“Shaddap, Pico!”
Pico seemed wounded by Casey’s sharp tongue and pulled his dollar bills from the table. “Gotta go back to work,” he announced and left the supply department. Roberto followed a few moments later.
Casey, however, stayed behind. Kicking the concrete floor with his size-ten feet, he cursed. “That damn Pico. Always flapping his trap.”
Mas remained seated, tracing a torn section of the card table’s vinyl top with a dirty fingernail.
“I wasn’t the one who did anything wrong. It was Jorg and Ike.”
Mas leaned back in his chair until he felt the edge of a box press against his head.
“Cocaine,” whispered Casey. “That’s why Jorg and Ike got killed. It was a Mexican mob hit. Jorg was running around with a lot of money. Stone-cold cash. I saw it with my own eyes. I was helping Jorg and his son Geoff unload his truck of some birds-of-paradise and a bag fell out onto the floor. Stacks of new twenties. Jorg made some excuse, that he hadn’t been able to make a run to the bank, but I didn’t believe him. When those two got killed in Hanley, I knew the truth. It was no accident.”
Mas slowly blew out some air from his cheeks.
“I didn’t tell the police. I didn’t tell the insurance companies. I kept my mouth shut. But because Geoff knows that I know, he’s punished me all these years.”
“Insurance?”
“You didn’t hear? Those guys each bought one-million-dollar life insurance policies on themselves. What flower grower’s going to do that? Spoon breaking off the engagement with Haruo is the best thing to happen to him, believe me. The Hayakawas and de Groots are bad news, I’m telling you. I know Haruo is your friend, so you should tell him to thank his lucky stars that the wedding got called off.” With that, Casey stomped out of the storage room with his meager winnings.
Mas also claimed his dollar bills on the table. If Casey’s intent was to scare Mas, he’d succeeded. Television shows and movies domesticated the Italian mob and even Japanese gangsters, but Mas knew the reality was very different.
He did not have straight-out dealings with the yakuza in Japan, but he had plenty of contact with the chinpira, lowlife gangsters who multiplied like mold after World War Two. They were the masters of the black market, two-bit gambling, hiropon, and alcohol made from weak gasoline.
These chinpira had entrapped a young girl Mas had met after the war, an orphan who had lost her parents in the bombing, sending her into a life of prostitution. These gangsters weren’t that scary, but they were fierce enough to send not a few innocents down a path of destruction.
The problem with gangsters was that they were close to impossible to exterminate. You tried to crush one, and four emerged in his place. If Ike and Jorg were playing around with the Mexican Mafia, it was no surprise that they got burned and burned for good. Mas would have to watch himself or else his own fingers would get singed.
Mas was back on the freeway, this time to the home of his Alhambra customer. Dr. Svelick had been Mas’s customer for the past seven years. Mas had watched him grow from a young resident, stopping by the house at odd times in green scrubs, to a full-fledged private practitioner who wore a tie five days a week. Mas knew that one day the doctor, who was starting to go ohage around the back of his head like an old-fashioned Catholic priest, would someday move to a more upscale neighborhood like San Marino. But for now Mas had him, and he would relish the working relationship. The doctor never complained and mailed in his monthly check like clockwork. No monku and money you can count on. What else could a gardener past his prime ask for?
The traffic on the 10 was still moving at a crawl, and Mas couldn’t help but think of the two dead men who had been buddy-buddy. What would possess seemingly straight-arrow guys like Jorg de Groot and Ike Hayakawa to do something illegal? The two men, with their sturdy middle-class ranch homes in the suburbs, obviously seemed to be able to support their families with legitimate work. Why did Casey want to tarnish their reputations by spreading rumors after both were long gone?
Mas finally reached the offramp for Dr. Svelick’s house and went north on Fremont. Construction delayed him further, so by the time he turned onto the doctor’s street, he was ready to hop out of the truck and get to work. Except that another gardener’s truck was parked in front of Dr. Svelick’s. It was a white Toyota, probably about twenty years old but maintained as if it were a newborn. The original hubcaps had been replaced with shiny racing ones, and the back of the bed, which once simply sported the brand name TOYOTA, now read just “YO.”
