Becca lowered her eyes.
“Well, we’ll check her out, just in case.” Detective Ghigo’s gaze then fell on Mas. “Mr. Arai, what a surprise to see you here again. Didn’t know that you had any business with the Ouchi Foundation board.”
“He was here to look after the trees,” explained Becca. “But his family now plays a role on the board.”
The sea urchin began to cough; it was obvious to Mas that he wanted Becca to stop. She caught on and looked awkwardly at Ghigo and the attorney. As if receiving a baton in a relay race, the attorney turned to Mas, then cleared his throat and continued Becca’s train of thought. “In the event of Mr. Ouchi’s death, he named a successor to the board,” he said to Mas.
“Yah, yah, so?”
“That person is Takeo Frederick Jensen.”
Nanda? Had Mas heard correctly?
Ghigo was also surprised. “You mean the baby?”
“Now, we haven’t verified if this is legal,” said the sea urchin, pulling at his orange spiky hair.
“Are you saying that the Ouchi Foundation contests the will?” asked Ghigo.
“No, it’s just that we only heard it earlier this morning. How can a baby be a member of the board?” continued the sea urchin.
“Well, K- san ’s will instructed that Lloyd would assume the position until Takeo became of age,” said Becca.
The sumo wrestler sucked in more air into his immense lungs. Sitting down, he seemed taller than Mas standing up. “It’s craziness. Utter craziness. I want our attorneys at Waxley Enterprises to take a look at that will before we do anything.”
“Excuse me if I sound uncultured,” interjected Ghigo. “But why do you care who’s on the board? How much money do you get?” Mas listened intently. He was wondering the exact same question.
Miss Waxley laughed, covering her mouth with a hand dotted with age spots. “Quite the contrary, Detective Ghigo,” she said. “You are usually expected to give money when you’re named on a board.”
“So who cares who’s in and who’s not?”
“The board decides the future of the garden and museum,” explained Becca. “If the board votes to shoot the project down, it’ll eventually die.”
After forty-five minutes of this incessant talking, Mas had to leave. He felt bad abandoning the sycamore, but he figured a few more days of being attached to its infected limb would do no extra damage.
The route back to the underground apartment was remembered by Mas’s legs, which automatically carried him past street signs, bus stops, bakeries. He turned on Carlton and unlocked the gate and door of the apartment, and was greeted by the friendly smell of cooked green onions, fried bacon, and soy sauce. Fried rice, the way Lil Yamada had taught Chizuko to make it when she first arrived in America. It had become Chizuko’s specialty dish, now reprised in Brooklyn.
Mari had returned without Lloyd or Takeo, but with two other guests-Tug and his daughter, Joy.
“Mas, old man, we were wondering where you were,” said Tug, getting up from his chair at the kitchen table, which had been moved into the living room. Mari smiled and scooped a serving of fried rice from a wok onto a plate in front of an empty chair. Her hair was wet, freshly washed. In fact, her whole spirit seemed freshly watered. She told him what he had already sensed: Takeo was doing much, much better, and would be released from the hospital after undergoing a few more tests.
Before he took his seat, Joy acknowledged him. “Mr. Arai, I haven’t seen you in ages. Maybe even ten years.” Joy didn’t mention Chizuko’s funeral, but that had been the last time, they all knew. Joy had the same moon face, and wore a dark-blue kerchief over her head. Her hair lay in two long braids, like those women in Hong Kong kung fu movies, except the right one was dyed bright pink and the other electric blue. When Mari was a teenager, she often said that Joy had “tight eyes,” claiming that she herself found that kind of thin eyes attractive.
“Yah, long time,” Mas replied. He couldn’t believe that this two-tone-braided girl had been close to becoming a full-fledged doctor after completing her residency in South Carolina. He had once viewed her as being quiet and bland, like a boiled egg, but it was quite obvious that her shell was now broken.
“Well, Dad,” said Mari, pulling out a chair for Mas, “tell us where you’ve been.”
Mas took off his jacket and started from the beginning. He mentioned the sycamore, but quickly went on to the suicide letter and conversation at the Waxley House. Mari kept interjecting, filling in Mas’s blanks. The sea urchin, Penn Anderson, worked with Phillip at Ouchi Silk, Inc., while the sumo wrestler, Larry Pauley, was a senior vice president of Waxley Enterprises, which donated money to the Ouchi Foundation. And Miss Waxley was the only child of Mr. Waxley, and chairman emeritus of the company.
“Who is this Waxley fellow?” asked Tug.
“The late, great Henry Waxley?” Mari said. “He started Waxley Enterprises, a shipping company, before World War Two.”
“Oh, yeah, wasn’t there a biography that came out recently?” recollected Joy. “Sounds like he was a real SOB. A control freak, right?”
“Joy.” Tug frowned and wiped his beard of any stray grains of fried rice. “He was a successful businessman.”
“No, Mr. Yamada, Joy’s right,” said Mari. “I heard Waxley was a hard man to deal with. Actually, Kazzy was no better.”
Mas didn’t know why these daughters had to warukuchi so much. Warukuchi literally meant bad-mouth, and they were freely talking bad about men two and three times their age.
“Kazzy was lecherous, Dad,” Mari maintained. “A sukebe. He even propositioned me when I was four months pregnant with Takeo.”
“What an asshole.” Joy tossed her blue braid behind her shoulder while Tug took a big swig of water.
“Maybe youzu get it wrong,” Mas countered.
“No, Dad, I didn’t misinterpret that. It was pretty clear what he wanted.”
The four of them became quiet. Mas didn’t know whether to be happy that Kazzy was dead or to view his daughter as being shinkeikabin, too sensitive. He watched Mari circle the table, collecting dirty dishes, until she stopped at his side. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she then recalled. “Haruo left a message on the answering machine. Wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about.”
After she took the dishes to the sink, Mari turned the dial counterclockwise on the aged answering machine.
“Mari, don’t you think it’s time to go digital?” said Joy. “Damn, girl, you guys live like you’re just out of the eighties.”
“What can I say? Lloyd and I are old-school.”
“More like prehistoric.”
Mas waved the girls to be quiet as he positioned his ear toward the machine’s speaker.
It was indeed Haruo, first breathing hard like he had run up a bunch of steps to make this call.
“I gotchu Mystery Gardenia, Mas. Call me as soon youzu getsu dis message.”
Mas looked at Tug and didn’t waste any time. Since Haruo had been up for his graveyard shift, he was probably already in bed, wiped out from the day’s activities. But Haruo wasn’t the type to mind if anybody interrupted his slumber, especially if it meant that someone out there needed him.
Haruo answered after the sixth ring. He had indeed been sleeping, but Haruo being Haruo, it didn’t take him long to start talking, his words dribbling out like a steady rain.
“You be proud of me, Mas. Izu found your Mystery Gardenia.”
Haruo’s search actually began in the Flower Market, where he now worked part-time, a concrete refuge in downtown Los Angeles amid wandering transvestites, fenced factories protected by coils of barbed wire, and refrigerator box after box (apartments for the homeless). Inside, on the first floor, however, were rows and rows of blossoms-either grown locally in Southern California or imported from Latin America and Asia. Haruo always spoke about how he loved the scent of flowers. Like Mas, he had survived the Bomb, but unlike Mas, he always talked about sweet smells, whether they came from a garden or a woman’s kitchen. The Bomb might have destroyed Haruo’s face, but his nose was as strong as ever.