Sayonara Slam

by Naomi Hirahara

  Tanji’s room was more expansive than regular hotel rooms, with fancier lighting and furniture. His hair was still wet from the shower, blunting the shock of the blondness.

  Sitting on the edge of the king bed, he gestured toward a comfortable chair with a matching ottoman. Yuki took his position on the ottoman and flipped open Itai’s computer, which never seemed to leave his side. Mas chose to keep standing.

  Tanji took out a cigarette from a pack that he held in his left hand. Mas was surprised to see that it was a brand he recognized from the 1930s. Golden Bat. The cheapest of cheap, and filterless. As Tanji lit his cigarette, Mas almost starting salivating. These young men from Japan would be the death of him. More days of spending time with them, and he’d be back smoking again.

  Tanji must have noticed the longing in Mas’s eyes, because he held out the pack of Golden Bats to both him and Yuki. Mas hesitated but still shook his head. Once the smoking started, it could not be stopped. Besides, wasn’t this hotel nonsmoking like all the other ones? Tanji was a bigwig who obviously considered himself immune to rules. Yuki was still busy trying to find something on the laptop.

  “Interesting slogan,” said Tanji, smoke coming out of the gaps between his teeth. He gestured toward the sticker—sure enough, he was talking about the characters for teia, , on the back of the computer.

  “You know what that means?” Mas asked in Japanese.

  Tanji shook his head. “No idea.”

  “This is Itai-san’s computer,” Yuki finally said. “There are some very interesting things on here. Like this.” He turned the laptop around, and even Mas was taken aback. On the screen was a photo of Tanji with the same two men who’d confronted Mas in East L.A. “Can you explain this to us? Itai-san took it the day before he was killed.”

  Tanji’s face didn’t change expression. Mas was looking very carefully for signs. He thought he saw a very brief shadow cast over Tanji’s eyes, but the darkness quickly left, like the grayness below fast-moving storm clouds. “What of it? It’s just me with two local fools.” He’d already finished one cigarette and started on his second. Mas didn’t know how these star athletes could compete with so much damage to their lungs.

  “Why are you spending so much time with them?”

  “I don’t see how it’s your business.”

  “They threatened my driver here,” Yuki said. “They told him they might kill him if he was sympathetic to the ianfu issue.”

  “Ianfu? I don’t get it.” Tanji, at least to Mas, seemed genuinely perplexed.

  “Jin-Won’s grandmother is an ianfu. She’s in the hospital right now, perhaps a result of somebody’s dark mischief.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Really, I am. But I had nothing to do with it. Absolutely nothing.”

  “Then why spend time with these ‘fools,’ as you call them?”

  Good question, Yuki, Mas thought.

  Tanji dropped his second cigarette into an empty beer can. “If I tell you, you can’t write this, Kimura. At least not now. I’ll give you the green light when it’s official.”

  Yuki didn’t agree, but he didn’t disagree, either. His silence gave tacit approval to Tanji’s offer.

  “I’m retiring from baseball after this season and going back home to Kagoshima. I plan to run for an open spot in the Lower House.”

  “I’d heard some rumors,” Yuki said. “But how does your political campaign have anything to do with those characters?”

  “I’m not hanging out with them, okay? They’re from my prefecture. They’ve been following me around town. I can’t chase them away….”

  “Because that wouldn’t be smart politically.”

  The blond would-be politician nodded. “I’m worried about the future of Japan. We used to be a world economic and political power. Our automobile industry may soon be overtaken by other Asian countries. What can we offer? The best anime and manga out there? The most gorgeous sushi? There’s got to be more.”

  Both Yuki and Mas remained silent. Tanji had a point.

  Tanji continued to address Yuki. “You’re young. You know how it is with your friends. All these young men and women unemployed. Lost in a fantasy world with their computers. They’re afraid to come out of their rooms. Is this our Japanese future? Trapped on our little island?”

  “But surely we can’t go back to Imperial Japan? Look how damaging that was to us, the rest of Asia, the world.”

  “That was the past. We have to look to the future.”

  “Maybe not making peace with that past is what’s keeping us back,” Yuki said.

