The next hour was a blur. The LAPD had descended in a matter of minutes as officers had already been patrolling the parking lot. Two men appeared with a metal gurney; they put Itai’s body on it and covered it with a dark cloth that read “L.A. Coroner.”
“Are they going to cancel the game?” Mas overhead April Sue ask Smitty as the gurney was quickly wheeled out of view.
“We have a game to play with TV crews from fifteen countries. A dead journalist from Japan isn’t going to stop anything.”
Most of the police officers also dispersed, leaving only two male investigators—one black and one white—wearing dress shirts and ties. The press was being escorted from the field into the stadium. Based on the humming monku of the Japanese journalists, their removal was under protest.
Mas put his head down and attempted to make his way back to the equipment storage area. He had barely taken two steps when he heard a harsh male voice, the sound of twisted rusty metal.
“Wait a minute. You. We need a few words with you.”
Mas turned to see one of the men in suits—the hakujin man, his brown, wavy hair whipped to one side like dead branches on the side of a highway. Lloyd—where did he come from?—appeared suddenly, standing in front of Mas, a human shield. “That’s my father-in-law. He had nothing to do with any of this. He’s just here to sharpen some lawnmower blades—”
“We need to question everyone on the field, and that includes him.” The detective studied Mas. “What, he can’t speak English?”
“I can speak orai.”
The detective hesitated, as if he didn’t quite understand. “It’ll just be a few minutes.”
Lloyd relented. After all, the boy had responsibilities. This was his first big event since the promotion, and the hubbub of the dead journalist had delayed his final field prep.
As it turned out, it wasn’t just a few minutes. It was forty-nine to be exact. Mas knew because about every five minutes he checked his digital Casio watch, held together only with twine around his wrist. He and the journalists had to sit in the hallway inside the stadium as one person at a time was called into a room named after one of the Dodger’s former managers, Tommy Lasorda. It was worse than a doctor’s waiting room.
Finally, the detective with the wind-blown hair, the one who’d spoken to him, appeared. “You,” he gestured toward Mas. “You’re next.”
Mas grimaced. He’d had encounters with homicide detectives before, and only half of them had been good. He had a feeling this one would not fall in that category.
Already sitting at a table in the room was the black detective. He was young and clean shaven, wearing a colorful tie with rainbow swirls. He introduced himself as Detective Cortez Williams and extended his hand for Mas to shake. Mas took it—what alternative did he have? Williams looked like he was eighteen years old. Mas wondered if the LAPD was that desperate these days. The ugly one, Detective Garibay, sat beside him, studying the dirt under his nails.
“What’s your full name?” Williams asked.
“Mas—Masao Arai.”
He had to repeat the spelling a couple of times before the detective got it.
“So tell me about yourself, Mr. Arai.”
“I’zu gardener. Gotsu son-in-law who’s now in charge of the field. Heezu one brought me on board.”
“Did you know Mr. Itai from before?”
“Neva seen his face. Neva heard of him.” Mas’s life would certainly have been better if that remained the case. “Just helpin’ dat girlu.” Mas silently cursed the skinny blonde, April Sue. Why hadn’t he just held back from helping her? Ten years ago he would have. But lately Mas found himself getting involved in things that he never would have in the past.
“So did someone hand you that water to give to Mr. Itai?”
The water. So that’s what they were after. Did it have something to do with Itai’s death?
“I just grab and give it ova to him.”
Detective Williams scribbled something in his notebook.
“Did you take it from April Sue or someone else? Or did you pull it from the rest of the bottles?”
Mas explained that it had been randomly pulled. It could have been any of the bottles with the Dodgers label.
“Mr. Arai, would it be okay if we took your fingerprints? Just so we can exclude them.”
“I gotsu fingerprinted,” Mas announced after leaving the Tommy Lasorda room.
His daughter, Mari, was there in the open walkway, as well as his grandson, Takeo, and Lloyd.
“What the hell, Lloyd? How could you let that happen?” Mari said.
Takeo grabbed hold of Mas’s right palm and examined it closely. “Are you getting arrested, Grandpa?”
“It’s just routine,” Lloyd interrupted. His ridiculous sunglasses were now perched on his head. “That guy probably just had a heart attack. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if someone hadn’t said that he’d probably been killed. And then someone from the coroner’s office confirmed that the body looked suspicious.”
Outside they heard the cheers of the crowd.
“You can still see most of the game,” Lloyd said to Mas. “It’s not like you missed much of anything.”
Mari then assumed a very familiar position—all five feet of her erect, hands on her hips, staring up at her six-footer husband. “Are you kidding me? A man just died, Lloyd. Right on the field. My father just witnessed it, and you want us to pretend everything is fine?”
