Snakeskin Shamisen

by Naomi Hirahara

  Stinky, on the other hand, bred and spread rumors like mosquitoes in standing water. Today, however, he seemed to lay low. Must be sick, thought Mas. And then, when Lil inquired when Stinky’s wife, Bette, would be returning from her trip to visit their daughters in Seattle, Mas put two and two together. Stinky, a bachelor for the week, was clearly the Yamadas’ charity case. Never mind that obviously Mas was too. It was always easier to see the true state of someone other than yourself.

  “Sorry it’s just curry. Didn’t have much time to cook anything fancy today.” Lil Yamada brought out plates of sticky short-grain rice covered in a pool of yellow-brown sauce with lumps of vegetables and meat.

  The familiar smell—musty like a garage after a rain, mixed in with exotic spices—made Mas’s mouth water. Chizuko had made curry, or kare rice, as the Japanese liked to call it, once a week from packaged blocks of curry shaped like mini gold bars. You broke each piece off like Hershey’s chocolate and tossed it into a saucepan of boiling water with cooked nuggets of chicken, sliced onion and carrots, and cubed potatoes. Occasionally Chizuko would add raisins, but as soon as she could talk, Mari had requested that the raisins be eliminated.

  Stinky didn’t waste any time after he received his plate. He was raising a heaping tablespoon of curry to his mouth when Tug announced, “Let’s pray.” The spoon clattered to his plate and Stinky turned to Mas for guidance. It had taken Mas a while to get used to the Yamadas’ ritual of saying grace. Mas rubbed his hands on his jeans and then extended his left to Tug. Stinky slowly gave one of his hands to Lil, who smiled encouragingly at Mas to take his other one.

  The last thing Mas wanted to do was hold Stinky’s hand. Stinky had a habit of going shikko without closing the bathroom door. Any other evidence of personal hygiene and decorum, such as the washing of one’s hands, was not apparent. But for the blessing of the curry, Mas reluctantly stretched his hand across the table and pinched the cuff of Stinky’s flannel shirt. Tug murmured something so softly that Mas couldn’t make out everything he said. Mas heard “Lord” and then “friends” and something about Jesus’ name. After he finished, Tug would usually squeeze Mas’s hand, and a faint electrical shock would go up to his elbow. Mas didn’t know if it was a result of a spiritual phenomenon or just static. This time, after “Amen,” Mas quickly withdrew both hands. No electrical shocks this time.

  Lil passed a small bowl of rakkyo, the sweet and tart mini-onions, which she had chopped into slivers. Another bowl held bright-red ginger. Ever since Chizuko had died, Mas kept only a few condiments in the refrigerator—his trusty jalapeño peppers, pickled plums soaking in saltwater, and takuan, bright-yellow sliced radishes that stunk like tired feet released from sweaty socks (had to make sure that the lid was tight on that container). To have different types of pickles tonight made Mas happy. He didn’t exercise restraint and went ahead and piled two spoonfuls of rakkyo and ginger next to his rice.

  “So go on, Mas. Tell us about Randy Yamashiro.” Tug was looking at Mas intently, and Mas recognized the shine in his friend’s eyes. That shine meant that Tug was ready for adventure beyond his three-bedroom, two-bathroom tract house. It also only meant trouble. Hadn’t Tug and Lil recently joined some senior citizens’ group where they could play bingo and sing birthday songs in honor of still being alive? Tug should concentrate his efforts on that, not living on the dark side.

  “Tug, let him eat,” Lil said. She had just finished placing four glasses of ice water on the table.

  Tug dutifully allowed Mas to take three bites, when he couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Do the police have any suspects?”

  Mas shook his head, not mentioning either G. I.’s or Jiro’s name. The police had questioned both of them, but didn’t have enough information to formally charge either man, according to Juanita. Both she and G. I. figured, based on the way Detective Alo was pursuing the investigation, that no prints had been found on the knife.

  Mas had already told Tug about the bayonet. Tug had fought in World War II with the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Unit, leaving a piece of his finger behind on the front line of Europe. He said that it was a small price to pay, considering half of his buddies never made it back. Mas had been shocked that while these young men had been in battle, some of their parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles had still been held behind barbed wire. If the Japanese Americans had been so disloyal, why had Tug and his fellow Nisei soldiers been handed rifles, grenades, and machine guns and told to fight America’s enemy? Didn’t make sense.

