Mas had first met Stinky Yoshimoto at Tanaka’s Lawnmower Shop in Altadena, near a supermarket called Market Basket. More than for selling equipment and parts, it was most known among gardeners for its covert activities in its backroom. In a haze of cigarette smoke, and around the poker table littered with red pistachio shells, the men traded money and gossip, with the quieter ones typically winning the whole pot at the end of the night. Stinky usually lost.
Mas never knew how Stinky had earned his nickname, and he never wanted to ask. Wishbone Tanaka, the proprietor of the lawnmower shop, was a more formidable figure who usually overshadowed Stinky’s ridiculousness. But when you least expected it, Stinky would be inserting his opinion whether you wanted to hear it or not.
Tanaka’s was gone, replaced by a nail salon, with its tinny chemical smell instead of the earthy cling of the lawnmower shop. Both Wishbone and Stinky had found refuge at a nursery underneath power lines near Eaton Canyon. Mas hadn’t seen Wishbone’s pockmarked mug for a while; he blamed that on the fact that his regular schedule had been upended to accommodate the new additions to his household. Not to mention his friendship with Genessee.
A call to Eaton’s Nursery resulted in shocking news. Wishbone had just undergone surgery for stomach cancer. And, coincidentally, he was recovering at the same nursing home in Lincoln Heights where Stinky was now living. The dismal duo, inseparable again.
After Mas got off his cell phone, he felt sadder than hell. It wasn’t like he was buddy-buddy with either one of those guys, but he preferred to imagine them causing trouble in multiple neighborhoods rather than rotting away in an institutional box.
He called the nursing home for Wishbone. Would it even be worth talking to Stinky?
“Come on over, Mas,” Wishbone said. “Stinky has his good days. He has his bad, too. Either way, it would be good to see you.”
Wishbone hadn’t been joking about his anticipation. As soon as Mas parked in the lot for the Japanese nursing home on top of the hill in Lincoln Heights, he saw a familiar pigeon-toed man leaning by the front entrance. He had a walker and his back was bent, but sure enough, the old attitude remained. “Hell of a place to see you in, Mas. Here I am, with half a gut. Probably from eating too many umeboshi.”
Could too many pickled plums kill a man? Mas wondered.
“Just started walking yesterday. Figure that I’ll break out tomorrow.”
“Sorry, Wishbone. Gomen ne.”
Wishbone scowled. “Nah, not like you had anything to do with it. Getting old is a bitch. But you know that, Mas.” His eyes were milky and moist. Mas wondered how long the old man had. “So, what do you want with Stinky? You know that his brain isn’t working right. Locked up in the Alzheimer’s ward.”
Hearing Wishbone say “break out” and “locked up” made Mas want to run in the opposite direction. But he was here to investigate a lead. Find out about the Gripsholm. He might as well test it out on Wishbone, Stinky’s supposed best friend. “Hey, youzu knowsu about Gripsholm?”
“Gripsholm? Haven’t heard that in long time.” Wishbone turned his head awkwardly toward Mas, as if he had a kink in his neck. Mas helped him sit down on a bench.
“Yeah, the Gripsholm, that’s a story in itself,” Wishbone continued. He was wearing a hospital gown and red socks with webbed soles. “It was a fancy Swedish cruise liner at one time, I believe. But during World War II, it went to the dark side and took prisoners of war to Japan from the US. The thing is, they went the long way.”
“Whatchu mean, long way?”
“Well, they couldn’t just cross the Pacific, right, with all the fighting there. So they went from New York City down to Latin America, South Africa, India, Singapore, the Philippines, and finally Japan.”
“Stinky was on it?”
“Stinky? Nah. He’s never been east of Las Vegas. Come to think of it, me neither, if it weren’t for camp. Got to see the Bighorn Mountains, compliments of the US government.” Wishbone, still full of his piss of sarcasm, puckered his mouth. Maybe his days weren’t that numbered after all. “But Stinky was in Tule Lake after his parents went No-No. On the loyalty oath.”
