Snakeskin Shamisen

by Naomi Hirahara

  Mas didn’t know how to take her comment, so he decided to ignore it. “Yah, can you take a look at a pic-cha?”

  “What picture?”

  “Photo. Of a hakujin man. See if itsu same guy you saw wiz shamisen.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mas. My eyes aren’t that good, remember? But have Haruo bring it to work with him, and I’ll get back to you.”

  Mas handed the phone back to Haruo to receive his instructions. Mas understood how it worked now. Haruo had a new boss now, and it wasn’t Taxie, the guy who operated the flower stall where he worked at. “Yah, yah, yah,” Haruo was saying into the receiver.

  Mas left soon after with a bag of Hachiyas. He was sitting at the kitchen table, in fact, biting into the soft tip of a kaki, when the telephone rang. Haruo. They seemed to have a bad connection, because Mas heard clicking noises after every three sentences.

  “The photo…”

  Mas waited.

  “Youzu right,” Haruo said. “Spoon say dat man, Judge Parker, was the one with the shamisen.”

  chapter eight

  In Japanese Noh puppet plays, a stagehand called a kurogo runs all the behind-the-scenes activities right on stage. Dressed in all black like a killer ninja, the kurogo moves furniture or changes the actors’ clothing as surreptitiously and unnoticeably as possible. Mas knew that to properly handle Judge and Mrs. Parker, he had to do the same. But Mas wasn’t much into subtlety or deception. So he dutifully dug out Juanita’s phone numbers. He dialed both her home office and cell phone, but came up empty and didn’t bother to leave a message. Strange, Mas thought. Juanita always seemed to answer her cell phone whether she was in the toilet or speeding on the freeway. She must be involved in some heavy-duty business to ignore its ringing.

  After watching a television rerun of a detective who lived in a trailer in Malibu, he called Juanita’s cell phone again, but got her voice mail. Shikataganai. What could he do? He went ahead and left a message: “Itsu Mas. Give me a call. Important.”

  About an hour later, the phone did ring. “Hallo, Juanita?”

  “Juanita, who’s Juanita? Your new girlfriend?” It was Mari in New York City.

  “Baka yo, have nutin’ to do wiz girlfriend.”

  “Okay, okay,” Mari said, almost sounding relieved. Mas, for a minute, thought about Professor Genessee and then berated himself. Don’t be kuru-kuru-pa. A sensei like that would have nothing to do with a no-good gardener.

  “Howzu baby?” Mas asked.

  “Takeo’s not a baby, Dad. He’s almost three. We’re talking about visiting you in California someday. Now, wouldn’t that be something?”

  Mas couldn’t picture the presence of his active grandson bringing life to his dust-filled rooms. He hadn’t seen Takeo for two years, but traced his development through regular telephone calls and letters from Mari.

  Then there it was again. A clicking noise.

  “What’s with your phone, Dad?”

  Okashii. “Dunno,” Mas said. “Keep happenin’.”

  “You should get the phone company to check it out.”

  Mas grunted.

  “You’re not going to do it, are you? You’re going to wait until the phone goes dead and you’re in trouble.”

  Urusai, thought Mas. Sometimes Mari was as much of a nag as her mother. The line crackled again.

  “Has it been raining over there? Didn’t your line go dead during El Niño?”

  “No, no rain.”

  “Weird. Well, get it checked out.” She then began asking if there was anything new in his life.

  “You knowsu, same, same.”

  Mas didn’t mention to Mari anything about his volunteer investigative work for G. I. She would tell him to drop it, take it easy instead, and find friends to play his favorite game, go. But most of his peers were buried or close to it. And since Haruo had his lady friend, Mas was pretty much on his own. He spoke to Mari a few minutes more and then got into bed. The chase, news of the dead Japanese man, Spoon’s identification of Judge Parker, it was too much for Mas to take right now. That night, another nightmare visited him. Gushi-mama again, this time wearing a bright-red wig like a kabuki lion dancer’s. She was stomping in circles, her feet wrapped in tabi, the traditional white socks with a split for the big toe. She was gesturing for Mas to come, but then she would hide behind a giant tree or a concrete post. Mas felt himself getting angrier and angrier. “Ole lady, what do you want?” Mas called out. Either show yourself or disappear. And then, as if adhering to Mas’s demands, she vanished, and Mas found himself in complete darkness in a huge wet tomb, water dripping from the sides of the walls, slippery algae accumulating on the floor.

