Strawberry Yellow (23 page)

Sergeant Salgado intently studied Mas’s face. “You wouldn’t know of any bats in the greenhouse?”

Mas wadded up a napkin. “No, nuttin’. Been away ova fifty years.”

“I also just heard about the new variety Sugarberry is planning to introduce.”

Mas felt a coolness at back of his neck.

“It’s called the Masao. Quite a coincidence. Isn’t your birth name Masao?”

The fact that Salgado had been checking into his identity troubled Mas. What did he know that Mas didn’t?

“Thatsu Shug’s bizness. Strawberry bizness. I’zu just a gardener from Rosu Angelesu.”

“No, Mr. Arai, you are not ‘just’ anything.”

They both noticed Minnie making her way back to the booth.

“Well,” he said, standing up. “You know where to find me. If you need to tell me something.” He then went to greet a couple sitting at a nearby table.

Minnie’s reaction was immediate. “What did he want?”

“Nuttin’,” Mas lied. “Just wanted to getsu some salt.”

As soon as he drove Minnie home, Mas headed to the guest room for a nap. But the problem was that he couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned on the twin bed, thinking about bloody baseball bats, poisonous rhubarb leaves, and strawberries worth killing for. By the time he was ready to leave Watsonville, he’d hoped that Minnie would feel safer. But now the exact opposite had happened.

He stumbled out of the room into the hallway, which had the whiff of something sweet baking.

A photo album lay open on the living room table. Black-and-white prints, attached meticulously with photo corners.

“I found more photos of you with Shug,” Minnie called out from the kitchen. “Before you left, I thought you might want to see them.”

Mas fingered the thick, black album paper. Each page had a different story. The gang clam digging in Pismo Beach, picnicking with rice balls and sandwiches at Point Lobos, picking wild berries in the mountains. In every shot, Shug and Mas were smiling. Mas couldn’t remember a time when he smiled so much.

Minnie sat down with a plate of warm cookies and turned the album page. “Oh, here you are at UC Davis.
I didn’t know you visited Shug in college.”

There were the three of them, Oily, Shug, and Mas. Mas had his long sleeves rolled up to his upper arm, a simple bandage covering the place where a scalpel had claimed an inch of skin. Both he and Oily were playfully making biceps like Popeye, while Shug, his trademark glasses overwhelming his narrow face, was bent over laughing.

Minnie pointed to Mas’s bandages. “What was that for?” she asked.

Some research project, wasn’t that what Shug had told them? He didn’t give many details.

Mas reached for the magnifying loupe that was always on hand when Minnie was examining her photo albums. The sign on the department building was now readable. Genetics.

If Shug was in the photo, then who had taken it in the first place? Mas’s mind raced back fifty years. There was that strange
hakujin
boy, one of Shug’s classmates. He was small in stature like them. Mas couldn’t remember much what he looked like. Only that he prided himself in being what he called, what was it again, naturally, nature man, nature-ist? Basically he liked to walk around in the nude.

“Mas, are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“The otha scientist at Sugarberry, Shug’s friend?”

“Who? Linus Verdorben?”

Mas nodded. “He at Davis, too?”

“Yes, they were in the same class.” Minnie frowned. “Why do you ask?”

A sign-waving crowd, even larger than usual, blocked the Sugarberry driveway. The protesters’ message had changed ever so slightly; it now was based on the strawberry commission’s meeting that was scheduled the next day. The chants, however, were pretty much the same. Mas noticed one large difference, which was also noted by another protester, one of those bedraggled
hakujin
college students he’d seen at the earlier meeting.

“Rosa not here?”

“She hasn’t been here the whole week.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. Elias is pissed about it. Says that she’s not telling everyone what she knows.”

Mas slipped through the crowd, anonymous as usual. Where was Rosa? He needed to talk to her. She was supposed to hear from Laila’s friend, the scientist, about the Masao berry, wasn’t she?

Just as Rosa was MIA from the protest line at Sugarberry, her daughter Cecilia was absent from the motel. Mas wandered through the three main floors, even attempting to go to the fourth floor, but at the top of the stairs, a locked gate barred his entry. A sign hung from a knob: PRIVATE PARTY.

What was it with this fourth floor?
Mas wondered, remembering the sound of Cecilia’s high heels on her way up there.

Through the gate, Mas could see a swimming pool with a few rooms surrounding it. He also spied something on the ground outside the gate. It was smooth and black, appropriately called
ishi
, or “stone” in Japanese. But this wasn’t
an everyday stone; no, it was a
go
piece imprinted with the Japanese character for forever,
eien
.

