Read Online Gasa-Gasa Girl by Naomi Hirahara - Free Book Online

garden,” Mas told him. “Take a look—some kind of hair in the middle.”
    Ghigo stared at Mas for a moment as if he didn’t know what to make of the old Japanese man. “I’ll have the lab check it out,” he said.
    Mas nodded. Somehow he felt that the gardenia was important, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.
    After Lloyd gave Mari an awkward kiss on the lips, he and Detective Ghigo headed down the hallway toward the elevators. Both Mari and Mas stood and watched until the two men disappeared into the elevator going down.
    “He wants me to get an attorney. How am I going to find a criminal attorney?” Mari began pushing buttons on her cell phone when a nurse passing by stopped her, pointing to a large sign showing a picture of a phone with a red diagonal line through it.
    “Dammit, dammit. Nothing’s going right today, Dad.” Mari buried her forehead in her hands.
    “No worry, Mari.” Mas meant to take the phone from her, but instead felt his daughter’s fingers, ice-cold and trembling. “I may knowsu someone who can help.”

chapter four
    G.I. Hasuike was an attorney in Los Angeles with long black and gray hair that reached down to his waist. His hair was usually tied back in a rubber band; that’s why Mas hadn’t noticed its length the first time he had met him.
    Since that time, they had shared enough beers and sake for Mas to learn that G.I. was short for George Iwao. He was a Sansei, a third-generation Japanese American, who ran around with a pack of friends from Boyle Heights, next door to East L.A. G.I. had fought in the Vietnam War, not because of any sense of duty, but because his friends had run out of soy sauce the night before their Army physical. They had a square gallon container of Kikkoman
shoyu
, which they took turns gulping (in between swigs of rum and whiskey and puffs of who-knows-what). G.I. unfortunately had too much rum and whiskey and not enough salt from the
shoyu
, so his blood pressure test came out free and clear to go shoot some other yellow men an ocean away.
    G.I. specialized in spill-and-fall cases, but he was no stranger to criminal cases, either. He told Mas that he had witnessed dozens of men killed in the jungle, so what was dealing with a few murders in the streets of L.A.?
    “Where are you calling from, Mas?”
    Mas, clutching Mari’s cell phone, stood underneath a pine tree on the corner outside the hospital. A few pine needles fell on his shoulder as a lost bird moved on to a warmer location. “New York,” he said.
    “New York? Damn, Mas. You sure get around these days. What’s goin’ on?”
    Mas tried to explain the whole scenario, from the discovery of the body to Detective Ghigo’s questioning of Mari and Lloyd. “You knowzu any lawyers in New York?”
    “Do they have any money? Criminal defense lawyers like to have their fee up front.”
    Mas blinked. He pictured the underground apartment and pitiful television set. “No, no money.”
    “May be hard,” said G.I. “But I do have a friend connected with the Asian Legal Defense Alliance. Her name’s Jeannie Yee. She’s young, but can kick anybody’s butt.”
    Mas took down the name and phone number on the visitor’s sticker the hospital had given him.
    After he got off the phone with G.I., Mas realized that he had forgotten to tell the lawyer that Lloyd was
hakujin
, not Asian. Either way, he still needed defense. And besides, wasn’t he a member of the family?

    W hen Mas returned to the waiting room, Mari was talking to a young dark-skinned woman in a white lab coat. She resembled Mr. Patel, one of Mas’s customers in Arcadia who owned a small chain of teriyaki fast-food stands. “Thank you, Doctor, thank you,” Mari said as the physician headed for a door to the hidden heart of the hospital. Mas pulled out his visitor’s name tag, which had hairs of his wool sweater on the once-sticky side and the lawyer’s name and phone number on the other. “Youzu call dis Jeannie girl,” he