Sayonara Slam (14 page)

Mas abruptly rose, almost toppling some puzzle pieces on a folding table. “I needsu to go,” he announced to no one in particular.

He was by the locked door, pressing a button for the nurse to let him out, when Stinky called out, “Hey, Mas.” His voice was not as high-pitched as before. It was low and grating like a broken tail pipe scraping the ground. It sounded like the old Stinky.

Mas turned, and Stinky lobbed the baseball right at his head. He didn't have time to catch it, and it landed squarely on his forehead.

Stinky cackled and said, “Good catch.”

Mas now had a swollen red bump on his head, thanks to Stinky. The nursing-home worker gave him the baseball, castigating him for bringing such a potentially dangerous object into the facility.
Nobody got hurt
, Mas wanted to say.
Nobody except me
. Mas began to wonder if Stinky really had Alzheimer's, or maybe he was thumbing his nose at all of them. A grand final gesture.

One thing was for sure. He needed to talk to Amika. Luckily, Little Tokyo was only a fifteen-minute drive away. Mas passed aging city buildings with low-slung roofs and stunted palm trees that hadn't decided whether to die or try to press on toward the sky.

He first parked at the Miyako Hotel and went in to see
if Amika was there. She still had a room but didn't answer the phone when the front desk called for him. He knew of one other place to check.

The Far East Café, or Entoro, still had its neon sign and old façade, but they were the only things that had stayed the same. A narrow alley in between seismically retrofitted buildings revealed an outdoor bar filled with probably the same youngsters who frequented Suehiro's after midnight.

Sitting at one of the iron-rod tables was a slim figure in a gauzy dress and sneakers. Two empty shot glasses sat in front of her.

“So are you here to interrogate me, too? Have a seat. Have at it.” Amika gestured to the seat across from her.

Mas accepted her offer, and when she got a good look at his face, she asked, “What happened to your forehead?”

“Nuttin'. Just bumped in car.”

A young waitress with cat-eye makeup and her hair in a bandana came to take his order, but he waved her off. He wasn't planning to stay long.

“I seezu your report today,” he said.

“Oh, the wonderful World Baseball Classic.”

“Itai, the day he died, holdin' a notebook.”

“Really? What a shock.” Amika's hand began to tremble a bit.

“And then I seezu you on the terebi, holdin' the same notebook.”

“A notebook is a notebook is a notebook.”

“Not dis one.” Mas took the pencil on the table that was supposed to be for sushi orders. On the margins he
wrote the character for
teia
,
. “Dat notebook had dis.”

Amika got up to leave the table.

“
Zainichi
,” he said, causing her to stop in her sneakers.

She turned slowly. “What the hell did you say?”

“You'zu
Zainichi
.”

Amika returned to the table and lowered herself into her chair.

Mas wasn't sure, but he had a hunch. He remembered her linguistic skills at the press conference. Anyone could know a bunch of languages, but Amika seemed especially interested in things Korean.

“You knowsu Korean.”

“A lot of Japanese can speak Korean.” Amika went into her purse and pulled out some cigarettes. The same young waitress immediately appeared, scolding, “No smoking, ma'am.”

Amika zipped up her purse, got up, and stalked out of the bar and down the alley to the street. Mas, leaving a twenty-dollar bill by the empty shot glasses, quickly followed.

“
Ma'am
? Shit, how old do I look?” she said, lighting up her cigarette.

Now that Mas was so close to Amika's face, he could see the fine lines around her mouth and eyes. Before, he thought she was in her thirties, but he now realized that she was at least forty.

“Don't answer that, by the way.” She blew cigarette smoke toward the sidewalk along First Street, and a few young women glared at her and waved away the smoke as they passed. “What the hell is wrong with L.A.?” she
murmured to herself.

The cigarette seemed to settle her. “So you think I'm a
Zainichi
, huh? What tipped you off? Do I smell like garlic, like those racists say on the internet? I hate kimchi, by the way.”

Mas had never met a woman quite like Amika. Mari was strong, but not always so self-directed. Amika, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what she wanted all the time. As a result, she left a clear trail of who she was.

“Youzu figure out about Neko and her grandma.”

