Aachoo Voo, Private Eye
Episode 19
Tokyo Joe and The Tale of Woe
I was sitting in Clapsaddle's drinking tea with my new friend Man Nee Takizaki who called himself Joe Jackason to fit in with the native New Yorkers. It was a bright Saturday afternoon and the usual crowd of old degenerates and the occasional college professor and off/off/Off Broadway performer or hungover fan dancer sat staring into their bowls of Chicken Feet Soup and munching on buttered toast. Joe had recently been hired by T Wayne, the King of Things, to help restore oriental antiques that Mr. Elliottt didn't have time to do. That Joe was Oriental and Japanese was a big plus except when it came to Chinese or other Asian cultural items and in those cases, Mr. Elliottt and Mr. Takizaki just winged it but usually pulled it off.
The only customer that had ever complained had been a wealthy Chinese tourist, who upon examining his 'priceless' Ming Dynasty vase, found to his dismay that one of the dragons on said vase seemed to be wearing a sombrero and drinking Sangria. Mr. Elliottt was quite upset upon having to refund the $50,000 purchase price and berated Mr. Takizaki (who had done the artwork on that piece) quite loudly and angrily before realizing that Joe barely understood anything he was shouting at him. (Or so he believed at the time. Joe had remarkably and easily picked up the English language by the age of nine and spoke it rather well though with an indecipherable accent.) Looking at Joe's sad face as he crouched behind the Mummy display, he soon relented and took him out for lunch which is how I had made his acquaintance.
They had bee-lined it to my booth as every other table and booth had been filled with gawking old men making bets on which one of them would make me scream the next time in the hallways and win that free buttered toast. I recommended the Salmon Noodle Whatever The Heck It Was and the coffee which was the only thing Clapsaddle's served that was normal besides buttered toast but Joe had declined and pulled packets of tea out of his pockets along with a small tea pot and cup and saucer. Then he ordered hot water and a hot dog and proceeded to make himself a dainty cup of fragrant tea. Terrence and I watched in amazement along with the rest of the crowd of Saturday afternoon coffee slurpers.
After long winded introductions had been made at last by Mr. Elliottt, along with backgrounds and family histories concocted for the two of us, Mr. Takizaki, excuse me, Joe Jackason, smiled shyly and attempted to pronounce my name. He gave it a try anyway. And I tried to say his but soon gave up and extended my hand and smiled, "Hello Joe, welcome to New York!" He had a very strange accent, one I could not place. I had met several Japanese people, particularly my mother's balcony/rooftop greenhouse gardeners, and none of them sounded like Joe. I would find out why later. Though I would never know if any of it was true. Joe was sweet and charming, of indeterminate age, and seemed to form an immediate infatuation for me.
As he excused himself to find the restroom, he slipped on the slick seat of the booth and ended up lying on his back on top of my shoes. I pretended not to notice but the rest of the onlookers snickered as he tried to make a quick exit. Poor guy. "He is pretty clumsy." T Wayne observed. "I can't tell you how many things he's broken at my shop in three days." I immediately felt a bond with the guy and tried to find a defense for him but I didn't know him well enough yet. Knowing me and my history well, T Wayne grinned and whispered, "Fortunately, most of the things he's broken have been fakes or my own creations...but don't tell him that!"
While he was gone, which seemed a long time (and I'd noticed he had taken his tea paraphernalia with him) (he had asked Harold to wash them) my friend filled me in on his story. It was sad. It was puzzling. It was quite unbelievable. But then, most of the stories Terrence told me were. Joe had presented himself at The King of Things Shop one day inquiring if there might be a room for rent nearby or available employment anywhere and asking how much the "doggie in the window" was. Terrence had invited him in, given a tour, asked him four hundred and thirty-nine questions and offered him a room over the shop, a job as his assistant as payment for the room and gave him the taxidermized Cocker Spaniel to sleep with because he looked so lonesome. Several years later, "How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?" would become a big hit record and T Wayne would take credit for writing the song but there was some dispute over that. He said he gave Joe credit for inspiring the song. (In court, he claimed it had been another dog and not that particular dog in that particular song or window.) No one cared and Bob Merrill got the rights and the royalties.
Joe, aka Man Nee Takizaki was a quiet and pleasant fellow. He was gifted with a paint brush and knowledgeable about many things though his vocabulary was difficult to follow. He insisted upon being called Joe though most people called him Tokyo Joe for various and sundry reasons none of which I will go into here because this is my story after all and well, I don't want to. Anyway, he had introduced himself as a homeless Japanese tourist and Terrence being the soft hearted wheeler/dealer that he was took full advantage of the situation...... ............I mean, took him under his wing and gave him a home and a job.
