Terminal Island (13 page)

Steelyard had brought Jack Liffey back to the office with him, but he wouldn't let him see the list for some reason. Looking it over with a cursory eye, he was finally defeated by all the Japanese syllables. “I guess we got a new penal code here: BPWO.”

“What's that?”

“Being Pissed off While Oriental.”

“Has anyone told you the word
Oriental
is relatively offensive these days?”

“Relative to what?”

“Let's say it's somewhere between
Asian
and
gook.
”

“So my partner says, bless her PC heart.”

“Why don't we see if anybody on this short list is in the current phone book?”

“I never would have thought of that.”

Maeve and Ornetta had just fled south from the hovering menace of Hollywood Boulevard, and Maeve was now driving east across LA on Beverly, one of her dad's many shortcuts she was trying to fix in her memory. She figured his knowledge of LA lore and LA inside info might be her only tangible patrimony, but she didn't really mind. Beverly was a broad avenue that stayed mainly residential until you got near downtown. With half her mind, she noticed how nice some of the old houses were and realized that Rebecca's ritzy school was around here somewhere.

A skinny old man with big wooden wings on his bicycle was pedaling hard ahead of them, leaning into it to tow a homemade fine-mesh chicken-wire trailer chock-f of what looked like old eyeglasses. As she passed she could see that that was exactly what he was transporting. Could he be taking them to a swap meet? One point to me, Dad, she thought.

They left the big houses behind and now were passing shops with hand-lettered Spanish signs and then Korean minimalls as they neared downtown. Where the street split, she decided to go up Silverlake and then take Sunset across downtown. It would keep her north of the worst traffic, and then become the renamed Cesar Chavez Avenue, which seemed fitting for a grand entrance to East LA.

They passed north of downtown LA, right between the abandoned Terminal Annex, which had once been the central post office, and the beautiful arcaded bulk of Union Station. Her father had brought her here several times to drink in the history of the last of America's great train stations, a mix of mission and Art Deco style filled with colorful tile and wrought iron and all that sad ambience of would-be movie stars lugging suitcase up the long, tiled halls on their first arrival into the town of dreams.

Maeve was beginning to worry about which street El Mercado was on. She was pretty sure it wasn't Chavez, which she knew had been called Brooklyn Avenue until recently, from the days when the whole area of Boyle Heights had been Jewish. She thought El Mercado was on First, but wasn't sure and decided it was best to continue on Chavez until she got deep into East LA and then she could circle back on First. If she didn't apologize for it, Ornetta might not even notice she was circling around lamely.

Dec 20 AM

He's coming. I know it. This hunter of children, of men. I feel I must prepare in new ways. He and the policeman were on my island today. They sat and looked back to where your fishing village used to thrive, and they talked for a long time. I sense him drawing the bow against me.

Until now my actions have been simple justice. But I feel a change. His challenge is stirring up the will to hurt.

Eleven

Women Know

“Hamasaki.”

Steelyard read aloud as Jack Liffey flipped several pages of the phone book and let his finger run down the names, making no effort to correct the man's pronunciation, Ham-a-SAK-i, which probably should have been something like Ha-MAS-uh-ki, if not Ha-MAS'ki. Americans made only occasional stabs at linguistic accuracy, and in this case it would have been little more than pedantry. The town itself had become San PEE-dro so long ago, and so enduringly, that even the Latinos who lived in it had given up.

“Nope.”

“Ozaki, Frank.
Frank
—there's a great Nip name.”

Jack Liffey frowned but said nothing about the epithet. “Bingo,” he said, his finger stopping halfway down the page. “On Twenty-first Street in the four hundreds. That must be just off Pacific. Not Frank, but Mary. Could be related.”

“I don't know what's got into me having you around today,” Steelyard said, “but Gloria's taken herself off, so how would you like to come with me, for old times?”

“Sure.”

“It violates every department policy I can think of, so keep your mouth very shut.”

Jack Liffey mimed zipping his lips.

“If I rub my nose like this,” Steelyard insisted, “I want you to leave whatever's going on and go out to the car and wait.”

Steelyard punched some code numbers into his phone, probably an I'm-on-the-move signal, after which they trooped out to the parking lot just below the big incinerator stack on the hill.

“I love to ride in these big, wallowy Fords,” Jack Liffey said. “You've got some kind of jet engine in here, right?”

“It's called the police interceptor package. It'll catch a Hyundai with one cylinder missing or an old Toyota dragging an anvil. We in the law enforcement community like the elbow room and
traditional
engineering of a full-size American car, which means the power windows break down every week. It does have two hundred horsepower in its big, overweight V-eight engine, but the weeniest BMW six-cylinder can beat it to death on the highway.”

“Let's hope we don't have to fight any BMWs.”

Steelyard pointed to a row of police motorcycles, all tilted at the same angle on their kickstands. “The poor bike cops had to go over to rice-burning Kawasakis some years ago. Where's the patriotism in that, I say? Okay, Jack, if I'm going to deputize you on this mission, I want you to learn the basic code of the police:
Accept that which you cannot change, especially if it's in large denominations.”

