Grandmaster (58 page)

"Even more flowers than usual," Susi said.

"Our secret admirer never fails," Miles said with a grin. He remembered a truckload of flowers had arrived at his apartment in New Haven on the day he graduated from law school. And it had been that way since they were toddlers. Every birthday, every personal milestone, had been greeted with white chrysanthemums; but no one ever knew where they came from.

At first their mother Mickey had believed that her husband was sending them, but he quickly disabused her of that idea. "Tomfoolery," he had grumbled. "And a waste of good money."

As Miles spun her around the dance floor, Susi was able to see the vast array of the floral arrangements. "These must have cost thousands," she said. "But why chrysanthemums? Aren't chrysanthemums for funerals?"

"Depends on where you live," Miles said with authority. "In Japan, chrysanthemums are the symbol of love."

Susi smiled. "I'm glad your two semesters of Japanese Language and Culture weren't wasted." She closed her eyes as they danced, and Miles noticed how little she had changed since childhood. She looked as Japanese as their mother, golden-skinned and delicate. The difference between them was that Susi accentuated her Asian features with her makeup and clothing, while their mother had spent a fortune on plastic surgery to eradicate hers.

"You look beautiful," Miles said quietly.

"I'll miss you, Miles." She lay her head on his chest.

"Hey, this isn't goodbye. You can count on me for dinner every Sunday. John does cook, doesn't he?"

"Dog," Susi growled mockingly and hugged him more tightly. "Dad says you might join his law firm?"

Miles sighed. "I guess so. I've been dodging it as long as I could, but I guess Dullstein, Boringly, and Stultifiable are now calling. God, Susi. Brain death as a career. Even marriage sounds better."

Susi reddened. "You'd still have to work sometime, at something," she said stiffly.

Miles smiled at his sister.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I must be an awful bore."

He kissed her forehead. "Forget it, Sis."

In the tradition of younger sisters everywhere, Susi was given to worrying about Miles. It seemed to her that everything—money, women, athletic skill, social grace—had always come too easily for him. He was an excellent piano player who didn't practice; a fine boxer who, like as not, in a tough bout would surrender before the bell and walk out of the ring; potentially a brilliant lawyer who had chosen instead to party his way through Yale, graduating somewhere near the middle of his class.

Miles's lack of drive bothered Susi more than it did either of his parents. Mickey Haverford had never objected to her son's academic mediocrity, since he excelled at all the things that really mattered: he was six feet tall, darkly handsome, and possessed of the sort of shallow charm that shows best at cocktail parties. Miles was the perfect tenth man at dinner, glib, self-assured and undemanding—either of others or of himself—and the ideal escort for his mother on the many occasions when her husband begged off some unmissable "A"-list party or another, preferring to hide in the sanctum of his law office.

As for Miles's father, Curtis Haverford felt nothing but disappointment in the boy who had once held so much promise. Miles had won a Westinghouse Science Award at eleven. He had given a piano recital of Bach fugues at Julliard when he was thirteen. By sixteen, he had read every book in Curtis's library, including those on law. And he was going to follow his father into the profession.

But that was long ago, it seemed. Long before Miles had lost interest in his future.

"It's just that you could do something wonderful with your life, if you wanted," Susi said gently. "If there were something worth dedicating yourself to . . ."

"Oh, Susi."

"I mean it, Miles. You're special. Meant for special things. I've always known that about you."

With a gesture, Miles invited his father to cut in. Curtis shook his head. During the brief exchange, Mickey Haverford eyed the dancing couple with disdain, then turned away.

"Okay, I'll shut up," Susi said.

"Good." He laughed. "Did you see Mother? She looks like somebody forced a dill pickle down her throat."

"It's my kimono," Susi said with a sigh. "She hates it. She hates anything that reminds her that she's Japanese."

Miles didn't answer. He knew it was true. Mickey Haverford had spent several hundred thousand dollars on cosmetic surgery to systematically westernize the Asian features of her face.

"That's why she likes you so much better than she does me," Susi went on. "You don't look Japanese at all."

"You're paranoid," Miles said.

