Summer of the Big Bachi Read online

  Tug wiggled his little finger, which was whole and complete with all its joints. “But figurin’ I just lost half of a finger, and other guys lost much more than that, well, I guess I can’t complain. I’ve received a lot of blessings.”

  Tug and Lil attended the Sunrise Baptist Church in Boyle Heights, just east of Little Tokyo. Every summer, the Yamadas would bring over yellow tickets for their chicken teriyaki fund-raising dinner. Mas complained the church’s chicken wasn’t salty enough, but Chizuko would berate him, saying his monku was just another sign of his own moral failure.

  “The 442nd’s having another reunion next year in Hawaii. I’m not into all these veterans’ shindigs, but I guess it would be a nice trip for Lil. I wouldn’t mind seeing the guys again, especially the ones on the Islands.

  “We missed the Biffontaine tour. I guess it was a big to-do. Lil wanted to make it over to Europe, but I don’t know—there’s a lot of things I could just as well forget.”

  Tug took back the untangled chain from Mas. “You must have seen hell, too, huh, Mas?”

  Mas pulled a screwdriver out of Tug’s red toolbox and began loosening connections to the toilet’s old float ball. What was it with the Nisei and their desire to memorialize the past? Camp, the war front, they wanted to remember now that their families and wood-framed houses were secure. They had their Purple Hearts and Silver Stars, and could die with their souls at rest. But Mas filled his days with numbers and odds, his only hope to change his history. And now the young red badger was in town, tugging at remains that were never meant to be unearthed.

  Tug tried again. “I get bad dreams, too.” But Mas didn’t bite. The image of melting Mari crept back into his mind. It didn’t matter that she was thousands of miles away. No parent could forget a child’s cry for help, even if it was in a dream.

  They continued to work in silence; Mas unscrewed the lift wires while Tug handed over the new parts from his paper bag. In the end, they fastened the black float ball on the new flush arm.

  “Listen, Mas,” Tug said. “Sorry I blew it by spilling the beans about Mari. I caught hell at home. I guess I was never that good about keeping things to myself.”

  Mari and Tug’s daughter, Joy—soon to be Dr. Yamada—had played together in this very house, attended each other’s birthday parties, and posed in the same class pictures. What had happened to take them in such different paths?

  Tug stood over the empty toilet tank. “You know, they never quite come out the way you expect it. I guess that’s just the risks of parenthood.”

  The phone rang, and Mas paused for a moment. Tug must have placed the receiver back on the cradle. Mas left Tug to contend with the toilet bowl and answered the phone.

  It was Wishbone Tanaka with some nonsense about a poker game.

  “Don’t play no cards no more. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that.” Wishbone didn’t sound convinced. “Hey, I wouldn’t be calling, but I’m all jammed up right now. Bunch of guys are going to this Heart Mountain reunion. I need more guys to fill the table.”

  Mas wanted to slam down the phone. Why was Wishbone bothering him about this? Should’ve kept the phone disconnected, he thought.

  “Hello, hello.” Wishbone sounded like his mouth was too close to the handset.

  “Yah.”

  “You know any guys?”

  “There’s Whitey Tsukamoto. Shy Amano,” Mas offered impatiently.

  “Them two are going to the camp thing. Look, I promised my friend that I could get a game going tonight. He owns one of those storefronts in Little Tokyo and knows someone who wants to run regular card games up on his second floor.”

  Not my problem, thought Mas. “Can’t help you,” he said.

  “There’s another thing.” Wishbone took a breath. “Gonna sell my shop, Mas. Everyone’s dying, or gettin’ out of the business; no fun anymore.”

  Mas sucked his metal dental plate. No Tanaka’s Lawn-mower. Hard to believe. It would be strange to enter that shedlike store and not see Wishbone’s pockmarked face behind the counter.

  “Look, Mas, you owe me; you know you do. Gave you a break every time things didn’t work out so good. Remember when your back went out real bad, fifteen years ago? Prac-tically gave you that gas blower.”

  Sonafugun. He would bring that up. Even though Wishbone was Nisei, there was a big part of him that was Japanese, and it was coming up now.

  “Hey, what about Haruo Mukai? He’s your buddy, right? Heard he sold his house. He’s, what, somewhere in Crenshaw?”