  Mas woke up cocooned in a cotton sheet and worn blanket. He shook his shoulders free and wiped the sweat dripping from his ears. Gushi-mama kept visiting him in his dreams, and Mas was beginning to see that it was no coincidence. Gushi-mama had revealed that she had known Isokichi Sanjo, but said nothing about his death. When it became light, Mas called up Haruo to accompany him back to Keiro. Haruo could be his anchor at times, a solid weight that prevented Mas from drifting into unsafe waters. But Haruo, again, was otherwise occupied. He was going over to Palm Springs to help Spoon and her daughters with their floral decoration job at a hotel.

  “Gonna see Wishbone at Keiro?” Haruo asked. He obviously wasn’t informed of the latest news. Mas told him about Stinky’s Japanese stock scheme and how it had imploded, spreading debris all over its victims.

  “So-ka,” Haruo murmured. A perpetual loser and gambling addict, Haruo had deep empathy for anyone who found their pockets empty. “You knowsu, Mas, I’ve been thinkin’ about this killing. Don’t have a good feeling about dis, Mas. Betta if you forget about it.”

  But it was too late to forget. As much as Mas hated to admit it, Sanjo’s story had gotten under his skin.

  Gushi-mama was knitting in her room. Her roommate, the pigeon-faced woman, was again tucked in her bed. Must be depressed, thought Mas, who in the past had also opted to shut himself from sun and people. When Gushi-mama looked up and saw Mas, her chin quivered a little. Mas knew that she was afraid.

  “Kaerinasai,” she ordered, rather than said. And if Japanese wasn’t sufficient, she added the English translation, “Go home.”

  Mas shuffled his feet, but he didn’t leave. “You tell me lies,” Mas said in broken Japanese. “Neva mention Sanjo oniisan dead,” he continued in English.

  Gushi-mama dropped her knitting and attempted to move her wheelchair. Her roommate remained listlessly on the bed. “Sachi,” Gushi-mama called out, trying to stir her roommate. “Sachi.” But depression had firmly taken its hold on the roommate.

  Mas felt a twinge of guilt about hassling a woman who had made it into her hundreds. But being that age didn’t come by accident. It took not only a strong body, but a spirit that was not easily crushed. Gushi-mama was toothless, but her mind was like a steel trap.

  Mas stepped forward to Gushi-mama. She threw a spare knitting needle at his chest, a pitiful arrow that just grazed his T-shirt.

  “Izu not making trouble. Sanjo’s musuko dead. Just trying to findsu out who did it.” Mas made it a point to say musuko, instead of “son” in English. Musuko evoked the sounds of a mother with her child, laughing and playing in a freshly mowed park.

  “You know Uchinanchu?” Gushi-mama finally asked.

  Mas cocked his head. The term was somewhat familiar. Wasn’t it what Okinawans called their own kind?

  “Uchinanchu not only in Okinawa. In United States. South America. Australia.”

  Mas had known about the Uchinanchu in Hawaii and Latin America. But way down south in Australia? Okinawans were like the Chinese; they knew no borders.

  “We all Uchinanchu—feel it inside—even though we everywhere. Do you know why?”

  Mas had a clue. He knew that Okinawa had been a kingdom at one time. The Ryuku Islands.

  “Kuro. We know kuro.”

  Suffering, yes, Mas could appreciate t
hat. Like the Indians in America, Okinawans were the native people. Indians had been pushed out to make room for the hakujin, and now people of every country and race were pushing on each other to get into the best houses, schools, and companies.

  “Yamashiro, Tamashiro, Kaneshiro, all these names have shiro at end. Castle. For king.”

  Mas nodded.

  “Japanese names all about trees, farming. Nothing about kings.”

  Mas’s last name could have different meanings, depending on how you wrote it. Arai could be “New Well,” but in Mas’s case it meant “Rough Home.” The only one who would truly know the correct characters would be the owner of the name himself. Nonetheless, Gushi-mama’s contention was correct. The meaning of the Arai name had little to do with royalty.

  “Uchinanchu kokoro, heart, strong. Food best. Music best.”

