WHEN Masuto entered his home in Culver City, his wife was waiting, her face drawn. She was an anxious mother. The house and her family were her world and all the world that she wanted, and she stubbornly refused to be Americanized. There were times when Masuto took great pleasure in this, and usually her anxieties were flattering to his own strength. But he had his own anxieties now, and he listened with some irritation to her story of Michael, the eight-year-old son, and his sore throat. Apparently, the sore throat was worse.
“Did you go to the doctor?” he asked.
She looked at him reproachfully. They had one car and she did not drive. She was always promising to learn to drive.
“Then why didn’t you call the doctor to come here?”
“That’s ten dollars, Masao. If I call the doctor every time a kid has a sore throat, we’ll soon be penniless.”
“We are penniless, the way you watch every dollar!”
“Masao!”
She always knew when something happened inside of him. It was not the things that occurred outside of him that worried her, but the strange responses that sometimes overtook him. That was the way it was tonight. In bed she left a space between their bodies, and when he whispered to her, she pretended that she was asleep.
Sleep came hard to him. He would doze off and come awake again. He dreamed of being lost in strange places—jungles and cities and boundless plains—but in each and every place there was Beverly Hills. Yet finally, he fell fully asleep and slept until the alarm awakened him at seven in the morning.
This morning, he was more than solicitous of his wife, Kati. He went out of his way to help her with the smallest child and then he made the seven wonderful faces for Michael, who would spend the day in bed. He was almost ready to leave when the telephone rang. Kati answered it. Masuto was outside the kitchen door when she called him, “It’s Pete Bones.”
He came back and picked up the phone and said, “Masao, Pete. I’m on my way out.”
“Well, just hold still for a moment. We got a make on Gertrude Bestner.”
“Who?”
“Oh, no—no, I don’t believe it. You only give us the life and death howl, and research works fifteen hours straight, and now you ask me, who is Gertrude Bestner.”
“Wait—you mean Samantha Adams, nee Gertrude Bestner?”
“Exactly.”
“You mean you’ve found her?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Bones said. “All that’s mortal. She’s buried in the County Pauper’s Reserve.”
“Dead.”
“Very dead, Masao.”
“You know—funny thing, but I felt it. The poor kid was a loser.”
“Maybe.”
“When did she die?” Masuto asked.
“Nineteen fifty-six, age nineteen, pneumonia, Mt. Sinai Hospital, emergency case; picked her up in the street where she had fainted; malnutrition, semistarvation, pulmonary—she died seven hours after admission to the hospital. Her death certificate was signed by the ward resident, name of Harry Levine. Practices medicine in Brentwood. I have name, address and telephone. Do you want it?”
“No,” said Masuto.
“Funny thing, Masao, when she was admitted she gave them the name of Samantha Adams—the way these kids cling to the dream that it’s theirs to make big, real big. It wasn’t until she died that they got her real name from the ID in her purse.”
“Where did she come from?”
“Chicago—but no connection, no family, no nearest of kin, nothing. A kid dies and it’s like she’s never been. Jesus, there are times when you could take this job and shove it right up your ever-loving.”
“It’s not the job, it’s just the way things are,” Masuto said.
“I suppose so. Look, we got her effects from the morgue file. Not much. A purse, a few incidentals—you know what a kid keeps with her—and a little leather-bound day book with a few phone numbers and some diary entries.”
“Have you checked the phone numbers?”
“Aside from agencies and the unions and that kind of thing, they’re all discontinued. She’s got the number of Sidney Burke’s PR outfit, but I guess you expected that.”
“I expected it,” Masuto said. “Did you read everything?”
“Well, it wasn’t no War and Peace. Sure, I read it all.”
“Anything?”
“Well, it depends on what you want. I got it here in front of me. On December 25th, 1955, she wrote, ‘This is Xmas. It’s a lousy Xmas. That’s all I can say. It’s a lousy, lousy Xmas. I had no date on Xmas Eve, and I walked around and I walked up to the Strip and. I almost began to cry for feeling sorry for myself. Then I walked over to Fairfax and I bought a fruit cake for thirty-five cents. That left me with eighteen cents, but I had to have something even for a lousy Xmas like this. So I went home and stuffed myself with the fruit cake. It wasn’t much good. It wasn’t anything like the fruit cakes Mrs. Walensky used to make in Chi. They were great fruitcakes. God, I wish I was a kid again. I don’t. It was lousy to be a kid. But God, I wish I was a kid again. Today, I’m sitting here in my room waiting for Santa Claus. This is Samantha, Santa Claus. Wishing you a lousy merry Xmas—”
“That’s enough,” said Masuto.
“There’s more. A million laughs.”
“Go to hell.”
“That’s a fine way to thank a buddy. Do you know what I told the boss—I told him to bill Beverly Hills for the time spent. You can afford it. You can afford to pave your streets with two-bit pieces.”
“I’ll tell them that at City Hall.”
“Do you want to look at this stuff?”
“No.”
“At least be grateful.”
“Thanks,” said Masuto. He replaced the telephone and then stood there staring at it.
“Masao,” his wife said.
Not moving, he stared at the telephone. Perhaps not hearing, because she asked him again.
“Masao, please, what happened? Did something terrible happen?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“A girl died. A little girl died.”
“How awful! Is it someone close to you? Who is it?”
“I don’t know her. I never saw her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She died ten years ago, and they buried her in a pauper’s grave. Her name was Samantha. That was her stage name. Her real name was Gertrude Besther, and in the whole world today, maybe only Pete Bones and I speak that name aloud.”
“Samantha. Pete Bones. What strange names the Anglos use!”
“Anglos?”
“You don’t like the word?”
“I don’t know. It’s just a word. We’re not Mexicans.”
“Is it a word only for the Mexicans? What do we call them?”
“People. Just people. That’s enough.”
“You’re in a strange mood,” she said. “This case has changed you. When will it be over?”
“Today, I think.”
“Oh, God—Masao—”
“I will be in no danger,” he said impatiently. “Nothing will happen to me. We will have a good dinner tonight, and I will tell you all about it.”
“And it will be over?”
“All over and done with. I promise you that, and then I can go back to being a Beverly Hills policeman.”
“And tomorrow is your day off,” she said with delight. “We can have a picnic.”
“If Michael is well enough.”
“And where will we go, Masao?”
“To San Fernando, I think, to Soko’s place. He promised that he would have the Sashu Roses from Japan. They are new, quite small, almost a mustard color, and they have a very good, strong smell. I am tired of these new beautiful tea roses that have no scent. We will eat in his garden, and then I will bring home the rose bushes and plant them.”
“Good. Good.”
He kissed her and went out to the car. The windshield was blurred with the wet morning mist, and upon it, in big block letters, he traced out SAMANTHA. Then he wiped it away with the palm of his hand, and then got in the car and drove off.