Mas struggled to follow what Wishbone was saying. Since Mas had been in Hiroshima during World War II, the goings-on in the camps were a bit of a mystery to him. He’d heard that Tule Lake, right on the California and Oregon border, had the most complicated history. Halfway through its existence, Tule Lake became a segregation center for the No-Nos, folks who wouldn’t agree to forswear allegiance to the emperor and fight for America—mostly because they were ridiculous questions, and also because citizenship wasn’t even on the table for people straight from Japan. To be a person without any country was a scary proposition, one that Mas knew too well.
“Stinky’s old man was one of those types who wasn’t going to go down without a fight. You know they were one of the biggest grape growers out by Fresno, right? His dad was so mad about the government telling him that he had to give it all up, that he actually burnt the whole vineyard down to the ground.”
Mas completely understood Mr. Yoshimoto’s point of view.
“So when they started passing around that questionnaire, Stinky’s old man wrote down ‘no, no.’ Stinky was only sixteen, but he had to go along with what his father wanted, you know.”
“He talksu one time about the Gripsholm. Mukashi, mukashi.”
“He might have had a girlfriend who was on it or something. That Gripsholm all happened before Tule Lake started having a special section for No-Nos. When folks think of Gripsholm, they think traitors who rejected America. Wrong-headed, but that’s how people are.”
Mas felt a bit dejected. It might have been a mistake for him to have come.
Wishbone sensed his disappointment. “Never know what will jog his memory. Can’t hurt, at least.” Wishbone pushed his walker to the glass door and waited for Mas. “C’mon, I can vouch for you.”
Mas wondered about an outfit that would value an endorsement from Wishbone Tanaka. But it didn’t matter. All he needed was a way in.
He signed his name on a check-in sheet and followed Wishbone down a hall. The nurse accompanied them to open the door; the Alzheimer’s ward was locked for the benefit of the patients who had a penchant for wandering.
Stinky wasn’t in his room, which was decorated with hand-drawn pictures from his grandchildren in Seattle. According to Wishbone, Stinky’s wife, Bette, was up there now for a quick respite. “She’s all skin and bones now,” Wishbone said. Mas was surprised to hear about her physical transformation. She was one of those Nisei women who were built sturdy, like a fire hydrant. The fact that she’d lost weight likely meant that caregiving had taken its toll on her.
Mas followed Wishbone from the empty room to an activity center with a large-screen TV and overstuffed couches. A few folding tables were set up, and at one of them, a woman was pushing around puzzle pieces but failing to make any connections. Stinky was in front of the TV, transfixed by the infinite loop of the Japanese cable programming.
“Hey, Stinky. It’s Wishbone.”
Stinky didn’t respond to his lifelong friend’s voice. He blinked hard, as if blinking would make the speaker disappear.
Stinky used to have a few long strands of hair that he whipped over his bald scalp like a piece of limp seaweed over a polished rock. Now those sad strands were all gone. Stinky was completely bald, with a pale, green-gray tint to his skin, which made him look like something from outer space. Gardeners weren’t meant to be trapped inside, and Stinky was living proof of that.
“This is Mas. You remember Mas Arai, right? Used to garden out our way.” Wishbone leaned forward in his walker.
Stinky squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them wide. “Oh, yah, Mas. You have a daughter, right. Jill?”
“No, sheezu Mari,” Mas corrected, but Wishbone jabbed him in the ribs to tell him such details were not germane.
“Mas came all this way to ask you a question.” Wishbone turned to Mas. “You didn’t bring him any chocolates or something, did you? He usually does better with some kind of bribe.”
Mas felt embarrassed. Any Japanese worth his salt knows that you bring an omiyage, a token gift, when you visit someone. He stuck his hand in his jacket pocket. The baseball that he’d found at Dodger Stadium. He knew it was ridiculous, but he held it out in his palm.
“Baseball! I love baseball,” Stinky said, almost squealing. “I played in camp, you know.”
“What camp Stinky in?” Mas asked Wishbone.
“Gila River. That’s where a lot of those Fresno people went. Pasadena, too.”
Sunny Hirose had said that he was in Gila River, Mas remembered. Sunny and Stinky must have been around the same age.
