Gasa-Gasa Girl (23 page)

The phone rang and Mari answered, with a ball of salami sandwich bunched up in her left cheek. She stopped chewing and asked a few questions. Her dark eyebrows furrowed like a wire spring pressed together too tight.

“That was Anna Grady,” she said, getting off the phone. “Seiko is dead.”

chapter eleven

Mas had been truly afraid only three times. The first time was, of course, when he stood in the black rain of the Bomb; the second, watching Chizuko being eaten by the cancer; and the third, when the Bomb returned from its hiding place in his memory. In those instances, fear slapped him square in the face and kept his legs from moving. The tangle of Kazzy’s murder was different. Here now fear slowly seeped in, causing him to run faster and faster.
Hayaku
,
hayaku
, just like the pace of the city.

He was now in Fort Lee on the thoroughfare by the bus stop in the plaza, passing familiar cafés with lit candles on the tables.

Anna Grady said that she wanted to talk to Mari, face-to-face, but there was no way Mari could risk bail by leaving New York City. Lloyd was ready to go. News of Seiko Sumi’s death had altered his thinking. Lloyd had said he thought that the run-in with the Impala in Seabrook was more a case of road rage than anything else. Apparently Mari had gotten in her share of shouting matches and short-term chases when she was behind the wheel of a vehicle. But now, with another dead Nisei, you couldn’t help but make certain connections.

But Mas told Lloyd to stay home. If Anna had taken a fancy to Kazzy, a half-Japanese man, maybe she would open up to Mas.

It was no problem locating the exact high-rise building. Three police cars, lights flashing, were parked at the loading zone, radios squawking out numbers and addresses over the crackle of static. In spite of the late hour—nine, ten?—there was a small crowd of men and women surrounding the parking lot, cordoned off by familiar yellow police tape. Huge lights had been propped up, as if it were a location for a movie shoot. Mas knew about these things because he had driven past his share of production sites in L.A.; hell, one director had paid him one hundred dollars to park his Ford gardening truck in the background of a scene.

The figure of a body was outlined on the concrete ground. The coroner’s department must have carted away the body, but had left behind a puddle of blood. Under the bright lights, the blood glistened, still wet with floating chunks of body parts—was that part of a brain? Mas felt his dinner come to his throat, but he pushed it down.

He couldn’t believe that only this remained of the
chawan
-haired woman so prim and precise.

The same security guard was outside with the crowd, so in spite of the high-rise being the scene of a bloody death, Mas found it easier to get to the elevator, and then to Anna Grady’s floor. The apartment door was open, more radio voices. A long, colorful ribbon decorated the knocker. Mas hadn’t noticed that before.

Police officers, men in suits and ties, and women in sweaters and slacks walked into and out of rooms, talking among themselves and taking notes. Again, no one seemed to pay attention to Mas.

The sliding-glass door was ajar, letting a cool breeze in. Mas could smell the sourness of an overworked river. A wind chime shaped like a Buddhist bell tinkled from the top of the balcony. Most of the plants had been overturned, soil dumped out, roots exposed.

“Mr. Arai, you came.”

Mas turned. Anna Grady was wearing a tight black dress with part of her
chichi
s showing. At her age, her breasts should have drooped down to her
heso
, belly button, so either she had on one amazing piece of underwear or else her body was still in tip-top shape. “Please, over here—” She gestured to a small dining room table in the corner.

Mas sat with Anna in silence for a few minutes. The display case was busted open, glass shards everywhere, and the journal and clothing were gone. They watched as police officers went from place to place—door, light switch, telephone—collecting evidence.

“That’s all they took,” Anna finally said, gesturing to the display case. “Seiko’s mother’s things. They left my jewelry. Seiko’s money—she had at least a thousand dollars in cash in her closet. All of that, untouched.”

“Book.” Mas kept staring at the destroyed display case.

“Yes, the journal’s gone. Do you think that’s what they were after?”

Mas recalled the detailed questioning by the bail bondsman. “What happen, exactly?”

Anna crossed her legs. “I was out with a friend. We went out to a concert in the city. When I came back, the police were already here, and Seiko’s body—” Anna covered her face with her hands. Her fingernails were filed and painted a funny tan shade the color of garden snails.

“Sorry, so sorry.” Mas wished that he could leave. He could barely stand it when any woman cried. He didn’t know what was worse—when it was a stranger or your wife.

“They say that she was thrown off the balcony. Why would anyone do that to Seiko?” She dabbed the corner of her eyes with her fingers and took a deep breath, making the top of her dress move up and down. “I asked for you and your daughter to come, because she had asked me about the note I sent Kazzy.”

She then leaned over to Mas, so close that he could feel the softness of her
chichi
s. “I’ll tell you what happened as long as you tell no one,” she whispered. “Especially Becca.”

Becca? What did she have to do with Anna Grady?

She placed a folded-up note in Mas’s hand. “Read this later,” she whispered. “Kazzy wrote me back. He messengered it to me the same day. Thursday. The day he died.”

Mas stuffed the note in his jacket pocket.

“With Kazzy dead and now Seiko, what am I going to do?” She leaned her head against Mas’s arm, and Mas could feel her soft hair on his chin.

“Mr. Arai, what the hell are you doing here?” Mas pulled away from Anna to see Detective Ghigo standing in the middle of the noisy living room.

Mas felt the blood drain from his face. Was Ghigo, the crow, ever present?

“We can ask you the same question, Detective,” Anna said. Kazzy’s ex-girlfriend knew Ghigo? “Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction?”

“Like I told you before, Mrs. Grady, the New Jersey police is working with us on the murder investigation of Kazzy Ouchi. Since we were just here interviewing you, we were called in. Just to see if there’s some kind of connection.”

