Death in Little Tokyo

9

I don’t think Americans are an especially honest people. Cheating on taxes is endemic, and everyone speeds over sixty-five miles per hour. I admit to the latter, but I’m too scared to do the former. I used to have a friend call me every April to boast how little he was paying in taxes. He accomplished this through outrageous cheating, and he was proud of it. He stopped calling the year I told him that because of cheating bastards like him, stupid bastards like me were paying more taxes.

We like to think we’re honest, and old Frank Capra movies celebrate the innate honesty of Americans. We’re decent and frank and open and we often confuse all these traits with real honesty. Maybe Americans were more honest when Capra made movies in the 1930s, but now honesty is not as celebrated as shrewdness. Top government officials circumvent the law when it suits them, and Savings and Loan executives, lawyers, and car salesmen have the reputation for being so crooked that these professions have become a shorthand for what Capra would have called “sharp dealing.” It’s sad, but there you have it.

Having said all this, I must admit I was shredded by remorse about not telling Hansen the truth about the package. Dickens once said, “The law is an ass.” I thought Hansen was a supercilious ass, but he was still the law.

Mariko curled into the curve of my arm. We were both sitting on my dilapidated couch with our feet up on my equally dilapidated coffee table. “I’ve got to tell him about the package tomorrow,” I said.

Mariko looked thoughtful. “I think you’ve got to talk to my cousin Michael, first.”

“The lawyer?”

“Yes. Get his advice first, then tell Hansen about the package.”

“You really think that’s necessary? Consulting a lawyer, I mean?”

“You’re the one who was hauled downtown to talk about the murder. You let them look over your car and you sat for hours talking to them. You probably should have had a lawyer then and you shouldn’t have given up your rights, because you told me you certainly knew them. You said that Hansen rubbed you the wrong way. He’s just looking for a suspect in the murder and you might be it, Ken. I think you better get Michael’s advice before you just march down to the police and say you actually have the package.”

“Correction: You’ve got the package.”

“Well, it’s at the boutique.”

“Is it in a safe place?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it in a hatbox in the stockroom. It’s safe, unless we get hit by a hat burglar, as opposed to a cat burglar.”

“Very funny.” I paused. “I’m sorry I got you involved in this,” I told Mariko.

“Well, I am involved in it, at least because I have an investment in you that I don’t want to see wasted. After all the work I’ve been putting into you, I don’t want some gorilla named Bubba to reap the rewards of what I’ve done just because he ends up as your cell mate.”

“Meaning?”

Mariko reached up and patted my cheek. “Meaning those nights in prison can get awfully long and lonely, and you might start looking awfully good to some of those guys in there.”

“That’s a comforting thought.”

She smiled, “Well, it’s something to think about. I might not be the only one that finds your sweet buns attractive.”

I rolled my eyes.

“By the way, that Hansen guy sounds like a creep,” Mariko continued.

“I guess he’s just doing his job.”

“Do you think he was so snotty because you’re Japanese?”

That was an angle I hadn’t resolved. Racism doesn’t spring to mind whenever I have an unpleasant encounter with someone, but the insidious problem with racism is that once you’ve been stung by it you always have it lingering as a possibility.

When my marriage fell apart, I had a job programming at the Calcommon Corporation. With my personal life in shambles, I decided to concentrate on my career. I think now that I was embarrassed and hurt by the divorce more than I realized and simply wanted to divert my energies into something I viewed as an activity of the intellect instead of an activity of the heart.

Over time I noticed that I was not advancing in my career. Although my performance reviews were excellent, I was not made a supervisor or manager. I started taking business courses at UCLA in an effort to get into management, but that didn’t seem to advance my career, either.

I used to think that the world is color-blind. Maybe that’s my Hawaiian upbringing. Lately I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that race is becoming the defining factor of our lives. Maybe this is because I live in Los Angeles, which has degenerated into a collection of ethnic tribes instead of a community. Here all the racial groups are in deadly competition. Literally. This has consequences for all of us, no matter what our race is.

One consequence for me was the nagging doubt that maybe I wasn’t being promoted at Calcommon because I was an Asian. It would have been a relief if some third party I trusted would just tell me I wasn’t good enough to be made a manager, but that wasn’t the case. The difficult assignments I got showed I was performing my job, and I had no problems working in teams. My performance reviews were always outstanding.