“I’zu orai.” And really, Mas was all right, or at least he thought he was. He had, unfortunately, witnessed much, much worse. “No good leavin’ those other guys all by themselves.” Lloyd had secured group seats for not only the family, but all of their friends.
“Well, you come, too,” Mari said. “There’s a seat for you.”
“Gonna just take it easy for a while.”
“It’s not like you can drive yourself home. You came with Lloyd, remember?”
“Meetcha by the store when game ova?” Mas asked. That was their regular meeting spot.
Mari gave her husband a parting frown. “See, I told you it was too much.”
Mas didn’t bother to say goodbye. He didn’t like a big to-do. When he decided something, it was decided. And he decided that he needed to be by himself.
He wandered and checked out the displays in the stadium’s hallways, where the big shots roamed. In the corner was a little bug of a vehicle, painted like a baseball, which they once used to bring in the relief pitchers. Other funny memorabilia were displayed on the walls. Farther down the hall were rows of shiny trophies, gold catchers’ mitts, and engraved trophies.
Even though Mas wore a lanyard with a laminated pass, no one checked to see if he was official. They probably figured that he was a janitor. Someone harmless. Utterly forgettable.
In one of the side display rooms, he encountered another person. An Asian woman about his age. She stood in front of a row of baseball bats engraved with names of former Dodgers. She wore a jacket with “Korea” stitched in the back, so it was clear who she was rooting for.
Mas dipped his head. “Hallo.” What the hell. He had to say something.
“Konnichiwa,” she responded in Japanese.
Was it that obvious that his roots were back in Japan? It wasn’t unusual for people straight from Korea to start talking to him in Japanese, but it made him uncomfortable, like he was suddenly in a position to be the colonizer. As soon as he could, he excused himself and headed in the opposite direction.
Outside he heard the roaring of the crowds, the clanking of the bells, the hum of the organ. To hear such excitement made him feel melancholy for a moment—he was again outside of the circle, the pulse of the heart.
He thought of Genessee for a moment—the gap between her front teeth, her dark and animated eyes. She could talk with her eyes, he thought. That’s one thing that he appreciated about her. That they could be dead silent yet Mas would know what she was thinking.
Was it love? He wasn’t quite sure what love was. He met Chizuko just weeks before they were to get married. She, like Genessee, was a brain, big on reading and investigating details. With Chizuko, it was everyday things like tax rebates and the best college for Mari, while with Genessee it was beyond their homes and mundane lives: the world and music.
Had Mas loved Chizuko? That was almost an insulting question. They’d been beyond love. They didn’t need red roses or silly Hallmark cards to prove their commitment to anyone. But Mas hadn’t been constantly at Chizuko’s side during her chemo treatments—and he still felt badly for that. It wasn’t that he didn’t love her; it was that he cared for her too much. To see this vibrant woman wasting away and getting sick to her stomach was too much for Mas. He knew now that he was capable of doing more. But it was too late. It almost had been too late to mend his relationship with Mari, but he’d answered the call. And now the four of them were squeezed in his two-bedroom in Altadena.
Genessee never mentioned anything about love, thank goodness. But her eyes said love. Mas could see it as she looked over from her couch and gazed at Mas while he watched an old Western on TV. It caught him by surprise. Why would this part-time professor want to spend so much time with him, a semi-retired gardener? He was, however, grateful for her desire.
Mas took the elevator to the top of the stadium and walked by murals heralding the stadium’s past. Long lines for Dodger dogs and beer stretched out from concession stands—a tangle of stout, tall men of all colors, women in blue and red T-shirts, crying babies wetting their jumpers.
For a moment, Mas felt like he couldn’t breathe. Even though they were all out in the open air, it seemed like the air was heavy, pressing down. He needed an escape from all the people. He needed quiet. He needed green.
Mas walked through the exit and past the sculptures of giant numbers, all belonging to the Dodger greats, all retired. Number 42, Jackie Robinson, back in Brooklyn, before the move to Chavez Ravine. Number 39, Roy Campanella, the catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Number 32, Sandy Koufax, the southpaw pitcher. In the hush of emptiness here, were their spirits present?
Seeing that man die in front of him, the kuso-head Itai, had indeed taken a toll on Mas. Mari knew him better than he would like to admit. One moment, Itai had been bellowing and bragging, and another moment, struggling for air. Mas had seen something like that before, but it was decades earlier, buried and unimaginable.
One of the first times he stayed over at Genessee’s, his yelling during his sleep had frightened her.
“You were crying ‘help!’” she said, her eyes shiny with tears. “‘Give us water!’”
Mas dismissed it as indigestion. “Shoulda neva eat chili and onions.” But in his heart of hearts, he knew what it was about. Chizuko had also spoken about his late-night cries. He decided then that he shouldn’t sleep over at Genessee’s anymore.
