G. I.’s face looked grim, his mouth drawn in a straight line.
“There are more PIs in L.A. than your Juanita Gushiken. It wasn’t that difficult to trace my brother’s bank accounts, especially since he didn’t have that many.”
“I didn’t know anything about the check until after he died. He hid it. Underneath my sofa cushions.”
Brian then began to laugh and took another sip of the tomato juice, only this time the leafy celery almost went up his nostril. “That’s a good one. I like that story.”
“No story,” Mas piped up. “Izu da one who found it.”
“Yeah, right,” Brian said. “That’s going to hold up in court.” He then readjusted himself in his lawn chair. “Listen, we can put an end to this. I won’t even ask you for all of it. You can keep ten percent. That’s still fifty grand.”
G. I. crossed his arms. “No, let’s go ahead. Let’s solve this in the courts. Greedy little brothers don’t do well on the witness stand.”
Brian spit out a couple of obscenities and slammed his glass against the table so hard that Mas feared it would shatter. The tomato juice ran down the sides of the glass. “Greedy? That’s why you think I’m doing this? Who do you think has been helping him financially all these years? Who has to pay off all his debts?”
“He had a job. Why would he need help?”
“He got laid off six months ago. I guess he didn’t bother to tell you that.”
G. I. was quiet. It was obvious that he had not been informed about this latest downturn in his friend’s life.
Brian, perhaps influenced by his liquored tomato juice, was getting relaxed with his language, slurring words and dipping them up and down the musical scale. “You didn’t know the real Randy. I know that he idolized you. The one guy from ’Nam who made it. Randy had problems, okay? I was the one who was always behind him, helping him. Did you know that he was hospitalized once? Nervous breakdown. Had some drug addiction problems too. You can ask anyone back home. Why do you think his wife left him? Jiro knew all of this. I don’t know why he didn’t tell you. Jiro was actually the one who called me, convinced me to come to L.A. Told me that Randy was in trouble. That I needed to talk sense to him.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Dunno. Jiro was going to tell me at that party. I never made it, because my rental car got broken into. Stole my laptop and everything. I was dealing with the theft when I got the call about Randy.”
The woman in the white cap had ended her laps and was getting out of the pool.
“Did you see Randy at all here in L.A.?”
Brian shook his head. “Just spoke to him on Friday before he died. That’s when I found out that Jiro was right, that Randy was going off the deep end.”
“Whatchu mean?” Mas couldn’t help but ask.
Brian unconsciously began cradling his bracelet with his left hand. “He started talking about how he’d found our dad. That story again. I told him to forget it. Our dad left us; we’ve had nothing to do with him for over fifty years. Why start now? ‘If Mom was alive now, she would spit on him,’ I tell him. But he said that he was going to meet with him on Friday afternoon. What the hell.”
“Why didn’t you mention it to me?”
“Because I knew that you would make a big deal of it. But it’s not. Believe me. I’ve gone through a lot with Randy over the years. I had warned him not to meet with the guy. He was probably only after his money, I told him. But there was no stopping Randy. Obsessed. Ever since he was a teenager. Obsessed about our dad. Drove our mother crazy with all his questions. I can’t tell you how many times she just started crying. My grandfather whipped his oshiri, told him that it wasn’t worth looking back at the past. You know, all that Japanese shit. Shikataganai. What, it cannot be helped. I agreed with Grandpa, actually. Why look at stuff you can’t change? But Randy wasn’t that type of person. He liked to brood, you know. Wallow in his pain.”
“He never mentioned anything to me about his father. I just knew it was an off-limits topic.”