  Aside from the Okinawa dango, a fried donut that Chizuko used to make in an electric skillet, Mas didn’t know much about Uchinanchu food. But Gushi-mama was speaking so adamantly that Mas had to take her word for it.

  “Your home is where?” Gushi-mama asked in Japanese.

  Mas was going to say Altadena or his birthplace, Watsonville, California, but he knew she meant Japan. “Hiroshima,” he said, for his parents’ hometown.

  Gushi-mama’s mouth fell open. “So,” she said. “You know kuro too.”

  A little suffering, more than a little happiness, always seemed to draw people together. It certainly seemed to work on Gushi-mama. “What Sanjo-san to you?” she asked finally.

  “His son, friend of friend.”

  Gushi-mama’s heavy-lidded eyes rested on Mas’s face as if she were taking in every line and blemish. “Last time I hear about Sanjo-san”—Mas practically held his breath in anticipation of what would come next—“fifty years ago. INS call him in. Sanjo never come back.”

  “Nobody do nutin’?” I thought you Uchinanchu all stick together, he said to himself.

  “Whole family leave for somewhere. Nobody want to get involve.”

  “You knowsu sons’ names?”

  “Just oniisan’s. His name Randy.”

  Mas caught his breath. More proof that Isokichi was indeed Randy’s father. “So you knowsu about Isokichi dying?”

  Gushi-mama bunched up her knitting. “I just choose good things to remember. Throw away the bad. My husband the same way, and he go to The Rafu Shimpo to ask them not to write anything about Sanjo-san. It was haji for the family and the Okinawa people too.”

  This shame was deep; it could not be erased by merely censoring journalists. Mas could imagine how the haji burned red-hot inside. It was no wonder that the wife escaped to Hawaii with her children.

  “You in L.A. in 1950?” Gushi-mama asked.

  Mas nodded.

  “Then you know. You hear about government taking Issei.”

  Mas did faintly remember some stories about questionable Japanese being arrested and threats of them being sent back to Japan. But it hadn’t been in the papers, not even The Rafu Shimpo.

  “I become citizen in 1952,” Gushi-mama said proudly. She pointed to a plastic American flag that was hanging from the panel light above her headboard. “My boys fight in 442nd.” That was Tug Yamada’s outfit, the all-Nisei combat unit that battled and died all throughout France and Italy.

  Mas got where Gushi-mama was coming from. She chose to embrace the American way, while others were still smarting from their families being barred from buying land and then being sent into camps during World War II. If Mas hadn’t been born in America himself, he didn’t know how enthusiastic he would have been about switching allegiances from Japan to the United States.

  “I no think about Sanjo for fifty years. Then, all of sudden, you come. And this morning the other one.”

  Another person had been asking about Sanjo? Mas could barely find his voice. “Who?”

  “Tall, good-looking, all dressed up in a suit. Nice hair. Chinee, I think. Didn’t say his name, only that I shouldn’t say anything about Sanjo to anybody but him.”

  “When?”

  “Hour before you come.”

  Mas jammed his hands down his jeans pockets so hard that he could feel the lint gathered in the corners of the lining. The description fit Agent Lee, no doubt. “Heezu say anytin’ else?”

  “Not much. You know, your hyoban pretty bad here right now.”

  Hyoban, one’s reputation, was everything to a working-class man. A reputation is what you built slowly and deliberately over a lifetime. Anyone could have a success at the track, and some were born with good looks; but the windfall could be easily taken during one bad session at the poker table, and an accident with a Weedwacker could put an end to a handsome face. Mas couldn’t afford to have a bad reputation, but it wasn’t anything that he could take hold of and remedy. You couldn’t beat your own shadow in a boxing match. Mas figured Stinky must have done his share of damaging Mas’s reputation in his futile search for Wishbone.

  “Wishbone not back?” Mas asked.

  Gushi-mama shook her head. “You want to see Tanaka-san’s roomu?”

  Mas nodded. Gushi-mama gestured for Mas to take hold of the handles of her wheelchair. The queen had returned in full form.

  Mas wheeled Gushi-mama down the hall to Wishbone’s residence. This time a thin, bony man was sitting by the window. He had large bags under his eyes as if they were holding decades of sorrows. He listened to Gushi-mama’s question about Wishbone’s visitor and then pointed to Mas. “Look a little like you. Dark skin. Short. They were talkin’ okane. Money,” the man said for emphasis.

