Sayonara Slam

by Naomi Hirahara

  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.

  Mas was trapped next to the table and bench that he first thought was for woodworking. Some kind of sanding drum was attached to the table, and then he remembered seeing the exact same contraption in the garage of a customer who had a side business making jewelry. His customer’s work involved all sorts of chemicals—some of them semi-lethal—that he’d been careful to store. In fact, he often told Mas to take care when he walked through the garage into the backyard.

  “You’zu make jewelry wiz dis thing,” Mas said abruptly. Yuki glared as if to ask, What are you doing?

  Sunny steadied himself with a stack of boxes.

  “Lotsu of chemical involved in dis machine.”

  Yuki quickly caught on. “Cyanide, Ojisan?”

  “You don’t want your brotha’s book published, so you killsu your cousin,” Mas declared.

  Sunny looked out the top of the living room window, a forlorn look on his face. Now his round face resembled more the moon than the sun.

  “That wasn’t his book to make decisions about. My brother Kan is dead, and so are our parents. I’m the only living one in my brother’s memoir. It wasn’t right for Tomo to give it to the publisher without my permission.”

  So Sunny was indeed Hideaki.

  “Did you read the book? Since you know about it, you must have,” said Sunny. “I couldn’t get past the first thirty pages.”

  Mas had no idea what was in that manuscript. But he figured that whatever it was, it brought up memories that Sunny wanted to forget.

  “I hated being on those ships.” Sunny’s back and arms now leaned against the boxes of soy sauce. “The Gripsholm, but more the Teia. It was like a floating prison with no room to sleep. No water for showers, so we had to sit out on the deck when it rained to wash our bodies. And it was bitterly cold, with no decent food. Our rice had worms in it. When I was a little boy, I dreamed of traveling to wild and exotic places, but not like that.”

  Gohan with worms? Mas remembered those times of want.

  “I came back to the US as soon as I could. But I told no one that I was on the Gripsholm. Nobody understood that we hadn’t renounced our citizenship. We weren’t being repatriated to Japan, and we weren’t POWs. We were kidnapped. I was drafted during the Korean War and was happy to fight for America. I put my past, the Gripsholm and the Teia, behind me.” He grasped his right fist in his left hand, the rings on his fingers shining in the morning sun.

  “Now Tomo was going to spill the beans about my private life while I’m trying to enjoy my retirement? My war buddies won’t read my brother’s memoir, but they’d hear about it. I’ll be forever connected to the Gripsholm.” It was obvious that Sunny was scared out of his mind about his secret past being revealed. Had he been looking over his shoulder his whole life?

  “Do you know how many men in my unit during the Korean War were either killed or wounded in action? Everyone talks about World War II or even the Vietnam War, but we lost a lot of men in the Korean War, too. I’m a patriot. Will people remember that?”

  Sunny was now sitting on the floor, his possessions crowded around him, possessing him. He looked like he had melted, collapsed from his memories. Mas could relate, but his pain was no justification for murder.

  “We go to police, Hirose-san,” Yuki said, helping the old man to his feet.

  Sunny realized that it was time. “Yes, yes,” he said. “But I need a ride.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  You know that Tomo had the nerve to tell me that I was an awful brother to Kan. That I never visited him when he was ill. But I swore when I left Japan that I’d never go back.” Now that he was out of his cluttered home and freed from the weight of his physical possessions, Sunny Hirose had become an oshaberi. Words flowed in the Impala. There’d been a lot on Sunny’s mind all these years, and admitting that he’d killed his cousin seemed to have given him permission to release all his demons.

  “My father, who owned a small dry goods store in Bakersfield, was hopping mad at America,” he said from the passenger seat. “Why would they send him and our family as pawns in a prisoner exchange with Japan? He was from Japan but he had no special allegiance to the country. We were on those two godforsaken boats for almost two months. Once we arrived in Japan, we saw the country’s true condition. Bombed out, poorer than poor.”