Mas frowned and parked behind the revamped truck. His stomach felt queasy. He had a bad feeling about this.
As he approached the doctor’s home, the side back door swung open, and Mas heard the banter of Spanish and saw a couple of men carrying a gardener’s catcher full of freshly mowed grass. The smell of the grass was powerful, pungent—no matter how many lawns Mas had cut, that scent gave him a high no drug could. The second man, donning a worn wide-brimmed straw hat shaped like an upside-down Chinese teacup, abruptly stopped in his tracks upon noticing Mas. He was tall and brown and somehow looked familiar. He was young, with a strong profile, a narrow face, and a high-ridged nose.
“Hello, Mister.” The boy took off his straw hat and smiled widely. “Remember me?”
It was the sardonic grin that helped place the face. Mas’s former helper Eduardo’s nephew. This was the same boy who refused to get into Mas’s truck because it was too old. How long had it been? At least six, seven years.
“Dr. Svelick give this to you.” The boy handed Mas a neat white envelope.
Mas didn’t have to open it to know what it was. Sometimes the message came via the telephone, sometimes in a thin envelope like this one, mailed to the house. Either way, the communication was short and to the point: “We won’t be needing your services anymore.”
To have the message delivered by his replacement was especially cruel and humiliating. And this one—a boy probably barely in his twenties! A youngster who had disparaged Mas’s beloved Ford.
Mas edged closer to Eduardo’s nephew, and the young man must have detected Mas’s foul mood because he took a few steps back. “Whatchu name?” Mas asked.
“Raul Jesus,” the boy replied, pronouncing his second name the traditional Spanish way of hey-sus.
Jesus. That just plain figured. Thanks or perhaps no thanks to Tug, Mas was starting to open his heart to God, and this is what He gives him? That’s why bachi, what goes around comes around, had once seemed to make more sense to Mas. Either God didn’t exist or He had a very mean streak in Him.
Mas was going to tear up the envelope and throw it at Raul Jesus like confetti, but then he thought better of it. There was probably a final check in there, and in these lean economic times, Mas had to put his emotion aside, at least for this week. There was no telling how long Haruo would be staying at the house, for example, and Mas might need that money to set his friend up with a deposit on a new apartment.
“Raul Gee-sus, good luck to youzu,” Mas growled and turned on the heels of his scuffed work boots and marched back to the Ford. He was so mad that he even entertained the thought of dragging his key along the span of the perfectly hospital-white side panel of the Toyota. Only for a second, however. No decent man would ever deface another man’s automobile. Some things were sacred; that line should not be crossed.
Once Mas hopped into the Ford, he squeezed the steering wheel so tight that his joints hurt. How in the world could this Raul Jesus have stolen Dr. Svelick from him? And then he remembered. When he was laid up around Christmas with shingles, he’d called Eduardo to cover for him. He must have brought along his nephew, this Jesus. It was then that the takeover plan had been set in motion. There was no doubt that the boy must be charging at least twenty percent less than Mas’s rate. Inu! Traitors, all of them.
It was only when he was stopped at an intersection a good three blocks away that he had the nerve to open the envelope. The note was written in
Dr. Svelick’s lopsided scrawl. Mas couldn’t make out all of the words, but the last paragraph was fairly readable: “I’ve appreciated your hard work for me over the years. Just think it’s best—for both you and me—that we make this change. You really deserve to take it easy. Enjoy your life!”
Odairisama to ohinasama
Futari narande sumashikao
Oyome ni irashita neesamani
Yokunita kanjo no shiroikao
Emperor and empress
Side by side, grave expressions
At the wedding are maidens
Their white faces all alike
— “Hina Matsuri Song,” second stanza
CHAPTER SIX
Enjoy my life!” Mas muttered as he drove to Juanita Gushiken’s family’s Japanese-Peruvian restaurant on Virgil in Los Angeles. He couldn’t get Dr. Svelick’s breezy directive out of his head. The mantra had played in his head all afternoon. Enjoymylife! Driving home to his sidewalk-less neighborhood in Altadena. Enjoymylife! Splashing water on his face and combing his hair back with Three Flowers oil. Enjoymylife! Fooling with the lock of the Ford because the screwdriver technique wasn’t working effectively.
