by Kay Hadashi
“Most days, I try to forget the war, but I do my best to remember them.”
“I know my family is from that part of Italy, but I doubt we’re the same family, Mister Tanizawa. It would be a pretty big coincidence if we were.”
That didn’t seem to matter to him. He only held her arm for a moment. “Doesn’t matter so much. But there’s something about your job they haven’t told you.”
“Oh, what’s that?” she asked.
“Their big idea is to sell the place, build condos, get rich quick.”
Now Gina was getting even more family gossip; unfortunately, she was stuck right in the middle of this batch. “I’m sure it’s a valuable piece of property. Who exactly owns it? You or the entire family?”
He pointed to his face. “I do. As long as I’m alive, they can’t sell it.”
“But…”
“I’ll be dead someday. But once the place goes back to the same way as long time ago, it can get registered as historical landmark. When it gets that, they can never sell the place to make condos.”
“I see. You need me to hurry up and get the registration before, well…”
“I die, yes.”
“I’m sorry to bring it up like that,” she said.
“No one else around here has the guts to. Anyway, you’re polite.”
Gina had some thinking to do. If she hurried and got the job done before the old man died, she’d make him happy. If she dragged her heels long enough for him to die first, and the family was able to sell the property to a developer, the family would have a massive payday. That must’ve been the bonus Millie had implied once.
“They all want to sell the property?” she asked.
“Kenzo and I are against all of them. We’re a couple of sentimental old fools. He’s not as old as I am, but just as foolish.” He chewed but without anything in his mouth. “Maybe one more ally.”
“Who’s that?” she asked. She needed all the allies she could get if she were to join his side of the scheme.
“Reiko. Don’t say anything to the others.”
“I won’t. You’re not foolish, Mister Tanizawa. But you have to realize, my hands are tied with the project. I can’t really manipulate things too much.”
“Miss Santoro, we have a saying in Japanese. We tell people ‘Gambatte!’ when they start something new.”
“Gambatte,” she said to herself to learn the word. “What does that mean?”
“Do your best.” He took a small lapel pin from his pocket and handed it to her. It was diamond shaped, with white and red bands around the edges, and a blue background. In the middle was a hand holding a torch.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Go for Broke emblem. The patch we wore on our uniforms back then.”
“Do you want me to wear it?”
“When you finish the job and get the historical registration, you wear that.”
“Why give it to me now?” she asked.
“I might not be here later.”
Gina could barely keep from crying. He was putting his trust of his little empire into her hands. “Thank you. I’ll do my best. Gambatte!”
“If nothing else, go for broke.” He smiled at her as if the lecture were done. “Will you do something for me?”
She couldn’t imagine what else he might want, maybe for her to trace her family roots to see if she was in some way related to the Santoros of Fabbiano that had showed him that moment of kindness years before. She figured that would be nearly impossible, unless her father knew more about their family history than he’d ever let on. “Of course.”
“Bring me a hot dog. Only catsup on it.”
When Gina went back out to the patio, she was mentally exhausted after hearing Mr. Tanizawa’s wartime story, and his explanation of why the estate needed to be returned to its original condition. She’d never before heard a real war story from the lips of the soldier that had lived it, only reading about battles in school history books. The least she could do was take him a hot dog with catsup.
“Is that for my father?” Millie asked as she watched Gina fix the hot dog.
“It’s okay if he has one, right? He almost made it sound like I had to sneak it to him.”
Mille laughed. “He shouldn’t have the salt, but he’d find a way of getting one eventually. Put plenty of catsup on it, something else that’s taboo. I think the best part for him is finding people to help him break the rules. What did the two of you talk about for so long?”
“Oh, just a story from the good old days.”
“About the estate?”
“Mostly about the war.”
“That’s odd. He never talks about it with us.”
“It was kind of a personal story.” Gina noticed there was still a little wine left in the bottle she’d brought. “Is he allowed to have wine?”
“He has a cup of sake every day. No reason why he can’t have a little wine with his hot dog.”
Gina went back to Mr. Tanizawa’s room with his meal. She found he had two new visitors when she got there. One of them surprised her.
Mr. Tanizawa listened as his youngest son introduced himself as if he and Gina had never met. He was at least a dozen years younger than any of his siblings. The bigger surprise was that he was the owner of Bunzo’s Bar. It was his girlfriend that got most of Gina’s attention, though.
“Mom and Dad wanted to give me a Japanese name, so they settled on Haruki, my grandfather’s name. Most people call me Harry. This is my friend, Holly.”
Holly’s face barely changed, but Gina could easily see the piercing glare coming from her eyes. She’d cleaned up since the night before, with a change of clothes and shower. What had been big blond hair a day earlier was today a soft brown, and styled straight. Even with the change, Gina knew it was the same girl.
“Nice to meet you, Holly.” Gina couldn’t help but grin. “You seem familiar. Have we met?”
“Not likely,” Holly said to Gina. She put her hand out to shake. Gina hesitated, wondering if she could catch a disease from shaking her hand.
“Maybe I saw you at the park, or in a restaurant?”