"Oh, I don't really mind. Not anymore. And she's been a lot better since I decided to marry John. He's a good round-eyed WASP, the way she likes them."

She laughed and he joined her, but Miles felt uncomfortable all the same.

Susi had spoken the truth. Their mother exercised an almost absolute racial denial. She knew nothing about her own origins, and expressed no desire to know.

Mickey Haverford had been adopted by a wealthy Yankee couple when she was a small child. English was her first language, French her second. She had been raised in Westchester County, confirmed in the First Presbyterian Church, educated at Brearley and Barnard, married to an American husband, and produced two American children. There was, in fact, nothing Japanese about her.

But Miles remembered the woman on Fifth Avenue.

It had happened when Miles was still a small child. He had been walking down the sidewalk with his mother when a demented looking old woman lurched toward them muttering, "Jap! Dirty Jap!"

Mickey had pulled Miles away, walking quickly to escape the old harridan, but the woman had followed them, shouting and pointing, her eyes huge and bulging almost comically. "You killed my son, Jap. . . ."

"What's she talking about, Mom?" Miles had asked, but Mickey only rushed him silently toward home.

It was only later, when Miles sat up in his bed listening to his mother weep in his father's arms, that he realized it hadn't been the first time she'd been humiliated by a stranger.

And later, the same slights had been inflicted on his sister. Susi would come home from school in tears because of some obscene schoolyard insult. Miles had tried to comfort her.

"Don't pay any attention to them, Susi. The big event of their day is picking their noses." He had smiled as he spoke, but he could feel the anger inside him threatening to explode. Anger, and something else—something deeper and infinitely more shameful.

They've never bothered me
, he thought,
because I pass.

"Anyway, Granddad stood up for me," Susi said, bringing Miles back to the present. "He told Mother that he'd traveled twelve thousand miles to bring me an antique kimono from Tokyo so that I'd have something old at my wedding besides him, and by God, I was going to wear it."

Miles laughed aloud. "The old man's more Japanese than Mother will ever be." He spun Susi around and waved toward the bar, where their grandfather, Matt Watterson, was singing "Amapola" along with the band. Watterson saw them, hoisted a glass of champagne in salute, and kept singing.

At seventy-five, he was still a big, hulking man who had lost none of his wavy white hair and only a little of the stevedore physique that had earned him the nickname Shiro Ushi, or "White Bull," in Japan during his younger days. No one could have looked less like an expert in Oriental antiquities than Matt Watterson, yet among the trade his name was as respected as his fortune.

As Susi and Miles watched, a change came over the old man. His mouth fell open and the glass in his hand dropped with a crash to the floor. Susi gasped, pulled free of Miles, and ran toward him.

"Granddad!" she shouted, reaching for him. But Watterson waved her away absently while he walked toward the door.

Seven men had just entered. They were a strange group. All of them were Japanese. Six of the men, identically dressed in blue suits, formed a double phalanx on either side of the seventh, a diminutive old man with thinning gray hair and slender, sensitive hands, which he kept folded in front of him.

The crowd parted for the small man and his entourage. Even the band faltered, and a murmur went up from the guests as Matt Watterson moved slowly and hesitantly forward.

"Sadimasa?" he said softly into the silence.

The small man turned to Watterson and bowed deeply. His wrinkled face struggled with emotion.

The two old men stood facing each other for a long moment as if they were both suspended in space, then Watterson rushed forward and they embraced like lost brothers while the blue-suited asians formed a protective circle around them.

The music started up again. "I thought he was having a heart attack," Susi said, sidestepping the busboy who had come to clean up the broken glass from Watterson's spilled drink. "Who is that man?"

Miles shrugged. "Drinking buddy, probably."

"Don't be stupid," Susi snapped as the circle around the two old men broke and Watterson stepped out, his arm draped over the old man's shoulder like a bear's. "Look at Granddad's face. He's so happy he's
crying
. And what are all those other men doing with him? They look like some sort of praetorian guard."

"Guess you can ask him yourself," Miles said. "They're coming this way."

Watterson brought the man over to them and introduced him as Mr. Nagoya. The old man bowed to the bride.

"And this must be your grandson," Nagoya said, extending his hand to Miles.

