Naomi Hirahara - Gasa-Gasa Girl

“Did he want to end the project?”

“He was always saying that. But he really didn’t mean it. He just needed me to reassure him that everything was going to turn out all right.”

“You really had a stake in this working out,” said Ghigo.

“What the hell are you trying to say?” Mari interrupted.

“A garden that was paying for your family’s health expenses.”

The power of the detective’s words seemed to catch Mari off guard. Her eyes misted over, and then Ghigo softened his approach.

“Listen, I got two kids myself. I know how all this can add up, a doctor’s visit here, a procedure there. A person may feel like he doesn’t have many choices.”

“We didn’t hurt Kazzy. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to him,” Lloyd said.

Mari took a less calm approach. “What are you suggesting? That we threw Kazzy into the pond ourselves?”

“Do you own a gun, Mrs. Jensen?”

Mari’s face grew very still, and Mas knew that something was wrong.

Lloyd hesitated for a minute. “No, of course we don’t own a gun.” He stumbled over his words like he was walking in unknown territory when it was pitch dark.

“Well, that’s good to know, because we found a gun in a trash can down the street. A nine millimeter. It’s only a matter of time before ballistics matches that gun with the bullet in the victim’s skull.”

“Bullet? I thought that Kazzy was pushed into the pond by vandals,” said Lloyd.

The missing part of his head, thought Mas.

Lloyd and Mari exchanged looks. Finally Mari swallowed and spoke. “Well, there is this one gun. It’s just a prop from one of the silly slasher films I worked on as an assistant cinematographer. The propman wasn’t too professional and never kept track of it.

“I just kept it as a joke. I knew that I needed to get rid of it eventually, but I stuck it in a shoe box and forgot about it. Until all this stuff was going on at the garden. I was working there, sometimes alone, at all hours. I needed to use the foundation’s digital equipment, you see. We don’t even have a decent television set at home.”

Mas nodded. That definitely was true.

“I took the gun to work just as a precaution. It wasn’t loaded, of course. I just kept it in a drawer in case I needed to scare off any vandals late at night.”

“You never registered it?”

“I wasn’t going to use it. Did you do a search of the edit suite inside of the house? It’s on the second floor.”

“No gun in there.” Ghigo tapped his pen on his thigh. “Do you know what kind of gun it was?”

Mari’s voice sounded as small as a mouse’s squeak. “Nine millimeter, I think.”

Mas spit out his gum into a flattened Juicy Fruit wrapper.

“So who else knew about the gun?”

“Well, just me, for a while. Lloyd found it about a week ago. Told me to get rid of it. But I was too busy.”

“I’d like for us to go over to the precinct. To sort everything out.” Ghigo stood up.

“My son,” Mari said.

Ghigo studied Mari’s face for a moment. “Oh, yes. How is he doing?”

Lloyd stood up, and Mas wasn’t sure if he was going to challenge the detective to a fight. “Not sure yet.”

“Listen, you can make it easier on both of us if you just come with me. Wouldn’t want to cause a scene, you know.”

An older couple sitting on a couch at the other side of the waiting room looked over. Mas didn’t relish his daughter and son-in-law being taken away in handcuffs. When a family member was sick, the hospital became your new world. It would be hard enough for Mari to return to this world without everyone knowing that they were suspects in a murder investigation.

“I’ll go, Mari. We have nothing to hide.” Lloyd put on his jacket. “Just call me as soon as you hear something from the doctor.”

Mari nodded.

“And you’d better find us a lawyer.”

While Lloyd and Mari discussed more details about doctors, Mas went over to Ghigo.

“You hang on to that gardenia?”

Ghigo, a bit puzzled, peered down at Mas. “Oh, you mean that white flower. Yep, we bagged it. But then there were a lot of flowers in that garden.”

“That flower not from the garden,” Mas told him. “Take a look-some kind of hair in the middle.”

Ghigo stared at Mas for a moment as if he didn’t know what to make of the old Japanese man. “I’ll have the lab check it out,” he said.

Mas nodded. Somehow he felt that the gardenia was important, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.

After Lloyd gave Mari an awkward kiss on the lips, he and Detective Ghigo headed down the hallway toward the elevators. Both Mari and Mas stood and watched until the two men disappeared into the elevator going down.

“He wants me to get an attorney. How am I going to find a criminal attorney?” Mari began pushing buttons on her cell phone when a nurse passing by stopped her, pointing to a large sign showing a picture of a phone with a red diagonal line through it.

“Dammit, dammit. Nothing’s going right today, Dad.” Mari buried her forehead in her hands.

“No worry, Mari.” Mas meant to take the phone from her, but instead felt his daughter’s fingers, ice-cold and trembling. “I may knowsu someone who can help.”

G.I. Hasuike was an attorney in Los Angeles with long black and gray hair that reached down to his waist. His hair was usually tied back in a rubber band; that’s why Mas hadn’t noticed its length the first time he had met him.

Since that time, they had shared enough beers and sake for Mas to learn that G.I. was short for George Iwao. He was a Sansei, a third-generation Japanese American, who ran around with a pack of friends from Boyle Heights, next door to East L.A. G.I. had fought in the Vietnam War, not because of any sense of duty, but because his friends had run out of soy sauce the night before their Army physical. They had a square gallon container of Kikkoman shoyu, which they took turns gulping (in between swigs of rum and whiskey and puffs of who-knows-what). G.I. unfortunately had too much rum and whiskey and not enough salt from the shoyu, so his blood pressure test came out free and clear to go shoot some other yellow men an ocean away.

G.I. specialized in spill-and-fall cases, but he was no stranger to criminal cases, either. He told Mas that he had witnessed dozens of men killed in the jungle, so what was dealing with a few murders in the streets of L.A.?

“Where are you calling from, Mas?”

Mas, clutching Mari’s cell phone, stood underneath a pine tree on the corner outside the hospital. A few pine needles fell on his shoulder as a lost bird moved on to a warmer location. “ New York,” he said.

“ New York? Damn, Mas. You sure get around these days. What’s goin’ on?”

Mas tried to explain the whole scenario, from the discovery of the body to Detective Ghigo’s questioning of Mari and Lloyd. “You knowzu any lawyers in New York?”

“Do they have any money? Criminal defense lawyers like to have their fee up front.”

Mas blinked. He pictured the underground apartment and pitiful television set. “No, no money.”

“May be hard,” said G.I. “But I do have a friend connected with the Asian Legal Defense Alliance. Her name’s Jeannie Yee. She’s young, but can kick anybody’s butt.”

Mas took down the name and phone number on the visitor’s sticker the hospital had given him.

After he got off the phone with G.I., Mas realized that he had forgotten to tell the lawyer that Lloyd was hakujin, not Asian. Either way, he still needed defense. And besides, wasn’t he a member of the family?