One day, out of curiosity, I took out a Calcommon organization chart and marked down the races and gender of the corporation’s top management. There was one Latino (who was in charge of buying office supplies), one black (given the title of manager, but just in charge of the mail room), and only one woman (also given the title manager, but really in charge of employee activities like the annual picnic). The rest of Calcommon’s management structure was lily white and male.

If you’re a white male, this kind of research may bring a wince to your face. Some white males have been treated very unfairly in ham-fisted efforts to correct past racial and gender wrongs by perpetrating new wrongs. But traditional barriers to nonwhite and nonmale employees far exceed the new barriers to white males. That doesn’t make any barrier right, but it does mean that if you’re not a white male, you’re probably more likely to come into contact with prejudice.

In my own country I’ve been called a gook, a chink, a Jap, and a slope. I think “gook” was first applied to Koreans, “chink” to Chinese, “slopes” to Vietnamese, and “Jap” is both obnoxious and obvious. Asians in the U.S. get to learn the full range of ethnic slurs, no matter what their real ethnicity is. I’ve also been told to go back to my own country, even though America has been home to my family since 1896.

Like many people, I’m tired of some people excusing their personal conduct because of past injustices to their race, religion, sexual preference, or gender. Despite that, racial prejudice was a possibility when faced with the situation I was in.

I talked to my immediate supervisor about promotion and Calcommon’s racial policies, and he was very uncomfortable. He said he would talk to our department manager about my concerns, and eventually I was granted an interview with Calcommon’s white, male vice-president of human resources. Mr. VP gave me the usual song and dance and said that if my performance warranted it, I would certainly be considered for a supervisory or management position.

And then a strange thing happened. A few months later I got my first mediocre performance review at Calcommon.

I was angry and upset, and I remember my immediate supervisor wouldn’t look me in the eye when he gave me the review. I was transferred from software development to software maintenance. In the world of software, development is where the fun and challenge is. Maintenance is usually where you stick beginners and less-qualified programmers, who spend their days making minor changes to the work of others.

As I considered my options, the nagging voice of my mother reached out from the grave. Like a good second generation Japanese mother, she valued security above all else. When she was alive she’d counsel, “Don’t make waves” or “Play along” or “Don’t cause trouble,” and to my undying shame, as soon as the anger passed, that’s what I did.

About a year later Calcommon went through what the MBA types euphemistically call “downsizing,” and I was cut. So much for playing safe and not making waves. Calcommon did give me a generous severance package, but I regarded that as a payoff for being a “model minority.”

I was tired of being a model minority, but I didn’t relish the thought of having to confess to Hansen that I had misled him about the package. I decided to take Mariko’s advice and talk to her lawyer cousin Michael before I did anything more.

“You said the pictures of the body were pretty awful,” Mariko said.

“They were. I bet the television crews were mad as hell they couldn’t get into the room to film it.”

“You’re getting cynical in your old age.”

“Age has nothing to do with it. I was always cynical. As I get older I’m just getting braver about showing it. You know blood and gore make for big ratings. The only thing missing is sex, and maybe the prostitute in Matsuda’s room or Rita Newly will supply that.” I paused. “It really was awful to see those pictures, Mariko. But the way Matsuda died is in itself a clue.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the cops said that he was hacked up with something like a sword. People don’t go running around with swords these days. It’s hard to understand why you’d chose that weapon. Plus somebody had a real grudge against Matsuda or else they wouldn’t have taken the time and effort to slice him up the way they did.”

“It must have been a mess,” Mariko said.

“It was. They didn’t show me all the pictures, but I’m sure the entire room must have been splattered in blood. Whoever did it must have been covered in it. In fact, it’s amazing that they were able to get out of the hotel without someone seeing them covered with blood.”

Mariko touched my cheek. “You’re shaking.” We kissed. Her lips were cool and moist. I sank into their softness and, after a time, I stopped shaking. I’ll spare you the active details of our sex life. Just think of pounding surf, rearing stallions, heavy rain, and any other sexual cliché you like from old movies.

When we were done with our lovemaking, during that period when women like to cuddle and men just want to drift into unconsciousness, Mariko said, “Did you forget about tomorrow night?”

That snapped me awake. Women and men sometimes have trouble communicating, but even the dullest man learns when a woman is broadcasting a signal. This was not a question; it was a test. Men hate these tests, but women keep giving them because we men seem to keep failing them. “Of course not. It’s your first time speaking at an AA meeting, and I will be there for you,” I said with aplomb.

She snuggled closer to me. The test was not only passed, it was aced.