Sayonara Slam (12 page)

And the steroid use. Those stories nearly destroyed the enthusiasm of Tug and his son, who religiously followed the stats. With the effects of these performance-enhancing drugs, did records mean anything anymore? But baseball in that sense were like the
hibakusha
. They rose from the ashes and survived, just like Mas. Were such scandals present in Japanese baseball as well?

When he finally emerged from the steamy bathroom wearing the Dodgers T-shirt, Yuki was back at the desk and the computer. “I wasn't able to recover any files on the laptop,” he said without averting his gaze from the screen. “But remember the thumb drive Sunny gave me? There was a file
there, too. Not ‘
Gurippu
' but ‘
Gurippusuhomu
.'”

Mas repeated the word a couple of times. It was obviously in
katakana
, an alphabet used mainly to phoneticize non-Japanese words.

“It's Gripsholm, I think,” Yuki said. “There's a castle in Sweden named Gripsholm. I can't open the file—it's been deleted.”

Mas had heard of Gripsholm before. Someone in his circle had mentioned it. Someone at Tanaka's Lawnmower Shop, back before it had been turned into a beauty shop and now exclusively a nail salon. Mas imagined Tanaka's interior. The plain wood shelves full of bags of fertilizer and pesticides. The metal revolving stand of seeds. The one who'd mentioned Gripsholm hadn't been the proprietor, Wishbone Tanaka, but someone close to him: Stinky Yoshimoto, a fellow gardener in Pasadena who'd unfortunately been diagnosed with Alzheimer's last year. Before the diagnosis, Stinky often didn't make much sense, so this new development probably made communication even more difficult. Mas had yet to visit him in the nursing home in Lincoln Heights, but the reports had not been good.

“I may know someone who knows about this Gripsholm,” Mas said in Japanese to Yuki. “But he's not hundred percent.”

A line formed at the bridge of Yuki's nose. Not a ringing endorsement of a reliable source, that's for sure. He shook away talk about the Gripsholm and went onto a more definite matter. He clicked the keyboard to reveal a website all in Japanese. “Those two good-for-nothings that threatened
you in East L.A.—they aren't strangers to Tanji. They're distant relatives named Tanji, too.” Scrolling down the page, he stopped on a photo of the men posing with Kii Tanji at Dodger Stadium. “I found them on a blog based in Kagoshima. It has their whole itinerary. And they haven't left Los Angeles yet. This afternoon they'll be at a luncheon organized by a Kagoshima prefectural organization. In a place called Quiet Cannon in Montebello. Have you heard of it?”

Mas nodded. Practically every gardeners' event was held at Quiet Cannon, next to the Montebello Golf Course. If those Tanjis were out to make trouble, they'd chosen the wrong place.

“Letsu go,” Mas said.

Chapter Eleven

M
ontebello used to be a flower town; it even had a generic flower featured on banners drooping from light poles on its main streets. Haruo's second wife, Spoon, had lived there for some time, and when the two aging lovebirds got hitched, Haruo abandoned his postage-stamp apartment in the Crenshaw district in central L.A. to move in with her and her adult daughter, Dee. It had been rough going at first, but now they'd become a finely tuned household. The three of them had a special-event floral business, and they'd turned the garage into a makeshift shed with long tables for young mothers and high school students to thread leis and braid ti leaves for graduations and parties.

Quiet Cannon was on the far north side of town, butted up against the 60 Freeway. Mas had no idea why it was called Quiet Cannon, as the drone of the freeway was anything but quiet, and there was nothing remotely military about the place. But as you turned the corner into the event center, past an
agua
store, a tattoo parlor, and mom-and-pop
eateries, the neighboring eighteen-hole city golf course and the towering line of pine and eucalyptus did deafen the urban din. The facility was the go-to place for many a Japanese American event, especially
shinnenkai
, New Year's installation luncheons, as well as weddings and quinceañeras serving the locally dominant Latino community.

In fact, this afternoon, as Mas drove the Impala up the wide bend toward the parking lot, he spotted a team of dark-haired fifteen-year-old girls, teetering in high heels and holding up their long, poofy dresses as they walked past old Japanese couples in dark clothing and sensible shoes.

He and Yuki did not have formal invitations to the Kagoshima prefectural party, which could prove to be a problem. At every event here, the
uketsuke
, or receptionists, sat at a long table at the front doorway, their eagle eyes fixated on a pile of RSVP cards or a typed guest list. A large box on the side held boutonnieres, usually carnations, for the male VIPs and corsages, usually orchids, for the women. Every guest received an adhesive nametag as well a drink ticket and table assignment. Neither Mas nor Yuki would have any of these. Their clothing also wouldn't help them blend in. Mas was in the Dodgers Kuroda T-shirt, while Yuki wore the skeleton one with a heart and the message, “Love Kills.”

“Ready?” Yuki asked Mas, after the Impala was parked.

Mas grunted. He hoped he wouldn't run into anyone he knew, but, of course, after they climbed up the stairs to the second-floor banquet room, he saw a familiar face.