  “No, bad idea. He don’t do cards.” Mas tightened his grip on the telephone receiver.

  “Well, he sure did back in the old days. Crazy bettor, that skinny man was.”

  “Hotteoke,” Mas said. Leave him the hell alone. Although Wishbone didn’t speak much Japanese, he would understand that much.

  “Okay, okay, no need to get so touchy—”

  Something clattered onto the tile on the bathroom floor. “Wishbone, I gotsu someone here.”

  “Listen, I’ll call you in ten minutes. Game’s starting at eight.”

  Mas wanted to tell him not to bother, but Wishbone had already clicked off. What trouble. Mas tried to clear his eyes of the film that had accumulated during the past three days, but it was no use.

  Mas and Tug completed the work on the toilet bowl tank and then sat at the kitchen and talked over 7-UP and rice crackers. It was about eight o’clock when the phone rang again.

  “Hey, Mas, it’s me, Wishbone.”

  “Yah.” Mas could hear the clicking of poker chips and men’s voices in the background.

  “Don’t worry, you don’t need to come. Got plenty of guys.”

  “Orai. What, Whitey and Shy help you out?”

  “No, Haneda found them all. We’re covered.”

  “Haneda? What Haneda?” Mas could barely speak.

  “You know, Joji Haneda, from Ventura. He’s back in town. That’s my friend’s connection.” Laughter in the background. “And hey, your old buddy Haruo is even here. Seems like he plays cards now.”

  Before Mas could interrupt, the line cut off. “Wishbone, Wishbone.” Mas jiggled the receiver. It was no use. Wishbone was probably back absorbed in his game, and Mas had no idea where they were.

  “Everything okay?” Tug called out.

  Little Tokyo, wasn’t that what Wishbone had said? Second floor. It all sounded familiar, a faint echo of something recent. Mas went into the bedroom and rummaged through the pockets of his old jeans. There, in the pair torn from the accident, in the front pocket, was the map, folded in half.

  Even after looking at the photo of Haneda at the mistress’s place, Mas couldn’t remember his face. It seemed blurry, hazy, like a photo of a moving man. He tried to recall the photo of the bridge, how he had looked as a teenager. He could remember certain features, the prominent nose, high cheekbones, pointy chin. But they were separate parts that didn’t quite match together, like those police composites of suspected rapists shown over the television. Those drawings were all similar. The faces were devoid of any racial distinction, could be either black, Mexican, or hakujin. When the guy was finally caught—say, like the Night Stalker in East Los Angeles—Mas was always amazed how different he seemed from the early drawings. Perhaps the victims couldn’t clearly describe their assailant; the darkness of the crime pulled a film over their eyes, blinding them to the softness of a mouth, the liveliness of the eyes, or the curve of an ear.

  He sat in the passenger seat of the Yamadas’ old Buick, in front of their fabric dashboard cover. A line of decorative pins had been attached to the right side, above the glove compartment—a swirling American flag, the words 442ND REGIMENTAL COMBAT UNIT—GO FOR BROKE; a church and a cross outlined by an orange sun, SUNRISE BAPTIST CHURCH—CENTENNIAL; and the rings of the 1984 Olympics.

  It was eight-thirty at night and the sun was just starting to set, casting an orange hue over the hills north of Little Tokyo. Barely visible, they we
re dried out and brown. Tiny homes crowded the base of the slopes like globs of salmon eggs.

  Mas grasped the shoulder strap of the seat belt. “You know, when we get there, betta if you just drop me off. I can get a ride home.”

  “I can hold my own, Mas. Don’t be worried about me.”

  There was plenty to worry about, though. There was Haneda, and then Haruo, the sickest gambler alive. Mas remembered the time when Haruo had disappeared for some days after his divorce.

  “Probably turn up dead,” Stinky Yoshimoto had said at the lawn mower shop. “You know—pah.” He pointed a finger toward his head like a gun.

  Mas kept his mouth shut. Stinky and the others knew nothing. Death was easy, but Mas and Haruo had been cursed with surviving. To take your own life was an insult to the dead—like stealing a medal and wearing it proudly over your shirt pocket. No matter how bad things got, you had to just wait and hope that someone or something else would cut you down, cleanly and swiftly, like pulling weeds out from the ground.