Forever Inn, wasn’t this the name of the motel? And then there was Forever Resort across the street from the Everbears headquarters. This was more than a coincidence. This place must be owned by Clay Gorman.

Mas heard something by the far side of the pool and pressed his face against the gate’s grating. Two figures, most likely men, emerged from one of the rooms.

“How many tonight?”

“Just five. Do we have enough girls?” The thin, monotone voice was a familiar one. It came from a skinny body in a long sleeved t-shirt and jeans. Clay Gorman.

“Kekai won’t help us anymore. And that sorority at UC Santa Cruz is having some function tonight.”

“Damn.”

A door opened from another room and Mas immediately recognized the outline of a mass of long, curly hair—Cecilia. She had some folded towels in her arms. By now, Mas had also identified the other man as Scott, the desk clerk.

“Hey, Cecilia, could you get some of your college friends to stop by tonight?” Clay asked.

“They’re not interested, and they won’t do it for the money. Most of them have boyfriends. My boyfriend wants me to stop, too.”

“It’s not like you’re prostitutes.”

“I know, I know, we are hostesses. But some of your friends did some inappropriate things last time.”

“Those weren’t my friends. They were some venture capitalists from San Diego. I barely knew them. These ones
tonight won’t do anything, I swear.”

“I don’t know, Mr. Gorman. My mother’s been pretty upset lately. You know, with everything. I think I should spend some time with her tonight.”

“Well, you have to do what you have to do. At least let’s get some of the good wine out. Scott, what do we have left from last time?”

“Not sure.”

“I’ll go down with you and check out what we have. Meanwhile, Cecilia, can you clean out the ashtrays?”

The two men started walking toward the gate, and Mas hurried around the corner and stood behind a potted ficus tree. The gate clanged open and Mas watched as Clay and the desk clerk made their way down the stairs.

The gate hadn’t properly closed, so Mas slipped in. He watched Cecilia in her maid’s apron filling a bucket with water from a hose. It took her a minute before she noticed Mas standing there by the pool.

“What are you doing here?” The hose fell out of her hand and was spilling water onto the patio. A large stone barbecue pit was surrounded by padded deck chairs. On a platform was an impressive
go
board, essentially a grid of lines on a wooden pedestal, and two bowls filled with
ishi
, one all white and the other all black.

“I findsu dis,” Mas said, placing the black stone on the
go
board.

“You shouldn’t be here. The owner won’t like it.” Cecilia turned off the water.

“Whatchu doin’? Sumptin police won’t like?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just a party. A private pool
party for some people who may invest in our area.”

Mas remembered how Billy said he’d met Laila at a pool party thrown by Clay. Had it been here? “How Laila involve?”

Cecilia sighed. “Okay, if I tell you, will you leave?”

Mas nodded.

“Laila wasn’t ‘involved.’ It was her younger sister, Kekai. She used to get her friends from Santa Cruz to come over and go swimming. They were just supposed to talk to Mr. Gorman’s friends. Nothing more. But Laila found out and went ballistic. She came here and started yelling at Mr. Gorman during one of his parties. Kekai was so embarrassed. I think she had a little crush on Mr. Gorman. After that, she stopped coming here.”

A blast of synthesized beats sounded from Cecilia’s apron pocket. She pulled out a cell phone and frowned as she looked at the display.

Holding the phone to her ear, she said, “I’m fine, Mom. I’m here at work. Why do you need me to be home? Stop being so paranoid.” She said a few more words and put the phone back in her pocket.

“Ohmygod, what’s going on today?” she said almost to herself. “You’re asking me questions about Laila. Mom’s been in hysterics, saying that whatever happened to Laila may happen to her.”

Mas jerked his head up.

“I think she’s going through some hormonal changes. She’s been acting so strange. Getting mysterious packages, secret calls. You’d think she joined the CIA or something. And then yesterday, I come home and this old white man with a beard takes off from the house.”

Mas waited. “Boyfriend?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. I mean, she wouldn’t tell me who he was. But I have a hunch it has something to do with strawberries. He drove off in a truck with a Sugarberry logo on its side.”

Jimi Jabami should have felt victorious. He had beaten the legal system, beaten the Arai family. But then there was Ats. Her body had gotten weaker, but her mind, sharper. Her face had become gaunt, with hollow cheeks. She could no longer speak with her voice, but she could still speak with her eyes. And her eyes were not happy with him right now.

Over the years, they did have their disagreements, mostly before the children arrived. When it came to their children, they were unified, in total agreement. When the first child, a girl, was born, Jimi finally felt that his blood family was being restored. All the hardness from past losses could soften a bit, or at least be sidelined temporarily.