Sayonara Slam (17 page)

Yuki didn't budge. Mas didn't know whether to be impressed or incensed. It was literally his neck on the line here.

“The police have already spoken to me, too,” Yuki said. “Detective Williams, right? I told him that Itai-
san
wouldn't have bought any drugs from you. Especially something like cyanide.”

Mas felt the chef's grip loosen a little. He was listening.

“I asked them for proof. Solid proof. They had a photo taken by a customer who'd posted it on Facebook. Of you giving Itai something in an envelope. What was in that envelope?”

The chef let Mas go and set the knife on a desk by the door. He took a deep breath and started talking. “It was a memory card. From a camera. With photos of Soji Zahed. I had a party here in his honor and a stupid paparazzi took a photo of him, let's say, enjoying himself. He was going to sell those photos to the tabloids, which, of course, would have ruined his chances with the majors. Itai paid me to take care of it and get that memory card. So I did.”

Mas wondered what “taking care of it” meant.

“My regular bouncer would never have let that
paparrachi
in my place.”

“Why didn't you just tell the police that? That Itai-
san
was just after the photos?”

“And what? Spill the beans on Zahed? I told Itai that I'd keep quiet.”

Mas knew that the yakuza had their own code of ethics. He'd heard that gangster culture had been changing in Japan, but maybe here in the US, like all things Japanese, the yakuza clung to their old-school traditions, afraid that if they lost hold of them, their identity would also slip away.

The chef grabbed his sashimi knife. “I'm a man of my word. Itai knew it. And I'm sorry that he's dead. Now get the hell out of here.”

When they returned to the Impala, Yuki asked to use Mas's phone. He looked up a phone number on Itai's laptop and dialed it. “Zahed,” he said. “It's Kimura. I need to talk to you. Immediately. Where are you?” Mas heard a slight mumble coming from his phone, held to Yuki's ear. “Um, um,” Yuki grunted a few times. And then, “Wait for me. I'll meet you at the parking lot.”

“He's at Dodger Stadium,” he told Mas.

“What we gonna do when we see him?”

“Find out if he did it. If he killed Itai-
san
.”

“But if Itai was helping him—”

“Maybe Zahed didn't know what had happened with the photos.”

He did seem desperate to get ahold of Itai's computer, Mas remembered.

Zahed was waiting by a five-foot red number 42, a tribute to Jackie Robinson. He hurried over to the Impala as soon Mas pulled into a space. Yuki rolled down his window, because it was obvious that Zahed wanted to tell him something. “Not here,” Zahed said. “Somewhere else in the parking lot.”

“Get in,” Yuki told him.

Mas drove the Impala through the huge lot, far, far away from the other cars. He stopped by the edge of the Japanese garden. Just being next to it made him feel more settled.

“Can we talk? Just you and me,” Zahed said to Yuki.

Mas didn't mind leaving the car. Zahed got into the driver's seat, and Mas was careful to make sure that he took the keys. Who knows how the teenage
senshu
would respond to Yuki's accusations?

The conversation was obviously not going well. The voices in the Impala rose, and the whole car began to shake.

Out the driver's-side door came Zahed. He sprinted away with Itai's laptop underneath his arm.

“Give that back!” Yuki shouted in Japanese, chasing after him. “That's not going to save you!”

There was really no place to run in the wide-open parking lot, so Zahed headed for the fenced garden. He pulled at the gate, and as Mas had discovered earlier, it swung open easily.

“
Chikusho
,” Yuki cursed. He followed the pitcher through the gate and up a dirt path toward the garden. It
was full-on dusk, with the sun below the horizon.

Kiyotsuke
, Mas said under his breath. The untended garden was a minefield of potholes. Worse in the dark, without even the distant glow of the stadium lights. Chavez Ravine at night when there wasn't a baseball game going on was indeed a dark ravine, one that threatened to unleash ghosts of the buried past.

“Shit!” Yuki's voice rang out.

Mas, his hands shaking, dialed his cell phone. “Lloyd. Come to Japanese garden.
Hayaku
.” He wasn't sure if he made any sense or not. Either way, he couldn't just stand there and wait by the car.

He cursed himself for not having a flashlight in the Impala. One was in his toolbox that he kept at the McAdams's Hollywood Hills estate. What good did that do him now?

Holding onto the bars of the iron fence for balance, Mas gingerly climbed up the dirt path. He wanted to call out to Yuki, but he knew it would only signal his location to Zahed. When he'd almost reached level ground, he nearly tripped on something. Something grabbed his leg, but before he could cry out, he heard, “
Ojisan
, it's me.”