“I'm a journalist. That's what I do for a living. And that's what I have done for almost twenty years.”

“But youzu wanted to find out. Your
mokuteki
. I seezu your
mokuteki
.”

“My motivation? How about yours, old man? Why are you hanging out with this disaster of a reporter, Kimura? Because even you know that he's terrible, right?”

“I'zu know his grandma.”

That piece of information seemed to quiet Amika. She dropped her dead stub of a cigarette on the sidewalk, which was marked with an artist's timeline of the history of Little Tokyo. She crossed her arms, ready to listen.

“Her name izu Akemi Kimura. Weezu in Hiroshima together. During the
pikadon
.”

“Shit,” Amika muttered and her eyes became shiny. For all the prickly thorns on her outside, she was soft inside.

“We gotsu history together.”

“I bet you do.” Amika gazed out at First Street, the blur of cars, the lights in restaurants, the pedestrians in motion.
“So yes, I'm a
Zainichi
Korean. It's not a big secret or anything. I just don't advertise it.” She leaned against the brick wall and lit another cigarette. “We were forced to get Japanese names. I'm still of that era. So Hadashi. Barefoot. That was my father's joke, I guess. To pick the weirdest Japanese name that he could think of. Because that's how he came to Japan. Without even a good pair of shoes to his name.”

“Youzu papa and mama all in Japan?”

Amika nodded. “We're in Nagasaki. So we know something about the
pikadon
, too.”

Mas's eyes widened. So was Amika a legacy of the atomic blast, too?

“I know my career is coming to an end. Hell, I'm surprised I've even lasted this long. Because it's all about looking
kawaii
in Japan, right? Like a forever-youthful anime character. Believe it or not, Itai inspired me, at least professionally. He took risks. He challenged me. Of course, he could investigate the thing he did because he was working for
Nippon Series
and not for a mainstream outlet. Television journalism is more superficial, based more on my hair and makeup than what might come out of my mouth.”

Amika took a final drag of her cigarette, savoring the nicotine moving through her system before she dropped it on the ground and stepped on it. “I know my days at the news desk are numbered. I figured, what the hell, I'll go after the stories that I've always wanted to cover. A female knuckleball pitcher in Hawaii. And then when I'm doing some research, I find out that her father was born in Manchuria. And not only that, but in an orphanage. My mind begins to
whirl. It can't be, right? Could it be? Then I come to find out that Jin-Won Kim's assistant had done research at that very same orphanage. We have two talented knuckleball pitchers, and that's not an easy thing to pull off in the pros. It's not only about physical skill, but the mind. Both Jin-Won and Neko can deal with uncertainty, risk. Is it really a surprise that they share the same DNA?”

“Neko's family not happy wiz you.”

“No, that's an understatement.” Her hands dipped in her bag for another cigarette. “They're furious. Neko's father still denies it. The adoptive grandparents are threatening to sue the station if we air anything about it. Quite a disaster, I would say.”

“Sorry,” Mas said.

“No reason to be sorry. I'm doing my job if the people I interview are mad at me. I'm supposed to be uncovering the truth, and more times than not, it's a truth that no one really wants to hear.”

If the reporter was talking about truth, then Mas would hold her to it. “Howsu about the notebook?” he said, bringing up the reason he was on the lookout for her in the first place.

Amika looked at Mas as if she was seeing him for the first time. “I've underestimated you,” she said. She unzipped her bag again, only this time, instead of a pack of cigarettes, she brought out a notebook. The notebook with
written on the cover. Itai's notebook. “I took it because I was curious about what he was working on. Take it.” She held it out to Mas. “It's not worth anything. It looks like he was
just doodling during practice. Probably wasting time before press conferences.”

Mas tapped the
kanji
on the cover. “
Teia
, you knowsu about this?”

“Sounds like something those nationalists would come up with. Maybe Itai had some kind of lead? Maybe it was something he couldn't forget.” Amika was distracted by a young couple walking arm and arm across the street by a restaurant called Mr. Pizza. “I broke it off with Sawada today, by the way. I figure you knew about that, too. Mas Arai, the invisible man who knows everything. You do make a good detective.”