In the days since, bits and pieces of the sad tale emerged with the help of drawings, sign language, interpreters and foreign language dictionaries. Man Nee had been born into the third wealthiest family in Japan come to find out and had been disowned and disinherited by his family at the age of seven and sent to America to live with a distant relative who had migrated over as a child and established himself as the Asian -American "Noodle King of Rhode Island." Years later after a falling out with the relative, Man Nee roamed the country in search of himself and ended up in New York City in our very own neighborhood. He had tried to establish contact and communication with his family back home but their solicitors rebuffed his every effort at any sort of reconciliation.
Joe was heartsick but never gave up hoping. His crime? His family's oddball reason for disinheriting him? Because he had never been able to learn and speak Japanese! He had only been able to speak Portuguese. No one had ever been able to determine why and wrote it off as some kind of birth defect inherited from his mother's side of the family. (Or so his father had claimed.) Years later however, Joe did discover that his mother's mother's father's father's father had indeed been Portuguese.
Having just been informed by articles in newspapers that Joe's family was now the Most Wealthy Family in Japan, Joe, with the help of Mr. Elliottt, had taken new interest in reconciling with his family after years of estrangement as well as renewed hope in inheriting at least something. Until that glad day arrived, Joe aka Man Nee Takizaki would pass his days happily breaking and repairing things at the shop he had come to call home. Much to his surprise after hiring Joe, Terrance found that many Portuguese customers began to patronize his establishment and his business grew exponentially. In fact, he had discovered a whole new niche for himself creating and selling Japanese/Portuguese priceless antiquities from undiscovered countries. Life was good. Joe and I became fast friends. He taught me how to make exquisite tea, speak in his language (?) write heartbreaking letters to his family and I taught him how to fall gracefully without killing himself.
I took to calling him Man Nee Joe (cause I like to do stuff like that) and introduced him to Mr. D'Sal and they began to pal around together and take fishing trips and explore Asian spices that Mr. D'Sal was unfamiliar with. Once I had to bail them out of jail but that's a story for another time. I had a wide and diverse variety of friends as you probably know by now and though my uppity mother disapproved of every one, I continued to accrue new friends from every culture and calling. I got that from MiMi Voo, I think, because she didn't have a prejudiced bone in her body though she made fun of all people equally but without malice. Some day I may tell you about her Creole man friend named Water Melon, whose actual name was Mr. Walter Mellond. It's a funny story unless you're one of those people who get offended by watermelons.
Man Nee Joe took me out on a date once after weeks of continual begging. We decided to go dancing at a popular nightclub but as usual, it ended in disaster. I ended up with five hangnails and he had a broken ankle. He was not a good dancer. I bet that man bowed at least six hundred times that night! He was very polite and very sorry for the fiasco but the whole thing was really my fault. (Of course it was.) As he hobbled in to go up to his room later that night after we'd left the hospital, T Wayne, who was working on a new project in the shop screwing fan blades onto a blue wooden statue of a scantily clad woman (he called it 'The Blue Flame' named after his favorite local fan dancer) took one look at Joe and shook his head. "Been out with Aachoo?' And Joe grinned widely and said, with avid excitement "Oh, Garoto!! Wharra woman!!!!!!!!! Wharra woman!!!" Terrence helped him and his crutch up the stairs, put him to bed and promptly grounded him for a month.
But getting back to the beginning I began with but didn't finish. That Saturday afternoon as Joe and I sat there some couple of months after our meeting, a heavy set Japanese man in an expensive black suit and dark sunglasses approached our table with a large envelope and stood there scrutinizing us both in an alarming manner. Behind the dark glasses we couldn't really tell what his eyes were saying but when he whipped them off trying to look menacing, we still couldn't tell because we still couldn't see his eyes, they were so tiny. Finally he put the envelope down and beat his fleshy fist on top of it, huffed and walked away, out the door and entered a waiting black Rolls Royce.
After some silent moments, Joe opened the envelope and immediately turned three shades of green and then a deathly pale and jumped up and headed for parts unknown. (Well, his room, really. I just added that for dramatic effect.) I wasn't sure what to do. Go after him, order another slab of mystery pie or decide to investigate this case that had seemingly been thrown into my lap. Joe's life consisted of mystery upon mystery and I loved mysteries. But I also loved getting paid and until my friend received some inheritance, he had nothing to live on but the $8.75 Mr. Elliottt gave him weekly plus free room and board. One week it had gotten so bad for the poor guy that he was forced to sell the board. (I think a wino bought it for his fire barrel.) I started slipping him the food my mother sent over that I didn't want so he had begun to eat well and developed quite a sophisticated palate for foie gras and other yucky stuff.
I adored Joe but that Japanese inheritance business was not exactly up my alley. I finished eating and made my way to my office through the maze of back hallways. Just as I put the key in the door, I felt a big thumb and finger pinch my right cheek. I determined not to give the ole goat the satisfaction of winning anything and rubbed my bum and slammed the door, buried my face in a cushion and screamed. No free buttered toast for you, Mr. Quattlebaum!
ごめんなさい。
(gomen nasai)