Mas bent down, his knees popping. Yuki whispered, “I think I might have sprained my foot.”

They heard something up above, and Mas thought he spied movement by the concrete
toro
.

He remembered the granite memorial for Korean immigrants that was nearby and helped Yuki crawl over to it for cover.

“Your cell phone,
Ojisan
?”

Mas pulled it out for Yuki, who opened it and groaned. “Damn, no service here. It's like a black hole.”

“Who's that? Kimura?” Zahed called out.

“Just give it up, Soji-
kun
,” Yuki yelled. “If you just cooperate, they'll go easy on you.”

“Why should my career be ruined over this?”

Mas saw the outline of Zahed's long body making its way toward them.

“Shit,” Yuki murmured.

Mas felt around the ground for anything—a stone he could throw, loose dirt that could temporarily blind Zahed's eyes. He found a branch that had fallen from one of the dried-up trees on the hill.

“My whole life has been devoted to baseball. My parents sacrificed everything for me. I'm not going to let this ruin that.” Yuki was now a few feet away. Zahed held the computer over his head, ready to plunge it down the hill. Mas grabbed hold of the branch and dragged it forward as hard as he could. It hit the back of Zahed's foot, causing him to fall backward onto his behind.

A line of light pierced through the darkness of the garden, resting on Zahed's fallen body. Zahed looked more stunned than hurt, and he covered his eyes with the crook of his arm.

“What the hell is going on here?” Lloyd asked, holding onto a high-powered flashlight.

“Watch him, Arai-
san
,” Yuki said.

Mas stood up and dug the branch into Zahed's stomach.

“Zahed kill Itai-
san
,” Yuki announced in English.

That statement revived Zahed. He easily knocked the branch from Mas's grasp and scrambled up from the dead pine needles. “
What?
No. I would have never hurt Itai-
san
. He was like a father to me.”

“Then why did you run up here with Itai-
san
's computer?” Yuki asked, using the base of the memorial to get to his feet.

“I thought those photos of me were on his laptop. He told me that if I didn't behave myself in the future, he'd release them. I wanted to make sure they didn't end up in the wrong hands.”

Lloyd had stopped listening to the conversation. He was aiming his flashlight toward the ten-foot
toro
, the cemetery of dead trees, and the slopes covered with brown pine needles.

“So what happens now?” Zahed asked.

Indeed, what happens
, wondered Mas.

“Well, first of all, you stay put in Los Angeles,” said Yuki.

“I live in Rancho Cucamonga, so I'm not going anywhere.”

“Where's Rancho Cucamonga?” Yuki whispered in Mas's ear.

“Itsu not too far.”

“You'll have to tell the police exactly what Itai-
san
did for you.”

“No! It'll get out to the team managers.”

“Do you want the police to say that Itai-
san
killed himself? Do you think that will honor his memory? They'll stop
looking for his murderer if you don't tell the truth.”

“I didn't think about that,” Zahed said.

“No, you were just thinking about yourself,” Yuki shot back. “I was like you at one time. Totally self-centered. But working with Itai-
san
taught me that I cannot be the center of the story. The story always has to be about other people.”

Mas couldn't believe what he was hearing. Yuki, who was barely a decade older than Zahed, had grown up. And it looked like that had happened under Itai's tutelage.

Yuki picked up the laptop, and the four of them made their way out of the Japanese garden and back to the parking lot. Zahed got in a golf cart with Lloyd, while Mas found the business card of that LAPD detective, Cortez Williams.

“We won't tell anyone about those photos,” Yuki said to Mas in the Impala. “We can ask the police not to mention it in their report. Itai-
san
would have wanted it that way. For his sake, we need to keep quiet. This will be my gift to honor my
senpai
.”

Chapter Fourteen

I
can't help but think that I've failed Itai-
san
.” Yuki said from his spot in a sleeping bag on Mas's bedroom floor.

Mas wished the boy would shut up and sleep, but he was clearly too wired from their encounter in the Japanese garden. Luckily, Detective Williams answered his cell phone and agreed to meet Zahed at the police station. Yuki wanted to stay, but Mas convinced him to crash at his house in Altadena. His ankle needed attention; Lloyd helped by cooling it with Blue Ice and settling him in a spot where he could elevate his leg. Takeo served as Yuki's personal butler, running to retrieve a towel from the linen closet to wrap the ice to mitigate the coldness.