“You knowsu anyone name Itai, no, Hirose?”
“Itai. Itai.” Stinky made a sour face and grabbed hold of his calf.
“He banged his leg on the side of his bed,” explained Wishbone. “He thinks you’re saying the Japanese itai.”
“No, no.” Mas shook his head and tried again. “Sunny Hirose. You knowsu a guy named Hirose?”
“I played shortstop. Made a double play. Won the game. Whee!”
“Stinky, hey, you remember a guy named Sunny Hirose?” Wishbone tried to help, but it was fruitless.
“We beat those yes, yes. Beat those Zenimuras,” Stinky said.
“Yah, yah,” Mas repeated. Stinky wasn’t making any sense at all.
“I thought you were going to ask him about the Gripsholm,” Wishbone hissed in Mas’s ear.
Mas nodded. “You knowsu about Gripsholm? I hear youzu talk about it at lawnmower shop.”
“Gurippusuhomu,” Stinky repeated. “Gripsholm.”
“It’s a ship, remember, Stinky? Took Nihonjin, including Nisei, to Japan during the war. Didn’t you have some girlfriend on that ship?”
“Kawaisoo.” Stinky’s face got drawn out like a clown’s. “She died in the Philippines. So sad.”
“They made a stop in the Philippines, I think,” Wishbone explained. “Didn’t they get transferred onto a second ship?”
Stinky didn’t respond. He readjusted his attention back to the television program, a cooking show that was discussing the merits of natto, fermented soy beans.
Something vibrated in Wishbone’s pocket, and he pulled out his cell phone. It wasn’t a clamshell like Mas’s, but a top-of-the-line smartphone.
He glanced at the screen. “I gotta get going. My son’s here.”
“Well, thanks so much, ne.”
“I didn’t do nothing. If only this guy’s head was on straight.” Wishbone let out a sigh and tottered away in his walker.
“Kiyotsuke.” Mas’s last words to Wishbone were to take care. No matter their rocky relationship in the past, they were now bound together with a common destination, with Wishbone likely to be the first one there.
“Yeah, what more can we do, huh?” Wishbone then grinned, his face dissolving into a fan of wrinkles.
Mas decided to stay a little while longer in the Alzheimer’s ward. It began to smell a little like shikko in the room, and Mas wondered if someone might have peed in their pants.
He silently watched the end of the cooking show with Stinky. It was a repeat, with the hostess cooing and crowing about the merits of natto—helps your eyesight, your digestive system. She was utterly too peppy and kawaii relative to the subject matter. Mas was getting ready to leave, but the program abruptly cut to a familiar face: Amika in some earlier coverage of the World Baseball Classic.
Settling back in the couch, Mas wondered why he’d never really noticed Amika before. As a regular watcher of this news program, he must have seen her. It wasn’t that she was forgettable. She had a long face with smooth, pale skin and hair past her shoulders. She was definitely attractive in a certain way, but then all these newscasters, especially the female ones, had to be. Perhaps it was her reading of the script. It was refined and warm, nothing like Amika was in person. On the program she was a congenial robot, while her real persona was much more unpredictable.
Mas watched a montage of images, including Amika eating a Dodger dog with Tommy Lasorda and Vin Scully, and Amika showing off a poster signed by pitcher Hideo Nomo. And then there she was, wearing the smeared blue polka-dotted blouse and interviewing Jin-Won Kim after the first game on Tuesday. It wasn’t her words that transfixed Mas, but what she was holding to her chest with her left hand. A notebook. It could have been any notebook, a generic notebook, except for the writing on its cover: 
Emperor of Asia.
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.”
He had been called a detective once before, and he deeply resented it. He hated the thought of sticking his nose into someone else’s business. But he also realized that he’d been doing just that ever since that first baseball game between Japan and Korea.
“And for the record, I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Itai. And I certainly wouldn’t have done anything to harm Mrs. Kim.”
Mas believed Amika about the last thing, but frankly, he wasn’t sure of the first. Either way, tonight the girl needed someone to believe in her. Mas could at least fake that much.