Wishbone was behind the counter, like usual. Wishbones real name, given by his immigrant parents from Kumamoto Prefecture, was Wallace. Strangers who met Wishbone for the first time thought that his nickname meant that he was lucky. But it had nothing to do with luck. When he was a skinny teenager, his legs were terribly pigeon-toed, resulting in the nickname from his East L.A. classmates. At age sixty-seven, the name still stuck.
He and three others were talking about the gardeners association meeting the night before. Hardly anyone there,
ne,
said one of the guys, a gardener in San Gabriel. A lot of fines to be paid.
Took just about thirty minutes, datsu all. Was even home for the horse race broadcast, said Stinky Yoshimoto, also a gardener who lived in Pasadena.
Mas, at first, didnt notice the man standing in the corner by the loops of garden hoses. He was quiet, and it was his silence that attracted attention. He was in his fifties, younger than the usual crowd. He wore a tan turtleneck, even though it was ninety-eight degrees outside, and a pair of tinted glasses with golden tips. Must be straight from Japan, Mas had thought, studying the mans flat, manicured fingernails. Definitely no gardener.
You not at the meeting last night, Mas. Stinky held on to the handle of a lawn mower on display.
The man in the tinted glasses and the two gardeners stared at Mas as if they had just noticed him in the doorway. He fumbled with a button on his khaki shirt and adjusted his Dodgers cap.
Mas dont go to meetings. Hes not that kind of guy. Wishbone grinned, wrinkles covering his face like a Mojave lizards.
Mas bit into an old toothpick he had found in his jeans pocket. The guys always made a big deal about the gardeners association meetings. But what was it, really? A bunch of old guys in folding chairs, listening to speeches on the latest drought or blower ban. The heyday of the Japanese gardener had passed them by years ago. Once, there had been hundreds of them on the front lawns of practically all Southern California homes and businesses. Now they were replaced by their former helpers, the Mexicans, with shiny new trucks, eager family members, and cut-rate prices.
We were just tellin this fella what your name again? The gardener from San Gabriel turned to the stranger.
Nakane. The man squeezed the right tip of his eyeglasses.
Yah, Nakane-
san,
yah, tellin him that we saw Haneda last night.
The toothpick broke in Mass mouth. His heart pounded, and blood pulsed through his head.
You know Haneda Joji? the stranger asked in Japanese. His tinted glasses had turned a shade or two lighter in the dark shed, and his heavy eyelashes fluttered.
Yah, he knowsu Haneda. Stinkys eyes were bloodshot and milky yellow like a stirred raw egg. Knowsu each other back in, what, Wakayama?
Hiroshima, Mas corrected Stinky.
Oh, yah, thats right. Hi-RO-shima.
Longtime friends, Nakane stated, more than questioned.
No, I neva say friends. Mas chewed on the broken toothpick until it splintered into even smaller pieces. What kind of stranger comes around and makes noise like this?
Shitsurei,
Nakane apologized. Dont take offense. Im just looking for him.
Heezu right ova there, in Ventura, said Stinky.
Yah, the gardener from San Gabriel interjected, got a fancy nursery right there by the ocean. The beach clean there, he say. Best sashimi in California. Better than the ones down here, any day.
Thats the thing. Wishbone smoothed a dollar bill on his wooden counter. Hes not in Ventura anymore.
Oh, yah? Stinky looked greedily at Wishbone. Wishbone was the king of local gossip, which seemed to sell better than his lawn mowers.
He left his wife and his kids, although they all are pretty much grown now. They say hes with a mistress down here in North Hollywood.
North Hollywood? Mas felt like spitting the tiny splinters of toothpick onto Wishbones floor. While it took at least an hour and a half to drive to Ventura, North Hollywood was only twenty miles away.
Happen to know her name? Nakanes eyes looked shiny and bright, but Mas couldnt tell if it was just the reflection off of his glasses.
No. Wishbones smile diminished slightly. Just know that shes younger.
Atarimae,
thought Mas. That much they all could figure out.
Another gardener walked into the steamy shed, and the conversation switched from Haneda to gossip about a Japa-nese mechanic whose son had been arrested for drug dealing. The turtlenecked man retreated into the back storage area, and Mas remained with the others. It was only a matter of time before the man in the tinted glasses made his way toward Mas. So, you know where Joji-
san
is?
Why you wanna knowsu? The man spoke as if he were straight from Japan, and Mas was suspicious. He smelled like high-tone cologne, not the familiar scent of Old Spice that Mas splashed on special for a funeral.
The man bent his head. Im working in conjunction with the government. Trying to restore some lost records. We thought that Joji Haneda died in 1945, August. But heres one, right here in Southern California.
Mas tossed the chewed toothpick on the floor. Lotsu of Jojis, I betsu. A dime a dozen. Mas made sure he spoke in English. And Haneda. Probably a load of themsu, too.
The man squeezed the tip of his glasses again. Yes, it could be so. But they never recovered his body.
Mas almost laughed out loud. How many thousands were never found? How many were tossed in piles like charred, useless logs? You gonna track down every dead sonafugun? You gonna be one busy man.