  Being a military man, Tug was familiar with weaponry from different eras. He even got out a heavy book on the military and flipped through illustrated pages. He pointed out photographs of bayonets, which just looked like larger versions of hunting knives to Mas, aside from a ring on the side that was supposed to snap onto the rifle.

  “Well, Izu helpin’ dis girl. G. I.’s friend. She says sheezu some kind of PI.”

  “Private investigator?” Lil pursed her lips. Lately she seemed more critical of any woman who pursued a career outside the home. “Does she have children?”

  Mas hadn’t asked, but he figured she didn’t. “Not sure,” he said. “Gonna see her tomorrow. Dunno too much about her.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Tug asked, a white eyebrow arching above his wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Lookin’ into…” Mas said, swallowing a potato, “shamisen.”

  “Sha-MI-sen? You mean that Japanese bamboo flute?”

  “Thatsu shakuhachi,” Mas corrected him. “Shamisen more like guitar. Three strings. A couple of guys doin’ shamisen at G. I.’s party.”

  “That’s right,” said Tug. “I remember seeing the instruments onstage. What does that have to do with Randy’s death?”

  “Sumbody left a shamisen there. Wiz Randy’s body.”

  “Strange,” Lil murmured, biting into one of her sliced rakkyo.

  “So have the police looked into the shamisen players?”

  Mas didn’t know. But he and Juanita were heading out to Gardena the next day to pay the musicians a visit.

  “Spoon saw a hakujin guy wiz a shamisen.”

  “Hakujin man?” Lil frowned. “Somebody at the party?”

  At this point, Mas thought that he’d better not mention Judge Parker. No use stirring up the pot now. Juanita had said that they had to verify every detail before spitting out information.

  “Is this shamisen anything special?” asked Tug. “I mean, is it like those one-of-a-kind fancy violins worth millions of dollars?” Tug’s mind seemed to be racing. Mas didn’t know whether to make it go faster or try to stop it entirely.

  “Covered in snakeskin. From Okinawa,” Mas replied.

  “There’s a lot of Okinawans at Keiro,” Lil offered. Every Thursday, Lil volunteered at Keiro, a Japanese nursing home in Los Angeles. Keiro meant respect for elders, which made Mas laugh. What person, either young or old, in America had respect for elders? Even Japan’s sense of keiro had been going downhill. Hadn’t Mas, in fact, heard of a story of a Japanese youth who had tied up his grandmother and stolen all of her money? Nonetheless, Mas had to admit that it was good that a place like Keiro existed in L.A. He couldn’t depend on his daughter to take care of him, and although he planned to spend his last days in his house on McNally Street, it was reassuring to know that there was a nursing home that served old-time comfort food like okayu, soft-rice porridge, and okazu, stewed bits of vegetable and meat.

  “There’s a resident from Okinawa who is a hundred and six years old—they call her Gushi-mama,” said Lil.

  “That’s her nickname, right? What’s it short for?” Tug asked.

  “Gushiken, I think.”

  The same as Juanita’s name. Mas didn’t know how many Gushikens were running around in L.A., but it couldn’t be that many.

  “By the way, you know who just got checked in?”

  Mas shook his head, ready to receive new gossip.

  “Wishbone Tanaka.”


  “Wishbone? Heezu too young to be in there.” Wishbone was barely even seventy, wasn’t he? Mas could see him in a retirement home, but a nursing home? It had been only four years ago that Wishbone was standing behind a counter at the lawn mower shop, a crooked grin on his pockmarked face.

  “Got pneumonia, I guess. And then took a little spill and twisted his ankle. He was asking about you, Mas. You should visit him sometime.”

  Throughout this whole discussion, Stinky had been stuffing spoonful after spoonful of curry into his mouth. Usually he would be the one volunteering the latest bad news about his best friend, Wishbone.

  “You knowsu about dis, Stinky?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Saw him a month ago.”

  “In Keiro?” Lil frowned. She probably was wondering the same thing Mas was—where had he been since then?