Lloyd also had been energized, not by the conflict but by the setting. As he'd never gone over to the pitiful Japanese garden before, every corner of it fascinated him. After tending to Yuki's foot, he began sketching out the garden on a piece of graph paper, calculating where to build additional slopes in the dirt that had been flattened by the elements. Maybe he'd even build a koi pond.

Mas sighed. “Youzu figure out Zahed's secret,” he said to Yuki. “You knowsu about Missus Kim being Neko's grandma. No mo' mystery.” He didn't mention anything about Amika being a
Zainichi
Korean. He figured that was Amika's personal business; she could reveal it whenever she wanted to.

“But we still don't know who killed Itai-
san
. And the police are probably going to label it a suicide. That's something a traditional Japanese would do. Not Itai-
san
. He didn't care that he didn't have a penny to his name. He didn't care about such things.”

“Just
nenasai
,” Mas admonished him to sleep. “Nuttin' we can do now.”

Mas felt like he'd slept only for a few hours when Yuki started talking again. “
Ojisan
, can we use your computer printer? I saw one in the living room.”

Mas cracked open his eyes and saw sunlight coming through the slats of the blinds, so it was later than he thought. “Yah, go ahead.” He returned to his pillow.

Yuki wasn't moving. “Not sure how to set it up.”

Mas sat up, took a deep breath, and pushed himself erect. His bare feet carried him to Mari and Lloyd's bedroom. He knocked, saying, “Mari, we needsu your help.”

She opened the door immediately. “What? Oh, good morning,” she greeted both Mas and Yuki, carrying laundry in her arms. Mas checked the clock in her room. Past the time Takeo was taken to school. “How's your foot? Lloyd told me you injured it last night.”

“Okay,” Yuki said. “Not too bad.”

“He needsu to print sumptin,” Mas interrupted.

She set down the clothes she'd been folding. “Sure.”

Mas returned to his bed, but he couldn't get back to sleep. He heard the two of them speaking in broken English and broken Japanese, attempting to forge some kind of communication. Then he heard the printer humming and spinning its gears. Mas finally got out of bed again to see what was going on.

Mari was standing over the printer, checking how the paper was feeding.

Mas walked into the living room in his worn-out slippers, the same ones he wore when Chizuko was alive. Yuki looked up. “I've made my own notes on Itai's computer,” he explained to Mas. “Just seeing if I've missed something here.”

Yuki's notes were in Japanese. It seemed like he had enough for a book, judging from the number of pages being spit out by the printer. A few pages fell to the floor, and Mari picked them up. One page had a photo of the former Swedish ocean liner, the
Gripsholm
.

“Why do you have a photo of the
Gripsholm
?” she asked.

“You know?” Yuki asked incredulously.

Mas was also surprised.

She turned to her father. “Remember when I was working on that proposal to do a documentary on Japanese Peruvians, like Juanita's parents? They were practically kidnapped during World War II and brought over for a possible prisoner of war exchange. They never left Texas during
the war, but a lot of other Japanese Peruvians went on the
Gripsholm
. And Nisei, too. Even children. I guess it may have been the worst for them, having no choice in the matter. It was like they were repatriating to Japan, only their home was really America.”

“Itai-
san
do research. Interested in many things.”

“Yeah, not many people know about the
Gripsholm
story. I wonder if Itai was able to talk to some of the people who stayed in Japan. I think most of them came back to America.”

Mas then remembered what Wishbone had told him. “Went all the way ova to India or sumptin.”

Now it was Mari's turn to be impressed. “That's right. That's where they did the transfer of prisoners. Those from America had to get on the
Teia,
and those from Japan went on the
Gripsholm
.”

“What you say?” Yuki asked.

“What?”

“Youzu say ‘
Teia'
?”

“Yeah, the
Teia
. There were two ships involved—the entire voyage took eight weeks or something—and the
Teia
was pretty rough, as I understand it. May I?” she gestured to the laptop, and Yuki nodded.

Mari pulled the charging laptop toward her as she settled in a chair next to Yuki. “Does this have an English mode?” she asked. Yuki nodded, and after making the adjustments, Mari tapped the keyboard and swiped the trackpad. “Yes, here it is.” On the screen was an image of a military ship. On the bow she could see its name painted in both English and
Japanese
kanji
, “
Teia Maru
” and
. Mari read some of the caption. “This ship was formerly the
Aramis
. A French ship. It was taken over in 1942 by the Japanese and renamed
Teia
.”