Holly’s glare turned deadly. “I don’t go to parks.”
“I suppose not.”
Gina figured that few Tanizawa family members knew Holly was a working girl, maybe not even Harry, even though she worked out of his own bar. While they talked around the truth, Mr. Tanizawa took a sip of the wine he’d been brought.
Gina smiled at him, and he smiled back. “How is it?”
“Exactly like I remember,” he said.
“Remember what?” Harry asked. “Dad, you don’t drink wine.”
The old man glared at his youngest son. “I’m old enough.”
Gina left Mr. Tanizawa to his hot dog and wine, and Harry to tell his elderly father about the bar. When Gina left the bedroom, Holly went right after her, grabbing her arm from behind.
“You say one word to anybody and you’re dead, understand?”
Gina yanked her arm away from the surprisingly strong grip. “Look, what you do to earn a living is your problem. But these people seem decent to me, so why don’t you just walk away before you embarrass yourself?”
Holly had two words for Gina, the same two she’d used the night before while they were in the parking lot at the park.
“Same to you, charm school dropout.”
Once she was back on the patio, Gina had a hot dog of her own, tried milling around to chat with strangers, had a soda, and said her goodbyes to the people with names she could remember.
“Well, I’m learning all kinds of secrets today,” Gina said, going back to the Datsun. “I wonder what’s next?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gina was up early the next morning, ready to work. After reading online about the battle Mr. Tanizawa had told her about, and thinking about the family he’d met in Italy, and hearing why he was in a hurry but the family was dragging their feet over the completion of t
he project, she had a renewed interest in getting back to the project.
What she couldn’t figure was why the family seemed so divided about the property. She could understand the interest in the money from the sale to a developer, but it was also a part of their heritage on the island. Much of the family had grown up in the house, and worked on the little farm in their spare time. It was a beautiful parcel of land, with trees all around the edges, and the stream along one side. The old house wasn’t anything to brag about, even after it was rebuilt. But it seemed like a shame to let it go simply for the money.
“About the only one without a connection to the old house is Harry,” she muttered while getting dressed. “I bet that little thing he hangs out with has more to do with wanting to sell the property than anything else.”
The agenda for that day was to continue digging the old fishpond. While half the crew worked on that, Gina worked with others to rebuild the pig fence that went around the property along the ridge. She’d seen a wild goat munching on the fruit that was being tossed into the giant compost pile that morning, and the time had come to keep some of the bigger critters out. When she saw Florinda and Clara return from a trip to the supermarket, she decided to join them in the house. Gina had a few questions for them, mostly for Clara.
Florinda went to the fence work party, leaving Gina alone in the kitchen with Clara.
“How’s the pregnancy coming?”
“Good enough. Two more months.”
Now came the delicate part. “Is your husband one of the work crew?”
“I think I told you last week that I’m not married,” Clara said.
“I remember now. You’re raising the baby on your own?”
“Florinda will help me.”
“That’s what sisters are for. You’re sisters, right?”
Clara nodded. She was busy swiping mayonnaise on slices of white bread. “I’d be lost without her.”
“I have a sister, too. I can’t think of having a life without her.”
“You must miss her a lot.”
“Yep, sure do.” Gina had taken up the task of wiping mustard on slices of bread, the other side of the sandwiches that were being made. “Do you know much about the Tanizawas?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. What kinds of farms they have?”
“They have more than farms. They have a grocery store, restaurant, a shop at a little mall, rental houses, some other places.”
“I’m more interested in hearing about the farms. Haven’t most of the crew working here worked for them elsewhere?”
Clara nodded. Now that the slices of bread had been coated, she went to work slicing cheese. “One place is a produce farm, another fruit. They grow flowers somewhere else. And a chicken farm. I’ve never been there.”
“There’s a place called Bunzo’s in Kapalama. I think the youngest son owns it.” Gina scratched her head, pretending to give something some thought. “What’s his name again?”
Clara’s hand slipped with the cheese cutter, slamming into the cutting block. “Harry.”
“Yes, that’s right. Are you familiar with that bar?”
Clara fired darts at Gina as deadly as what Holly had glared. “Why should I? Why should I care about some dumb old bar? Why do you keep asking me about that place?”
“Sorry. I guess it was a dumb question.” Gina needed to try again. “Do you know his girlfriend? Her name is Holly.”
Clara slammed the cheese slicer down on the cutting board. “I don’t know anybody, okay?”
Gina watched as Clara assembled sandwiches. Sliced Velveeta on white bread with mayonnaise and mustard. The same thing as the previous week. Gina tried to recall if Clara had even made a joke one day, about that being the only kind of sandwich she knew how to make. Then something else occurred to her, something Detective Kona had said to her a few days before. It was what the coroner had found during Danny’s autopsy.
Cheese, mustard, and mayo on white bread made by Clara every day for the crew. The same thing found in Danny’s stomach during his autopsy. Danny found dead on her porch. Clara making a wide berth around the porch to go in the back door.
It wasn’t superstition or fear of ghosts that made Clara nervous at the house.
