“Oh, yeah? Were you here when they found-”
Mas nodded his head.
“No kiddin’. Right over there?” The man pointed his cigarette to the empty pond, the yellow police ribbon stretched across from the bamboo to a broken-down cherry blossom tree.
Mas nodded.
“Shit, gives me the creeps. I guess the police want you to hang around.”
Mas exhaled smoke from his nostrils. “You knowsu him- Kazzy?”
“Yeah, real nice guy. He lives in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, but he seemed to hang out here the most. Anytime I gave him a ride, he always gave me a good tip. Twenty dollars, even, for taking him a couple of blocks.” The man extended his hand. He wore ragged knit gloves with the tips of the fingers cut off. “I’m J-E. Miss Waxley’s driver.”
“Jay,” Mas repeated, not bothering to shake the man’s gloved hand or introduce himself.
“No, no. Jay-Ee. The letter J, hyphen, then E. J-E.”
Mas paid little attention to the driver’s detailed instructions on how to spell his name. What did he care? “Your boss live ova here?” Mas gestured toward the Waxley House.
J-E shook his head, causing his twisted tufts of hair to tremble. “Nobody lives there now. Just offices. Used to be Miss Waxley’s father’s place way back when, though. Miss Waxley’s here because she’s a member of the foundation board. By the way, how’s Becca taking it?”
Mas shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t know the daughter that well, but from the looks of it, her response was not good.
“I call her ‘sweet,’ her brother ‘sour.’ Have you met the brother?”
Mas nodded.
“He thinks that he’s all that, you know. Conceited bastard. He thinks that he’s the only one who knows what’s going on. Becca and the rest of us are fools, he thinks.”
Mas didn’t care to listen to family gossip. He brought the conversation back to the garden. “Somebody must be out to get dis Kazzy. Or at least his garden.”
“Well, he’s a rich guy. Must have had his share of enemies. But the garden, what would anyone have against that? Doesn’t hurt anyone, you know?”
The back gate to the garden swung open and slammed shut. A bald hakujin man in an oversized sweater walked over to the stairs, his legs spread wide and his elbows out, as if he were challenging them to a gunfight at high noon. “Is that your damn Cadillac parked outside my house again?”
“Hey, it’s a free country. The street is public property,” said J-E.
“I’m expecting a special delivery today. I need the street clear today for my delivery guys.”
“Well, that’s not my problem. You don’t own the street.”
The bald man’s face flushed red, his head now a distressed lightbulb. “You move your damn car, or else I’ll be telling Miss Waxley to do it.”
J-E rose, dropped his still-smoking cigarette on a step, and swore under his breath. “Asshole. Makin’ trouble all the time. Wouldn’t surprise me if he offed Kazzy himself.”
Crushing the cigarette with his waffle sole, he looked apologetically at Mas. “I’ll catch you later, man.”
Mas nodded back. He knew the sting of urusai neighbors complaining about the volume of a gas blower or lawn mower. The thing was, they had a job to do, and nothing was going to happen in America without some kind of inconvenience to somebody.
The driver never returned, but two other people came through the back gate a few minutes later. Hakujin men, again in fancy suits. One was short, almost Mas’s height, in a brown suit and an orange tie the color of a sea urchin’s guts. Even the front of the man’s reddish brown hair was splayed out like the spikes of a sea urchin. The other man was taller, with a solid body like a mini sumo wrestler’s. His gray pin-striped suit seemed a little tight on him, as if he had recently gained weight or muscle.
“Oh my God, look at that.” The sea urchin pointed to the yellow police tape fluttering in the breeze across the pond.
“The last resting place of Kazzy Ouchi.” The sumo wrestler spit on the concrete. It was so cold out that Mas noticed the man’s spit came out slow and even seemed to harden right there on the cement walkway. “Good riddance.”
“This isn’t going to mean the end of the garden, right?” The sea urchin’s voice went up an octave higher.
“No. Don’t worry about it, Penn. ”
The men noticed Mas for the first time. Examining Mas’s brown, leathery face and worn jeans, they must have figured that he was no threat to them. “Are Becca and Phillip inside?”
Mas nodded. “Wiz police.”
The men exchanged glances. They didn’t seem too eager to enter, but with Mas sitting out on the stairs as a witness, they didn’t have much choice.
Finally, after about forty-five minutes, the back door opened again. It was Detective Ghigo, his tie loosened and eyes bloodshot. “Okay, Mr. Arai, we’re ready for you.”
Mas followed Ghigo through the dining room into the living room. A gloomy gray light from the large picture window in the front cast a pall over the surroundings. On the large couch sat the son-in-law, wearing the same work clothes as yesterday, and Mari, carrying the baby. They must have come through the front door, thought Mas, grateful that everyone was back together, safe and sound. Another older woman, a hakujin with silver hair piled on top of her head, sat in a high-backed armchair. Miss Waxley, the driver’s boss, Mas figured. Both the sea urchin and sumo wrestler were standing awkwardly next to the picture window.
“This is your father, is that correct?” Ghigo asked, pulling at Mas’s coat as if he were a piece of old furniture found in the trash.
Mari glanced down at the Oriental rug in the middle of the room and then lifted her head toward Mas. She had gotten much thinner; her face was now angular, much like during her teenage years. But she had also aged-her eyes had lost all their sharpness, and her skin was as sallow as raw fish that had been left out too long. Her hair had been clipped short like a boy’s, and poking out from the top of her head were quite a number of gray strands.
Mari licked her lips. “Yes, he’s my father,” she said.
“Well, your father verified your story. That you were at home taking care of the baby this morning.”
Takeo was sleeping in Mari’s arms. His face was no longer so red as in his earlier photograph, and even with his eyes closed, he somehow looked more Asian.
“So we can go?” asked Lloyd.
“Yes.” Detective Ghigo nodded. “You all can go. But don’t be planning any trips to California.”
As Lloyd went to retrieve a baby stroller left in the hallway, Mas patted down his coat pockets. Empty. “Gloves, forgot my gloves,” he told the son-in-law. Mas went through the back door, and sure enough, he found the gloves on the stairs. What a sonafugun mess, thought Mas, taking one last survey of the garden. He expected to see the pure whiteness of the gardenia left in the middle of the dirt path. But the path was completely empty, as if it had been swept clean.
“I think they are going to close down the whole project, the garden and the museum,” Lloyd said. Mari pushed the stroller, one of these elaborate kinds with patterned cushions and even a holder for drinks.
“What do you expect? Kazzy’s dead.” Mari bent down to adjust the blanket over Takeo. He was starting to fuss, making hiccupping noises. Mari then noticed Mas at her side. “It’s a real screwed-up situation,” she said to no one in particular, followed by a couple of double-dose bad words.
Mas hated to hear his daughter curse, much less in front of the baby (who knew what he could absorb?), but it wasn’t anything new to him. Ever since she had moved to New York for school, it seemed that the East Coast had coarsened her, stripped her of any good manners learned from their detached single house in Altadena.