  “Now you sound like Itai. He was always crying about what happened sixty, seventy years ago. How does that help us today? It just crushes our spirit. Just look at Zahed. He has no idea who he is, how much talent he has. I try to egg him on, to encourage him to be strong, but he doesn’t seem like he can take the pressure.”

  Mas was surprised to hear Tanji say this. Wasn’t he the one who’d said disparaging things about the young man’s pitching record in the minors? But then again, that was the traditional way of doing things in Japan. To scold and correct the younger ones, the kohai—not because you lorded over them, but because you wanted the best for them.

  “Ah—” Mas interrupted. He remembered then that Tanji had approached Itai in the press box dining room on Itai’s last living day. Mas had forgotten to tell Yuki; he reported what he’d heard right now.

  Yuki’s face grew still as he listened to Mas. He turned to Tanji. “What did you two talk about?”

  Tanji’s jaw tightened, and Mas expected him to repeat None of your business. He instead took a deep breath. “He asked to see me. He wanted me to ease up on Zahed. Said that my approach wasn’t helping him play better.”

  “And you said?”

  “I refused, of course. I’m not going to let a tabloid journalist tell me what to do on the field.”

  “And these two guys?” Yuki again flashed the computer image of the mini-thugs who had bothered Mas. “What are their intentions?”

  “They don’t have the balls to hurt anyone,” Tanji said. “They talk a lot, but when it comes right down to it, a barking dog doesn’t bite.”

  After getting back in the Impala, Mas didn’t start the engine right away. He was still a bit shaken by the encounter with the two fools, regardless of whether they really were a legitimate threat. But what was more disconcerting was Yuki’s conversation with Tanji. The veteran baseball player was a convincing speaker, but then weren’t all politicians? Many were great manipulators of feelings; perhaps Tanji was one of them with this dangerous gift.

  “Whatchu think?” he asked Yuki directly.

  “When I think about it, it makes sense that Tanji is contemplating a career in politics. He was meeting a lot with various community leaders here in Los Angeles. It wouldn’t be the first time that a Japanese politician came to the US to court international support.”

  Mas fumbled with his keys.

  “But on the other hand,” Yuki continued, “I think he’s hiding something. I don’t believe for one moment that Itai-san was telling him how to treat Zahed. I think this has something to do with his future as a politician.”

  Mas gave his passenger a sidelong glance.

  “It’s all in Itai-san’s notes,” Yuki said. “He’d actually heard that Tanji was planning to retire from baseball and run for office. Even sent Tanji an email about it. But Tanji denied it. It’s all in here.” Yuki patted the laptop. “Maybe Itai-san was planning to write something about Tanji’s candidacy. Along with his connection with these right-wing nuts who traveled to L.A.”

  Mas didn’t know about Japanese politics, but figured campaign dirt was still dirt, no matter what the country. Would that be enough to cause a man to commit murder?

  After they returned to Little Tokyo, Yuki invited Mas to go out for a late-night snack. Mas tried to defer; he had two bean-and-cheese burritos rolling around his stomach, after all. It was now close to midnight, and the on
ly place open seemed to be Suehiro’s, a Japanese diner on the other side of Yuki’s hotel on First Street.

  Apparently lots of other people—mostly young—had had the same idea, so most of the booths were occupied. There was one empty table for two in the middle of the diner, not very comfortable with its metal chairs, but it would have to do.

  After they ordered—Mas opted for simple ochazuke, the bowl of green tea over rice he often ate at home—they returned the laminated menus to the side of the napkin dispenser. A party in the far corner exploded in laughter—all twentysomethings whose faces were flushed with drink.

  Mas had been thinking more about Itai’s protectiveness toward Zahed. “Youzu know that Itai was buddy-buddy with the boy pitcher?”

  Yuki, who was promptly served a bowl of miso soup, nodded. He broke his disposable wood chopsticks in half and stirred the cloudy soup with the ends of his chopsticks. “Yeah, Itai was funny about Zahed. He kind of lost all editorial judgment there. Itai, as far as I knew, didn’t have children, but Zahed was like his son.”