  “Yah, right in the beginning,” he mumbled, focusing his attention back on his food.

  When the last bit of curry had been cleared off each plate, Lil rose. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  Mas stood up to take his dirty dish to the kitchen, but was stopped by Tug.

  “You gonna take my job, Mas?” Tug kidded, taking the plate from Mas’s grasp. He also followed Lil into the kitchen, and Mas found himself awkwardly alone with Stinky. Although Mas didn’t really care how Stinky was, he asked, just to make conversation, “So youzu busy?”

  Stinky took a long sip of his water after picking at his teeth with the side of his thumbnail. “Life’s shit,” he proclaimed. Mas was surprised that he spoke so plainly.

  “Whatchu mean?”

  “I mean, it don’t make sense. A man works hard for his dreams, and what does it get him. Nothing.”

  Stinky wasn’t a philosophical man, so Mas knew that this observation came from something very personal. “Sumptin’ happen?”

  “A new gardener comes into town. Old friend of a friend. Says he knows of a business deal. Will double, triple my money, he says,” Stinky explained. Mas had stopped hanging out at nurseries and lawn mower shops, so he was out of the loop.

  “Japan stocks making a comeback, he claims. If a bunch of us pool our money together, we can buy a lot of shares. Foolproof deal.”

  Mas resisted the impulse to shake his head. There were no foolproof deals, in his experience. Making money meant taking risks, and in both Mas’s and Stinky’s world, they were the ones who were usually on the losing side of the odds. If Mas had been there to hear the scheme, he would have thrown cold water on it—and fast.

  “Some of us were getting returns right away. A guy puts in a thousand, gets five thousand a month later. Pretty soon, all of us want to get in on the action.”

  Mas waited to hear the damage.

  “I lost seven grand. A few other guys got taken for fifteen. None of us can get a hold of the guy now. Phone disconnected. Disappeared in thin air.” Stinky closed his eyes and rubbed his droopy eyelids with his arthritic fingers. “I’m goin’ to get it bad when Bette comes home.”

  Even though Mas was no fan of Stinky, he didn’t wish him any ill will. He was an aho to fall for these schemes, but apparently he wasn’t the only one.

  Stinky had said that he had seen Wishbone a month ago and had no contact since then. Stinky and Wishbone had been thick as thieves; it was unusual for them to be apart longer than three days. Something was up, and Mas suspected it was money. “Wishbone in on dis deal?”

  “How did you—” Stinky closed his mouth and nodded his balding head. He was one of those men who combed the few hairs they had over their bare scalp. For most men, it was vanity. In Stinky’s case, he was just too lazy to go to a barber. “He’s been giving me money to hold on to so he’ll qualify to get into a place like Keiro without paying an arm and a leg. I guess he doesn’t trust his own kids. So I thought that I’ll surprise him—you know, double his money.”

  “How much lose?”

  Stinky pulled at his comb-over, revealing his pimply scalp. “Twenty grand.”

  Mas let out a silent whistle.

  “Don’t have the nerve to tell him—especially with him being sick and all.” Stinky lowered his head, and Mas hated to admit that he felt sorry for him.

  As the coffeemaker gurgled in the kitchen and cabinets were opened and closed, Stinky snapped his eyes open again. “Don’t say a word to them. The last thing I need is Mr. and Mrs. Christian to rat me out to Bette.”

  Mas nodded.

  Lil came out with a tray of coffee cups on saucers. Tug carried out the apple pie that Stinky had purchased from Marie Callender’s. “Ready for dessert?” he asked.

  Somehow Mas was able to get through the apple pie and decaf and into bed by ten o’clock. He woke up two times, once at four thirty and then at six. He was more anxious than he could readily admit to himself. Juanita had warned Mas that Tuesday would be a long day—she had mentioned something about meeting a musicology professor at UCLA—so he placed some squares of Salonpas over his achy joints, in particular his kneecaps and right shoulder blade. He tried to maneuver another adhesive square onto the middle of his back with a back scratcher he had received from Haruo, but the patch kept rolling up like a cigar. These were the times that Mas thought about the merits of a companion like Haruo’s Spoon, but the hassles outweighed the benefits. He would just have to suffer a sore back.

