Death in Little Tokyo

20

You’re a hero.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, come on,” Mariko cajoled. “None of this phony modesty. You helped the police round up two gunrunners and the two Yakuza who beat you up. I’m sure when they start checking into them, they’ll find other things that they can nail them for. I just think it’s great, and I’m really proud of you.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t too bad,” I said, giving her what I thought was a suitably modest smile. She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. A big, wet kiss. “Ouch!” I said. “Take it easy. This face of mine still feels like a piece of raw hamburger. Even your kisses can’t change that.”

We were both sitting on my couch. After making the necessary statements to the police I drove home after my encounter with Rita, her lover, and the two Yakuza at UCLA. Mariko was waiting for me, a nervous wreck. She insisted that I go through the encounter in detail, something I was not particularly adverse to doing.

“Oh, I almost forgot the best part,” I said.

“What’s that?”

I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. “Here’s the three hundred and fifty for Mrs. Kawashiri. I figure I came out short a couple of hundred, but Mrs. Kawashiri should get what’s due her. Rita said she’d pay me five hundred dollars to pick up the package and deliver it, and I only got three hundred. Well, I picked up the package and delivered it. I told her as long as she wasn’t involving me with something that was illegal, I’d keep her confidentiality, and that’s exactly what I did. As soon as I found out what the scam was, I didn’t have second thoughts about calling the cops in. When the two Yakuza guys showed up it was lucky I did. I didn’t get the full five hundred dollars, but I figure the initial three hundred dollars she gave me is mine. Not bad for just a few days’ work.”

“A few days’ work and getting your face rearranged.”

“Oh, yeah. That, too. You know, I just realized I owe your cousin Michael two hundred fifty dollars. That means I cleared a whopping fifty bucks. In fact, when you deduct my medical expenses, I’m going to end up with a net loss on my first foray into big-time detective work.”

“It wasn’t worth it, Ken, and it’s not a matter of money. Even if you made a ton of money, it’s just not worth it.”

I sighed. “I know. Every time I move and feel the pain, I know that. But it still makes me happy to have the money for Mrs. Kawashiri. Why don’t you give it to her tomorrow?”

“All right. I’m sure she’ll be surprised to see it. Well, aside from the minor point of getting your face pushed in and almost killed, this entire case has been a triumph for my ace detective.”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“I still can’t figure out who killed Matsuda. They all denied it.”

“And they’re all liars.”

“Well, that’s true,” I said. “Rita’s boyfriend, George, sure had a temper violent enough to have him hack up Matsuda, although he hardly looks like the type to carry a sword around tucked away for just such occasions.”

“What about the Yakuza?”

“Well, the sword is a Japanese weapon, and those guys can get really nasty. But you know, despite the beating they gave me, I got the feeling that they were very professional in the way they went about doing things. That if they killed Matsuda they’d just simply kill him and not hack up the bits after he was dead.”

Mariko gave a little shudder. “Maybe they hacked him up before he was dead.”

“Well, that’s a possibility. I suppose if they wanted to know something from him or if they were really bent on revenge, they’d do something like that. You know, it’s a pet theory of mine that violent crimes like this are done by psychopaths or people with a long-standing grudge. It’s still a puzzle to me.”

“Why don’t you let the cops handle it? You’ve already handed them enough on a silver platter.”

“You’re probably right, but it still bugs me. Look, I know you want to talk some more about this, but I’m really beat.” I laughed. “Literally beat! Do you mind very much if we went to bed right now?”

I fell asleep with Mariko curled up in my arms. During the night I woke with a cry, my heart pounding and my breath coming in gasps. I had dreamed that I was still tied to the chair in the office with the edge of my belt cutting into the flesh of my wrist, while a mechanical Yakuza was beating me. The big Yakuza was now a shiny machine with flailing arms that swung toward me in wide arcs as the machine twisted from side to side. The arms didn’t actually hit me, but with each swing they came closer and closer to my face. Since the Yakuza was a machine, there was no one to appeal to and no way to shut it off. The clenched fist at the end of the swinging arms came closer and closer to my face, and right before they hit I woke up.

“It’s all right,” Mariko said. Now her arms were holding me, pressing me against her naked bosom. My face was so battered that Mariko pressing me to her breast actually caused me pain and I had to push myself away slightly to take the pressure off my cheek. Despite the tenderness of my face, I didn’t want to distance myself too much from her and her smooth skin. She felt warm and strong in the darkness around me.

“I had a nightmare that I was still in the office being beaten.”

“I heard you crying out,” she said. “But you’re safe with me now. They’ve been put away. You put them away. It’s going to be all right.” She held me closer and this time I didn’t push myself away, even though it was slightly uncomfortable to my bruised skin.

When my breathing turned from short gasps to a regular rhythm of inhale and exhale, she started stroking my hair, kissing me gently.

“I guess I’m not as tough as I think I am,” I said, a little embarrassed.