  Mas pictured the middle-aged journalist with his pitiful wilted goatee standing next to the towering, skinny hapa pitcher. What a pair they made.

  “Maybe it was that Kyoto pride or something. They went to the same high school, you know. At different times, of course. But Itai-san still would not advocate on Zahed’s behalf. He wouldn’t cross that line.”

  “Zahed tole me that Itai was doin’ stories on him since he was in junior high.”

  A plate of pork tonkatsu, cabbage salad, and a mound of rice was placed in front of Yuki. Mas’s humble bowl of ochazuke looked perfectly peasant-like in comparison.

  “I didn’t know that,” Yuki said in between bites of rice. He squirted dark brown sauce on top of the sliced fried pork cutlet. “But it doesn’t surprise me. Itai-san always rooted for the underdogs, the minorities. His family, in fact, bounced around between Japan and the US. That’s why his cousin, Sunny, lives here. Sunny’s brother, on the other hand, died recently in Japan.”

  Mas took a big slurp of his ochazuke. “Oh, yah?”

  “Sorry, my phone. It’s Neko.” Yuki, still chewing, excused himself and took her call outside.

  Mas took out his phone while he was alone at the table. Flipping it open, he was greeted by the current time, 12:38 a.m. He didn’t know the last time he’d stayed out so late. There were no voicemail messages waiting. No calls from Genessee. Being that it was after midnight, Mas knew that he shouldn’t be calling anyone. But Genessee was a late-night person, who at this hour was often curled up on the corner of her living room couch, a hand-stitched quilt from her paternal grandmother around her slim shoulders. On her stereo system was usually a CD, perhaps folk music from Okinawa, a classical symphony, or even sometimes a rock song. Genessee had many different dimensions to her, dimensions that he ardently missed right now. It was as if eating the ochazuke had taken all the sour pretense out of his system. He needed Genessee, really needed her, and before he knew it, he was calling her home number. The telephone rang once, twice, and then her recorded message came on. What? Where was she at this hour? If she was home, she surely would have answered the phone, fearing some kind of emergency. Then the beep to leave a message, and Mas could only breathe into his cheap cell phone once before snapping it closed. Then the table in the corner roared again, and this time Mas silently cursed them for their momentary happiness. Happiness is indeed fleeting, he thought. Before you know it, it’s gone forever.

  Chapter Ten

  You look tired, Ojisan,” Yuki said after returning to the table at Suehiro’s.

  It’s no wonder, thought Mas, at this hour.

  “Sleep in my room tonight. My bed is big enough.”

  Mas frowned. What kind of offer was the boy making?

  “Don’t be baka. I’m not saying anything untoward. I just don’t want to worry about you driving home in that old car.”

  Huh! That old car had been safely transporting them all around town. But Mas didn’t have the energy to argue. Frankly, just thinking about collapsing into a bed with a fresh set of sheets was too enticing.

  The next morning, Mas woke uncertain of where he was. The plump pillow with its starchy case felt unfamiliar under his head. And there were no layered smells of the past: the hint of the Shiseido toner that Chizuko applied on her face every night before going to bed, the ancient mothballs from her underwear drawer that he still hadn’t cleaned out, and the medicated Salonpas patches from when his back gave out a couple of years ago. Instead he smelled nothing, or at least it seemed like nothing. Maybe a nothing that was trying too hard.

  He opened his eyes to a harsh light coming from the large window that faced north. And the sound of tapping buttons. It was Yuki sitting in front of Itai’s laptop at the desk at the Miyako Hotel. His hair was frizzled and tangled; Mas’s probably wasn’t much better. The reporter squinted at the screen through his black plastic glasses. His dedicated concentration made him seem, Mas had to admit, halfway intelligent.

  Mas pulled himself up on the firm mattress and rolled to his feet on the padded carpet. After going shi-shi, he washed his hands and reluctantly studied his face in the bathroom mirror. With a shadow of black and gray whiskers and bags under his eyes, he definitely looked like shit.

  “You have to look at this,” Yuki said from his seat at the desk when Mas returned to the main room.

