Note Club in Tokyo’s Roppongi section. One of the few jazz bars I’d missed. But Hudson, it seemed, had kept a bottle of Crown Royal there. In most key clubs in Tokyo you bought a bottle of overpriced liquor, they gave it a number, and you received a card identifying you as the owner. When you returned, they’d give you a bucket of ice, your mixer and the bottle. As long as there was liquor in the bottle, you only paid for set ups. Evidently, the Key Note Club gave out an actual, engraved, key. At last, I knew what the key was for.
13
“Get rid of it, Hetta,” Jan said later that day as we drove to her flat in the city after the adoption/birthday bash ended in a brawl. Even some of the dogs got involved.
“What?”
“You know what. The damned key. As long as you hang on to it, you won’t be able to get over what happened.”
“I am over it. I keep the key to remind me not to be so stupid again. Ever.”
She shrugged. “Could have happened to anyone. Hudson Williams had all the credentials. Good job, good education, great promise. Good looking, too, from the sounds of it. You never showed me any pictures. Think about it, girl, you were screened up one side and down the other before you were allowed to work in Japan. As an American working there, so was he. Even his company’s president said Hudson hoodwinked them, too.”
“True. You’d think the SOB would have been satisfied stealing Comptec blind. But nooooo, he had to clean out my bank account, as well. How could I have been so damned dumb? I’d only known him six months, and he had PIN. Duh! Thank heavens I didn’t keep a big yen account. I should have a tee shirt printed up that reads, ‘Hudson Williams took a powder out of Tokyo, and all he left me was this damned key.’ ”
But the Fujitsu’s new information about the key set me to thinking. Did I still know anyone in Tokyo who could check out the Key Note Club for me? Probably not. At least, no Gaijin.
I soon found after moving to Tokyo that Gaijin did not mean foreigner, but really means Not Japanese. The Not Japanese distinction lumped all foreigners into the Barbarian category. The Japanese engineers I’d worked with probably wouldn’t, or couldn’t, bluff their way past the tight security of these key clubs. I needed a sneaky Gaijin, but my fellow Barbarian friends, perfect for the job, were probably all gone by now. They were, after all, getting a little long in the tooth to still hold down their jobs as high-class hookers.
Hookers?
Well, maybe not officially. Officially they were hostesses. Dad’s generation would have called them B-girls: bar girls. These gals were all stunningly beautiful, mostly foreign, and were paid barely enough by their Japanese employers to afford rent on very small apartments and keep themselves in sequined gowns.
Monday through Friday the hostesses worked at ritzy nightclubs, hired to entertain Japanese businessmen and their clients. Mix their drinks, smile a lot, and carry on polite conversations in English. Sort of Berlitz meets burlesque on the company tab. Whether the after hours goings-on went on the company’s very liberal expense reports or not, I never really found out, but the going rate for such high-toned harlotry was a grand. A thousand big ones, U.S. dollars, per night. I was definitely in the wrong bidness. But then again, I am neither tall, blonde, nor willing to suffer the attentions of short drunken men, so I guess I’d better stick to engineering if the rent is to be paid.
Anyhow, after the Hudson calamity, I found myself stuck in Tokyo without any non-business related acquaintances. It was to that end that one Saturday night I wandered back into the bar where I had met the jilting bastard: Red’s Revenge, Home of the Fightin’ Roo. The gin joint was, as I knew it would be, frequented mostly by foreigners who liked to get together, drink, and bitch about their host country. My kind of place.
Red, a diminutive, feisty, titian-haired Aussie, ran a great bar and a tight ship. She was also an ex B-girl who had made some good—read, Japanese mafia—c
onnections and ended up with a successful bar. Her place was a gathering spot on Saturday and Sunday nights for foreign hostesses whose Japanese clients went home to wife and family for the weekend.
My newfound friends, including Aussie Red, ended up spending most Sundays at my apartment. The Baxter Brothers Corporation had generously set me up in an American-sized two bedroom apartment capable of housing at least six Japanese families. Not only did I have lots of space, I had cable TV. In English.
After drinking ourselves silly at Red’s on Saturday nights, we’d end up eating a Korean Barbecue breakfast at four or five in the morning. Reeking of kimchi, we staggered back to my place. Sunday mornings found a litter of somewhat bedraggled beauties sleeping all over my apartment. The day was spent cooking, watching movies, and educating Hetta as to the subtleties of soliciting mink coats and the like from ever horny Japanese men. I never had the opportunity to put my lessons to work, but by golly if I ever need a mink, I know how to get one. “The same way minks do,” vamped a stunning blonde from Washington, DC. I heard she later entered politics, working as a PR officer for Bill Clinton.
But those Tokyo beauties were long gone by now, replaced by a new set of younger women willing to make special dates after working hours for a thousand bucks a pop.
So, who could I …? Jan’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Hetta, you missed our turnoff. Are you all right?”
I shook off my musing and turned at the next block. “Sorry, I was thinking about the key and what could be in the Tokyo hooch box besides Clown Loyal. Maybe Hudson left something there I could sell. The jerk still owes me fifteen-hundred bucks.”
Jan shook her head and glared at me. “Now you listen to me. There’s nothing in the box. All that’s yen under the bridge. End of story. Forget the whole thing. Throw the key in the garbage, and get on with your life. And cheer up. How are we supposed to terrorize a street fair in our usual style today if you aren’t your usual self?”
“And which usual self would that be?” I grumped. “Pushy? Demented? Terminally manless? Jobless? Bordering on dogless?”
Jan wisely did not answer, leaving me to contemplate losing RJ. His birthday/adoption party had painfully reminded me of the day he got me.
The day after the day of the rat.