  Haruo had eventually turned up in Laughlin, feeding his last nickels into a hungry slot machine. Stinky seemed a little disappointed; gossip at the lawn mower shop had reached a lull, and news of a suicide would have sure sparked things up.

  Little Tokyo had not been a part of town that you went to at night. That’s when the manju makers brushed rice flour from their hands and darkened their sweet shops, the bankers went home to the suburbs, and bento lunch shops closed their doors. To the south, the beggars dragged out their cardboard homes, while City Hall remained lit but deserted. Mas had heard of a friend whose car had been broken into, and a ten-pound bowling ball had been stolen. In another case, a thief had taken a radiator out of a car and was on his way to a local dive with his prize when he was apprehended.

  That was before they began cleaning it up—building new, fancy structures and sending out a troop of citizen patrolmen. But Mas was still not going to take any chances.

  “That parking lot best place,” Mas said, pointing to a place with a security guard, and Tug nodded. No sense in Tug’s having his car stolen, too.

  A few bars were open, as well as all-night noodle shops catering to carousing young people and red-faced Japanese businessmen. Mas glanced at the map and figured out that it was on the second floor of a brick building painted white. On the first floor was a video store, still open with paper hearts twirling from the ceiling.

  “This way.” Tug opened a glass door, which led to a dark, narrow staircase.

  “Wait, Tug, maybe—” Mas was having second thoughts. Tug was a family man, after all, with a wife and grandchildren.

  “C’mon.” Tug slapped Mas’s back with his huge palm, practically pushing him up the stairs.

  At the top was a door. Mas turned the knob. Locked. The staircase was pitch-black.

  Mas turned, bumping into Tug’s stomach. “I guess no one’s there.”

  “Try knocking.”

  But Mas was having second thoughts. “Let’s just get outta here.”

  “Who’s that?” A muffled male voice sounded from the other side.

  “Mas. Itsu Mas Arai.”

  The door opened, and there was Wishbone. In the shadow of the room, the pockmarks on his face looked like the surface of a peach pit, all bumpy and dark. Out of the context of Tanaka’s Lawnmower shop, Wishbone didn’t seem like himself. He wasn’t smiling, and his usual mischievous grin was replaced with a cold stare. “Thought you weren’t coming.” He held a strange-looking skinny cigarette in his wrinkled hand.

  “Change my mind,” said Mas. While Tug was introducing himself to Wishbone, Mas examined the room, which was cloudy with smoke. A light hung from the ceiling over a card table. Mas didn’t recognize most of the faces, young ones with shaven heads and tattoos, some even with zigzag scars. There were paler Japanese with meticulously oiled hair and expensive suits. A few hakujin men—one with a pitiful wisp of a mustache—looked like they hadn’t bathed for at least two days. This crowd was a rough one. Mas could smell the scent of jail time and illicit activity. This wasn’t what Wishbone was bargaining for, Mas knew.

  “Where is he?” Mas asked.

  “I’ll get him.”

  Mas meant Haruo, but Wishbone was speaking to another man in a corner. The man turned, and Mas felt like his heart had stopped. It was the same man in the photos in the North Hollywood apartment, but this one had been reduced to skin and bones. His cheeks, even his eyes, seemed sunken into his skull. His hair was cropped short, and age spots marked his bare skin like raindrops.

  The man was walking toward Mas, coming closer and closer, and then the face, once a composite, now was real flesh and bones. The reality now hit Mas squarely. He could no longer think of this man as other than who he really was.

  “Riki,” Mas whispered.

  “Haneda,” the man said. His voice was gravelly, the sound of work boots crushing pebbles and sand. “You call me Haneda.”

  Somehow thinking of Riki Kimura as Joji Haneda all these years had slowly erased the painful memory of the real Joji. But having Riki Kimura standing in front of him changed everything. Time had not been kind to him, that was for sure. Mas didn’t know if it was because of the decades of hard living. Or maybe the decay of Riki’s insides had finally grown to reach his outsides. Whatever it was, Mas didn’t want to be anywhere near Riki, but he had to, at least for this night.

  Tug, who had been surveying the room, approached Mas and Riki. “Tug Yamada,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  “Joji Haneda,” Riki said easily, slipping a fresh cigarette in the side of his mouth. “You a friend of Arai’s?”