The man did not smile back. Instead, he flipped out a thin gold case and removed a business card. SHUJI NAKANE, INVESTIGATIONS, it read. Underneath the title was an address in Hiroshima. You call me if you remember anything. My local pager numbers on the back, Nakane said.
Wait a minute, Mas said before Nakane left the shed. How you knowsu a Joji Haneda in America?
Television, said Nakane. On an American news program.
Mas remembered. It had been a couple of years ago in August. He had been flipping through the television channels after eating a burnt Swansons chicken pie, and there was that ugly face, the hooked nose. He was sitting next to a
hakujin
man reporter, one of those generic ones with neat hair, not too good-looking, but not so bad, either. They were on the shore of a beach; must have been Ventura. I was with two friends that morning, he said. Below him, on the screen, were the video letters JOJI HANEDA/SURVIVOR.
Mas felt sick to his stomach. You nuts, he practically spit at the 12-inch image of video dots. It was just like him to run after attention. Couldnt he keep quiet after all these years?
How many of them survived? the reporter asked.
Hanedas eyes watered, like those of a trapped fish. Only me, he said, and one other.
Mas promptly turned off the television and smashed his hand against the fake wood console. The worn-out antenna, which he had reattached with metal telephone wire, sagged down to the floor.
Baka,
Mas cursed. He couldnt believe this man could be so stupid. It would be just like him to talk after fifty years, when it felt deceptively safe. And now that recklessness had resulted in this fancy investigator nosing around.
So, were you able to help the man out? Wishbone had left his counter to stack some cans of snail killer on a shelf next to Mas.
Mas shook his head. What youzu know about dis guy, anyway?
Just came in this morning. Never laid eyes on him before.
Strange, thought Mas. Wishbone didnt care for these white-collar types from Japan. If he had his way, none of them would be allowed into the United States, much less his Altadena lawn mower shop. Before Mas could ask any more questions, Wishbone had returned to the rest of his customers.
Standing beside the cans of snail killer, Mas studied the investigators card. This Shuji Nakane was no government man; that was for sure. No such person would set foot in Tanakas Lawnmower Shop. This man was used to getting down and dirty, digging in places he should not be. What would happen if he uncovered the truth about Joji Haneda?
CHAPTER TWO
Mass best friend, if he could call him that, was Haruo Mukai. He was scrawny and a little shriveled, like a piece of fat that you couldnt quite chew through. He had a shock of white hair that usually covered the left side of his face.
What was underneath that hair made Mass stomach churn, even to this day. A keloid scar, puckered and webbed, from the eyebrow to the chin. And the fake eye, which needed to be adjusted.
Ron-Pari
eye, they called it. While one faced London, the other looked toward Paris.
Haruo never talked about it, at least to Mas. Didnt have to. Thats the way they operated, and it had worked for more than forty years. They had met at the Pasadena DMV, where they both happened to stand in line, struggling with the paperwork to get their new drivers licenses. Turned out both had spent time in Hiro-shima, and both were gardeners trying to make their living from the lawns of
hakujin
people.
They soon became track buddies sometimes even going in between gardening jobs during the weekdays. Type of lunch break, Mas told himself, didnt have to tell Chizuko. But of course Haruo got found out by his wife, Yasuko. Yasuko seemed as gentle and pliable as a willow branch, except for her eyebrows. It was these eyebrows, or rather her lack of them, that revealed her true character. She had plucked every single hair and replaced the brows with two hand-drawn black strokes ominous crows in the swaying willow branch.
When she discovered ten betting stubs in Haruos back jeans pocket, all hell broke loose. She even brought Chizuko into the picture, claiming Mas was a corrupting influence. The lunch breaks to the track ceased, and Mas saw Haruo only when they got together on a sprinkler job.
Haruo had lost out to the sweeping eyebrows, and come clean. Thats why Mas didnt believe the lawn mower shop gossip several years later. The talk was that Haruo had collected money from his
tanomoshi
but had failed to show up to the meetings to make his monthly contributions. The
tanomoshi
clubs served as private banks among the Japanese. It was through their
tanomoshi
that Mas and Chizuko were able to buy their home, replace their old refrigerator that had wheezed like an aging dog. There were no contracts, just an understanding that you in time would replenish the pool of money.
Occasionally, someone would take off with the money and disappear into the far northern or eastern suburbs, or maybe back to Japan. But Haruo wasnt like that. If he borrowed a power drill bam it was back the day after, in addition to shiny homegrown eggplants and prickly long cucumbers. Nah, got story wrong, Mas told the guys at Tanakas Lawn-mower Shop.
But then, two days later, Yasuko called for Chizuko. He took a second mortgage on the house, she wailed. That good-for-nothing. Bookies callin every hour. Nothing. We have nothing now. The house was lost. Eventually Yasuko packed up the teenagers and furniture and walked out. Haruo was now living in a small apartment in Los Angeless Crenshaw area, and regularly seeing a Japanese counselor in Little Tokyo to get gambling out of his system.
