Sayonara Slam (19 page)

“It's like my world is slowing down, coming to an end, while the outside is spinning by so fast. I can't even catch my breath.”

Mas took a few bites of the banana bread. “
Gomen ne
,” he finally said. “I gotsu go.”

Lil wrapped the leftover bread in a napkin and handed it to Mas at the door. “I don't know what's going to happen, afterwards. I can't lose my daughter. She's really my everything.” Tears finally ran down her papery face, and Mas didn't know what to say. He had no answers.

“I'zu going to get married again,” Mas abruptly announced.

“Oh, Mas, I'm so happy for you. I never told you this, but Chizuko wanted you to find someone.” Lil pulled out some tissues from a box on a table near the door and wiped her face. “Well, actually, what she told me was something like, ‘No one will want to have that old man, but if someone wants to pick him up, that's okay with me.'”

Mas laughed. He knew that Lil was telling the truth, because that sounded exactly like Chizuko.

“You and Jill figure it out somehowsu,” Mas finally said, and he walked down the porch steps. It might take a lifetime, but he had faith that they would.

It was Chizuko's birthday, so Mas prepared to do what he always did around this time. Clean her gravesite plot. The last time he went there was right before Valentine's Day. He didn't actually time it for that—in fact, he would have avoided it if he'd realized it earlier. Too many red roses and stuffed teddy bears with hearts, symbols of love that could not be reciprocated by the dead.

Mas had never in his life given his wife red roses, at least on purpose. One time a customer had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend and shoved a bouquet in Mas's dirty hands after he'd mowed the lawn. Chizuko's eyes grew wide when he brought it in through the back door, but they returned to their normal size when he explained what had happened.

Mas didn't even know what day was their official wedding anniversary. There was the day he received her photo in the mail when he was a bachelor gardener in Altadena. And the day he wrote back to his parents saying that he was interested. And the day he actually traveled to Hiroshima to lay eyes on her for the first time as an adult. He'd actually seen her once, before he left Hiroshima. She was the younger sister of a former classmate, and she was only about thirteen at the time. Even at that age, she was very
majime
, serious, but with the loss of her two brothers, she had to be. He'd heard that Chizuko's family had lost everything in the Bomb and were living with distant relatives to make ends meet.

The wedding ceremony and reception were a blur. He'd felt like he was playing dress-up, in his rented tuxedo. Chizuko wore a silky kimono adorned with a giant crane. The
furisode,
long sleeves, almost reached the floor and made Mas feel that he would be knocked over by a wave of passion. The kimono was knotted with a colorful rope in the front, as if Chizuko's insides were being held together, suppressed. Her face pancaked white, she wore the traditional wedding cap on top of her elaborate black wig. As tradition decreed, the bride's horns were supposed to be hiding underneath. Chizuko looked like a complete stranger, which she actually was.

There was the day of the ceremony, but there was also the official date on their family registry. And then there was the day they flew on Pan Am from Tokyo to Los Angeles. There were too many dates to keep track of, too many years of regret and adjustment. They found that it was better not to recognize a wedding anniversary, no reminders that they might have had a choice in the matter. It was better to pretend that they were destined to be married, and it was their job to stay that way for the rest of their lives.

This birthday, which would have been Chizuko's seventy-fifth, was a different one. Riding in the Impala's passenger seat was Genessee, who looked out the window toward the street vendors selling grilled sausages, tacos, and clothing.

Mas and Genessee kept their conversation light. They spoke about Genessee's grandson, his grandson, anything but where they were heading to.

“I'zu stop at the Yamadas today,” Mas said.

“Oh?”

“Lil stay home.”

“I'm so sorry about that. I think she'll regret it.”

She already does
, Mas thought, but he said nothing about that. It was between mother and daughter, and it was their job to figure it out.

Once he turned into the driveway for Evergreen Cemetery, Genessee became quiet. She'd never been to the historic cemetery, despite living in Los Angeles for so many decades. It wasn't like the ones advertised on billboards along the 710 and 605 Freeways. There were no promises of fish ponds or European-style chapels. The grass was even getting a brown tinge along the sides, like a cake that had been in the oven too long.

