“My dad is a great guy. He’s incredibly honest.”
“I’m sure he is.” Kazu faced him squarely, his arms still crossed against his chest.
Solomon hesitated but said it anyway: “He’s not some gangster. He doesn’t do bad things. He’s an ordinary businessman. He pays all his taxes and does everything by the book. There are some shady guys in the business, but my dad is incredibly precise and moral. He owns three parlors. It’s not like—”
Kazu nodded reassuringly.
“My father’s never taken anything that wasn’t his; he doesn’t even care about money. He gives away so much of it—”
Etsuko had told him that Mozasu paid the nursing home bills for several of his employees.
“Solly, Solly. No, man, there’s no need to explain. It’s not like Koreans had a lot of choices in regular professions. I’m sure he chose pachinko because there wasn’t much else. He’s probably an excellent businessman. You think your poker skills came out of a vacuum? Maybe your dad could have worked for Fuji or Sony, but it wasn’t like they were going to hire a Korean, right? I doubt they’d hire you now, Mr. Columbia University. Japan still doesn’t hire Koreans to be teachers, cops, and nurses in lots of places. You couldn’t even rent your own apartment in Tokyo, and you make good money. It’s fucking 1989! Anyway, you can be polite about it, but that’s fucked up. I’m Japanese but I’m not stupid. I lived in America and Europe for a long time; it’s crazy what the Japanese have done to the Koreans and the Chinese who were born here. It’s fucking bonkers; you people should have a revolution. You don’t protest enough. You and your dad were born here, right?”
Solomon nodded, not understanding why Kazu was getting so worked up about this.
“Even if your dad was a hit man, I wouldn’t give a shit. And I wouldn’t turn him in.”
“But he’s not.”
“No, kid, of course he’s not,” Kazu said, smiling. “Go home to your girlfriend. I heard she’s a looker and smart. That’s good. Because in the end, brains matter more than you think,” he said, laughing.
Kazu hailed a taxi and told Solomon to take it before him. Everyone said that Kazu wasn’t like regular bosses, and it was true.
A week later, he put Solomon on the new real estate deal, and Solomon was the youngest one on the team. This was the cool transaction that all the guys in the office wanted. One of Travis’s heavyweight banking clients wanted to purchase land in Yokohama to build a world-class golf course. Nearly all the details had been worked out; they needed to get three of the remaining landowners to sign on. Two were not impossible, just expensive, but the third was a headache—the old woman had no interest in money and could not be bought out. Her lot was where the eleventh hole would be. At the morning meeting, with the client present, two of the banking directors gave a strong presentation about the beneficial ways of structuring the mortgage, and Solomon took careful notes. Right before the meeting broke up, Kazu mentioned casually that the old woman was still holding up progress. The client smiled at Kazu and said, “No doubt, you will be able to handle the matter. We are confident.”
Kazu smiled politely.
The client left quickly, and everyone else scattered out of the conference room shortly thereafter. Kazu stopped Solomon before he had a chance to return to his desk.
“What are you doing for lunch, Solly?”
“I was going to grab something from downstairs. Why? What’s up?”
“Let’s go for a drive.”
The chauffeur took them to the old woman’s lot in Yokohama. The gray concrete building was in decent condition, and the front yard was well maintained. No one seemed to be home. An ancient pine tree cast a triangular shade across the facade of the square structure, and a thin brook gurgled from the back of the house. It was a former fabric-dyeing factory and now the private residence of the woman. Her children were dead, and there were no obvious heirs.
“So how do you get a person to do what you want when she doesn’t want to?” Kazu asked.
“I don’t know,” Solomon said. He’d figured that this was a kind of field trip for Kazu, and his boss wanted the company. Rarely did Kazu go anywhere alone.
The car was parked in the wide, dusty street opposite the old woman’s lot. If she was home, she would have noticed the black town car idling not ten yards from her house. But no one came outside or stirred within.
Kazu stared at the house.
“So this is where Sonoko Matsuda lives. The client is confident that I can get Matsuda-san to sell.”
“Can you?” Solomon asked.
“I think so, but I don’t know how,” Kazu said.
“This will sound stupid, but how can you get her to sign if you don’t know how?” Solomon asked.
“I’m making a wish, Solly. I’m making a wish. Sometimes, that’s how it starts.”
Kazu asked the chauffeur to take them to an unagi restaurant not far from there.
18
Yokohama, 1989