Quicksilver (Nameless Detective) (14 page)

“Sanjiro wasn’t close to anybody after his wife died,” Pink said. “Took it pretty hard and kept to himself after that. Hardly ever had any visitors or left the village. That’s why I was so surprised to see you over there today.”

“You didn’t know him well, then?”

“Well as anybody around here. We were neighbors twelve years. His wife Yoshiko and I used to take tea together sometimes. Nice woman, real pretty. She died of cancer. He carried her picture with him all the time in a little gold locket.”

“Locket? What sort of locket?”

“Little gold one, like I said. Shaped like a heart.”

“With a pearl on one side?”

“Why, that’s right. How did you—?”

“I’ve seen lockets like that,” I said quickly. “In fact, I’ve been planning to buy one for my wife.” But I was thinking: First the medallion and now the gold locket—both of which could have come off men newly dead. What in the name of Christ is going on here?

I wanted to ask her if Masaoka’s locket had been missing from his body when he was found, but I doubted it was something she’d know. And it was the kind of provocative question that might arouse her suspicions and lead to difficulties. Instead I asked, “Did Masaoka ever mention any friends in San Francisco?”

“No, not that I recall.”

“Does the name Simon Tamura mean anything to you?”

“Let’s see—Tamura. Is kind of familiar, come to think on it. Didn’t I read something about a Tamura in the papers recently?”

I did not want to get into that with her, either. I said, “But you don’t remember Masaoka using that name?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“How about a man named Kazuo Hama?”

“Hama, Hama. Nope.”

“This fellow Hama might live in Orange County. Did Masaoka ever mention knowing anyone down there?”

“Nope.”

“Hama might also be a rancher in Petaluma,” I said.

She shook her head. “Only rancher from Petaluma I ever heard tell of,” she said, “was a shirtail cousin of my late husband’s. He was an atcohoiic—the shirttail cousin, I mean. Set himself on fire one night while he was drunk and burned down his house and barn and touched off his cornfield when he went running through it. Pink One thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard when he found out. Me, I’m not so sure.”

I asked her if Masaoka had ever spoken of Haruko Gage or Ken Yamasaki, and she answered negatively both times. She was curious now over all the questions; I could see it in her eyes. Which made it time for me to leave. So I said I’d better get home and change out of my wet clothes before I caught cold, and Pink agreed that that was a good idea.

“Take some peppermint tea laced with rum and honey,” she said. “Best thing in the world to fight off a cold.”

The thought of peppermint tea laced with rum and honey made my throat close up. But I said, “Thanks, I’ll fix up a cup when I get home.”

“You do that.”

We went outside together. When I looked off to the east I could see the white Ford still parked around the corner of the next intersecting street. Pink noticed it too. She said, “You know those Japanese in that car over there?”

“No,” I said.

“Me neither. They were parked out front while you were at Sanjiro’s.” She gave me a speculative look. “You sure you don’t know ’em?”

“Positive. Maybe they’re tourists.”

“Don’t look like any tourists I ever saw.”

“I’d better go,” I said. “Thanks again, Pink.”

“Don’t mention it. Watch out for mean dogs from now on.” She favored me with an amused grin. “Rain puddles, too.”

I returned the grin, walked out of her yard and up to my car. The Doberman came pounding off the porch of the Masaoka house and stuck his snout between two of the fence stakes and snarled at me again. But that was all right; I didn’t hate him any more, or even dislike him. I knew how it was to be lonely.

I got out the blanket I keep in the trunk and spread it over the front seat to keep my damp pants off the upholstery. Then I started the car and drove down to the near corner and made the turn past the white Ford.

The two stone-faced
kobun
raised their hands and waggled their fingers in my direction—the first animation either of them had shown. The bastards had seen me run away from the Doberman and fall into the rain puddle, and it was their way of laughing at me, too.

I drove straight back to San Francisco. Even if I had felt like stopping in Princeton for lunch, which I didn’t, I couldn’t have done it in my damp suit. I needed to get home and change clothes before I did anything else.

On the way I did plenty of ruminating. The fact of Sanjiro Masaoka’s sudden death made two of the three men in that photograph dead of unnatural causes within a week of each other. Coincidence ? Maybe; things like that happen sometimes. But what about the medallion? What about the gold locket? It seemed to be stretching coincidence a little too far that Haruko Gage would have received a locket exactly like Masaoka carried the day after he died, and a medallion exactly like the one Simon Tamura wore the day after
he
died.

But if it wasn’t coincidence, then what the hell was it? A pair of murders, with Masaoka having been pushed or clubbed out on those rocks? Then where was the motive for the two slayings? If somebody was bent on eliminating males in Haruko’s life, her husband Artie was the obvious first choice. Besides which, both Masaoka and Simon Tamura had been in their sixties, and she had claimed not to know Tamura very well.

It was possible there was some connection between her and Masaoka. Or her and Kazuo Hama. And what about Kazuo Hama? Could
he
be responsible for the deaths of Masaoka and Tamura? If so, why? And even if there was a connection between Hama and Haruko, or Masaoka and Haruko, I still couldn’t conjure up a motive that would fit the facts I had dug up.

Why were the locket and the medallion sent to Haruko? And what about the other presents she’d received? Had they also once belonged to men now dead?

And where did the Yakuza fit into all of the above?

It was the screwiest business I’d ever come up against. A lot of the pieces kept cropping up, but I could not seem to get them together so they amounted to anything. For that matter, I couldn’t even get a good grasp on them individually. It was like trying to load a thermometer with beads of quicksilver, without the proper tools: every time you tried to pick up one of the beads, it squirted away from you.

