Free Gasa-Gasa Girl by Naomi Hirahara Page A

Down below, on the tracks, were remnants of people’s lives. Dividing the “Manhattan-bound” passengers from the “Brooklyn-bound” were a few benches and advertisements about preventing disease. More people seemed to be on Tug and Mas’s side, and Mas figured out that the ride to the Seventy-seventh Precinct would not be a pleasant one. The train car going in the opposite direction came and went, and then finally one on their side rumbled through the connecting tunnel and screeched to a stop in front of the platform. The car was a magnet for the waiting passengers, who all moved to the edge of a yellow-painted line toward one of the series of doors. Tug guided him, and as the doors whooshed open, Mas felt the uncomfortable closeness of people on all sides of him. Travelers spilled out of the train car as if they had been released from a dam. Mas and Tug’s crowd, on the other hand, pushed forward, moving against the tide.
    Once inside, Mas noticed that all the seats facing the center were occupied. Tug reached up for a metal bar parallel to the length of the car’s ceiling, while Mas had to grasp on to the only stationary thing that he could reach—a vertical pole like those in fire stations. The doors slid shut, the train jerked forward, and Mas felt his body sway back and forth like a dead perch on a fishing line.
    As the doors opened and closed at the next station, the crowd changed slightly with the subtraction of some passengers and the addition of others. A teenager in a basketball jersey, with a boom box blasting rhythms, came and went, replaced by another young man in a black hat, short, scraggly beard, and a set of two long ringlets—Mari used to wear her hair in similar curlicues when she was young. A group of black women, all friends, stood in one corner, their voices dipping up and down in a cadence that Mas was unfamiliar with. Many of the passengers, from the boy in the knit cap to the old lady in loose panty hose, sat reading books. Chizuko would have been impressed with this, thought Mas, who was a little impressed himself.
    At the next stop, a muffled voice came on over the intercom. Mas couldn’t make out any of it, but Tug nudged Mas and they were released into a station with a sign that read Crown Heights—Utica Avenue. They made their way from the belly of the station to street level. As Mas was met by the cutting coldness, he almost missed the pressing fever from the people of the train.
    They walked north along a busy boulevard crowded with music shops, grocery stores, and restaurants smelling of burnt pineapple and other tropical fruits. At each intersection, Tug and Mas waited for the Walk sign while all the other pedestrians charged ahead. Even Tug got tired of them being the odd men out, and after looking both ways, they ran across the street against the red light with the rest of the crowd.
    Finally they came to a two-story rectangular building that reminded Mas of the tight and simple structures in L.A.’s Toy District, near Little Tokyo. It was made of bricks the hue of the yellow tiles in Mas’s bathroom back home. And like the bathroom, black dirt had accumulated in corners, proof of pollution, hard times, and neglect.
    “C’mon, Mas,” said Tug. “That’s the police station.”
    They went through the black metal doors and approached the counter, where a curly-haired woman stood behind a computer screen. Tug didn’t waste any time and made his plea. “I’m Tug Yamada, and this is my friend Mas Arai. Mas’s son-in-law is here, and we’d like to speak with him.”
    “Name?”
    “Lloyd Jensen.”
    The woman left her post and then returned after a few minutes. “There’s no Lloyd Jensen here.”
    Tug glanced over at Mas, who handed over Detective Ghigo’s business card. “How about Detective John Ghigo?”
    The woman went to speak to someone else again. “Detective Ghigo is busy right now.”
    Mas bit down on his dentures as Tug continued to prod in his steady,