“Arai-
san
, long time no see.” It was one of the leaders of the gardeners' federation, Kengo Toda, dressed in the
customary ill-fitted suit and old-fashioned tie. He was about twenty years younger than Mas, but his wavy hair and mustache already had plenty of gray. Luckily, Toda was speaking mostly in English; the Kagoshima dialect of Japanese sometimes seemed like another language to Mas.

“But you Hiroshima,
desho
?” Toda remarked. “Not Kagoshima.”

“Dis my friend,” Mas said. “Yukikazu Kimura. Reporter with
Nippon Series
. Heezu visitin' from Kagoshima.”

Yuki's mouth dropped open to hear Mas identify him as a Kagoshiman rather than a Hiroshima boy. Some called Kagoshima the Hawaii of Japan. Yuki knew little of either Kagoshima or Hawaii. He quickly recovered and bowed respectfully toward Toda. “
Dozo yoroshiku
.”

“Weezu don't have tickets to dis thing,” Mas informed his friend.

“No
shinpai
. I got you covered. A couple called in sick at our table.”

And just like that, the doors of hospitality magically opened for Mas and Yuki, all due to the gardeners' connection.

As Toda went to the receptionist's table to get some handwritten nametags and tickets, Yuki saddled up to Mas. “What if they start asking me things about Kagoshima?”

“Do what you do best,” Mas hissed back in Japanese. “Lie.”

Yuki inhaled and let out air from his puffed cheeks.
We'll see what the boy is truly made of
, Mas thought.

They received their table assignment, No. 5, and found
themselves seated between Toda and his wife. Offering to fetch their complimentary drinks at the bar, Toda collected their red tickets and asked for their orders.

“
Hai-boru
,” Yuki said, catching Mas off guard. A highball in the afternoon?

“Coke,” Mas said. At least one of them needed to stay sober.

Yuki scanned the room after Toda left. “I don't see Tanji.”

Mas grunted. He also hadn't spotted the baseball
senshu
and his bootlickers.

Mas leafed through a glossy bilingual pamphlet left on each seat. It described the history of the Southern California Kagoshima Kenjinkai, a prefectural group started in Los Angeles in 1905. Every Japanese was familiar with Kagoshima's stature as the home of the Satsuma samurai, macho men who held onto their fighting swords until the bitter end.

Servers distributed salads made with iceberg lettuce and grated carrots. Mas was in the middle of passing a salad dressing boat when he noticed that the room of a hundred people had grown hushed. Tanji had entered the banquet hall, the two mini-Tanjis following closely behind. Tanji wore the Japanese formal uniform of a black suit and black tie. He definitely looked the part of a politician.

A man at table 2 stood up and started madly clapping, and one by one, like weeds, they rose, welcoming the celebrity Kagoshiman to their humble event. Tanji was obviously lapping up the attention like fresh milk to an alley cat and began to circle the room. He smiled, revealing his mess of
teeth—that is, until he saw Mas and Yuki at table 5. Then he abruptly stopped, causing the entourage behind him to crash into each other.

“Tanji-
san, banzai
!” Again, the man at table 2 expressed his exuberance for the Yomiuri Giants veteran.

Soon, everyone in the room was holding up their wet glasses and toasting Tanji. A few called out the more appropriate and less warlike cheer of
kanpai
, but
banzai
seemed to rule the day.

The Tanjis finally took their places at table 1, allowing the room to settle down and concentrate on the rolls and salad. Toda introduced his wife, an attractive Japanese woman with short chestnut hair who was seated next to Yuki.

“So where in Kagoshima are you from?” she asked in Japanese. Her accent was thankfully not as strong as her husband's.

“Ah, Kagoshima City,” Yuki offered up, almost like a question.

Quick thinking
, Mas thought disparagingly.

“Oh, I'm from Kagoshima City, too. What part?”

“Ah, well…the east,” Yuki said.

“I'm from the east, too. Taniyama. How about you?”

“Further east.”

“Further east? Then you'd be in the ocean.”

“Well, my family moved to Hiroshima when I was just a baby.”

“Oh.” The whole table of Kagoshimans seemed disappointed, as if Yuki was a fraud. Which was appropriate,
because he was.

Toda, who was at Mas's left, stayed quiet as he buttered his roll. His spirits seemed to rebound after his second gin and soda. “You know that I fought in the Vietnam War, Masao-
san
?”

Mas shook his head.

“My dad came over as a
nanmin
. You know what a
nanmin
, is?” Toda directed his question to Yuki.

“Refugee?”

“There was a refugee act here in America in the 1950s. Japanese barely qualified; we'd suffered through a lot of typhoons, and some Nisei leaders fought to have natural disasters included. My dad got in, just under the gun. Worked on a grape farm. He met my mother in California, they had me and my brothers, and then we went back to Japan.”

Mas nodded. It was not an exact echo of his own early life, but similar enough.

“Then when I returned to America—boom, I got drafted. Went from the US back to Asia, only with a machine gun and hand grenades. Half the time I had to avoid getting shot by my own platoon. Needed a sign: I am not the enemy.”

Yuki's eyes got as big as quarters, and Mas was reminded how naïve the boy really was. Mas knew that Tug, the American with the Japanese face, fought in high mountain ranges in France, risking his life to save a battalion of soldiers from Texas, while his family and then-girlfriend, Lil, were kicked out of their homes and forced to live in a camp thousands of miles away. If that wasn't irony, Mas didn't know what was.