“You know how his obsession started? When he was drafted in the seventies. Everyone was messed up. Our mom. Our grandparents. And Randy. He didn’t want to go over there and kill people. Or get killed himself. But he said that he wouldn’t go to Canada or anything like that. That his number was called, so he had to go. Why should he be any different than any other Buddhahead in Hawaii? But then the army called. Turned out they were doing some checking into our family’s background. They started asking Randy if he’s a communist. Crazy stuff. He was the tailback for McKinley High School, almost failed civics, eh? What the hell does he know about politics? But they said that our dad was one of them. A commie. A Red. I couldn’t believe it. My grandparents were upset. Mom was crying. So the army doesn’t want to take Randy, but then he made a fuss. He wanted to see proof about our father, but the army offered nothing. It’s all classified, for some reason. Randy said that he’ll sign any paper saying that he’s a true red, white, and blue. I don’t know what he was doing, eh. Because he could have gotten out of the service, you know, but instead he insisted that the army take him.”
G. I. sat on the beach chair, his fists clenched so hard that his knuckles stuck out like ridges of a mountain range.
“You didn’t know any of this, did you?” Brian smiled again. “Randy was good at keeping secrets. Especially from those he cared the most about. Runs in the family, eh? What can I say?”
There was a high-pitched ringing and G. I. excused himself, pulling his cell phone out of his jacket pocket.
Brian finished the last bit of his drink, even crunching on the celery stick. He must be hungry, thought Mas. Maybe he didn’t have money for a decent breakfast.
“What’s your name again?”
“Mas. Mas Arai.”
“So what do you get out of this?”
“Excuse?”
“G. I. pays you?”
Mas shook his head. His relationship to G. I. wasn’t Brian’s business.
“You related to him or something?”
Did Mas and G. I. look anything alike?
“I get it, I get it. You guys mahu? Together, you know, like boyfriend-boyfriend?”
“Juanita his girlfriend,” Mas said plainly.
“Oh, she’s one good-looking chick.” Brian licked tomato juice from the edge of the celery.
G. I. walked back from his phone call and pulled Mas aside. “That was Juanita. That professor, the one you and Juanita met, called her. The Torrance PD contacted her to come in for some academic consultation.”
“Whatsu about?”
“I’m not sure. I guess the shamisen and something else; I wasn’t too clear. I have to go to court, so I told Juanita that you would go over there. That’s okay, right? You don’t mind meeting with the professor again, do you?”
The Torrance Police Department building looked like it had been constructed during Mas’s professional heyday, the 1970s. It was big and blocky, and made up of squares of cement. It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t have to be.
The parking lot was in the back, and Mas had no trouble finding a spot for the Ford. Crime was obviously not a big deal in Torrance. Before he got out of his truck, a car—one of the those new VW Bugs, the color as strong as the greenest green tea—parked in the next space. He noticed an orange gerber daisy in a vase on the dashboard. Before he was able to sneer, a familiar figure emerged from the driver’s-side door. Genessee Howard.
She was wearing a black suit, appropriately dressed for an official visit with a police detective. Mas suddenly felt self-conscious in his jeans and khaki work shirt.
“Mas,” she said as he stepped onto the asphalt. “Juanita told me that you’d be meeting me here. It’s good to see you again.”
Again, the funny tingle on the base of his neck. Kuru-kuru-pa, Mas berated himself. He tried to picture Chizuko, wearing her trademark full-length apron, wagging her finger at him and laughing. But still the tingle did not go away. Piri-piri,
piri-piri.
Mas didn’t bother locking the truck, and even threw the screwdriver underneath the front seat. He didn’t need a replay of the L.A. courthouse episode again. For Genessee, he wanted to look like less of a fool than he normally did.
They were walking together toward the police building when Genessee tripped over a cement bumper block. Mas automatically reached out to her waist to steady her, and then quickly released her once she got back on her feet. Her middle was firm, not at all squishy as he’d expected. She smelled musky, like the first summer thunderstorm on hardened soil.
“Oh, my, must be my nerves. Even though my nephew is on the force, I haven’t had good experiences with the police. I’m glad you’re here. Strength in numbers, right?”
Mas wasn’t familiar with the saying, but understood the part that she was happy he was with her, walking side by side. Mas’s back straightened. He didn’t mind being a bodyguard, though he didn’t know if five feet two inches of anything could do much protecting. But he was willing to try.
“Ready, Mas?” she asked before the glass automatic doors.