My watch said it was one-thirty when I entered my building. No mail in the box downstairs, no messages on the answering machine upstairs. I went into the bathroom and took a hot shower and ate some Vitamin C capsules as a precautionary measure; the last thing I needed right now was to come down with a bad head cold.

When I was dressed again I rang up Sonoma County Directory Assistance and found out the number of the Hama Egg Ranch in Petaluma. But all I got, when I dialed the number, were a dozen unanswered rings.

I called the Gage house to find out what Haruko had to say about Sanjiro Masaoka and Kazuo Hama. But I didn’t find out anything there either; she wasn’t home. Artie the wimp told me she’d gone shopping and he wasn’t sure when she’d be back—around three, maybe. Then he asked me if I had any news. I said no, and he said he wasn’t surprised and hung up on me.

Artie, I thought as I put the receiver down, I ought to introduce you to Leo McFate, Artie. A couple of assholes like you two ought to get along fine.

I looked in the refrigerator. The only thing worth eating was a carrot, so I ate one, feeling like Bugs Bunny in a Loony Tunes cartoon, and washed it down with a can of V-8 juce. My mood, by this time, was none too genial. If I hung around here doing nothing I would be climbing the walls inside half an hour. Instead I put on one of my dry overcoats and left the flat again.

So, naturally, the rain decided to start up as I was walking to where I’d parked the car, and I got wet again. And if I needed anything else to cheer me up, the white Ford was there in my rear-view mirror as I drove away.

I headed out California and eventually stopped, as I had this morning, in the bus zone in front of Ken Yamasaki’s apartment house. The Ford repeated its earlier procedure too: went around the corner and parked by the fire hydrant. I got out and climbed the stairs to the stoop and pushed the button next to Yamasaki’s name and waited. And kept on waiting. No answering buzz. No nothing.

“Goddamn it!” I said out loud, and a guy passing by on the sidewalk gave me a funny look, pulled his umbrella down lower like a shield, and began to walk faster.

I got out one of my business cards and wrote on the back of it:
Call me immediately. Important
. I pushed the card through the little slot on the front of Yamasaki’s mailbox, went back down the steps, and kept on going past my car until I reached the Ford. Behind the rain-streaked window glass, the two
kobun
peered at me as stoically as ever. I made a motion for the mustached one to wind down his window; he stared out at me without complying. I managed to control my anger. Instead of yanking open the door and hauling him out and yelling into his face, I leaned down and said just loud enough for both of them to hear, “Tell your boss I want to talk to him. Tell him to make it quick. And tell him I want you two off my tail by tomorrow morning. Or else I won’t be responsible for what happens. ”

Blank stares.

Back in my car, I made an illegal U-turn in the middle of the street and drove back to Pacific Heights. The two of them tagged along after me as if nothing had happened.

I was still steaming when I came into the flat. I banged some coffee water down on the stove, then tried again to get through to the Hama Egg Ranch in Petaluma. Still no answer. I got Orange County information on the phone, wrote down the number the operator gave me for the second Kazuo Hama, and called him up. He was home; he was also the wrong Kazuo Hama. He worked for Japan Air Lines, he said, had only been in this country eight years, and had never heard of either Sanjiro Masaoka or Simon Tamura.

It was almost three o’clock by then; I rang up the Gage house to find out if Haruko had returned. She had. But when I asked her about Masaoka and Hama, she claimed not to know or have heard of either man.

“Did you ever date any older men?” I asked her. “Men in their late fifties or sixties?”

“No, of course not. I don’t have a father fixation.”

“Nobody at all over fifty?”

Nobody at all over forty,” she said. “I don’t understand. Is there some reason you think my secret admirer is over fifty?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Then why ask me that question. And who are those men—Masaoka and Hama?”

“People whose names have come up,” I said. “Friends of Simon Tamura’s.”

Silence for a time. Finally she said, “That again—the murder. You still think there’s some connection between Mr. Tamura and me, don’t you?”

“I don’t know what I think right now.”

“But what if there is some connection? What if it’s the same man and he decided to ...” She didn’t finish the sentence, but it was plain enough what the rest of the words would have been.

“That’s not going to happen,” I said.

“Maybe we should call the police.”

“I’ve already talked it over with the police.”

“You have? What did they say?”

“They don’t think you have anything to worry about either.” It was time to change the subject, and quickly. I said, “You know a lot of people in the Japanese community, Mrs. Gage. Is there anyone who could give me some detailed information on the Yakuza?”

“Well,” she said, and stopped, and then said, “Yes, I suppose Mike Kanaya could.”

“Who’s Mike Kanaya?”

“A reporter for the
Hokubei Mainichi
. That’s a bilingual newspaper published in Japantown—half in English and half in Japanese.”

“Do you know him well enough to arrange a meeting for me?”

“Yes. But I don’t know if he’ll agree to talk about the Yakuza. It isn’t a subject Japanese discuss openly with
gaijin—
with non-Japanese.”

“See what you can do, Mrs. Gage. It might be important.”

“All right. When do you want to see Mike?”

“As soon as possible.”

She said she would try to get in touch with Mike Kanaya and call me back after she talked to him, and we rang off. I went out to the kitchen, where I found that most of the coffee water had boiled away; I’d forgotten I had put it on. This was not my day. I couldn’t remember, in fact, the last day that had been mine. I put some more water in the pot, the pot back on the stove, and sat down at the kitchen table to wait and brood.

The waiting got me a cup of too-strong coffee; the brooding got me nothing. I got up after awhile and paced around and watched the rain roll down the glass in the bay windows like tears down mourning faces. Then I went into the bedroom and tried to call the Hama Egg Ranch again, without any more luck than before. I debated trying Kerry’s number—she’d expected to be home from Bates and Carpenter around three—but I didn’t want to tie up the line until Haruko Gage called back.