The emcee, the enthusiastic
banzai
man from table
2, took his place on stage at the podium. He spoke of the proud tradition of Kagoshima, how its geographic isolation in the southern part of Japan had led to fierce independence, yet also ties with foreign countries. He was obviously giddy to be in the presence of Kii Tanji. Mas was starting to feel sick, but not sick enough to refuse the plate of prime rib set in front of him.

The emcee then proceeded to introduce the special guests. He went around the room, almost calling out the name of every person at every table. Finally he got to table 5.

“Kimura Yukikazu,” the emcee read from his list of names.

Toda rose to provide additional details. “He's a journalist born in Kagoshima. With
Nippon Series
magazine.”

“And your other guest….”

“Ah, Arai Masao.”

Toda didn't bother further identifying him, because what could he say? A fellow gardener, with currently only one customer. A has-been. Washed up. Poorer than dirt, with a few coins in his personal bank, a Yuban coffee can in the back of his closet. No, there wasn't much that could be said about Mas Arai, but Mas really didn't care.

There was then a bit of a rumbling at table 1.

The chubby Tanji was on his feet, pointing at Yuki. “He's a liar! He's not from Kagoshima!”

Toda frowned. Sitting back down, he asked Mas for clarification. “You said….”

A skinny man who Mas hadn't seen before stood up and joined the two other Tanjis in casting aspersions on Yuki's
credentials.

Yuki's face was as white as that of a ghost. He pointed at his cell phone. “That bony
kuso
-head,” he said, pointing to the skinny man with the Tanjis. “He sold me this phone.”

“Where? At the tourist office?” Mas asked.

“No, in the hotel parking lot.”

The boy had purchased something from someone in a parking lot? Mas had once bought a bowling ball bag from a stranger's trunk outside of his local lanes. As soon as he inserted his fifteen pounder in the bag, the handle fell off.

“I'm on a budget,” Yuki said, defending his purchase. “He sold it to me for thirty dollars.”

Mas couldn't believe it.
Is that how the Tanji gang seemed to mysteriously know their every move?

“Damn you!” Yuki shouted at the skinny offender. “You've been spying on me with that piece-of-shit phone you sold me!” He charged toward the table of Tanjis.

Mas bowed his head. “
Moshi wake gozaimasen
,” he said to apologize to Toda, who probably needed a third drink.

The skinny Tanji supporter had taken off running, and now he was flying down the stairs toward the golf course, with Yuki at his heels. Behind him were the two Tanjis who had confronted Mas, the chubby one surprisingly leading the other. Bringing up the rear was Kii Tanji, but not for long. Being the true athlete of the bunch, in spite of his smoking habit, he quickly passed the two in the back. Led by the stick-figure man, they zigzagged across the putting green and jumped over parked golf carts. Finally taking a flying leap, Tanji grabbed hold of Yuki's legs, sending him skidding on
the green inches away from the eighteenth hole.

“Fore!” High-pitched voices called out, and a neon pink golf ball bounced about two feet from the red flag stuck in the hole.

Mas, who'd been watching all this from the second-floor balcony, spied a group of angry Asian women in visors marching toward the pile of men on the green. You can get away with a lot of things in this world, but not messing with golfers on the eighteenth hole.

By the time Mas made it downstairs, the men, including the skinny one who'd run away in the first place, had wisely moved to the concrete in front of the golf cart check-in area.

“He sold me a tracker phone,” Yuki yelled at Tanji. “Your relatives—and yes, we know they're all your relatives,” Yuki said, drawing a straight line in the air with his index finger, connecting all the Tanjis on their nametags. “Your relatives have been following us, badgering us. All to protect you. Because you killed Itai-
san
.”

Tanji rubbed his yellow crown of hair, which obviously had a generous amount of hair product, because it barely moved. The carnation in his boutonniere was smashed, its stem broken, so the flower hung like a bloody appendage. His face changed expressions quickly—first indignation, then disbelief. He doubled over, but although his face was hidden, the sounds of laughter were unmistakable. “Don't even say a joke like that, Kimura. You're going to kill me with your nonsense.”

“It's not nonsense. And it's not a joke. You were seen
before Itai-
san
was killed in the cafeteria, angry about something. Later, he keels over dead, a situation that was celebrated by your minions on the internet.” Yuki sneered at the other Tanjis. “And I've copied everything, so don't even bother trying to erase them from your news boards.”

Kii Tanji's muscular body straightened. “Are you serious?” He turned to the mini-Tanjis. “You assholes have been posting things on the internet?”

“It's all anonymous. We didn't use our names or anything,” the mustachioed one finally said.

“If this miserable, no-good, so-called reporter figured it out, don't you think my political opponents will, too? And it's not like you can get rid of your digital footprint.” Tanji started slapping the heads of his minions, who had no choice but to accept their punishment. After a few seconds of that, Tanji stopped and faced Yuki. “Listen, I had nothing to do with Itai's death, okay? And they didn't, either. Like I told you before, they're all talk.”