Watterson's florid face flushed even deeper. "Yes. Yes, it is," he mumbled. "Miles, Mr. Nagoya is—"

The old man dismissed Watterson's words with a gesture. "I am a person of no account, whose worthless life your grandfather once saved."

Watterson's lips tightened, and Miles saw the big man's pale eyes shine with tears.

"During the war?" Miles asked politely.

Watterson nodded, then took Nagoya by the shoulder and led him away. "C'mon, Sadimasa. I want you to meet Mickey. That's what we call Masako, my . . ."

"Daughter," Nagoya finished for him.

Susi leaned over to Miles and whispered, "I hope he's not going to call her Masako." She giggled.

"Not if he knows what's good for him." He took her arm. "I'd better get you back to your husband," he said. "It looks like Big John needs his woman."

Susi halted abruptly. "Miles, look." She pointed toward the wall of white chrysanthemums. "It must be the light, or something."

"What are you pointing at?"

"The arrangement. Look there, in the center. The flowers are making a picture, Miles. It's a . . ."

Then Miles saw it, and his breath caught.

The top flowers had been arranged into a circle, and within the circle was a cascade of petals resembling a wave.

A wave
. He felt a cold shiver run down his spine.

"It's your imagination," he said, leading her away before she could notice the sweat that suddenly beaded on his face.

 

N
ick DeSanto nearly drove off the road while tooting a line of cocaine.

"Righteous!" he shouted, the rolled-up dollar bill still hanging from his nose.

The girls in the car were screaming. "Jesus, Nicky, take it easy, will you?" his younger brother Joey pleaded, shoving his blonde girlfriend off his lap.

"What, you suddenly Mr. Safety? Who's in charge here, anyway?"

"You are, Nicky," the girl in the front seat said placatingly. She reached for a cigarette with one hand and placed the other on Nick's crotch. He slapped it away.

"Hey, what's with you?" she shrilled. "All day you been like this."

"Shut up, will you?" Nick roared. He took the bill out of his nose and threw it out the window.

With a shrug Joey took another dollar from his wallet and gallantly passed it and a silver coke box to his girl.

It had been a rotten day, Joey thought philosophically, and it had started the night before. The two brothers had lost nearly three thousand dollars between them at Mongo Lewis's poker game, not to mention the five grand down the drain at Belmont because Jimmy Belcastro's hot tip turned out to be a washout.

Joey decided that Jimmy Belcastro had better start saying his Hail Marys now, because Nicky was going to put a big hole in his plumbing just as soon as the opportunity arose. He had planned to find Belcastro that afternoon and do the job right there in Jimmy's apartment, except that the girls started complaining about how they'd bought new dresses and wanted to go somewhere legit for a change instead of the Peyton Place, where all the guys hung out.

Nicky was as pissed off as he could be, and was going to belt his girl, Gloria, when she started in whining like that, but Joey said that a fancy dinner in a nice place like the Inn on the Park would make them all feel better.

Even though he was only nineteen years old—a dozen years younger than Nick—Joey was a voice of reason in the DeSanto family, the diplomat of the two brothers. Besides, he'd copped a new stolen credit card he wanted to use before the numbers showed up on the hot list.

Nicky skidded the royal blue Corvette to a halt in front of the restaurant, forcing the valet to leap out of the way.

"See that you keep an eye on it," Nick said, tossing the keys to the young man.

The valet caught the keys. "Are you with the party, sir?"

"What are you talking about?" Nick growled. "Open the door for the lady."

"I'm afraid the restaurant is closed today, sir. The restaurant has been booked for a private party. A wedding reception."

"Get out of here."

"Sir . . ."

Nick muscled his way past the young man to the front door.

"May I see your invitation, sir?" the doorman asked.

"Get out of my face." He tried to shove the doorman aside, but the doorman grabbed his arm. Nick made a fist and leaned backward, aiming for the man's face, when the valet ran up to restrain him.

It was at this point that Joey DeSanto hurled himself from the Corvette to take down the valet. Nick's right hook landed square on the doorman's chin. All four of them crashed to the ground, grunting and cursing as the restaurant manager came out, followed by a small group of onlookers.