“Clara, you knew Danny, didn’t you?” Gina asked quietly.
“Maybe.”
“Was he the father of your baby?”
“Why do you care?”
“I care because Danny was found on my front porch, and I have the police coming out here every day to question me about him. Nobody seems to know who he was, or at least they don’t confess to knowing him. But you do.”
“So what if I do? I didn’t kill him!” Clara said. She had a knife in her hand, ready to cut the sandwiches in half, or anything else that got in her way.
Gina stepped back to lean against the counter, keeping a wary eye on Clara’s knife. “Nobody said you did. But the police are still trying to figure out who did. Do you know?”
“Why should I help the cops?”
“To bring Danny some justice. He deserves that much.”
“Just a homeless guy. Who cares about them?” Clara said.
“You must’ve, enough to sleep with him. The coroner found a partially digested cheese sandwich in his stomach, just like the kind you make every day. Did you give it to him?”
“Maybe.” Clara lopped a sandwich in half using the knife as a guillotine. “He wasn’t getting anything else to eat. I took him the leftovers from our lunches. What’s wrong with my sandwiches, anyway?”
“Nothing. How long had he been homeless?”
“I dunno.”
“Were you homeless, too? Did you live at Kapalama Park with him?”
“No!”
Gina knew she was straying into female battlefield territory, and landmines were everywhere when it came to pregnant women. But Clara was turning out to be the best lead either she or Detective Kona had so far.
“What kind of relationship did you have with him?”
“Different. We weren’t in love or nothin’.”
Gina had a ‘wait a moment’ situation. Getting a drink of water, she leaned back against the counter and watched Clara work. Ignoring the belly, she took in the girl’s appearance with a new eye. She had grown-out highlights in her hair, and a few waves that were turning to split ends. She was the only one in the work crew that wore makeup, and Gina had figured it was because she worked indoors and didn’t need to worry about sweat messing it up. She was just a little too sultry looking to be part of a crew that did farm work.
“He was a john, wasn’t he?” Gina asked as gently as possible. Even with that, she steeled herself for an explosion from Clara.
“Not a john. I owed him some money and I had to work it off.” Clara stacked the sandwiches on plates. “He wasn’t homeless then. He was still a…my manager.”
“Manager as in pimp?”
Clara nodded. “I didn’t get paid by someone, and I had to work it off.”
“How many times did he make you work it off?”
“Just the once. But I know it was him that did this.”
“How long did you work for him?” Gina asked.
“Just a few months. I wasn’t very good at it. Pretty bad, actually. That’s why I didn’t always get paid.”
“Where did he have you work? The streets or did customers call for you?”
“I worked out of Bunzo’s. He had only a few girls, and we all worked out of Bunzo’s.”
Gina snapped her fingers. “I knew something was going on there. I just thought it was Harry behind it.”
For the first time, Clara made eye contact. “It wasn’t Harry. That guy’s too dumb.”
“He didn’t impress me as a scholarship winner. It was only Danny that had girls at Bunzo’s?” Gina asked.
“Someone else did. He was better at business than Danny, though.”
“And that caused trouble?”
Clara nodd
ed.
“Was Holly one of Danny’s girls, too?” Gina asked.
“She works for someone else. Can’t trust her. She’s bad, like rotten bad. Stay away from her.”
“I plan to. Who was the other pimp that had girls at Bunzo’s?”
“That bartender named Chuck. He was new, but he brought his girls with him from another bar that closed. He even paid Harry a small commission, just to look the other way and to lie to the police whenever they came around.”
“And Danny didn’t pay?”
Clara shook her head. “Too cheap.”
“It seems to me that Harry would’ve forced Danny to pay something, just for the protection, if nothing else.”
“No, I mean we were too cheap. The girls didn’t earn much. We were the cheap alternative to Chuck’s girls. Danny couldn’t afford to pay anything to Harry, for as little as we earned for him. Some nights we didn’t work at all. We just sat there and drank watered-down drinks that Danny had to pay for. So humiliating to sit there and smile at jerks who walked right past us, only to hook up with someone more expensive. Like we weren’t good enough. But whenever Danny wasn’t around, Chuck would steer johns to his girls, and talk crap about us, about Danny’s girls having the clap or whatever.” Clara sighed. “Eventually, the other girls started working for Chuck. I was Danny’s last one.”
The whole thing sickened Gina. In her brief time as a police officer, she arrested plenty of hookers and a few of their pimps, but had never learned much about the inner workings of the trade. Now, here was a girl who had somehow fallen into that life, and came away pregnant by her pimp, who was now dead.
“The police are trying to figure out Danny’s last name. Do you know it?” Gina asked.
Clara shrugged. “I’m not so sure Danny was his real first name.”
Now it was becoming heartbreaking, that Clara didn’t know the real name of the father of her baby.
“Do you know who killed him?”
Clara hung her head again. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Promise.”
“Any guesses?” Gina asked.
“If I had to guess…”
Just then, they were interrupted by Felix and Flor coming in for the sandwiches and lemonade that had been made.