I Can Still Hit the Curve

(February 2020)

There is no money in the foreign bank accounts.

The news was devastating.

Until this point, Ichihara’s investigation had focused in several areas, including identifying cohorts of Mister Slimeball, running background checks on the identities he stole, and attempting to locate the physical whereabouts of the man himself. But the entire underpinnings of the case against MSB in a court of law would be the money. No money, no case. And in some ways, by making a big deal of the accounts, my article had shined a flashlight on the situation and made it even worse.

“That’s impossible,” Ichihara said. He threw himself onto the ratty lounge couch in the break room. The rest of the room gave him space. Ichihara went on a rant in Japanese that turned his face red. He stamped his foot, and reached for his cigarettes.

“Maybe MSB withdrew it all and is living out in Jamaica someplace,” said Kanji Ishiki, a lieutenant in his force.

“Is he eating it?”

“Cash spends,” Ishiki said, cowering.

I hadn’t seen Yuni Ichihara react this way before, but I understood what he was thinking. He was thinking he’s been pulled out of his office by the National Police Authority, and been given every resource in Japan’s arsenal, and he’d travelled the globe only to get the door shut in his face time and time again. He was thinking that he hadn’t been able to make this happen. He was thinking Charlie Cooper is a ghost, that the clock is ticking, and despite months of pouring over material he had nothing more to go on. Zero. He was thinking that his career as a police officer may well be over.

He was thinking he had blown it.

He lost the case.

He lost the bad guy.

I should pause here for a moment to talk about law enforcement in Japan. It doesn’t work like it does in the US, or probably for that matter like anywhere else in the world.

Japanese society is arranged in prefectures, and each prefecture has its own police force. Each of these are essentially independent offices. The NPA presides over them, but does not manage them. In truth, it seems like its only real function is to play politics–though in cases of national emergency, it is expected to step in and lead large-scale efforts.

So when the NPA chose to get involved in the Slimeball case, it was a big deal.

And when they went out of their way to pluck Yuni Ichihara out of his own little prefecture to focus on the case, it was perhaps the brightest moment of Ichihara’s career. The release announcing his selection revealed that Yuni Ichihara was a pragmatic copper, a man who had been with the force in some capacity for fifteen years, and a man who knew the ropes. And his side-story was great, having played baseball in college and with a semi-pro team for several years before his knee gave away.

“I can still hit the curve,” he told me once. “But I can’t run to first base.”

His selection was national news. It was a big danged deal.

To run this show he was given his little office in the NPA 2nd division, and a few good officers, and some money. Much was expected of him by those in the NPA, but in truth it is not as much as he expected of himself.

I knew from the moment I met Yuni Ichihara, that this was the case of his life, that it was, most likely, what he would look back on at the end of his life to judge his own self-worth.

Given all that, I looked at him sitting there on the couch with his head in his hands, and his cigarette burning from his fingers, and I knew he was thinking.

I knew that Chief Inspector Yuni Ichihara was thinking that one day soon he was going to be returned to his office in Saitama prefecture to chase the petty criminals and the drug addicts, and that each day from that point on he’ll drive past the empty field of dreams that once housed his Kawaguchi Transmitters, and he’ll know that he was the man who let Charlie Cooper escape justice.

“You know what we need?” I said.

All eyes turned to me.

“What we need, is a rain out.”

Most everyone just looks at me like I’ve grown a trumpet out of my head. But Yuni, once he’s gotten himself together, he starts to laugh. “Yes,” he said, and in a moment it’s a full-throated laugh. He hits Ishiki with a good-natured punch to the shoulder. “A rain out! Like in the movie!”

I smiled, and I suddenly pictured Kevin Costner as a very young man sliding into second base on a sloppy nighttime field that is in the process of being soaked through by a sprinkler system set awry. Coster was probably my age now when he made that film. Or maybe a little older.

The laughter around the room is good.

Eventually it dies down, though.

“So,” Ichihara said. “Can you get us a rain out?”

“Well,” I said. “If nothing else I can buy you a beer and we can make the rest up as we go.”

“That, my friend,” Ichihara said, “Is the best idea of the day.”