  Mas traveled down the 10, a river of cars heading for different destinations. Most were likely mundane. Work in a skyscraper or a hospital. College. Lunch with a friend. At least one gardening truck heading for a customer. And here Mas was, transporting a murderer to the police.

  “My parents were beaten down. They weren’t even quite sure why we were selected to go on the Gripsholm. It’s not like they wanted to repatriate or anything. My father was one of the early ones to get picked by the US government right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Got sent to Bismarck, North Dakota, for a few months before joining us in Gila River. Maybe somehow he got on a list then. A vulnerable man who could be used as a chess piece. The government didn’t have enough desirable prisoners to trade with Japan. So they crammed these boats with Japanese Peruvians and assorted people like us.”

  Mas glanced at his side mirror as he merged onto the Pasadena Freeway at the Convention Center. There, as a reminder of the beginning of their adventure, he saw the silos of the Bonaventure Hotel.

  “My brother eventually met a Japanese girl and decided that he wanted to make a life in Japan. But not me.” Sunny pursed his lips, seeming to realize that the LAPD headquarters, Parker Center, was only blocks away.

  Parking was limited in downtown L.A., so Mas dropped Sunny and Yuki in front of Parker Center. Mas had heard that Parker Center, with its rectangular shape like a monster toaster, would soon be on its way out. Its brand-spanking-new replacement on First Street, a glass cathedral, gave the illusion of transparency—an illusion, because the glass revealed only interior walls. Mas had no real affinity for Parker Center, but its light-blue motif and scrawny palm trees represented his Los Angeles. It was a Los Angeles full of hope and possibilities, with simple lines and enough empty space to give newcomers opportunity to add colors of their own. Now Los Angeles was jam-packed with people, and developers were trying to build more on top of more until you couldn’t see the sky full-frame.

  Instead of going into a pay parking lot, Mas circled south through Little Tokyo. He passed the police parking lot on John Aiso Street, named after a judge who, after an illustrious career, had been mugged at a gas station in Hollywood and thrown down, eventually dying from head injuries. He drove along First Street, remembering Ginza Ya, the dry goods store that put Sunny’s hoarding tendencies to shame. There was barely room to walk through that shop, but it had everything Mas and Chizuko needed to build a life in the 1970s. A few doors down there’d been a grocery, which displayed its produce—piles of sweet potatoes, Japanese pears, persimmons, and tangerines—in stands open to the sidewalk, New York–style. On the other side of First had been a tiny bookstore in an insurance building. It sold manga, pack
aged with projects to make robots and tigers out of paper, alongside slim paperbacks in Japanese. The manga, along with fresh imagawayaki, thick hockey pucks of batter enclosing dollops of red bean, had been Mari’s favorites as a child.

  Mas’s phone began to chirp. Yuki was ready to be picked up. Time for Mas’s nostalgic reverie to end. His Little Tokyo, aside from the imagawayaki, was pretty much gone. The future awaited.

  Yuki, joking that he was starting to feel at home at the LAPD, said that Sunny kept running at the mouth while they waited for Detective Cortez Williams in the lobby. He was like a broken faucet, he told Mas in the Impala.

  “Maybe in jail heezu can write his own book,” Mas quipped, and they both got quiet. Sunny’s fate was no laughing matter.

  “I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Itai-san had pulled the book, anyway,” said Yuki. “If Itai-san had just told Sunny that he was going to abide by his wishes, his life would have been spared.”

  Mas nodded. Sunny had thought that by killing Itai, he’d be able to keep his past silent. As it turned out, all it did was end his Friday-night poker games with his Korean War buddies. Mas knew of other Japanese men in prison, but they were younger. Sunny would probably die behind bars.

  Yuki asked to be driven to Mrs. Kim’s nursing home in Koreatown, and Mas complied. He didn’t relish battling the congestion on Sixth Street and Western Avenue, but knowing that their time together was coming to an end made the drive bearable.

