Mas didn’t know if the boy journalist would be answering his phone in the hospital, but he tried calling anyway.
He’d just finished polishing off his second bean-and-cheese burrito—he thought he deserved it, after the encounter with the two hanakuso good-for-nothings, little bugger snots that Mas could have quickly brushed aside when he was in his prime. But he wasn’t in his prime now, and he knew it.
“Mas-san, hello.” There was a lightness to Yuki’s voice, a carefree warmth that Mas had never heard before. It didn’t surprise him when Yuki reported that Mrs. Kim’s condition had stabilized. Tests revealed no cyanide in her bloodstream, although it was possible that other poisons could be present. Unfortunately, testing for unknown chemicals could take days to process in the laboratory.
Mas told Yuki about the two men and the threat delivered by the roly-poly one. “I saw these two kuso-heads with Kii Tanji this morning,” Mas said in Japanese. “They were following him around like hungry dogs.”
“I think I know who you’re talking about. Just a minute, okay?” Mas heard Yuki speak to someone, most likely Neko. “Come pick me up at the hospital. I think we need to have a conversation with Tanji-san.”
“Maybe police betta handle,” Mas said.
“No, they have no idea what’s going on,” Yuki said. “You need to be from Japan to really understand.”
When Mas went to the hospital to pick Yuki up, he noticed Sally Lee standing by the glass doors. As soon as he parked the Impala by the entrance, she crossed her arms and scowled, as if to say, Didn’t I tell you to stay away?
“Whatsu dat lady’s problem, anyhowsu?” Mas asked after Yuki got into the car and closed the door.
“Who?” Yuki buckled his seat belt. “Oh, Sally Lee. She’s kind of Mrs. Kim’s assistant while she’s in Los Angeles.”
“Sheezu the one who told me to leave.”
“She’s just trying to protect Mrs. Kim. Don’t take it seriously, Ojisan. She’s actually not bad when you get to know her.”
Yah, right, thought Mas. He’d as soon see flowers bloom from a rock before that ever happened.
Tanji was staying at the Bonaventure like all the other Japanese team members. Neko had called him, feigning that she needed to talk to him about a very important matter.
Yuki even had his room number, so he and Mas went into the glass tube-like elevator with a clear mission: find out what Tanji was up to. And make sure to warn him to keep his minions far away from Mrs. Kim, who had to remain at White Memorial Hospital for who knows how many days.
Neko chose to stay with her grandmother in her hospital room. It made sense. She and Jin-Won needed to focus their energies on helping their elder get better. Yuki and Mas, on the other hand, had dirty work to do.
Climbing to the twenty-ninth floor, Mas looked out the elevator’s glass walls at the downtown L.A. skyline. It was now close to ten o’clock, yet some floors of the office skyscrapers were still lit up, either for the cleaning crews or late-night workaholics. He felt as though he was lifting off into space, until the glass pod shuddered to a stop. It was time to get out and face Tanji.
Tanji was obviously expecting Neko, so he opened the door immediately after they knocked. “Ara—” he said, stepping into the carpeted hallway to see if Neko was lagging behind Mas and Yuki.
Yuki pushed Tanji back into his room. Mas was shocked by the audacity but impressed by this new Yuki, transformed after being reconciled with his true love. “We have some questions for you, Tanji.”
“Oh, you do now?” Tanji sneered, revealing crooked teeth. Mas never understood why the young Japanese, even the rich ones, never seemed to fix their teeth. Mas and Chizuko had spent a small fortune to correct Mari’s, and she was no superstar celebrity.
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 only 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.