Quicksilver (Nameless Detective) (16 page)

“Ah.”

“Meanwhile, lunch is on me.”

He made a slight bow with his head.
“Arigato gozaimas’.
You enjoyed the
sushi,
then?”

“It was fine. Except for that last piece. Grayish thing, sort of chewy?”

“Tako,”
he said. “Octopus.”

I was sorry I’d asked.

When I got outside, the rain and the white Ford were both there waiting for me—another pair of joyless certainties, like death and taxes, that I seemed to be cursed with these days. One of the
kobun,
the putty-nosed guy, had followed me inside the Japan Center and hung around out in the mall somewhere while I had my meeting with Mike Kanaya; he was behind me again now, and when I crossed to where my car was parked on Post Street he went and rejoined his friend in the Ford, half a block away.

I was still fed up with having them around all the time, but what Kanaya had told me about Yakuza policy toward non-Japanese had taken some of the edge off my anxiety. And the thought of the two of them sitting a cold, cramped watch all night in the rain, as they had probably done, made me feel there might be some justice in this world after all.

The rain slackened to a fine mist as I drove back up the hill to Pacific Heights. I took the only legal parking space on my block, so that the Ford had to pull over and stop in somebody’s driveway. They were still parked there, watching, as I entered my building.

I had tried calling the Hama Egg Ranch again this morning, just before I left for Japantown, and that time I’d got a busy signal; so somebody was home up there today. I intended to give it one more shot, and if I still couldn’t get through, then maybe it was time to pay my first and no doubt last visit to the Kara Maru restaurant. Maybe I couldn’t beard Hisayuki Okubo without an invitation, but there was no harm in trying. I hoped.

So I dialed the 707 area code for Petaluma, then the Hama number, and the thing rang six times before I finally heard an answering click, just as I was getting ready to hang up. A woman’s voice, hoarse and a little on the quavery side, said, “Hello? Yes, please?”

I gave my name and where I was calling from. Then I said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Hama, Mr. Kazuo Hama.”

Silence.

“Ma’am? Hello?”

“No,” she said. “No, no.”

“You mean Mr. Hama isn’t there?”

“Not here,” she said, “Kazuo is
dead!”
and I heard her begin to weep just before she broke the connection.

I got up to Petaluma a little before three-thirty. The rain didn’t follow me all the way; it quit just north of San Rafael, and there were thin blue veins in the cloud pattern when I took the first Petaluma exit off Highway 101.

The white Ford didn’t follow me at all. But that was my choice, not theirs. When I’d left my flat I had driven down to Fisherman’s Wharf, where the traffic is always congested and the tourists are out even in wet weather, and did some tricky maneuvers involving other cars and stop signals; the last I’d seen of the Ford had been at an intersection near The Cannery, tangled up behind a smoke-belching Muni bus. It’s not all that difficult to shake a tail if you set your mind to it and expend some effort. And I just did not feel like going all the way to Petaluma with those two dragging after me like a couple of loose anchors.

The main street used to be called that, Main Street. Now it was called Petaluma Boulevard South and Petaluma Boulevard North, with the dividing line being the middle of town. The place used to be a small agricultural community with a population of around ten thousand, built mostly on the west side of Petaluma Creek—a narrow salt-water estuary that wound down through fourteen miles of tule marshes to San Pablo Bay. Now it was a place where San Francisco office workers lived and commuted from, a bedroom community with a population of over forty thousand, most of whom lived on the east side of the Petaluma River—creek becoming river by act of the state legislature. Once it had been famous as “The Egg Basket of the World” because it was the world’s leading producer of chickens and chicken fruit in the early years of the century, shipping millions of eggs annually from dozens of surrounding ranches. Now it was famous as the “Hell no, we won’t grow” city, the place that in 1972 had passed a limited-growth ordinance hailed by environmentalists and traditionalists, fought bitterly by developers who had gobbled up most of the land in and out of the city limits. In the old days, riverboats and barges and cargo schooners used to make regular runs up and down the creek, carrying hay, alfalfa, eggs, livestock, and passengers. In the new days, speedboats and small yachts traveled the river and tied up in the basin behind the old brick complex of restaurants and shops that had once been a feed mill.

Progress. Changing times. Some liked the idea, some didn’t. I didn’t, but then I had no stake in the town’s past or in its future. Why should I cry for Petaluma? Petaluma wasn’t going to cry for me.

I stopped at a service station and got directions to Rainsville Road. Following them, I drove out Petaluma Boulevard North to Stony Point Road, turned west on Stony Point, and came to Rainsville after less than half a mile. Another half-mile brought me to a rain-puddled gravel driveway and a sign that said: HAMA EGG RANCH. Below that, in smaller letters, were the words: ONE OF PETALUMA’S LARGEST. And in still smaller letters: EGGS, FRYERS, ROASTING HENS • BABY CHICKS FOR SALE.

One of Petaluma’s largest, I thought as I swung into the driveway. But that didn’t mean much these days. The egg industry up here was only a gaunt shadow of what it once had been. One conglomerate outfit owned most of the ranches; there were only a few independents like Hama left. And all the hatcheries and feed companies that had once flourished were long gone. Now Kazuo Hama was gone too. How? And why?