  “Ojisan, about your fee,” Yuki finally said.

  “No shinpai.” Mas surprised himself by saying that. “Itsu on the house.”

  “I can’t let you do that. I don’t have all the cash right now, but after I file a few stories, I can wire you money from Japan.”

  Mas respected that Yuki wanted to be chanto. Chanto, to do things just right, was high on Mas’s list of priorities. Mas knew that he missed the perfection mark by a football field, but when it came to paying his bets and helpers like Eduardo, he tried to bat a thousand.

  “You knowsu what, give it to Mrs. Kim.”

  “She’s not going to take your money, Ojisan. Besides, she has a good pension, not to mention Jin-Won and Neko for support. She’s well taken of, financially speaking.”

  “Well, howsu about dat Sally Lee? Sheezu helpin’ out other ianfu, desho?”

  Yuki choked as if he had a piece of chicken bone caught in his throat. “You want to give money to her advocacy work?”

  Mas shrugged. Why not?

  “You are full of surprises, Ojisan,” Yuki said. “Every time I think I know what you’re going to do, you go in the opposite direction.”

  “I’m like a koi,” Mas said in Japanese, laughing. “Keep trying to swim upstream.”

  Yuki, attempting to read Mas’s old Thomas Guide map, instructed Mas to make a right turn after making a right onto Western from Wilshire. Mas felt like he’d won a victory by presenting the book of neighborhoods to Yuki in lieu of the talking GPS. His map book went back to the 1970s, before certain freeways, such as the 105, even existed. And certain pages, like the ones for Silver Lake, were missing from overuse. Mas never truly understood those tangled streets around the reservoir. But the pages for Koreatown were still intact. While the storefronts had changed in this area, the streets themselves had not.

  The rehabilitation facility turned out to be a modest bungalow with a tiny parking lot. There were no open spaces for the Impala, and street parking didn’t look much better.

  “Getsu out. I findsu parking and come later,” Mas told Yuki, who was first hesitant to leave Mas on his own.

  Mas finally found a spot beside a crumbling curb a good four blocks away. When he approached the nursing home, he saw Yuki and Neko standing outside on the walkway.

  “We’re moving my grandmother here, to Los Angeles,” Neko announced. “To Little Tokyo, in fact. There’s a senior housing center next to Asian grocery stores, and it has a hot meal program.”

  “Honto?” Mas was surprised. He thought he would never see Mrs. Kim again. To think that he might run into her at the fish counter of a local grocery store.

  “The Dodgers might put in an offer for Jin-Won.”

  “Oh, yah?” Another surprise.

  “But it’s too early to report that. Anywhere,” Neko admonished Yuki.

  He crossed his arms. “I’m thinking of taking a break from journalism.”

  “But what will you do?”

  “Maybe write a book?”

  Mas couldn’t believe his ears. Now every sonofagun was writing one.

  Neko didn’t acknowledge Yuki’s newfound aspiration to be a book author. “Sally Lee can watch out for my grandmother. My grandmother told me that I’m supposed to call her ‘halmoni.’ It’s grandma in Korean,” she added, smiling as if she was holding something extra sweet in her mouth.

  To watch these twentysomething sweethearts, driven by entirely different passions, amused Mas. He didn’t know if Yuki and Neko would be together in the next six months—he doubted it—but the inevitable push and pull of their relationship would help chip away at who they really were.

  Mas left Yuki with Neko and navigated the curves of the Pasadena Freeway until it ended. Then up, up, up until he was almost in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.

  Tug’s ranch-style house was close to the giant, shedding cedars lining the side streets of Altadena. The trees made for a grand entrance, a reminder that the humans on the ground were truly dwarfed by a nature that could infiltrate even the concrete streets. One day, Mas had discovered a brown bear and her cub splashing in a customer’s swimming pool. Another time, during a late-night rainstorm during the holidays, two confused coyotes crossed Mas’s path while he was driving. No matter how quickly open lots converted to multi-unit dwellings, nature would not be swept away.