If he was to enjoy his life, he might as well do it at the Peruvian Palace. Unlike its royal name, the eatery, located a couple of doors down from a laundromat, was no frills. No frills meant no carpet and no tablecloths, just scuffed-up linoleum and paper napkins from a metal dispenser. But the food was tasty. Mas’s favorite was the fresh mound of seafood ceviche—baby octopus legs tangled through circles of squid and topped with orange-striped unshelled shrimp.
Mas opened the tinted glass door and spied G.I. Hasuike, Juanita’s boyfriend, seated in their usual spot, a corner booth.
“Eh, Mas, long time,” said G.I., finishing off a sip of Inca Kola.
It had been a long time. Long enough for G.I. to have chopped off his salt-and-pepper waist-long horsetail. In fact, the fiftysomething man had taken a razor to his head and now resembled a crazed skinny monk who’d stayed in the monastery too long. Mas met G.I. through Wishbone when a young Japanese acquaintance was knee-deep in legal problems. Ever since then, G.I. was usually the first person Mas called when he needed help from a Sansei, third-generation Japanese American, with a JD degree.
Juanita, wearing an apron, waved from the other side of the room. A Japanese Peruvian with roots in Okinawa, she was a PI by day and a dutiful daughter by night. When G.I.’s friend was found stabbed to death in a Hawaiian restaurant, Mas and Juanita joined forces to discover the truth behind a clue remaining at the crime scene, an Okinawan stringed instrument called a snakeskin shamisen.
“Haruo called. He’s running a little late but says to start,” Juanita announced, placing plates of soft rolls and green sauce in the middle of their table. Mas knew enough not to soak the roll in the sauce, which was like wasabi—a few drops gave starch some needed kick, but any more sent you to guzzle down a gallon of water and maybe to the bathroom as well.
He ordered a beer, and Juanita left to get a bottle from a refrigerator near the counter.
“So, too bad about Haruo, huh?” G.I. said.
“Heezu comin’ tonight.”
G.I. nodded. “How is he?”
Mas shrugged his shoulders. “Stayin’ at my place.”
G.I. began to cough, almost choking on his roll. Then his whole body shook with laughter. After taking a last drink of his Inca Kola, he asked, “And how’s that working out for you, Mas?”
After delivering Mas’s beer, Juanita sat with the two men in the booth. Although she was lean and muscular, she was all female inside. She wanted to know all the details of what Spoon had said to Haruo (Mas didn’t know), how Haruo was taking it (pretty good), and how much money was lost in canceling the wedding (Mas had no idea). Once the fortysomething woman had pumped as much information about Haruo and Spoon’s relationship as she could—only extracting about a cupful of useful gossip—she put on her private investigator cap and began asking about the theft of the dolls. G.I., whose eyes were starting to glaze over, looked reinvigorated. A lawyer who lived on the fumes of conflict, G.I. was always attracted to anything related to crime.
“You know much about Mexican gangsters?” Mas abruptly asked.
Juanita glanced at G.I. “Well, there’s the Eighteenth Street gang, which started back in L.A. in the sixties. You’re not getting involved with them, are you? They are very dangerous, Mas.”
“Howsu about cocaine? Whatchu knowsu about cocaine?”
“Cocaine, Mas? What’s this all about?”
Mas shared what he’d learned from Casey, not revealing his name, of course. Casey talked in the heat of anger to protect his reputation, and it wasn’t fair to hold that against him.
“Well, cocaine was big in the eighties. Very big. That time it was the powdered kind that rich people used,” G.I. said. “And what followed that was crack cocaine. You know, you smoke it in a pipe.” G.I. seemed to know his share about maiyaku, and Mas guessed that some of that knowledge was first-hand experience. Turned out his hunch was right.
“A lot of us got involved in drugs in the seventies and eighties, Mas. It’s just that some of us couldn’t leave it.”
Juanita nodded. She was a decade younger than G.I., but apparently old enough to have lived through that time herself.
“Asian-American groups like the Yellow Brotherhood came in to help addicts. We were losing too many people to cocaine.” From this effort came drug-abuse recovery centers, which were in existence even today, said G.I.