Mas looked for the statue of the Nisei soldier—it was like the needle of a compass. It grounded him, and from there he could find Chizuko's gravesite.

They parked along the driveway. Mas opened the trunk to retrieve stems of Chizuko's cymbidium. He chose the younger ones, the ones with tight, waxy faces. The cemetery didn't have a weekly throwaway policy, so there was a chance those blooms could remain for a while. He handed the flowers, wrapped in old pages of
The Rafu Shimpo
, to Genessee, and threw some rags and small pruning shears into an empty plastic bucket. Before they walked to the gravesite, Mas removed the rags and shears and filled the bucket with water from a faucet next to the walkway. There'd been a few dead leaves in the bottom of the bucket, and they swirled in the water.

They trudged to the spot, making sure they didn't step on the faces of other gravesite markers. Mas recognized many of the names they passed. Cousins, aunts, uncles, and parents of fellow gardeners, or the gardeners themselves. One day, Mas knew, his name would be cast here in metal, too.

He knelt down and began cleaning Chizuko's marker with a rag.

Genessee, still holding onto the flowers wrapped in newspaper, studied the marker. “Her birthday is today?”

Mas rubbed extra hard on the letters. Dirt tended to get stuck in between them.

She knelt on the grass next to Mas. She held onto his hands so he could not keep cleaning. “Why didn't you tell me?”

Mas couldn't say. Maybe if he said it out loud, he couldn't contain himself?

“I don't want you to erase her. I can't let go of Paul. His DNA is in our children. Our grandchildren. You can tell me anything about her, Mas. I want to hear your stories.”

Mas doubted that he would say much about Chizuko, at least directly. But she was hiding there, in every moment in his past in Altadena. To attempt to carve her completely out would be impossible, or perhaps even life-threatening, to Mas.

He flipped over the cylindrical metal flower holder that had been turned upside down. The pouring of the water, the clip of the shears, and then the positioning of the cymbidium.

Would this be a funny place to propose to a woman?
Mas wondered.

He must have had a strange look on his face, because Genessee quickly stood up, saying that she had to go throw the newspaper away.

Chapter Sixteen

W
hen Mas went to pick Yuki up at the Bonaventure the next morning, the journalist was waiting with two large paper cups of coffee. The parking attendant opened the door for Yuki, who offered one of the hot cups to Mas. “Black,
desho
?” Yuki asked. “I didn't think you took your coffee with anything extra.”

Mas was impressed to get something—even a cup of coffee—from the boy.

“I read Kanzo Hirose's manuscript last night,” Yuki said, pulling out his digital tablet from his bag. “It's in English, so it was a little difficult for me to get through it.”

His coffee squished next to the emergency brake, Mas pulled out of the Bonaventure driveway onto Grand Avenue.

“But at the end, guess what? There was an afterword by Itai-
san
.”

“
Eigo
?”

“Yeah, all in English. His English wasn't bad, especially his written English. Let me read it to you.”

At the stoplight, Mas took a big sip of the coffee, which
burned his tongue.

“Afterword. By Tomo Itai,” Yuki began reading. “Kanzo Hirose was my uncle, one of the closest relatives I ever had. I wasn't related to him by blood, but by marriage. The most important thing about my Uncle Kanzo is that he gave me a love for baseball.

“I thought it was only a sport from the United States, but he corrected me. He taught me that baseball is more than a sport. It is a rhythm of life. Some people choose to go after the home runs of life, to go for the big, dramatic arcs, but Uncle Kanzo told me to look for the small plays. The plays that the fans, sometimes even the umpires, don't catch. The plays that make for a winning life.

“My uncle began to embrace baseball when he was interned in a concentration camp in the United States. It was on an Indian reservation, and when the Japanese Americans moved in, this camp became one of the largest groups of people in the whole state. Among those imprisoned was a man named Kenichi Zenimura, who was known as the father of Japanese American baseball. There in the desert, he helped establish a baseball diamond and a thirty-two-team league.