Jack Liffey laughed politely. He was having trouble discerning any stable mood in the man, but that was probably the point.

Gloria Ramirez found them wandering like dazzled kittens in a
botánica
off in one corner of El Mercado on the street level. The immense warehouse building was chockablock with two levels of shops selling foods and toys and clothing and jewelry, and the walls were beating with crowd noise and insistent
ranchera
music that seemed to emanate from a third level overhead. Maeve had passed
botánicas
on the streets in LA many times, and she'd thought the name was just Spanish for drugstore, but wandering around the colorful aisles, it became obvious that
botánicas
were purveyors of something far more exotic, like Santería, from the Caribbean or wherever, with all its ointments and magic charms and quasi-Catholic icons of saints who really stood for African gods. Maeve ended up buying a little square bottle of yellowish oil that was called Brain-up/Habilidoso, while Ornetta paid four dollars for a bottle called Come-Hither Oil/Aceite de Hechizar.

Maeve could tell that the policewoman was definitely off work, as she wore jeans and a red cowboy shirt, a getup Maeve usually didn't like. It looked great on her, though—tight over her bottom and flattering where her waist narrowed a bit. The policewoman herded them in a motherly way toward a staircase, and Ornetta held their purchases up to the light from a side window to compare them. You could read some Spanish instructions on the backs of the labels, through the amber liquids. “It clear as day, Maevie: you don't trust your brain, and I don't trust my beauty.”

Maeve Liffey grinned. “A little edge never hurts; that's what my dad says.”

Gloria took the tiny bottles and looked them over skeptically as they waited at a landing for a large family—squat, round adults, a couple of slow-moving grandparents, and more well-behaved brown-eyed kids than you could count—to troop down off the stairs.

“I've learned two things in my lifetime of bungled relationships with men. You cannot make someone love you, but if you're really interested, you can always stalk them like mad and hope they panic and give up.” Ornetta laughed as the woman switched to looking at Maeve's bottle. “And you can rely on your brains for about fifteen minutes, and after that it's good to have large boobs.”

Maeve was startled and didn't know whether to be offended or not. Her own breasts were fine, almost embarrassing, but Ornetta was two years younger and still developing, and she felt protective of her.

Gloria handed back their magic potions, and they headed up the stairwell. “I'm kidding, girls. Never take advice from other people. Never. They're always much more screwed up than you think. Even me. What do I know? All the important men in my life have been taken away or wandered off in search of younger flesh.”

“What do you mean ‘taken away'?” Maeve asked as they came around a bend in the stairs into a sudden smell of crushed tropical fruit.

“Cancer, honey. One of them. Another one decided—or maybe learned—that he was gay. I don't know which way's the correct way to think about it. I guess that's okay, but he was really smart and sweet and it makes me worry sometimes that the good ones might all be gay.”

“I sure hope not,” Maeve said.

“Me, too.”

They emerged into the din of a kind of broad, open level that stretched around three sides of the third floor. There were competing Mexican restaurants with competing mariachi bands going full tilt, bawling and strumming and trumpeting at one another. It was hard to talk without shouting. Maeve swore to herself that she was going to work harder at Spanish next semester, though almost all the college-bound kids at Redondo Union High were taking French or German. It was a crime to live in this city and not know Spanish, she thought. It was like being locked out of all the interesting buildings around you.

Gloria Ramirez seemed to have become den mother and seated them near the railing, overlooking the market stalls below. It was marginally quieter there, and once the menus arrived, she leaned close to help order for them in Spanish. They were all having some variation of the standard Norteño-Mex combinations of enchiladas, tamales, tacos, rice, and beans, but Ornetta had insisted on an extra portion of
carnitas.
She said so many African Americans were avoiding pork these days that she rarely got it at school and she loved it. The policewoman ordered a selection of Mexican soft drinks for them all.

Blessedly, the earsplitting bands took a break on the same cue, like going back to their corners between rounds, and they could talk without yelling. The food came right away, and they all sampled the drinks to see which ones they liked best. Gloria Ramirez ended up with the white
horchata,
which seemed to be a kind of rice water that neither of the girls liked, Ornetta had a
Jarritos
soda called jamaica that she said tasted like hibiscus flowers. And Maeve slurped at another
Jarritos,
a guava-based drink that had a weird furry, perfumy taste.

Maeve was so proud of bringing her two friends together that she made Gloria repeat the story of her Paiute ancestor Wovoka and the Ghost Dance as they ate. She knew Ornetta would love it, and then she insisted that Ornetta relate the tale of “The Revolt of the Rhinestone Animals,” one of Maeve's favorites. In the back of her mind, Maeve wondered if she might just be testing Ornetta as a weapon she could use against her ornery grandfather. How could anyone resist Ornetta's infectious energy and kindliness? Wasn't everyone good-hearted down deep, just waiting to get over their feuds and intolerances?

