Summer of the Big Bachi (14 page)

 

 

“Change my mind,” said Mas. While Tug was introducing himself to Wishbone, Mas examined the room, which was cloudy with smoke. A light hung from the ceiling over a card table. Mas didn’t recognize most of the faces, young ones with shaven heads and tattoos, some even with zigzag scars. There were paler Japanese with meticulously oiled hair and expensive suits. A few
hakujin
men— one with a pitiful wisp of a mustache— looked like they hadn’t bathed for at least two days. This crowd was a rough one. Mas could smell the scent of jail time and illicit activity. This wasn’t what Wishbone was bargaining for, Mas knew.

 

 

“Where is he?” Mas asked.

 

 

“I’ll get him.”

 

 

Mas meant Haruo, but Wishbone was speaking to another man in a corner. The man turned, and Mas felt like his heart had stopped. It was the same man in the photos in the North Hollywood apartment, but this one had been reduced to skin and bones. His cheeks, even his eyes, seemed sunken into his skull. His hair was cropped short, and age spots marked his bare skin like raindrops.

 

 

The man was walking toward Mas, coming closer and closer, and then the face, once a composite, now was real flesh and bones. The reality now hit Mas squarely. He could no longer think of this man as other than who he really was.

 

 

“Riki,” Mas whispered.

 

 

“Haneda,” the man said. His voice was gravelly, the sound of work boots crushing pebbles and sand. “You call me Haneda.”

 

 

 

Somehow thinking of Riki Kimura as Joji Haneda all these years had slowly erased the painful memory of the real Joji. But having Riki Kimura standing in front of him changed everything. Time had not been kind to him, that was for sure. Mas didn’t know if it was because of the decades of hard living. Or maybe the decay of Riki’s insides had finally grown to reach his outsides. Whatever it was, Mas didn’t want to be anywhere near Riki, but he had to, at least for this night.

 

 

Tug, who had been surveying the room, approached Mas and Riki. “Tug Yamada,” he said, sticking out his hand.

 

 

“Joji Haneda,” Riki said easily, slipping a fresh cigarette in the side of his mouth. “You a friend of Arai’s?”

 

 

Mas stepped in front of the two men, his back toward Riki. “Haruo,” he said to Tug. “Check table.”

 

 

Tug nodded, looking a little confused. Here good manners don’t count for anything, Mas said to himself. You may be bigger than most of the men here, Tug, but you’re way out of your league. Watching Tug’s white head disappear in the crowd, Mas turned his attention to Riki. “People are comin’ ’round, askin’ about Joji Haneda.”

 

 

“So I heard.” Riki lit his cigarette with a match and grinned, fifty years falling from his face. Other than the stained brown teeth, it was the same man. He took a drag of his cigarette, and Mas could see him in the middle of that Hiroshima boulevard, teenagers and children crowded around barrels of fire.

 

 

“You betta leave, go back to Ventura.”

 

 

“Oh, yah?” Riki extinguished the match with his fingers.

 

 

“They gonna find out.”

 

 

“What? That thousands of people die in Hiroshima? Thatsu no secret, Masao-
san.
”

 

 

“You make him die.”

 

 

“America, heezu country, your country, killsu him. You say I killsu him— where’s the evidence?”

 

 

“They gotsu a drawing, a picture.”

 

 

“A picture?” Riki laughed. Brown tobacco stains had darkened his teeth like an ancient Japanese harlot. “Whatsu that suppose to prove?”

 

 

“Itsu Haneda, wiz your name on him.” Mas remembered the crudely drawn jumble of maggots, the strange circle by the body.

 

 

“Oh, yah?” Riki smirked. “What the harm? Whole family’s dead. He was almost dead when we found him.”

 

 

“Well, Akemi’s not dead. Alive.”

 

 

Riki took another drag from his cigarette, but Mas noticed that his spotted fingers trembled.

 

 

“Gonna come out.”

 

 

“You gon’ tell them?” Riki sneered. “Someone should warn you about that.” An image of tasseled loafers flashed in Mas’s brain.

 

 

Before Mas could mention the grandson, someone called out, “Haneda, a spot opened up. You in or you out?”

 

 

Riki raised his hand, the ash falling down like dust. “Izu in.”

 

 

 

Mas pushed his way through the crowd, past two blackjack tables and one pai gow. Here, above this brick, low-level storefront, was a gambling operation that rivaled that of any Indian casino. After Riki slipped into a chair at a green felt table, a dark mustached man on his left began dealing cards. A flat leather pouch with a tiki design hung from a string around the dealer’s neck. To his side was a metal cash box. On the other side of the cash box sat Wishbone, plastic poker chips piled up in front of him like a skyline. To the right of Riki was Haruo, his chin down in his chest and his head shaking back and forth. Mas first thought Haruo was petrified to be found out, but he must have been this way for a while.

 

 

Mas noticed that only five chips lay scattered on the table near Haruo. “How much gone?” he hissed in Haruo’s ear.

 

 

Haruo continued shaking but didn’t respond.

 

 

“How much?” Mas said— this time louder.

 

 

Haruo lifted his face, the bump of a keloid scar showing beneath his hair. “Almost five hundred.”

 

 

Mas cursed. “Dis guyzu out,” he said as the man with the pouch dealt the last card to Wishbone.

 

 

Riki spread his cards in his hand like a peacock raising its feathers. “Too late, Mas. Already started.”