“Well, there’s no connection; I can tell you that.”

“We’ll see.” Ghigo turned his attention back to Mas. “So how do you know Mr. Arai?”

“He’s a friend. Old friend.” Anna put her hand on Mas’s shoulder, snail-colored fingernails in full view.

“That’s interesting,” said Ghigo, “especially since he just arrived in New York last week.”

Before the detective could say more, his bald-headed partner called him over to the balcony. “Don’t go anywhere, Mrs. Grady,” he said.

While Ghigo’s back was turned to them, Mas rose. “I betta go.”

Anna followed Mas to the hallway, picking up her cat, Tama, on the way. “Oh, Tama-
san
,” she cooed in the cat’s ear. “You must be so afraid.”

“Tama, thatsu Japanese,” said Mas, who was feeling a pang of jealousy.
Baka
, he told himself, who would be jealous of a cat?

“Yes, I like the Japanese people. They were my first friends in this country. I trust the Japanese.”

“You ’Stonian?” Mas asked without thinking.

“Yes, I’m from Estonia. My family moved to New Jersey after World War Two. Why do you ask?”

Estonia had been taken over by a couple countries, by one twice over, isn’t that what Tug had said at the Seabrook museum? Anyone who had gone through that would be suspicious of people in power, especially those in uniform. It would make sense that Anna Grady would feel more comfortable with the people who had befriended her first. There were plenty of untrustworthy Japanese people, Mas knew that firsthand, but Anna didn’t need to know that right now.

Mas remembered the question that had brought him and Mari to Anna Grady’s apartment in the first place. “So whyzu you send him a gardenia dat night?”

“He had been coming over here regularly, wanting to talk with Seiko. She just didn’t like him at first. She said he was—what was the word she had used?—too high-tone. But we ended up getting to know each other better each time he came around. And then one day in January, it was snowing so hard, he just appeared at the apartment, his felt hat in his hands. I told him that Seiko was gone to see a friend, but he told me that he was actually here to see me.

“Then he brought out this gardenia. It was so beautiful—huge, with a wonderful smell. I told him that it looked like hope in the middle of winter. That was our first night together.”

Mas averted his eyes, as if he was watching an intimacy that he had no part of.

“I even saved the gardenia,” said Anna. “All brown and shriveled up, but I don’t care.” She went on to describe how wonderful Kazzy had been on all their dates. Mas didn’t have the stomach for such nonsense, but he knew that he had to hang in there like a dentist wiggling a rotten tooth. “We had gotten so close in a short amount of time. Kazzy even talked about marriage.”

Mas didn’t doubt it. If Kazzy had married three times, what was one more?

“But then that terrible daughter of his—”

Mas became more alert. What was that? She was talking about Becca.

“She was the one who poisoned Kazzy’s mind. She was so jealous; she couldn’t stand for another woman to be involved in her father’s life.”

Becca had just seemed like a silly female to Mas, not someone capable of any kind of poisoning, whether physical or emotional.

“You don’t believe me, do you? Well, she threatened me. Yes, she did. She even hired a private investigator to look into my past. Not only in New Jersey, but even in Estonia.”

Mas waited to see if Anna would divulge the private investigator’s findings.

“I told her that I didn’t care what she found, I wouldn’t break it off. But then Kazzy calls me. Tells me that he cares about me, but he has to end it.” Her mouth had become small and puckered. “So I sent him a gardenia last Thursday. I wanted him to remember the sweetness of our first time. But now I’m thinking that he probably used me.”

Mas pulled at one of his earlobes.

“He just wanted to see that damn journal so much.” Anna’s voice was powerful, an uppercut punch. “If he couldn’t get it through Seiko, he was going to get it through me. I was the one who Xeroxed it for him, a few pages at a time. I had to go behind Seiko’s back to do it. I felt awful, but she had already sent off a whole copy to the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles. But if they could see it, why couldn’t Kazzy? I didn’t understand.”

“You knowsu whatsu in it?”

Anna shook her head. “That journal’s cursed. You don’t want to know what’s in it.”

W
hen Mas got home, Lloyd was still awake, his stocking feet on the coffee table. He had the television on, but he wasn’t watching it. He had been doing some heavy thinking, and wanted to hear what Mas had learned in Fort Lee.

Mas told him the whole story and then pulled out the note, folded into a small square. Lloyd unfolded the paper and read the typed message aloud:

DEAR ANNA,
UNFORTUNATELY I CANNOT MEET YOU TONIGHT.
I THINK IT’S BEST IF WE DO NOT KEEP IN TOUCH.
K-SAN

“So businesslike,” commented Lloyd. “I mean, that’s the way Kazzy was, but even this seems too cold for him.”

“Maybe because Kazzy knowsu already he gonna die.”

“That’s true,” Lloyd said. “But why didn’t Anna just hand this over to the police?”

Mas couldn’t answer that for Lloyd. He wouldn’t understand. He probably grew up learning to trust the people in power. Anna Grady and Mas knew different. That sometimes people in uniform were to be feared.

Mas silently read the note again. One thing had been nagging at him on the bus ride back to New York City. “K-
san
, that was on the suicide note, too. Kazzy’s MIS buddy, dis Jinx Watanabe, he tellsu us Kazzy was
chanto
man.”

“
Chanto
, that means proper, right? Yeah, that was Kazzy, all right,” Lloyd said.

“But no
chanto
Japanese put ‘
san
’ on his own name.” That was an honorific reserved for other people or, in the case of Anna Grady, for cats.

Lloyd waited a beat. “That’s true. I never thought of it. Wait a minute, I have some notes from Kazzy.” Lloyd shuffled through papers on his overburdened desk and found at least six old memos. Every single one of them was typed in capital letters; every single one of them ended with one letter, a single K. No
san
added.