Naomi Hirahara - Gasa-Gasa Girl

All nuts, Mas thought, and now he had one more to contend with.

“That branch gotta be cut, or itsu gonna spread all ova.”

“Lloyd had that tree on antibiotics all summer.” In response to Mas’s frown, Becca added, “You know, antibiotics. Medicine to fight off the infection.”

“No kind of medicine gonna save that tree. Gotta saw it off.” Luckily, the branch was still young and stood only about three feet high from where it was connected to the tree. If Mas had a ladder, he could handle it on his own.

As they discussed various options, a man dressed in a black suit appeared from the house and stood at the top of the front steps. His face was as matte as the surface of a new frying pan. He had black thinning hair and a charcoal smudge of a moustache. “Is everything all right, Miss Ouchi? It’s five to ten; everyone should be coming soon.”

Becca nodded. “The foundation’s lawyer,” she whispered. Mas pursed his lips. New York City seemed full of attorneys.

“Just have to take care of some garden business; I’ll be right in,” she called out.

Mas wished that he had his own tree pruner and saw, one that he had inherited from an old Issei gardener who had learned his trade from an Uptown boardinghouse. Uptown was now present-day Koreatown in Los Angeles, full of indoor golfing ranges and restaurants. At one time, Uptown had been the gathering place for Japanese immigrants, many of whom had picked up the gardening trade. Even the Japanese church in the area had a stained-glass window with the image of a push lawn mower, a nod to the profession that had kept parishioners and the church well fed and clothed.

But the pruner and saw, as well as a dozen other tools, including his beloved Trimmer lawn mower, had all been stolen from his truck last year. He learned to make do, as he would today.

Mas followed Becca through the back gate. The yellow police tape was still around the dry pond, but it looked like most of their investigative work had been completed. “They got most of it done yesterday,” Becca said. “Guess they were afraid it was going to rain.”

They walked over to the wooden toolshed in the corner. Becca pressed down on a metal latch to open the door. As with most other toolsheds, the wooden shack was dark and damp. But while the ones in L.A. were ripe with the scent of mold and other growth, the Waxley toolshed was devoid of anything living, a freezer for dead equipment.

“Wait a minute,” said Becca, taking hold of a flashlight on the top shelf. “Something doesn’t look right.” She slid forward a switch on the flashlight and circled the light around the shed’s confines. “What the-”

“Sumptin’ wrong?” asked Mas, who knew well enough that something was indeed amiss.

“What happened to our new equipment?” Other than a bright-yellow plastic ladder, all the tools looked like they predated World War II. Old, toothless rakes, hedge clippers, and yes, a tree trimmer. The trimmer would have worked for small branches, but not for the large infected sycamore outside. The shovels that Mas had used a day earlier were propped against the wall, scoops up. Aiming at one of the shovels with the beam of the flashlight, Mas noted that its face was dented. What kind of force had caused that deformity? The old gardener whom Mas had met at a boardinghouse in L.A. had once told him that tools reflected the character of the gardener. It was no wonder that Mas’s tools over the years had been scratched and worn down, in some cases only held together with wire and duct tape.

“No, no, something is wrong here. I mean, the tools were in here yesterday. The day…”

The day we found your daddy’s dead body, Mas silently finished Becca’s sentence.

“Did Lloyd take some of the tools?”

“Lloyd too busy to take anytin’,” Mas said a little too angrily. Was Becca now accusing Lloyd, too?

“This is all we need. Those tools cost us two thousand dollars. Dammit. Just another thing to report back to the police. Can you see if you can make do with anything else in there?” Becca handed the flashlight to Mas and left to attend to her lawyer.

Shelves lined the shed, but toolboxes and small tools were haphazardly arranged on the dirt floor. Mas got on all fours and pulled out the toolboxes to look for a saw. His old, battered knees cut into the cold packed dirt, and Mas was ready to give up when his flashlight caught the sharp teeth of a handsaw left sideways by the door. As Mas got hold of the wooden handle, something rolled toward him like a marble. Again he guided the flashlight to get a better look. The tiny ball was no children’s toy but a dirt-covered bullet.

Mas didn’t know what to do. Should he tell Becca and the grim lawyer inside? And what did it mean in terms of Lloyd and Mari’s case?

Mas tried to slow his thoughts. What had Detective Ghigo said at the police station? That a bullet had gone straight through Kazzy’s head. But then earlier, at the hospital, he spoke about matching the bullet to the discarded gun. Had he been bluffing? There was no mention of a bullet or even a specific gun in the New York Post story. So up to now, the police might not have had a bullet. Which means they had no way to directly link Mari’s prop gun to Kazzy’s death.

The shed door must have been open, but hadn’t it in fact been closed when Mas had arrived at the garden that morning? Had the killer closed it? Or maybe someone else?

The whole thing didn’t make any sense. The neighbor said that he heard the gun go off and reported the gunshot to police. The killer must have fled right away. He wouldn’t have bothered to close the shed door.

Mas turned over different scenarios in his mind like he was throwing down dice and landing various combinations. He studied the dented shovel again. The wooden handle was especially long, maybe five feet tall. It certainly looked like the bullet had hit the face of the shovel and then ricocheted into the dirt floor.

He left the freezing-cold shed and began pacing around the pond, ignoring the yellow police tape flapping in the wind. The pond was completely empty now, so Mas could see some writing-Japanese kanji characters-carved into the cement bottom of the pond. If he’d been in a better frame of mind, he would have put on his reading glasses to make out the words. But they meant nothing to him now.

Kazzy had been around five foot eight. Since the back of his head had been shot off, the bullet would have landed up higher, maybe in the next-door neighbor’s tree trunk. The killer could have been much taller, that was for sure. Or else Kazzy could have been on the bridge, squatting down on his knees. The shooter could have aimed the gun from the side, by the edge of the pond a few feet from the back stairs.

Mas went back into the shed and dropped the bullet into his half-empty pack of Marlboros. Since the back door was locked, he made his way around to the front of the house. A mailman was walking down the stairs and Becca was at the open door, leafing through a stack of envelopes. Then she stopped at one piece of mail, letting the rest scatter at her feet like dry leaves. She hurriedly tore open the white envelope and unfolded a letter. Mas was now only a few feet away from Becca, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were open so wide that Mas could see her chestnut brown irises moving back and forth, absorbing the words on the page. Then she put the letter up to her forehead and began to scream.

Phillip was the first to respond. He came to the door, but didn’t bother to console his sister. Instead, he glared at Mas like a dog waiting to take a bite out of a person’s leg. “What the hell did you do to her?”

“No.” Becca shook her head. “It’s not him. It’s this. A letter from Kazzy.”