  Mas stretched his back until he heard his spine popping, releasing a night’s worth of tension. He slowly made his way to the desk.

  “I was looking through Itai-san’s web browser, and I came across this,” Yuki said, turning the laptop toward Mas.

  The screen was filled with Japanese words.

  “Can’t see dat,” Mas commented, making a half-hearted effort to search for his glasses.

  “I’ll read it to you,” Yuki said. He began reciting a string of hate, all aimed toward the Koreans and some people called the Zainichi.

  Sickened, Mas read over Yuki’s shoulder. “Zai-nichi.” Living in Japan. He had heard that term before but wasn’t sure what it exactly meant.

  “That means Koreans living in Japan. Goes back to when Korea was under Japanese rule in the 1900s. They came to work—sometimes even forced to work—in Japan during World War II. Afterwards, most went back to Korea, since they didn’t have many rights in Japan. Some of the ones who stayed, their children or grandchildren, went on to become citizens, but others continue to live in Japan as permanent residents. It’s not like America, where you’re automatically a citizen if you’re born in the US. To become a Japanese citizen, you have to pretty much erase your cultural background.”

  Mas had never given much thought to minorities in Japan. When he was there, it seemed like every face was like his. But now with young people like Soji Zahed, Japan was changing, just like in America. And like in America, some people didn’t seem happy about it.

  “Whozu writin’ dat kind of stuff?”

  “Well, that’s the whole thing. It’s anonymous. It’s like graffiti you’d find on the walls of a public toilet. We don’t know for sure. Maybe some teenagers who are too afraid to deal with the real world. Unemployed men and women. And, of course, the right-wingers who believe that Japan somehow needs to be protected from outsiders.”

  These were only words, right? Mas thought. Anyone could say something. It didn’t mean that they would actually do something.

  “Anyway, I’m looking at the walls of this web toilet, and guess what I find?”

  Mas was afraid to even think about it.

  “A thread on Itai-san.”

  Mas had no idea what Yuki was talking about, so he waited for the boy to elaborate. He resumed reading from the computer screen: “Our liberal enemy has been eliminated. The liar, Tomo Itai, has died in Los Angeles.”

  Mas couldn’t believe what he was hearing. How did these numbskulls know that Itai was dead? As far as he knew, it hadn’t been reported in either the local papers or the Japanese ones. Itai did wri
te about famous people, but that didn’t mean that he was famous himself.

  “This lover of the Korean and Zainichi fell to his death at a baseball stadium in Los Angeles. His face covered in vomit.”

  Mas’s jaw grew slack. How the hell did this writer know such details? He could only have known because he was there.

  “And that’s not all. Someone else wrote, ‘Cyanide poisoning is the proper demise for someone who poisons Japan.’ It’s dated Friday, 7 p.m., Pacific time.”

  “That’s about the time we found how Itai was killed,” Mas said in Japanese.

  Yuki nodded. “It has to be someone who’s here in Los Angeles, who’s either reporting on the baseball games or….”

  Mas could finish the sentence in his mind. Or killed him.

  Someone pounded on the door and Mas practically jumped. Yuki cautiously rose from his seat and approached the door.

  He looked through the peephole and cringed.

  “Let me in, Yuki. I know you’re in there.” Amika spoke in her native Japanese. “I’m not going to leave until you let me in.”

  Yuki sighed and opened the door.

  Amika walked in, wearing black slacks and a filmy white blouse that tied in a bow around her neck. She looked sweet, almost like a gift, until she opened her mouth. “Were you the one telling the police that I had it out for Itai?”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  She pulled out a swivel chair by the desk and planted herself in it, crossing her legs like she meant business. “Look, I did hate Itai, because he’s a story-stealing weasel.” Mas wondered how that was going to prove her innocence. “But I didn’t want him to die. The police couldn’t figure out how I could have obtained cyanide, so they had to let me go. I had to account for every minute that I’ve been here. They’ve been interviewing all my colleagues. Even the cameraman! I told them that they’re barking up the wrong tree. Wasting precious investigative time. And they don’t have anything. Now they’re talking about suicide.”