He waited for Genessee to take the first step onto the rubber mat. “Ready,” he murmured behind her.
Dressed in the same tan sports coat he’d worn at Mahalo, Detective Alo came to the front desk. “Mr. Arai,” he commented, “you’re everywhere.”
Genessee tugged at Mas’s elbow. “He’s good to have around.”
“Well, we’re most interested in your expertise,” Alo said before leading Mas and Genessee into a windowless room with a dusty vent. They sat in metal chairs around a table. On the table was the broken shamisen, and Mas surprised himself by cringing at the sight of it. It wasn’t as though the instrument were a human being, but now Mas had experienced its power. Something that evoked such emotion needed to be respected; even Mas knew that much.
“So, Professor, anything distinctive about this shamisen? Would it have any value to anyone?”
Genessee lowered her bifocals and carefully looked over the battered shamisen.
“May I touch it?”
“Sure.” Detective Alo pointed to a pair of nylon gloves on the table that Mas noticed for the first time. “Wear these gloves, just in case. The instrument’s been dusted for fingerprints already.”
The detective didn’t say if the fingerprints matched any criminal’s. They must have found the judge’s, but Parker claimed to have already spoken to the Torrance PD.
Genessee began with the top of the neck, where three narrow pegs had once held the strings of the instrument. The middle of the neck was broken off from the shamisen’s body, and the decaying strings attached to the bone pegs, one of them black, lay limp and useless. The face of the shamisen was completely busted, as if a prizefighter had taken a left hook to it. The snakeskin, in fact, was curling up, revealing the shamisen’s hollow insides.
She stuck her nose in the broken face of the shamisen and then moved it back and forth toward the fluorescent lights. “This sanshin is very old, could date back even to the nineteenth century. Could be a sanshin that the royal court musicians used. But in terms of monetary value, I don’t think it would be worth much even if it weren’t damaged.”
Detective Alo tapped his fingers against the surface of the metal table. “One reason why I asked you to come, Professor, is that we discovered something in the neck of the instrument.” The detective placed a plastic bag on the table. Inside was a yellowed scroll about five inches long. “We thought that you might be able to tell us what this is.”
Genessee’s eyes grew wide. She waited for Alo to give her the go-ahead.
“Go on—open it up.”
Genessee pulled the scroll out slowly, as if it were a vial filled with dangerous contents. The paper was brittle, and Genessee took her time unrolling it. If it had been Mas, he would have torn open the paper; but perhaps that’s why Mas dealt with plants, not books. Genessee knew the value of paper—its ability to tell stories and give information through the strokes of a pen. Mas preferred nature. He understood the secrets told on plant leaves—burnt edges, stripes, holes, each imperfection evidence of the sickness that lay inside.
Finally, the paper was completely unrolled, its image fully exposed to the three of them. A grid of brushstrokes.
“What is it?” the detective asked.
Genessee turned to the detective, her eyes filled with tears. “An Okinawan kunkunshi. A very old one.”
It was if the professor had been landlocked for her whole life and was seeing the ocean for the first time. Her eyes devoured the document. In fact, she got so close to the kunkunshi that the detective told her to keep a little distance. “We wouldn’t want it damaged in any way, right?” he said.
Her reading glasses were smeared with tears like a windowpane splattered with raindrops. Mas blinked hard. The kunkunshi was obviously sacred to the professor.
“What is it, exactly?” The detective had taken out a pad of paper and was writing down notes.
“A musical score for the sanshin. The kunkunshi system was developed in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds. Before that, the music was just passed down orally. The kunkunshi has actual links to the Ryukyu court music. It’s like a road map of how our music developed.”
Mas noted how the professor used “our” instead of “their.” She saw this music as a part of herself—no wonder she was crying.
“How old do you think it is?”
“You would need to have it analyzed in a laboratory. But it is definitely handmade banana paper—that’s unique to Okinawa. They developed it in the eighteenth century. This could date back to that time.”
“Suppose it’s the real deal—how much do you think it’s worth?”