It was a bit indecent anyway, especially when Genessee went to church the next Sunday morning. Marriage would make everything decent, but then what would Mas lose? His freedom, for one, but even more was his identity, and perhaps his late wife’s identity. If he went and got married, he’d no longer be seen as a widower. And if he wasn’t a widower anymore, would Chizuko’s existence be somehow erased?
He walked faster down the curve of the driveway into the sinkhole of the parking lot. Outside the stadium, which glowed with fluorescent lights, he felt even more alone. If he didn’t belong inside with his family, where did he belong?
And then he remembered. The Japanese garden. What was it that Smitty had said? That the garden could be found along a line from home base to second. Formerly parking lot 37, close to where a Union 76 station had once pumped gas. Mas walked in between the parked cars to make his way to a hill shaded by ill-shapen pine and cedar trees.
When he finally reached the edge, he came face to face with a tall, black iron fence with a sign that was menacing in its simplicity: “No Trespassing.” The gate, which was too high for him to scale, had a simple lock that was probably easy to pick. But he didn’t have to go to such lengths, because with one jiggle, the gate opened.
Did Mas even dare? He looked back at the lit stadium, the vortex of life. Was someone watching him as he made his way down here? Were there secret cameras mounted on those light poles? But he saw nothing. No police, no guards. Everything was focused on the game and the spectators. Not out here in a dirty corner of the parking lot.
Mas quickly went through the gate and closed it behind him. No sense attracting attention. There was still some light left, so he was able to see the broken cement stairs that took him up the dried-out hill. Did they ever bother to water this area?
When he finally reached the top, Mas felt weak in the knees. It wasn’t the climb that did it. It was what he saw. Dead, uprooted pine trees. Stones thrown haphazardly like giant dice. Dead grass. If a garden could bleed, this one would be covered in blood.
A toro, a Japanese stone lantern, was the only evidence that something artful had once lived here. It was large, maybe ten feet tall. These things were not cheap; Mas knew because he’d acquired smaller versions for the “Oriental” gardens some of his customers had requested in the past. With the fallen trees beside it, the toro seemed like a lone survivor in a war zone.
Sabishii. Mas felt the loneliness creep into his bones. Who had ravaged—or perhaps, more appropriately, ignored—this Japanese garden? He stumbled around the bleak area one more time while the sky quickly lost light. He discovered a cement monument base in a corner and could barely make out the letters on its plaque. Something about the hundred-year anniversary of immigration from Korea. Did the Koreans even know that such a recognition was here?
Mas then heard the crunch of dead branches up the hill. It wasn’t surprising that creatures invaded this place when the sun went down. And when he saw headlights flash on the cars in the distance, Mas knew his exit was overdue.
“Grandpa, you should have seen it! Japan won with a sayonara slam!” Takeo, his right hand encased in a blue foam mitt with a giant raised index finger, ran up to Mas.
“Sayonara nani?” Mas was breathing hard after his illegal trespass of the Japanese garden. He’d barely made it on time to their meeting place.
“That’s a grand slam. That’s what Uncle Tug calls it,” Takeo explained.
Sure enough, the large and sturdy body of Tug Yamada followed behind Takeo. A slap on Mas’s back. “Hey, old man. We heard about the incident. You okay?”
Mas nodded. Just hearing the baritone voice of his most stable friend made his stomach churn. Just from Tug asking, Mas realized that he wasn’t that okay. “Orai, orai,” he lied. Desperate to change the subject, he gestured toward the overgrown thatch of diseased trees. “You knowsu there a Japanese garden ova there?”
“What? A Japanese garden? I don’t think so.”
“He’s right, Dad,” responded Joe, a font of sports trivia. “It was built in the sixties. I think a Japanese sportswriter gave some kind of stone lantern or something to Walter O’Malley and the Dodgers.”
“Never heard of such a thing,” said Tug. “Why don’t they show it off or something?”
Mas moved with the group and the rest of the crowd. “Nuttin’ to show off. Saw it with my own eyes. Evertin’ dead.”
“You don’t say.” Tug slowed his pace. “They let you in there?”
“Where were you, Dad?” Why did Mari always pop out of nowhere?
“No place.”
“Our car is over in Lot L. We’ll see you guys later,” Mari said to Tug and Joe.
As they began to separate in their different directions, Tug called out to Mas. “So you’re going to come over to my place tomorrow, right? Lil says I need to fix the washer pronto. Haruo said he’s coming, too.”
Mas lifted his hand in acknowledgment. Ah, shikataganai. He couldn’t refuse. With only one customer these days, it’s not like he could say he was working.