Mas found Itai's notebook underneath the papers and pointed to the
kanji
on its cover and also on the back of the laptop. “
Teia
.”

Mari pursed her lips. “Wow, he was obsessed with it. The ship wasn't just a passing interest. He must have been connected to it personally somehow.”

Mas agreed. But Itai was too young to have been on it himself.

Mari was getting drawn into the mystery. “Wait, let me find my research.” She retrieved her laptop from her bedroom and they waited as it booted up.

“I have the ship's manifest here somewhere. So what's his family name again?”

“Itai,” Mas said and then corrected himself. “Look for Hirose.”

“Hirose. Yup. There're four. Bunjiro, Tsuyo, Kanzo, and Hideaki.” She also had information about their ages. Bunjiro and Tsuyo were father and mother, respectively. Kanzo was sixteen, Hideaki was twelve.

“Not Sunny.” Mas frowned.

“Well, Sunny is obviously a nickname.”

Mas thought of the two possible Japanese characters for Hideaki. It could be “excellent” or could be “light.” He and Yuki were on the same wavelength. “Hideaki,” they said in unison.

“Why Sunny say nothing?” Yuki said in English.

Yes
, Mas thought. He'd mentioned the camp in Arizona, but nothing about being in Japan, even when Mas mentioned that he himself was there during the war.

“Maybe he was hiding it for some reason,” Mari said.

“Of all the documents on Itai-
san
's computer and thumb drive, it was the
Gripsholm
folder that was erased.” Yuki bit his fingernail in thought.

And who'd had access to the computer and thumb drive? Sunny.

“Did you check Itai's email inbox and outbox?” Mari asked.

Yuki was able to follow that much of Mari's English. “Yes. That empty, too.”

He began twirling his finger on the computer's track pad and clicked a couple of times. “
Chotto matte
. An email came in a couple of days ago.”

Mari got up and read the message out loud over Yuki's shoulder: “Dear Mr. Itai, I'm sorry we could not meet last Tuesday. I've since returned to Hawaii. I've tried to contact you via phone, but I've received no response.

“I have to admit that I was very disappointed in your change of heart concerning the manuscript. Our editorial board was very excited about your cousin's memoir, as stories about Japanese Americans on the prisoner exchange ship the
Gripsholm
are rare.”

“There's a mention and attachment of a manuscript in a previous correspondence,” Yuki said. He lowered his head toward the bottom of the screen and slowly read in English:
“
The
Teia
Chronicles: The Memoir of an American on a Prisoner Exchange Ship during World War II
, by Kanzo Hirose.”

Mari looked back at her computer screen, where the list of the
Gripsholm
manifest was displayed. “That must be him. Hideaki's older brother.”

“
Chotto
,” Yuki said, after running his fingertips on the trackpad. “Itai-
san
make message.”

Mas got out his glasses and joined the two in front of the screen to read Itai's original message:

Dear Mr. Niiya,

I've had a change of heart. I would like to withdraw my manuscript about my late cousin's experience on the
Gripsholm.

I am cancelling my meeting with you tonight.

Sincerely,

Tomo Itai

“He sent this on his phone,” Yuki pointed to some minuscule numbers and letters. “Itai-
san
sent this on the day he was killed. Very early on Tuesday morning.”

“He must have been very close with his cousin,” Mari commented.

“Whyzu you say dat?”

“Well, I mean, he's obviously representing his late cousin's interests.” She turned to Yuki. “‘Late' means dead. Usually a closer surviving relative, like a child, would receive the
rights to such a document.”

“Howzu about brotha?” Mas said.

“If this Sunny is indeed Kanzo's brother, then, yeah, I wonder why Itai was representing the memoir and not Sunny.”

Mari wanted them to call the police, but Mas declined. They'd gone through so much for Yuki's investigation. They deserved to see Sunny's reaction face to face.

They didn't bother to call first. It would be better to catch the old man off guard. And besides, what would a seventysomething retired bachelor be doing on a late weekday morning?

Yuki and Mas assumed correctly, because Sunny's Toyota Corolla was parked in the driveway. The garage was presumably stuffed with junk, based on Sunny's interior decoration.

He came to the door with a half-eaten tuna sandwich in one hand. “Hello,” he said congenially. After studying Yuki's and Mas's faces, his own became more grim.

“Come in, come in,” he said, leaving the door ajar and walking through his maze of possessions.

He threw his corner of bread crust into the kitchen sink and rejoined his guests in his living room. “
Ocha
?” he asked, offering green tea again, although he seemed to know there'd be no takers.