  Mas stepped in front of the two men, his back toward Riki. “Haruo,” he said to Tug. “Check table.”

  Tug nodded, looking a little confused. Here good manners don’t count for anything, Mas said to himself. You may be bigger than most of the men here, Tug, but you’re way out of your league. Watching Tug’s white head disappear in the crowd, Mas turned his attention to Riki. “People are comin’ ’round, askin’ about Joji Haneda.”

  “So I heard.” Riki lit his cigarette with a match and grinned, fifty years falling from his face. Other than the stained brown teeth, it was the same man. He took a drag of his cigarette, and Mas could see him in the middle of that Hiroshima boulevard, teenagers and children crowded around barrels of fire.

  “You betta leave, go back to Ventura.”

  “Oh, yah?” Riki extinguished the match with his fingers.

  “They gonna find out.”

  “What? That thousands of people die in Hiroshima? Thatsu no secret, Masao-san.”

  “You make him die.”

  “America, heezu country, your country, killsu him. You say I killsu him—where’s the evidence?”

  “They gotsu a drawing, a picture.”

  “A picture?” Riki laughed. Brown tobacco stains had darkened his teeth like an ancient Japanese harlot. “Whatsu that suppose to prove?”

  “Itsu Haneda, wiz your name on him.” Mas remembered the crudely drawn jumble of maggots, the strange circle by the body.

  “Oh, yah?” Riki smirked. “What the harm? Whole family’s dead. He was almost dead when we found him.”

  “Well, Akemi’s not dead. Alive.”

  Riki took another drag from his cigarette, but Mas noticed that his spotted fingers trembled.

  “Gonna come out.”

  “You gon’ tell them?” Riki sneered. “Someone should warn you about that.” An image of tasseled loafers flashed in Mas’s brain.

  Before Mas could mention the grandson, someone called out, “Haneda, a spot opened up. You in or you out?”

  Riki raised his hand, the ash falling down like dust. “Izu in.”

  Mas pushed his way through the crowd, past two blackjack tables and one pai gow. Here, above this brick, low-level storefront, was a gambling operation that rivaled that of any Indian casino. After Riki slipped into a chair at a green felt table, a dark mustached man on his left began dealing
cards. A flat leather pouch with a tiki design hung from a string around the dealer’s neck. To his side was a metal cash box. On the other side of the cash box sat Wishbone, plastic poker chips piled up in front of him like a skyline. To the right of Riki was Haruo, his chin down in his chest and his head shaking back and forth. Mas first thought Haruo was petrified to be found out, but he must have been this way for a while.

  Mas noticed that only five chips lay scattered on the table near Haruo. “How much gone?” he hissed in Haruo’s ear.

  Haruo continued shaking but didn’t respond.

  “How much?” Mas said—this time louder.

  Haruo lifted his face, the bump of a keloid scar showing beneath his hair. “Almost five hundred.”

  Mas cursed. “Dis guyzu out,” he said as the man with the pouch dealt the last card to Wishbone.

  Riki spread his cards in his hand like a peacock raising its feathers. “Too late, Mas. Already started.”

  “Howzyu get five hundred, Haruo?” Mas remembered that Haruo had proudly shown him his personal monthly budget, figures from his social security, all six hundred dollars, written in one column, with his expenditures in another—seventy-five cents for the Laundromat, eighty dollars for gas, a hundred dollars for groceries, three hundred thirty for rent, and so on. It left only six dollars and thirty cents for the column “Savings.”

  The seated dark man patted the metal cash box. “He borrowed it from the bank. His car is the collateral.” His voice was staccato, reminding Mas of his occasional helper Eduardo.

  “It’s probably only worth that much,” muttered Wishbone.

  “I tole you don’t call him. Heezu sick. Heezu a sick man.” Mas bent down so close to Wishbone that he could smell his sour breath.

  “I’m no social worker. Besides, I wasn’t the one who called him.”

  “You were always one to jump to conclusions.” Plastic poker chips clicked in Riki’s hands. “I called Haruo.”

  “Itsu my choice, Mas.” Haruo pulled at the green felt. “I needsu to take sekinin for my actions.”