“Datsu what happen to Spoon’s daughter.” Rehab, isn’t that what Haruo called it?
“What’s her name?” asked G.I.
“Dee Hayakawa.”
“Sounds familiar. She from the Eastside?”
“Montebello.”
“Well, generally speaking, I didn’t really hang out with any girls from Montebello. Those were the rich girls.”
Even though Mas didn’t think Ike and Spoon were especially wealthy, anything compared to East L.A., where G.I. was from, had to be considered rich, he guessed. The two communities were separated by only a few miles, but it might as well have been two kingdoms for how the neighborhoods were different.
“So, this Dee is staying with Spoon?” G.I. asked.
Mas nodded.
“That’s tough,” commented Juanita. “I mean, I can see why Spoon would want to help her daughter out, but sometimes people in trouble need to hit rock bottom.”
Mas knew that those things were easy for Juanita to say, but hard to do. Wasn’t she herself living in the back house on her parents’ property? Juanita and her Peruvian immigrant parents were close, as close as an adult child and parents could be.
“Anotha thing kinda don’t make sense. The hina dolls. Spoon tell me they cost four hundred, but now it look like three thousand.”
“Three thousand?” G.I. opened his mouth wide, showing off the metal fillings on his molars.
“I thought Spoon didn’t have any money,” Juanita added.
“Yah, datsu what Haruo say. But she got one million from husband’s insurance policy. What happen to dat?”
“Four hundred.” G.I. ignored Mas’s question and returned to the sum that Spoon reported to the police. “That’s interesting. You know four hundred is the limit between a felony and misdemeanor.”
So what, Spoon was trying to protect Haruo?
G.I. continued with his train of thought. “But how would Spoon know that? She doesn’t seem the type to be savvy about the judicial process. And it’s not like she’s ever been arrested before for grand theft.”
A face full of freckles surfaced in Mas’s mind. The Buckwheat Beauty. He could only imagine what trouble she had gotten into in the past.
“Haruo needsu your helpu,” said Mas regarding G.I.’s legal expertise.
G.I. rubbed his shaven head. “I offered it to him, or at least some good referrals of public defenders. He told me that it hadn’t gotten that far yet. But it def
initely didn’t sound like he was planning to go to the police on his own. Why is he so reluctant? Usually Haruo is the first in line to talk to anyone.”
Before Mas could answer, he saw Juanita smiling at a figure walking toward them.
“Haruo,” she said. “So good to see you.”
Haruo, however, did not seem that happy to be there. His keloid scar, twisted like an old wisteria stem, was pulsating with anger. He didn’t acknowledge Juanita and G.I.; all his attention was on Mas. “Why you go—” he had to even pause to catch his breath. “Why you go—” he restarted, “ova to place where Spoon buy her dollsu without tellin’ me?”
Mas didn’t know what to say.
“The place in San Diego callsu her, wonderin’ why dis
Mas Arai askin’ all these questions.”
Juanita shifted uncomfortably in her seat and G.I. gazed down at the base of his soda can. Mas was being played as an interfering spy, and there was probably no convincing Haruo otherwise. But Mas had to at least try.
“Izu just tryin’ to helpu,” Mas attempted to say as confidently as possible. “Dunno whyzu Spoon so upset.”
“Well, sheezu mad. Sayin’ dis none of your bizness. Yell at me right in the middle of market. Youzu always say mind my bizness, but you don’t mind yours.”
Here you are, living at my place, eating all my instant ramen, Mas wanted to shout but he bit his tongue. If he went there, there would be no turning back.
“Whyzu you go there and say nuttin’ to me?” Haruo repeated.
Because I don’t trust your former fiancée, Mas said to himself. And I don’t trust the daughter of your former fiancée.
“I just wanna find out whatsu behind those dolls.”
“And whatchu say to her? I think youzu say sumptin mean, sumptin dat make her cry.”
At this point Mas was so frustrated that he didn’t show any restraint. “I tole her dat she shoulda say to you plain and square she don’t wanna get married.” As soon as Mas spoke those words, he regretted it, seeing Haruo almost shaking from the pain of it.
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