  “That’s all?” Gushi-mama asked in Japanese.

  The man pointed to his right ear. “This mimi no good. Can’t hear too well. But Wishbone was mad. Even began to hit the man with his crutches. I had to call a nurse to get him to stop. Then, a few hours later, he gone.”

  This was all kusai, as smelly as fish skin left in a trash can on a summer day. Strange things were going on in this nursing home. It wasn’t Wishbone’s style to go MIA. He wasn’t a man who did well solo. His disappearance was an act of desperation. Whether it was Wishbone’s desperation or another’s, he was in trouble.

  When Mas went home, he disconnected the telephone. Since he had just spoken to Mari, it would be another two weeks before she’d call again.

  It wasn’t worth it to continue with this investigation, Mas decided. This situation wasn’t black-and-white—it was full of grays. He couldn’t tell who was bad or good, guilty or innocent. He was standing squarely on one side, Isokichi Sanjo’s side, but what if it was the wrong side?

  He felt bad for Randy Yamashiro, but realistically, what could he do? Mas was just a good-for-nothing gardener who didn’t even have a full lineup of customers. G. I. and Juanita had the degrees and licenses. They didn’t really need him. The next time they asked, Mas would politely beg off any more visits to shamisen instructors or Uchinanchu community leaders, he vowed, and then he went to sleep.

  The next morning was peaceful. Mas didn’t bother to get up at the crack of dawn, and instead lingered in bed. He listened for the sparrows outside in the boxwood bush and could smell the edges of the sycamore tree’s leaves turning brown. He wondered what the next season, winter, would bring. Another El Niño, with the deluge of water that could melt a boulder and hillsides? Or would it be a sporadic sprinkling that would leave the ground hardened and lawns withered?

  After twelve hours of being disconnected from the outside world, Mas finally felt strong enough to deal with outsiders again and plugged in his phone. If Juanita or G. I. called, he would just tell them he was too busy, too old, to take up his time going gasa-gasa over the murder of a man he barely knew. He didn’t have much time to practice his kotowari, his regrets, because the phone soon began to ring.

  “I’ve been calling and calling you, Mas.” It was G. I.

  Mas took a big breath, but before he could spit out his second thoughts, G. I. shocked him with this: “Homeland Security arrested J
uanita’s father. A glitch in his permanent residency status. Doesn’t make sense.”

  Antonio Gushiken, the mustachioed man who stood rail straight and somehow knew how to respect his grown daughter’s space. Mas knew that Juanita had been born in the U.S.; Mr. Gushiken must have been in this country for at least forty years.

  “Now they’re saying that he illegally entered this country,” continued G. I. “But he was part of the prisoner-of-war exchange during World War Two. That’s how he and his parents came over. Later, the government made provisions for these Japanese Peruvians to stay, so I don’t understand why it’s a problem now.”

  Mas had a clue. Something to do with Juanita’s run-in with Agent Lee. The line crackled, inciting a response from G. I.

  “That damn noise—I bet they’ve been wiretapping your phone; they bugged Juanita’s. Better if you use a pay phone from now on.”

  The telephone receiver grew slippery in Mas’s sweaty palm. Wiretapping, electronic bugs—these weren’t a part of his life.

  “Juanita’s helping her mom with the restaurants. They don’t even know where her dad is being held. I got the best hotshot immigration lawyer working on the case. This is beyond me, Mas. We need the big guns.”

  After getting off the phone, Mas just sat at the kitchen table, listening to the ticking of the wall clock. He was not a superstitious man. He believed that crop circles (and, yes, they even showed up in Japanese rice paddies) were created by teenagers with too much time on their hands, not by space aliens. He didn’t give much credence to secret societies, although he did once see a former customer leave his house in a silly red hat with a long yellow tassel to meet three other men in the same outrageous getup. But it all made sense now how Agent Lee had been one step ahead of him, at least in this last visit to Keiro. He had been listening to Mas’s conversations all along.

  Juanita must be worried sick about her father. She was the type to take charge and put out fires before they got out of control. But this fire was much bigger than any one person could extinguish. The only way to stop it was to light another one, but then you faced the risk of the flames joining forces and swallowing you whole.