“So what were you saying? Something about a Japanese garden?” Mari, like their old dog, could never let anything go.
“Just that I heard one is out there. Back in parkin’ lot.” Mas got an idea. “Maybe you can make a movie about it or sumptin?”
“I don’t think a Japanese garden at Dodger Stadium will really interest anyone, Dad. These days it’s all about platform and crowdfunding. Remember when I tried to pitch a project about Japanese Peruvians based on Juanita’s parents’ experience? How they were taken from Peru and locked up in Texas to be part of a prisoner exchange program? If I can’t get that off the ground, who’ll want to fund a documentary on an old garden in a baseball stadium?”
Mas didn’t catch everything that his daughter said, but he got the general message. Gardens, not to mention gardeners, were definitely out of fashion.
As Takeo usually liked to ride shotgun with his mother, Mas was only too happy to ride alone in the back seat. They sat for some time in the darkness, frozen in place by the never-ending line of cars waiting for release from the stadium. Mari put on some music, a woman singing along with a simple tune played on a piano. Mas wasn’t much of a music person, but he preferred this to talking. Soon they heard the short breaths of Takeo sleeping, and finally the car jerked forward as the logjam cleared. As they flowed through the stadium’s gates, Mas silently said goodbye to the lone toro.
Takeo was too heavy to carry anymore, so Mari jostled him awake and led him through the house to the back room connected to the kitchen.
Mas, on the other hand, headed straight for the kitchen. He was famished, since he didn’t have a chance to eat a Dodger dog because of the Itai incident. He found a fistful of rice in Mari’s high-tech cooker that used something called fuzzy logic. Squirts of hot water from an electric carafe into a porcelain teapot holding day-old tea leaves. A crunchy red pickled plum from a bottle in the refrigerator. Put all that in a Japanese bowl and stir with the ends of chopsticks.
As he was slurping down his ochazuke in the blessed silence of the kitchen, the back door opened. Well, that didn’t last long, he thought. And while Lloyd usually headed to the bathroom to take a shower after work, he instead—unfortunately for Mas—took a seat at the kitchen table.
“What a mess,” he said, taking off his cap, the sunglasses still propped on top of it. “Those reporters are maniacs. They make the paparazzi here seem like lap dogs.”
Mas got up with his empty bowl and rinsed it in the sink. He wasn’t in the mood to hear about his son-in-law’s long day. He went to the living room and clicked the remote for the television set, which was tuned to Japanese programming. Sinking into his easy chair, he was again none too happy to see Lloyd getting comfortable in the chair next to him.
“Hey,” Lloyd pointed to the screen. “It’s that reporter at the game.”
The woman was wearing the same blue dotted blouse. Her hair was cleaned up and her lipstick more red than Mas remembered.
Mas listened for a moment. The reporter introduced herself as Amika Hadashi. In her rhythmic Japanese, she described how the Japanese team had beaten Korea and how Uno-san had hit the winning grand slam in the ninth inning.
“Nuttin’ about the dead man. Itai,” he reported to his son-in-law.
“You know his name?”
Itai was easy to remember. Although the name’s kanji was probably written differently in Japanese, itai usually meant pain. And judging from his colleagues’ reaction to him, Itai was indeed the biggest pain around.
“She looks pretty sweet on TV, but she’s quite another thing in person,” said Lloyd. “I saw her during the game in the hallway outside the Tommy Lasorda room. I think it was when you were being interviewed. She was totally laying into April Sue, saying that she was incompetent. She made the girl cry.”
Mas bit down on his dentures. He wasn’t a fan of the skinny blonde, but she didn’t deserve being yelled at in public.
“And after the game, she was on the field for a long time doing her interviews. I wanted to turn off the lights, but she kept talking to one of the players for what seemed like an hour.”
“Catcha, huh?”
“No, actually, that was the strange thing. It was with one of the Korean players. The knuckleball pitcher.”
What? That didn’t make sense. Why would a Japanese reporter want to spend so much time with a player from the losing team?
“Everyone in bed?” Lloyd asked, taking his cap off and rubbing his shaved head.
Mas nodded, and then announced, “I see dat Japanese garden.”
“What Japanese garden?”
“One ova in parkin’ lot.”
“Oh, yeah, I heard something about that.”
Mas was mystified. At one time, Lloyd would have been all over anything Japanese, especially a garden. Now he was obsessed with grass, fertilizing turf, and drawing perfectly straight lines in chalk.
“You change,” Mas declared.
“What do you mean, I’ve changed?”
Mas dragged himself out of his chair. He didn’t need to repeat himself. He knew what he saw. Uragirimono. A turncoat who hid his true colors inside. Yes, Mas’s only son-in-law had officially become a sellout.