“Tens of thousands of dollars,” she said. “But it’s worth more than the money, when you consider its value to a people. It belongs in a museum in Okinawa.”
“So how did it get in there?”
Mas could process the detective’s thoughts. If the kunkunshi had been hidden in the shamisen, it meant the owner probably had placed it there. Kinjo, the man who had been so desperate to have the shamisen returned to him?
“I’m not sure. I’ll have to spend more time analyzing it. There are more experts you can call in from UCLA and USC. And, of course, the Okinawan Prefectural representative. He has an office in L.A.”
Genessee recited names, which Detective Alo scribbled into his notebook. After the fifth one, he stopped her. “I think this may be enough for now. I’ll call you if we need further assistance.”
Mas could read between the lines. Now that he had what he wanted from Genessee, Detective Alo was trying to get rid of them. He practically pulled the chair out from underneath Mas and opened the door to the hallway. “After you,” Alo said to Genessee.
Before they left the building, Genessee gave Detective Alo some final advice: “You’ll have to get a special box, acid free, for it. And place it in a temperature-controlled, properly humidified room.”
“Yes, yes, don’t worry, Professor. We’ll take care of it. You’ve been a great help.” He left them before the automatic doors. Genessee asked for the bathroom, and Alo pointed to a door down the hall.
While Genessee was gone, a woman in a sweater and name badge approached Alo. “We’ve traced the knife in the Yamashiro case. It was purchased from an army supply store out in Vegas.”
Standing by the door, Mas, as usual, was forgotten. “When?” Alo asked the woman.
“A little more than two weeks ago.”
“Do they have a record on who purchased it?”
“Cash transaction. But an Asian, the seller said. That’s about it.”
“Get a better description. Age. Size. Any distinguishing marks. Send over the mug shot of Jiro Hamada. It’s twenty years old, but he still looks the same. And we’ll have to get a photo of Hasuike. Maybe from one of the local newspapers. And the brother, Brian too.”
Alo then turned and finally noticed Mas. “You didn’t hear that.
Any of it, right? If I hear word that you’ve leaked this to any of your friends, Mr. Arai, you’re going to be in big trouble.”
Arai was so surprised that he didn’t know how to react. A few minutes later, Genessee reappeared, and together they stepped onto the rubber mat and walked out the door.
“Mas, I don’t think that the police department’s going to take care of that kunkunshi properly. They’re just looking at it as evidence in a crime, but it’s more than that. It’s the legacy of a people. We’re going to have to contact the Okinawan Prefectural government and inform them about what’s going on.”
Mas’s head was still full of what Detective Alo had said about the murder weapon. “Betta not jama,” he said. In case Genessee didn’t understand jama, Mas repeated, “You knowsu, stick our noses in it.”
“Why not? Don’t you understand, Mas. This is big news. If it’s what I think it is, the kunkunshi deserves to be back home. Where scholars can study it and sanshin lovers can trace how their music has evolved.”
Genessee’s mind was now spinning around the shamisen, but she had left the main issue behind. Like who had killed Randy, and what might this latest discovery have had to do with it?
Mas walked Genessee back to her car, but her heart was now completely surrendered to the kunkunshi. He could tell in the way her eyes moved back and forth, barely focusing on the mundane parking lot before them. Her eyes were instead following her thoughts, which must have been traveling back in time to when the Okinawan court musicians were sitting seizo, on their knees, their precious instruments held close to their hearts, the melodies soaking into their skin. Genessee was calculating her next move to save the kunkunshi, and Mas knew that it wouldn’t be with him. Just as Detective Alo had used them up, Genessee was through with Mas, at least for today.
They stopped in front of Genessee’s VW Bug. “Mas, thanks so much. This was an exciting day.” Genessee gave Mas a quick squeeze; he kept his arms awkwardly to his sides. This time he felt no tingle, no piri-piri.
He waited for her to pull out of her parking space before approaching the Ford. He waved and realized that even after the VW left the parking lot, her musky smell was still on him.
Snakeskin Shamisen Page 17