“Nobody is. But you sound like that’s something to be ashamed of. It’s okay to be gentle, scared and lonely and in need of a friend sometimes. I know I am, and I know one of the things I love about you is that I always feel like you’ll be there when I need a friend.”

I closed my eyes, and after a few minutes I calmed down enough to slip back into sleep.

It was a night for dreaming. Or maybe nightmares. Most Asian cultures put a great store in dreams, and there’s some residual part of my psyche that also places great faith in dreams.

When I fell asleep again I dreamed I was back in Hawaii at O-bon time. O-bon is the Japanese Buddhist festival of the dead. Like I said, Little Tokyo in Los Angeles sort of celebrates it during its Nisei Week, and maybe that’s what set me dreaming about it, but in Hawaii we really celebrate it.

During soft August nights the Japanese believe spirits of the dead return. In the darkness the spirits float close to the ground, like a mist, and they move in and out of our lives as if they were still alive. In Hawaii everyone celebrates O-bon, whether they’re Buddhist or not. During this time Buddhist entice the dead near with offerings of large, round mochi (pounded cakes of sweetened rice) and bright mikans (the tangerine-orange).

When I was a kid growing up in Hilo after World War II the local Buddhist church would set up booths for an O-bon carnival. The carnival was a fund-raiser for various church activities. Even though I was a Methodist I’d go to the Buddhist carnival to have fun. Everyone did.

One booth at the carnival would sell cones of shaved ice crystals covered with flavored syrup, a treat popular in Hawaii. For twenty-five cents you could get any combination of flavors you wanted. My particular favorite was half lime and half grape, but I tried all the permutations of flavor that can be made from six different syrups. A particularly strange combination was called the rainbow, which consisted of all six flavors: lime, grape, strawberry, rootbeer, orange, and a vile yellow liquid they called melon. Melon is a flavor favored by Japanese, but it was too strange and musty tasting for me.

At another booth you could get toasted mochi. These were miniature versions of the pounded rice cakes, which were set out as offerings to the dead. These ko-mochi, or baby mochi, were toasted over an open gas jet. They’d turn puffy and expand, bubbling up into weird shapes and forming a toasty, golden shell over the warm, sticky insides.

When you bought a ko-mochi they’d toast it right in front of you, then they’d give it to you on a small paper plate with a little mound of mixed sugar and cinnamon. You’d dip the hot mochi into the sugar and cinnamon mixture and try to eat it quickly without burning your mouth, before it cooled down and lost flavor.

At night during the carnival, in the open field next to the Buddhist church, they’d build a large bonfire. They’d set up loudspeakers at the edge of the field and play scratchy records of bright Japanese folk music, all syncopated and full of the sounds of strange instruments you don’t find in Western music. To the sound of this music the people would gather and dance Odori dances around the fire, wearing Japanese yukatas, or summer kimonos, and Japanese wooden slippers, called getas. The wooden getas would make a syncopated sound as they slapped the Hawaiian earth.

In the Hawaiian sky a big round moon will hang, flanked by countless hard, bright stars. These are the same stars that guided the ancient Polynesians to the islands. They’re the stars that Captain James Cook navigated by when he “discovered” the islands. They’re the same stars used to provide reference points when the souls of the dead descend from heaven to earth to join in the festivities of the humans still on earth.

The dancing people will move their hands and twist their bodies in stylized motions that were originally developed by Japanese peasants, who used the motions of the dance to mimic the motions of their everyday lives, illustrating things like planting rice or harvesting barley or pulling on the lines of a large fish net. The fire crackles and the outline of the dancers make a hypnotic wave against the orange and red flames. Sparks fly up, ascending to heaven.

In my dream I could hear the music and see the dancers rhythmically circling the bonfire, doing a dance where they dipped low and then put their arms up toward the sky. As they circled I could see one dancer who looked peculiar to me. It took a second, but I realized that the dancer was missing an arm.

As the circle of dancers made their way around the fire I could gradually see that the dancer with the missing arm was Matsuda. His face wasn’t horribly sliced like it was in the pictures I had seen. In fact, it was quite intact and passive and held no emotions. The dancing light from the bonfire played across it, illuminating everything but the eyes, which remained shrouded in a velvet blackness. The dancers around the ghostly figure of Matsuda were laughing and enjoying themselves, but the one-armed apparition showed no human feelings as it went through the mechanical motions of the dance.

The circle of dancers continued to move around the bonfire, and eventually Matsuda’s figure was on the opposite side of the circle, where it was obscured by the leaping flames of the bonfire. Matsuda’s dancing figure looked like a lost soul, caught in the flames of hell.

Suddenly in my dream someone was standing next to me, and I was relieved to turn and see it was Mrs. Kawashiri. Her usually sunny face looked quite serious, and she waved a finger at me like she was lecturing a child. “It’s not right, it’s just not right,” she said.