“My uncle didn't want to go on that boat, the
Gripsholm
, and later the
Teia
, but the US government said they had to.

“When they lived in Japan, they had absolutely nothing. My uncle Kanzo told me that he was most worried about his younger brother, Hideaki. To give him hope, he'd play baseball with him all day long.

“I myself have gone through hard times. Times of self-doubt and despair. But Kanzo taught me to embrace a baseball life.”

“Not bad,
desho
?” Yuki said. “But Sunny never mentioned that baseball was that important to him.”

“Maybe no big deal for Sunny,” Mas said. “Maybe playin' baseball help the brotha more than him.”

They parked in the same lot at the top of Dodger Stadium that they always did. Mas took the paper bag he'd brought.

“What's that?” Yuki asked.

“Sumptin I gotsu take care of.” Yuki wasn't the only one with a job to do.

The attendance at the press conference was light. Only about a third of the former journalists they'd seen before showed up to find out who had killed their colleague. Most of them seemed to be local press, including a photographer for
The Rafu Shimpo
, who nodded a greeting to Mas.

The rest of the media must have headed home to Japan
, Mas thought. Their stories had been filed, recorded, and broadcast. They were onto the next story, the next game, the next scandal.

Yuki took a seat, and Mas took the one next to him. With so few attendees, it made no sense to stand in the back.

Detective Williams, wearing a purple tie, stood in front of them, while his partner, Garibay—was he still in the same clothes?—stayed on the side.

“Thank you all for coming. We wanted to provide an update on the murder of Tomo Itai, a longtime reporter for the
Nippon Series
,” said Cortez Williams.

“Yesterday we arrested a seventy-eight-year-old male, Hideaki ‘Sunny' Hirose, and charged him with first-degree murder in Mr. Itai's death. Mr. Hirose is the victim's cousin. He came forward to police headquarters yesterday and gave a full confession. He apparently placed cyanide in medication that the victim was taking for high blood pressure. Mr. Hirose had worked in the jewelry business and had access to highly toxic chemicals used to polish silver, including cyanide.”

“What was the motive?” a young Asian American woman in the front row asked.

“Mr. Hirose and Mr. Itai had gotten into a verbal altercation on Monday evening over a personal matter. That led to Mr. Hirose poisoning his cousin's capsules while the victim was sleeping.”

No matter how many times a reporter urged Williams to reveal the “personal matter,” he would not. Maybe that was the deal in securing Sunny's confession. To keep his motive under wraps.

“They didn't give us any credit,” Yuki whispered in Mas's ear.

Mas was relieved that Williams didn't mention them. He didn't want to feel responsible for sending an old Nisei to jail. Maybe it was a feather in Yuki's cap, but Mas didn't want that on his conscience. While Yuki would be flying back to Japan, Mas would still be here in California,
wondering how Sunny was faring in one of its prisons.

Mas heard the familiar tap-tap of high heels against the concrete floor. This time, Amika was wearing a royal blue dress.

“Oh, you're here,” Yuki merely stated. He obviously wasn't thrilled to see her, but he seemed to be tolerating her more than he had in the past.

She said, “Let me give you some sisterly advice—”

“Sister?” Yuki cried out. “Don't you mean
oba
?”
Oba
, old hag, was a supreme insult to a woman in her forties.

“Don't be an asshole,” she said. “First of all, don't worry about what the public says about the media. They need to be furious at someone, so it might as well be us. Don't forget that, Kimura-
kun
. Never sacrifice your ethics. Maybe the readers will hate you. Even your colleagues sometimes. But you can't worry about that.”

Amika put her hands on her hips and leaned toward Yuki. “By the way, we didn't have sex that night. You're a total lightweight. Two drinks and you were out.

“And you,” Amika said to Mas. “I will really miss you. Maybe I'll see you around someday. Maybe in Japan.”

