Phillip looked like he was going to protest, but he must have realized that he was physically overmatched. He stumbled down the alley, a stain visible on the back of his pants.
One by one, the young men returned to the room behind the red door, the last one being the tall teenager with his long and skinny weapon. With the light above the door, Mas could finally see that it was not a lead pipe but actually a shiny new top-of-the-line Weedwacker.
Mas barely made it back to the underground apartment. His left hand had finally stopped bleeding, but both hands were still trembling. Those sonafuguns had stolen the equipment from the garden, Mas was convinced. The beanie cap boy had claimed that he had nothing to do with Kazzy’s death, but he was a damn usotsuki, a liar of the worst kind.
He dropped his dentures into one of Mari and Lloyd’s drinking glasses and gritted his gums together. This was too much for him, he finally had to admit. He collapsed onto the couch, hoping for even nightmares to take over his reality.
chapter eight
“I thinksu I needsu to go home now,” Mas said to Haruo the next morning. He hated to admit defeat, but enough was enough.
“Mari still needsu you. Garden not finished. You can’t leave sumptin’ chutohampa.”
Half-done, so what? No different from when I came, thought Mas. He poked at the soiled bandage around his left hand. More blood had seeped through during the night.
“And whaddabout Ouchi- san ’s death?” Haruo continued. “You can’t leave dat alone.”
“Police, they figure it out. I’m dead, Haruo. Ole man. Not cut out runnin’ around in a place I have no business in.”
“ Gambare. ” Haruo tried to encourage Mas to carry on. “You tough, Mas. You the toughest guy Izu eva know.”
“Dat a long time ago.” Weren’t most of their friends one step away from their graves? Back in L.A., Mas was going to a funeral every other week. You were expected to bring koden -maybe twenty, thirty dollars-each time. These dead people were making Mas go broke. The only good thing about dying was that at least families would be returning all the money you had paid out over the years. The bad thing was that you weren’t alive to see it.
“Listen, Mas, us gardeners, we work when othas give up. Weezu the ones out there when itsu a hundred degree, desho? All otha people can’t handle it. But weezu neva give up.”
“Yah, yah,” Mas said. Haruo could be one of those silly male cheerleaders at the UCLA football games. Or, better yet, a mascot in a bear costume, constantly waving to children even though his team was getting pummeled by its rival. Mas hadn’t finished his monku, his list of complaints. “Tug wanna go to all these flowers shops. Look for dat Mystery Gardenia.”
“Let him do most of it, Mas. In meantime, you rest. No sense in gettin’ sick. Gotta lean on otha people sometime.”
“Yah, yah,” said Mas, attempting to cut the conversation short. Haruo sounded like he was going to launch into his counseling hocus-pocus. That would just make a bad mood go worse.
When Tug called later that morning, Mas was in a better mood. He thought about what Haruo had said. Gambare. Never give up. Mas wasn’t a quitter, and he wasn’t the type to let others pinch-hit for him. The police had their case, and he and Tug had theirs. The Mystery Gardenia meant something; Mas was sure of it.
They met at Happy Ikeda’s Midtown store. “Good thing I brought these tennis shoes, Mas.” Tug pointed to a pair of all-white sneakers with inch-thick rubber soles. “Lil and I got these on sale from Barstow.” Gamblers traveling to Vegas always stopped by Barstow, a desert city along Highway 15 with two sets of factory outlets. Only, in the case of the Yamadas, Barstow ’s factory outlets were their final destination, not the bright lights of Vegas.
Mas, on the other hand, had on the same pair of penny loafers that he had purchased from the now-defunct Asahi shoe store in Little Tokyo fifteen years ago. His feet were sore, his legs weak. When he walked, he cradled his injured left hand in his right. His lower back also had a kink, probably from throwing down Kazzy Ouchi’s useless son.
Happy kept immaculate records, both computerized and by hand, all of which he made available to Tug. “Sometimes the computer makes mistakes,” Happy said unsmilingly. On Thursday, there had been a delivery of fresh gardenias in a round glass bowl to a women’s luncheon at a members-only club on the Upper East Side. Some gardenia corsages for a wedding anniversary in Chinatown. And a special gardenia bouquet for a performer at the Metropolitan Opera House.
They had no luck at Happy’s and then struck out three more times at the other florists that Haruo had mentioned in his phone message. Some florists said the information was confidential, with all the executives and celebrities who were their customers. Others didn’t keep detailed records, but just mentioned that gardenias were not hot sellers in the wintertime.
The only shop left was back in Brooklyn Heights. They should have started out with that one, but they wanted to meet with Happy first in Manhattan. A mistake, perhaps, but Tug was the one who had meticulously mapped out their whole path on his AAA map like he was leading a reconnaissance offensive. Chizuko had traveled the same way, so Mas was used to following. Besides, he wasn’t thinking that straight today.
“So, Mas, you going to tell me what happened yesterday to get you so jittery?” Tug and Mas walked south alongside Central Park, its bare trees full of crows.
Mas had almost knocked down a fake plastic pillar at one shop and stepped in a planter full of peat moss in another. There was no doubt that he was shaken by the run-in with Phillip and the drug dealers. He had said nothing to Mari and Lloyd, but went over it with Haruo early this morning over the phone. Who was this hired gun, Riley? He and his gang had probably stolen the gardening equipment from the Waxley Garden, so did that mean they killed Kazzy as well? If not, why had Riley insisted it was suicide?
Mas spilled the beans once again to Tug, every single part of it, including his conversation with the neighbor who complained too much. “I don’t think Foster do it,” Mas said. “Just an urusai neighbor. A dime a dozen. Don’t think he’d kill to get his way. Type to drive people kuru-kuru-pa and make them want to shoot him.”
“Well, how about the son, Phillip?”
“Well, I think he hire the boy to do some kind of itazura. I just don’t know what, exactly.”
“Well, Lil always tells me to get a second opinion. Maybe I’ll have a talk myself with this Phillip Ouchi.” Tug walked over to a pay phone and lifted a New York phone book attached by a flexible cord. The pages were all curled up and shrunken from repeated soakings of rain, sleet, and snow. “Ouchi Silk, Inc., right?”
Mas didn’t want to see Phillip Ouchi again, especially so soon after the incident at the factory building with the red door. He didn’t know what Tug was hoping to prove. Phillip could have contacts with other chinpira, that was for sure.
Ouchi Silk, Inc., had an office in the Garment District and then on Broadway. Tug called both to find out where Phillip Ouchi’s office was located. It was on Broadway, just south of Central Park.
Ouchi Silk, Inc., was in a modern steel building about ten stories tall. Each floor seemed a little narrower as you went higher; at least that’s what it looked like to Mas from the sidewalk. Mas tried to talk Tug out of going inside the building, but it was no use. Mas knew that during World War II, Tug had been in charge of his squad’s fifteen-pound Browning automatic rifle because of his great size. Just like in Europe, Tug was on a mission in Manhattan, and there was no stopping him.