  The next morning, Mas maneuvered his truck around the winding Pasadena Freeway, apparently created for Buicks and Fords just a generation away from the Model T. As he neared Elysian Park, the home of Dodger Stadium, Mas was always struck by the silhouette of the palm trees along a hill, giant frilled toothpicks stuck into a meaty mound of L.A. earth.

  Juanita lived in Silverlake, named after the concrete reservoir that seemed more for show than for any usefulness. He headed toward Hollywood and got off around Echo Park, passing another fake lake, which bloomed with lotus blossoms, their leaves as large as plates, once a year. More curves, more cracked concrete, more hills that tested the Ford’s failing shock absorbers. The page for Silverlake in Mas’s Thomas Guide map had been torn out years ago, indicating how often it had to be used; Silverlake was like Culver City on hills—a web of roads that didn’t know the meaning of a straight line.

  Luckily, Juanita had been good at giving out directions, and Mas only had to backtrack once. She had said that her house was a little red castle, so Mas spotted it a block away. She had a large wooden trellis that supported healthy vines of bougainvillea, also bright red. His daughter, Mari, had once told him that the bougainvillea was her favorite plant, as it somehow reminded her of the California missions along the coast. Mas thought that it was because it was able to grow wild and flourished in full sun, much like his daughter.

  This PI business was lucrative, Mas thought to himself. For how could a single woman afford such a house? He parked the truck in the driveway in back of Juanita’s Toyota, since all the street parking was taken. The doorbell seemed to have been rusted for a while, because it emitted no sound. Mas instead took hold of the metal knocker and bore down on the wood door.

  A Japanese man in his sixties opened the door. He was tall and thin, with a well-groomed mustache over his thick lips. “Yes?”

  “Hallo. Juanita here?” With the same body type as the girl, this must be the father. Mas felt kind of funny asking for a girl young enough to be his daughter.

  “She lives out back. Here, I will show you.”

  The man led Mas through a side gate and down some concrete steps.

  “I’m Juanita’s father, Antonio,” he said when they reached a patio in front of a small back unit. Mas detected a slight clipped accent more reminiscent of his Latino helpers than Japanese Americans.

  “Mas. Mas Arai.”

  “You must be one of Juanita’s clients.”

  “Workin’ together,” Mas said. He wanted to make clear that his involvement with the daughter was purely professional.

  “Juanita.” Antonio banged on the door. “Mr. Arai is here for you.”

  The door op
ened, revealing Juanita in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Her hair was wet, and a towel lay on her shoulders. “Hello, Mr. Arai,” she said. “I’m running a little late. I’ll be right out.” She told him to wait in his car and repark it in the driveway after she moved her Toyota truck.

  Antonio obviously thought his job was done, and excused himself back to the main house. Mas found this father-and-daughter relationship interesting. Living side by side yet somehow able to keep walls between them. The Gushikens were not that Japanese-y, Mas figured.

  He returned to his car and watched a couple of squirrels scamper from one side of the road to another. The squirrels here looked different from the ones in Altadena. Instead of being chestnut brown and plump, their tails were shaggy and black. Mas was wondering what that difference meant, when he finally saw Juanita wave to him from the side of her truck. He waited for her to back out of the driveway and then eased the Ford onto the far-right side of their sloping driveway.

  “I dunno you live wiz family,” Mas said after he had settled into the passenger seat next to Juanita.

  “Yeah, it works out pretty nicely. They have their space, and I have mine. My parents have a restaurant business. Peruvian food. A chain of three restaurants. Antonio’s.”

  So-ka, Japanese Peruvian. Mas had had a hunch. He had had dealings with Japanese Peruvians, namely a gambler named Luis Saito, who had fed him a powerful liquor, pisco, in a black bottle in the shape of an Indian warrior. Mas was even familiar with Antonio’s; he passed by the Hollywood one whenever he went to a friend’s house in the Uptown area above Koreatown.

  “That’s probably why I can’t have a desk job. I’m not used to sitting around. I can’t stay in one place.” Typical gasa-gasa girl, Mas thought. Like Mari, before she had a gasa-gasa baby of her own.