 

 

“Howzyu get five hundred, Haruo?” Mas remembered that Haruo had proudly shown him his personal monthly budget, figures from his social security, all six hundred dollars, written in one column, with his expenditures in another— seventy-five cents for the Laundromat, eighty dollars for gas, a hundred dollars for groceries, three hundred thirty for rent, and so on. It left only six dollars and thirty cents for the column “Savings.”

 

 

The seated dark man patted the metal cash box. “He borrowed it from the bank. His car is the collateral.” His voice was staccato, reminding Mas of his occasional helper Eduardo.

 

 

“It’s probably only worth that much,” muttered Wishbone.

 

 

“I tole you don’t call him. Heezu sick. Heezu a sick man.” Mas bent down so close to Wishbone that he could smell his sour breath.

 

 

“I’m no social worker. Besides, I wasn’t the one who called him.”

 

 

“You were always one to jump to conclusions.” Plastic poker chips clicked in Riki’s hands. “
I
called Haruo.”

 

 

“Itsu my choice, Mas.” Haruo pulled at the green felt. “I needsu to take
sekinin
for my actions.”

 

 

“Thatsu what good-for-nutin’ counselor saysu? Whatta ’bout your kids? You gonna go ova there in some bus?”

 

 

“Maybe. If I hafta.”

 

 

Mas felt heat rise to his ears. That damn Haruo. No pride.

 

 

The dark man, called Luis, patted the metal cash box. “There’s the five hundred dollars.”

 

 

“I match it.” Mas shifted his weight from one foot to another. “Okay, two hundred, but I get fifty dolla in chips. He’s got about that much left, anyhowsu.”

 

 

Luis brushed down the overgrown whiskers above his lip. “Sounds good to me.”

 

 

“Mas, howzu you gonna get four hundred?” Haruo whispered, remaining in his folding chair.

 

 

“Let’s see it right now,” said Riki.

 

 

“I gotsu it,” Mas said, thinking about the IRA Chizuko had opened for them years ago.

 

 

Riki lifted a cigarette from an ashtray to his dry lips. A line of ash an inch long bent down from his fingers as he inhaled. “Cash,” he repeated.

 

 

Mas opened his wallet and dumped wadded-up bills and change onto the table. Luis flattened the bills and organized them in neat stacks. “A hundred thirty-five and nineteen cents,” he said.

 

 

Haruo shook his head and shoved his hair behind his ears. “No, Mas. I needsu to take
sekinin
.” The scar on the left side of his face was clearly visible now. A web of puffed skin and deep recesses, gnarled like the bark of a diseased tree, stretched from his mid-forehead to his cheek. With his left eyebrow and eyelashes missing, Haruo’s fake pupil looked undressed, naked, startled, while the right side of his face held his true nature— soft and lightly freckled, thin eyebrow, gentle double-lidded eye.

 

 

Tug, who had been silent, stepped forward with a rectangular blue checkbook. “How about I pay for the rest?”

 

 

The men stared at Tug and began laughing. Riki almost spilled his drink on the table. “Check?”

 

 

“This not your business,” Mas said to Tug. Tug and Lil were careful with their money, going to senior citizen early-bird specials at coffee shops, and even trading flattened aluminum cans for mere nickels at the local recycling center.

 

 

“He can just pay me back. In monthly installments, right? That would be the responsible thing to do.”

 

 

Haruo bit his lip, folded his arms, and rocked in the folding chair. “I dunno.”

 

 

Luis’s dark brown eyes seemed to take stock of Tug’s clean golf shirt, his pressed khaki pants, his neat loafers, a pipe sticking out of his shirt pocket. “He’s good for it, Joji.”

 

 

“No.” Riki smashed his cigarette stub in the ashtray. “We’re not a pawnshop.”

 

 

“Now, Joji—” interjected Wishbone.

 

 

“No.” Riki clamped his jaws together, and his eyes seemed to burn like coals in their sockets. Mas felt something charge in his brain. It was dread, like the time his car overheated right there on the Pasadena Freeway. The whole car had rattled as if it were going to explode.

 

 

Luis arranged Mas’s bills in various compartments in the metal cash box. “Look, I’ll cover him.” He counted out five blue chips while Tug asked for the spelling of his name for the check. “Luis Saito,” he said. “L-U-I-S, the Spanish way.”

 

 

Riki, looking a bit defeated, got up and poured himself a beer by the makeshift bar in the corner. On his way back to his seat, he muttered in Mas’s ear, “You betta watch your friend. You don’t want nutin’ to happen to him.”

 

 

As if his body were reacting to Riki’s poison, Mas felt a jolt go up his back. Then he saw another familiar face among the other good-for-nothings standing around the table. Yuki Kimura.

 

 

“You,” Mas could only manage to spit out. The boy must have followed him and Tug to Little Tokyo.

 

 

Yuki pulled at a long chain that was attached to his belt loop and grinned. “Second time today,” he said.

 

 

Mas said nothing. He didn’t have time for the boy right now. He needed to concentrate all his energy on the card game and getting Haruo out of his jam.

 

 

Riki must have noticed Mas’s reaction to Yuki, because he invited the boy to sit down. “Might learn sumptin’.” Riki smiled, pulling a flimsy wooden chair beside him.

 

 

Yuki sauntered to the chair and sat down, his brown arms folded at his chest. Mas felt queasy just thinking that grandfather and grandson were unknowingly right next to each other. There was definitely a physical resemblance around the eyes, the high bridge of the nose.

 

 

“It’s your call, Mas,” Wishbone said. “What you going to do?”

 

 

Mas settled in the chair and picked up his hand. Seven of diamonds, ten of diamonds, jack of spades, three of hearts, three of spades. A pitiful hand worth nothing. “We drop.”