* * *
The Oakland dog pound was noisy, smelly and heartbreaking, but I knew that’s where I’d find my dream doggy.
She would be small, but not too fancy. Mannerly, of course, perhaps even well-bred, but also fiercely protective. Cute. Cuddly. Maybe she’d look like Benji. She’d be smart, like Lassie. But smaller, without all that hair.
Escorted by a gentle, weary Hispanic volunteer in his seventies, I walked past cage after cage of barking, howling, cringing, or jumping canines of every make and color. I stuck my fingers through the wire to pet those that would let me. My heart hurt for each one. I wanted to take them all home, protect them from the cruel world that put them behind bars for the crime of being born.
My escort, Juan, pulled on my elbow, guiding me away from one cell and the low, menacing growl from deep within. “Stay away from him, señorita,” he warned. “Don’t put your fingers in there.”
I heard the dog rumble again, but as I hurried to get past, something held me back. Doggy ESP?
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked, keeping my distance as told.
“He don’ like people, so they gonna put him down tomorrow.”
“Really?” I stepped closer to the cage.
“Careful now, he’s....” But I didn’t hear the rest. Soulful black-rimmed dog eyes locked me in a visual embrace, then pulled me forward towards the forbidden cage. A foot away, I stopped.
“Hi, baby,” I said.
Hesitant tail wag.
“Come over here,” I cooed, sticking my finger through the cage. I ignored the attendant’s fearful intake of air and continued talking in soft tones to the dog. “I won’t hurt you, honey, I promise.” I squatted down to the dog’s level and focused my gaze right above his head so I wasn’t looking him in the eye.
Tentative steps forward on four stiff legs brought him within biting distance of my finger.
“You wanta go bye-bye with—” I didn’t get the “me” out before the dog charged the wire in what can only be called an ecstasy of wiggles, wags, and grins. He whined his plea, “Get me out of here, and I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.”
I scratched his ears through the wire and said, “Wrap him up, Señor Juan, I’m takin’ him home.”
Juan shook his head and shrugged. “Your funeral.”
“And Juan, you’re wrong. He likes people, he just don’ like men.”
But I was wrong. My dog was a racist.
14
“RJ’s losing weight, isn’t he?” Jan asked after we arrived at her apartment with only one more wrong turn. The birthday bash, plus Mr. Fujitsu’s revelation about the key, had left me unable to concentrate on driving, but we finally got to Jan’s place.
We both looked at my dog. He was still wearing his red velvet bow tie and was lounging in the bay window of Jan’s Victorian flat, his red coat glistening in the late afternoon sun. He was alertly watching passersby on the street below. Someone who didn’t know better would see a happy, healthy dog. Only his swollen leg and slightly protruding ribs told the real story.
I nodded. “Two pounds in the last three weeks, even though we’ve upped his Ben and Jerry’s allotment. He eats well, though, and doesn’t seem to be in much pain. Craigosaurus keeps a close eye on him.”
“What was that about you being jobless?” she asked, referring back to what I’d said in the car while we were crossing the bridge.
“Oh, nothing. Feeling sorry for myself. My Seattle gig only has nine or so months to go, and you know how I am. If I don’t have something new lined up, I start getting antsy. My malaise will pass. As soon as I get a new project, marry a handyman to save my decaying home, and a dog angel descends to heal RJ. Oh, and porkers go airborne.”
Jan wasn’t buying my “poor me” act.
“Hetta, get off my bed and comb your hair. We’re hitting the street fair. Move it!”
I went to check myself in the mirror while Jan straightened her comforter.
“And when,” I demanded, “did that happen?”
“What?" she asked in mid pillow fluff.
“When did we get neat? Tidy? My dorm room resembled a garbage dump. Your first apartment was practically condemned by the Department of Sanitation. We both had cockroaches with NASCAR numbers on ‘em,” I raved. “When did we start cleaning?”
“What in the world are you talking about?” Jan looked as though she were alone with Norman Bates. She moved between me and the kitchen cutlery.
I sat down next to RJ and buried my head in his fur.
“Hetta?”
“Sorry, Jan. It’s just, well, the other day, when we were in the Coast Guard class, I suddenly wondered when I started finding men with gray hair attractive. At what point did I begin to clean house and pay bills on time? I even voted Republican, for pity’s sake!”
Jan planted her hands on her hips and smiled. “Midlife crisis. Buy a red convertible.”
“I have a red convertible.”
“Then buy something else. Let’s go to the fair and shop.”
“Good thinking.”
We cruised Union Street, trying on earrings and embroidered vests, grazing on Polish sausages, pizza, gelato, and Belgian waffles, ending up in our favorite bar, Perry’s. Using RJ as a shill, we conned two tourists out of their choice table so we could keep an eye on him through an open window, and tied him to a parking meter six feet away. His chagrin at not being allowed inside was soon soothed by strangers’ ear scratches and coos of “cute dog.”
“Isn’t that your dog?” a cop asked me, pointing at RJ.
“Uh, maybe. What’s wrong, officer, his meter run out?” I quipped. Jan’s face lit with approval and the cop burst out laughing.
&nb
sp; “No, I was wondering if I’d have to arrest him again this year.”
Uh-oh. “Ah,” I said. “Officer Jones, I presume.”
“The one.”
“Entrapment, sir, pure and simple. I should like to point out that you did leave your car windows down, and cookies on the seat, thereby enticing my mutt into a life of crime. He’s a minor, you know. You will notice, however, the alleged criminal is fettered this year to protect him from your obvious ploy to entrap.”
“Tell it to the judge. What’s wrong with his leg?”
Just Add Water (Hetta Coffey Mystery Series (Book 1)) Page 8