Don't count on it
, Mas thought. “
Chotto
, I'zu one question for you.”

“Yes.” She leaned back on her heels.

“Whyzu Itai scared of Sawada?” He described how Itai cowered when Sawada challenged him on the field on that first day of the World Baseball Classic.

“Oh, that?” Amika said, smiling. “Sawada's father was a sportswriter, too. He was Itai's
senpai
.”

Smitty Takaya hadn't been at the press conference. Maybe he knew that attendance would be limited to the third- and fourth-string journalists. Smitty seemed savvy about how to best spend his time.

Mas made his way to the front office. There were a couple of receptionists sitting at a curved desk, but as Mas approached, Smitty happened to be walking through the wide corridor with a walkie-talkie in his hand.

“Well hello, Mas. You were at the press conference, I figure.” He signaled for Mas to follow him. They went out the door and down some stairs toward the left field pavilion. “Terrible about Itai's cousin being responsible,” Smitty said. “Shocking, even.”

“You knowsu Itai before?”

“Knew him well enough. I guess anyone in baseball dealing with Japan has crossed paths with Tomo Itai.”

They walked inside the stadium. Smitty spoke into the walkie-talkie and waited for a response. Mas, meanwhile, opened up the paper bag he was carrying and dumped the contents onto one of the wooden benches. The decimated baseball, its guts hanging out like rolls of gauze bandages.

After responding to a message on his walkie-talkie, Smitty frowned at the mess. “What's this?”

Mas picked up the leather casing with the Japanese baseball commissioner's signature. “Dis ball from Japan.”

Smitty barely glanced at the signature. “Yup.”

“Youzu have one just like it.”

“I do?”

“Youzu show me first time I meetcha.”

Mas pointed down on the field. “There, the day Itai died.”

“I guess I may have.”

“Sumptin wrong with dis ball, but then you knowsu about dat.”

“What do you want from me? I don't have any money, if that's what you're after.”

Mas grimaced. Just what did this big-shot baseball executive think he was?

“Tomo thought there was something wrong with these new balls that the Japanese league was going to use,” Smitty said. “He brought over about a dozen of them; he wanted me to check them out. I gave them to Zahed to try at practice, and yeah, they were lively. Too lively, in fact.”

“So whatchu gonna do?”

“There's not much I can do. This is Japan's business, not mine. Tomo was the one who was taking them to task.”

“You'zu gonna just keep your mouth shut?”

“What do you think, Mas? I know we're cut from the same cloth. Don't want to make waves, right? I've also kept my head down and have done what's been expected of me. A hundred and ten percent.” Smitty glanced at his watch. “Listen, I have to cut some checks. I don't want anyone having to wait for their money.”

Mas didn't move. “Youzu don't seem happy about Jin-Won being pitcha here.”

Smitty, again, looked taken aback. Realizing that Mas
wasn't going to budge without a response, he finally said, “I mean, it's fine for the overseas leagues, if they want those kinds of circus acts. But what we want is power pitchers who can throw a ball at one hundred miles an hour. The public doesn't want to watch knuckleball pitches. They're too unpredictable.”

Mas sighed inside. The fastest always seemed to win. That's the way it was, in baseball as in life.

As Mas was leaving, he looked down on the field. No wonder the executives wanted offices right at this angle. The way the sun hit it, the grass shined like a carpet of green emeralds.

Mas took the elevator to the field level, just to get his head back on straight. Itai's job was to dig, dig, and dig. For years, Mas's job had been to fill those holes with seeds and plants. Digging, frankly, always made Mas's head ache. Maybe it was time to give up digging for good.

He walked the dirt sidelines, admiring even the placement of the chalk. And then, appearing out of nowhere like an angel, was Uno-
san,
sitting in the dugout. Mas blinked his eyes hard, wondering if he was seeing things. He was wearing a regular sweatsuit and no baseball cap. But there was no mistaking those high cheekbones and angular chin. What was the superstar
senshu
doing here? The players from Japan had all left days ago.

Mas couldn't help but take a few steps forward.