Gloria Ramirez seemed to enjoy Ornetta's story, resting her chin on interlaced fingers to listen and smile. She only nibbled at the food.

“I feel lost compared to the two of you,” Maeve said. “I've had such a boring middle-class
white
life.”

“Be thankful,” Gloria suggested.
“Really
colorful is an eight-year-old barefoot Indio orphan selling chewing gum on the streets of Tijuana.”

Maeve felt a bit hurt, as if she'd been accused of weeping crocodile tears over her privileged life. “I don't mean anything snotty. You don't really have to go all the way to Tijuana to find people with miserable lives.”

The woman nodded. “Yes. Imagine living inside your grandfather's skull,” Gloria said. “Day in day out, with all that pointless hatred eating at you.”

Ornetta seemed to be listening intently.

“Do you think he's hopeless?” Maeve asked.

“I don't know him very well, but I do know people like him. My own stepparents were pretty sure they knew who were valuable members of the human race and who weren't. I went back to see them when I was grown up, some kind of duty. When I went to college for a year, I pretty much cut myself off. I told them I'd made peace with my heritage, even visited my homeland up in eastern California and Nevada—and they were horrified. They'd done everything they could to make me hate what I was. I have no idea why
anyone
would want to hate Indians so, and then try to make an Indian girl hate herself. But the Paiutes I met don't consider me an Indian because I was raised white. It's funny; I might just be full-blood. It's hard to know who my mom was with.”

One of the bands came back and started tuning up noisily.

“Eat up,” Gloria Ramirez suggested. “I'm going deaf. I'll take you guys on a little tour of my home. You're in
East
LA now. This isn't LA.”

“Super!”

“Here's Twenty-first.”

The address was about halfway across town toward Point Fermin—not far, in fact, from the Petricich place.

“This may turn out to be some distant cousin of Frank Ozaki's. You
will
let me do the talking.”

The house was one of those sad little stucco bungalows from the turn of the century that suggested the builder was trying for some effect, but exactly what kind was a bit hard to determine. It was symmetrical with a half-round portico dead center in front, held up by pairs of too-slim Doric columns. The flat roof had a suggestion of castellations at the corners, and there were little red-tiled eyelids over each of the wide-eyed windows.

Jack Liffey followed Steelyard docilely toward the screen door. The unlatched screen rattled as he knocked. A very old, very short woman seemed to materialize slowly behind the screen, at about belly-button level. Her face was so wrinkled it almost suggested another species of life, and her thick gray hair was pulled back harshly, as if by a rake, and tied in a knot the size of a fist on the back of her head.

“Mary Ozaki?” Steelyard said. He showed her his badge wallet.

“Kuichi!” she called behind her. There was a flood of fluent Japanese, and eventually a woman who was not quite so old or so short appeared.

The first woman walked away with mincing steps, carrying a tiny suitcase. She seemed very disappointed.

“I'm Mary Ozaki. My mother,” she explained, with a nod toward the smaller woman. She opened the door, and they entered a small, dark living room. “Fusaye is ninety-six next month. For more than sixty years she's been waiting for the ship that will take her and all the loyal subjects of the emperor back to Japan. Her bags are packed. She's sure they won the war. Losing was inconceivable. We argued with her, showed her pictures of Hiroshima and Japanese troops surrendering, but they were all wartime tricks of the Americans. Then the streets filled up with Toyotas and Hondas, and what could we say?”

Her English was almost accentless, if just a little too precise to seem natural.

“Are you related to a Frank Ozaki, who once lived on Terminal Island?” Steelyard asked.

“He was my husband. Frank passed away seven years ago. Please sit down.” Both men sat on a sofa that seemed to puff out dust. “Terminal Island. My, my. I haven't thought about that place in years, and it's only right there.” She waved a hand languidly. “Our village was such a special little place. I grew up there. We had our own Japanese slang, our own street games.”

As their eyes adjusted, they could see it was a small room, with spindly bric-a-brac cabinets and antimacassars pooling everywhere like deflated ghosts. Steelyard pointedly didn't introduce Jack Liffey. “Could I get you gentlemen some green tea?”

“No, thank you.” It didn't appear that this room was used much. “Mrs. Ozaki, was your husband one of the men who refused to sign the loyalty oath during the war?”

She sighed and folded her delicate hands in her lap. For a moment she seemed to go into a kind of stasis.

“There's no problem about it,” Steelyard reassured her. “That's all over with. We just need to know we're speaking about the same person.”

“You saw his mother, gentlemen. Can you imagine how she would have taken it if Frank had repudiated her and her husband and their country during the war? It would have killed her. They were Issei—first generation—and they couldn't become American citizens under any circumstances. His mother told him over and over that signing that oath would spoil his chances to be asked home for the victory celebration. He knew better, of course, but he got his back up. He stood up in the meeting at Manzanar and said he'd sign it only if they'd let his parents out of the camp. But the government wasn't interested in bargaining. You take an action in a moment of righteous anger and sometimes it stays with you forever.”