Naomi Hirahara - Gasa-Gasa Girl

“Who was that?” Mari asked.

“Ole man from Tug’s church.” Mas was going to add that he was kuru-kuru-pa, but thought better of it. Elk Mamiya was apparently acting out of his convictions. He had come all the way to Brooklyn to protect a fellow Japanese American, and Mas should at least be grateful for that.

Tug then turned the corner, a cotton ball taped to the inside of his forearm.

“Uncle Tug, were you with Takeo?” asked Mari.

“Looking good. That’s what I told the doctor.”

“Yeah, Dr. Bhalla has been a godsend. Don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“Bhalla? No, this was a big, tall man. Couldn’t really see his face, covered up with a mask. He had a scar on his forehead.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he was with Takeo when I walked in.”

“Lloyd?”

“No, no sign of Lloyd,” said Tug. “Come to think of it, that struck me as kind of strange.”

Big and tall, with a scar on his forehead. Could only be one man. Larry Pauley.

Mari took off first, splashing her coffee onto the floor and wall. Her thin legs churned forward, her feet working so fast that her tennis shoes hardly touched the squares of linoleum floor. Mas followed through the maze of hallways and heavy unlocked doors. Women and men in pastel gowns holding clipboards watched them go-most likely not knowing if they should help or stop them.

They stormed through a wing of small rooms with large windows. Even though the door was closed, Mas could hear Takeo bawling. What did they say about parents and grandparents: that your ears became so in tune with your baby’s cry that you could hear it when others couldn’t. Takeo was lying on a high bed with metal sides, his face scrunched up and puckered like a pickled plum. Tubes were hanging loose, and the blood from the bag was dripping onto the floor. Multiple alarms sounded off in the room-some as soft as the beeping from a microwave, others as loud as the warning noise from a work vehicle backing up. Nurses and doctors crashed in, surrounding Takeo and eventually pushing Mari out of the way.

No sign of the giant gardener. Mas then spotted that the door of the bathroom was cracked open, not by a doorstop but by a size-eleven shoe, toe up. Sure enough, it was Lloyd-still breathing, but out cold on the tile floor.

With Mari and the team of doctors aiding Takeo and Lloyd, Mas ran out into the hallway of the neonatal ward. An old man, perhaps another grandfather of a broken child, was looking down the hall toward a stairway door that was swinging shut. Mas caught the door and entered the stripped-down stairway. He heard the echo of footsteps banging against metal stairs. Down, down. Mas followed the echo, his knees aching, his heels smarting, lungs low on air, until he landed up in the fancy, hotel-like lobby. Was it the tail of a white lab coat disappearing out the automatic doors?

Mas ran outside and then across the street. He wasn’t quite sure if he was heading in the right direction. But then there was the white medical jacket, crumpled on the sidewalk next to the entrance of a Chinese restaurant. Mas knew enough not to touch the jacket. He went through the restaurant, a fancy kind with tablecloths and cloth napkins. As he stared into the faces of the diners, their backs stiffened. They probably thought that he was an aging busboy reporting for the swing swift or perhaps a senile old man who had lost his way.

Mas returned to Takeo’s room, only to see his grandson cast on open seas, surrounded by doctors and nurses, their gowns the color of green toothpaste and after-dinner mints. “ Gambare, gambare, ” Mas murmured. Don’t give up. Don’t sink. Mari was constantly trying to swim toward Takeo, but the waves prevented her from moving forward. Lloyd, unconscious, was taken away on a gurney. And again, Mari was too far, her loved one unreachable. She looked as though she were underwater, and even to Mas, sounds were distorted, movements in slow motion. Before she collapsed, Tug, the tall angel, grabbed her arm, while Mas, the father, grabbed the other.

Mari rested on a couch in the waiting room, a cold pack on her forehead, while Mas and Tug spoke in the hallway.

“Couldn’t catch him. No good knees anymore,” said Mas, dejected.

Tug handed him a paper cup filled with water. “Drink this, and take a few deep breaths.”

Mas kept on wheezing, and Tug theorized that perhaps decades of smoking were finally taking their toll on his health. If Mas weren’t so worn-out, he would have snapped at his friend. He didn’t need useless health advice when his daughter had almost passed out, his grandson and son-in-law attacked. Lloyd was now conscious but being X-rayed to make sure that his brains weren’t scrambled from the blow to his head.

Both Detective Ghigo and Jeannie Yee were now on the scene. Ghigo said that they had an APB out for a dark-haired man named Larry Pauley. But hair could be colored and IDs falsified; Mas knew that much. And besides, had Larry been behind the shooting of Kazzy Ouchi? His style seemed more rough-and-tumble, while Kazzy’s murder had been more calculated, with an attention to details.

Mas and Tug made their way to the waiting area. Jeannie paced the linoleum floor, her heels clicking, kachi-kachi, like the red and blue castanets that children pressed together while dancing in circles at the summer Obon festival at the Pasadena Buddhist Church. Instead of a shimmering waterfall, Jeannie’s hair was uncharacteristically mussed up, a blue jay’s nest. Funny that both she and Ghigo would show up at the hospital together, thought Mas.

“We’ll pick him up,” said Ghigo. “He had a large amount of money recently transferred to his personal account. He and Penn Anderson were using the Ouchi Foundation to embezzle money from Waxley Enterprises. Using their own business contacts as vendors, overpaying them, and pocketing the extra.”

“The police traced the anonymous calls back to Penn,” explained Jeannie. “He had a voice-altering device. He’s been feeding all this information about Mari and Lloyd to divert attention from the missing money. He made such a production of hiding his identity that it seemed obvious that he was hiding something. I guess that it didn’t hurt that he had been double-crossed by Larry. He’s admitted the embezzling, and is willing to testify against Larry. He just doesn’t want to be associated with any murders or attempted murders; he’s said that’s all Larry’s doing.”

“I need to see my son.” Mari removed the ice pack from her head and tried to lift herself up from the couch.

“You hear docta; Takeo orai,” Mas said. “Sleepin’ now. Needsu his sleep.” Ghigo had ordered two police officers to keep watch in front of Takeo’s room.

“Yes, Mari. You need to rest a little. They could get you a hospital bed.” Tug placed his huge hands on the top of the couch.

Mari shook her head. “I can go over to Lloyd’s room and keep him company.” Lloyd had a mild concussion. He’d been knocked out by a fire extinguisher. He hadn’t seen his assailant, unfortunately, but several security cameras got pictures of Larry-his mouth covered with a mask, but that medical jacket, soaked in the scent of a designer cologne, had plenty of dark hairs. Good thing that Mas had pointed it out to the police.

“Maybe, Dad, you can get a few things for me from home?”

Mas nodded.

As Ghigo and Jeannie moved over to have a private discussion by a magazine rack, Tug clapped his hands together. “Well, good thing, Mas, the mystery’s solved. It looks like that Larry Pauley killed Mr. Ouchi.”

But Mas wasn’t in a celebratory mood. He was far away, looking beyond Tug, toward the darkness of the street through the hospital windows.