  Mas was halfway hoping that no one would be home, but the Yamadas’ old Buick, still in pristine shape, sat in the driveway.

  Mas rang the doorbell and waited a while, finally hearing the sound of the locks being turned. Lil, her face tense, attempted a smile. “Oh, Tug’s not here, Mas.”

  “Just checkin’ on the washing machine.”

  Her voice softened. “It’s good. Perfect. Working great.”

  “So, Tug went ova to Canada, huh?”

  Lil gave in. “Come in, Mas. I just made some banana bread.”

  Mas followed her into an airy, open kitchen with large windows facing a well-manicured backyard.

  “Mari went, I take it,” Lil said.

  “Lloyd take her to airport dis morning.” Mas took a seat at their kitchen table, a fancy number that was part of their kitchen remodel.

  “You probably think I’m an awful mother,” said Lil, cutting a fat slice of fresh banana bread and placing it on a plate with a fork and knife.

  Mas shook his head. Chizuko and Lil had become friends through motherhood. Lil was Jill’s perennial cheerleader. While Chizuko’s approach was to refrain from complimenting Mari, either publicly or privately, Lil lavished compliments on her only daughter.

  “I had just begun to accept that Iris would be in Jill’s life. But get married? Mas, I can’t be a hypocrite. I can’t stand there as mother of the bride and pretend that it’s okay with me. I know, I’m terrible. Even Jill’s brother says I’m behind the times. That I need to join the twenty-first century.” Her voice broke. Is she going to cry? he worried.

  “It’s like my world is slowing down, coming to an end, while the outside is spinning by so fast. I can’t even catch my breath.”

  Mas took a few bites of the banana bread. “Gomen ne,” he finally said. “I gotsu go.”

  Lil wrapped the leftover bread in a napkin and handed it to Mas at the door. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, afterwards. I can’t lose my daughter. She’s really my everything.” Tears finally ran down her papery face, and Mas didn’t know what to say. He had no answers.

  “I’zu going to get married again,” Mas abruptly announced.

&nb
sp; “Oh, Mas, I’m so happy for you. I never told you this, but Chizuko wanted you to find someone.” Lil pulled out some tissues from a box on a table near the door and wiped her face. “Well, actually, what she told me was something like, ‘No one will want to have that old man, but if someone wants to pick him up, that’s okay with me.’”

  Mas laughed. He knew that Lil was telling the truth, because that sounded exactly like Chizuko.

  “You and Jill figure it out somehowsu,” Mas finally said, and he walked down the porch steps. It might take a lifetime, but he had faith that they would.

  It was Chizuko’s birthday, so Mas prepared to do what he always did around this time. Clean her gravesite plot. The last time he went there was right before Valentine’s Day. He didn’t actually time it for that—in fact, he would have avoided it if he’d realized it earlier. Too many red roses and stuffed teddy bears with hearts, symbols of love that could not be reciprocated by the dead.

  Mas had never in his life given his wife red roses, at least on purpose. One time a customer had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend and shoved a bouquet in Mas’s dirty hands after he’d mowed the lawn. Chizuko’s eyes grew wide when he brought it in through the back door, but they returned to their normal size when he explained what had happened.

  Mas didn’t even know what day was their official wedding anniversary. There was the day he received her photo in the mail when he was a bachelor gardener in Altadena. And the day he wrote back to his parents saying that he was interested. And the day he actually traveled to Hiroshima to lay eyes on her for the first time as an adult. He’d actually seen her once, before he left Hiroshima. She was the younger sister of a former classmate, and she was only about thirteen at the time. Even at that age, she was very majime, serious, but with the loss of her two brothers, she had to be. He’d heard that Chizuko’s family had lost everything in the Bomb and were living with distant relatives to make ends meet.