The drive was lined on one side by eucalyptus trees planted as windbreaks. The ranch began its outward sprawl just beyond the trees—a familiar layout that gave me a vague, fleeting nostalgia because I had worked on a chicken ranch one summer in my teens, so long ago that the memory of it was faded and distorted, like a very old daguerrotype. The nearest buildings were a large white clapboard house, a tankhouse, and a garage with a wing tacked onto it that was probably a workshop. Opposite and beyond that little cluster was a small barnlike structure that was probably the grainery, where feed and supplies were kept and eggs were packed for shipment. The chicken houses came next, half a dozen of them, each one seventy-five-feet long—large enough for maybe a thousand laying hens—made of wood and built up off the ground, with a V-shaped roof and screened windows to let in light. Fenced-in yards stretched out alongside each of the houses, and in them hundreds of white leghorns pranced and pecked and drank from rain-swollen troughs.

There were two cars drawn up in a little parking area near the fenced yard of the ranchhouse—a newish Isuzu and a mud-caked pickup truck. I parked next to the pickup. From over in the chicken yards I could hear a constant fluttering of wings, with cackling noises mingled in. But I didn’t look over there; I did not want to think about chickens any more. Or about eggs. They reminded me of my diet, and made me hungry again in spite of myself.

I walked over to the front gate and along a crushed-shell path and up the stairs to the porch. I wasn’t trying to be quiet about it, but I must have managed just the same because the two people talking inside the house didn’t break off their conversation. I could hear them plainly; there was a closed screen door, but the front door behind it was standing open, evidently to allow fresh air to circulate. Their words sounded interesting. So instead of knocking right away, I stood there and listened. Occupational license. Private eyes were supposed to be keyhole snoopers and eavesdroppers, after all.

“... don’t understand this at all, Johnny,” a woman’s voice was saying. It wasn’t the same woman I’d talked to on the phone; this one was much younger. “A
mausoleum,
and all those years of upkeep. Why would he have done a thing like that?”

“I don’t know,” a man’s voice said. Also young, also unfamiliar. “How should I know?”

“Well, there aren’t any Wakasas around here.”

“Not now. Maybe there were after the war.”

“Are you
sure
you don’t know who that woman was?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?”

“I thought Father might have confided in you ...”

“Man-talk, eh? You think he had an affair with this Chiyoko Wakasa, don’t you?”

“Sshh! Do you want Mother to hear?”

I was listening good now. Chiyoko—Haruko’s middle name, and the name that had been written on the package containing the medallion.

“Well?” the man’s voice said, a little more quietly. “That’s what you think, isn’t it?”

“It’s what you think too.”

“How do you know what I think? I don’t think anything. Maybe she was an old relative of the family or something.”

“You know we don’t have any relatives named Wakasa.”

“It could have been her married name ...”

“Oh God, Johnny, she wasn’t a relative and you know it!”

“What difference does it make who she was? She’s been dead almost forty years. And now he’s dead too. What does it
matter
anymore?”

“It matters,” the woman said stubbornly. “Are we supposed to keep on paying the upkeep on this ... this stranger’s burial place?”

“It’s only a few dollars a year. Father kept paying it; it must have been important to him. We should pay it in honor of his memory.”

“I still want to know who she was. A mausoleum at Cypress Hill! Of all things!”

“Come on, it’s not that strange.”

“Isn’t it? Did you ever hear of anything like that around here?”

“Plenty of Japanese are Catholics ...”

“But we’re not. I just don’t understand it.”

“Janet,” the man said in exasperated tones, “you worry too much about little things. Worry about the big things for a change, like these files and papers. I don’t want to spend all night sorting them out.”

A couple of seconds of silence. Then, “I guess you’re right. Do you want to see if Mother needs anything before we get back to it? Some more tea?”

“Yes, okay.”

The sound of footsteps, fading. Then silence. I shuffled my feet, making some noise, and reached out and knocked on the screen door’s wooden frame.

The woman came after a few seconds and peered out at me, then drew the door open. She was thirtyish, slender, very attractive, with her black hair tied up tight on her head; wearing a black skirt and a black sweater—mourning clothes. “Oh, hello,” she said solemnly. Then she said, “I’m afraid we’re closed, if you want to buy something. There’s been a death in the family.”

I feigned surprise. “I’m very sorry to hear that. I hope it wasn’t Mr. Kazuo Hama.”

“Yes, it was. Did you come to see my father?”

“On a personal matter, yes. May I ask when he passed away?”

“Four days ago. His funeral was yesterday.”

“A sudden illness?”

“No. He ... he was killed. A hit-and-run accident.”

“Have the police found the person responsible?”

“Not yet.”

“Where did it happen?”

“On the road out front. He’d gone to get the mail.”

“Then there were no witnesses?”

“No. None.”

“Did your father wear a white jade ring, by any chance?”

“Yes, but it’s missing—” She broke off and frowned at me. “You said you came to see him on a personal matter?”

“That’s right, Miss ... ?”

“Mrs. Janet Ito. And your name, please?”

I made one up—Allan Barker—and made up a profession to go with it. I didn’t like the idea of lying to her, lying in the face of grief, but it was easier and kinder and more prudent than telling her the truth; the truth would only have led to questions and stirred up a lot of ugly suspicion. “I’m a lawyer,” I said, “representing the estate of Mr. Simon Tamura in San Francisco.”

The Tamura name didn’t seem to mean anything to her. She said, “Yes?” blankly.

“Mr. Tamura and your father were old friends, you know.”