Quicksilver (Nameless Detective) (9 page)

“A former girlfriend of yours. Haruko Gage.”

His forehead wrinkled slightly; that was the extent of his reaction to Haruko’s name. “Why?” he said. “Who are you, anyway?”

“A private detective.” I gave him my name and showed him the photostat of my license. “Mrs. Gage hired me to investigate a little problem she’s having.”

“You mean Haruko’s in trouble?”

“No, nothing like that.”

I told him what the problem was, and he didn’t react much to that either. A little surprise and a little puzzlement, nothing else.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Anybody who’d do something like that has to be nuts.”

“That’s what Haruko is afraid of.”

“But why talk to me? I don’t know anything about it.” He paused and frowned again. “Hey, she doesn’t think
I’m
the one who’s doing it, does she?”

“No. Your name was one of several she gave me—old boyfriends, men who’ve been serious about her in the past.”

“Well, that lets me out. I’ve never been serious over any girl. There’s too many of ’em, you know? Too many
sakana
in the
umi
.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We had some fun, Haruko and me,” Edgar said. He grinned. “I brought her here once and we were, you know, getting it on over at the house and Pop almost caught us.
That
would have been a heavy scene. Pop’s old-fashioned; he doesn’t think people ought to screw unless they’re married.”

“Is that how your mother feels too?”

The grin vanished. “My mother’s dead,” he said in a different, softer voice. “She died last summer. It’s been rough on Pop; that’s why he works so hard.”

Rough on Edgar, too, judging from his tone. I said, “How do you feel about Haruko now that she’s married?”

“Same as I’ve always felt about her. We’re still friends, only without the sex.”

“No regrets about that?”

“A few, sure. I wouldn’t mind getting it on with her again if she ever dumps Art the Fart; we were good together, real good. But it’s no big deal. A guy can always get laid.”

“I take it you don’t like her husband much.”

“He’s a jerkoff. I don’t know why she married him, unless it’s because he lets her tell him what to do. Or maybe he’s Clark Kent with his clothes on and Superman in the sack.” He shrugged. “Who knows why women do anything? I never could figure ’em out.”

That makes two of us, brother, I thought. “Do you know Ken Yamasaki?”

“Sure. Not too well, though. He thinks he’s an intellectual; I don’t think I am.”

“Could he be Haruko’s secret admirer, do you think?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“How about Kinji Shimata?”

“Shimata ... no, never heard of him.”

“Nelson Mixer?”

“Is that somebody’s name?”

“Yes. A history teacher at City College.”

“I didn’t go to college,” he said and shrugged again.

I thanked him for his time, and he said, “Sure, I hope you find the nut,” and I left him and went out of the greenhouse. Most of the vehicles and workers had disappeared; so had Ogada Senior. The black-veined clouds were overhead now, scudding along in front of the sharp west wind like bales of gangrenous wool.

The rain started again, hard driving bullets of it, before I was halfway to my car.

With the exception of Ken Yamasaki, I had exhausted the list of names Haruko Gage had given me and I hadn’t learned much of anything so far. I had Yamasaki’s address, but I couldn’t look him up until I cleared it with Leo McFate. After having had my license suspended for a time five months ago, even though I hadn’t done much of anything wrong to deserve it, I could not afford to get the cops miffed at me again. And I couldn’t go down to the Hall to see McFate until four o’clock; he’d answered the homicide squeal last night, which meant he was working the four-to-midnight swing this week.

Another talk with Haruko seemed to be the only tack I had left. I could find out if she knew about Ken Yamasaki’s apparent Yakuza connections, and I could ask her some more questions about her past, maybe get a few more names worth checking out.

I came back into San Francisco on the 19th Avenue exit off Highway 280, drove straight to Japantown, and managed to find the same parking spot near the Gage Victorian that I’d occupied yesterday. When I went up and rang the bell, Haruko herself opened the door. She was wearing a tight white sweater today, and a pair of form-fitting designer slacks, and her glossy black hair was piled high on her head and held in place by a lacquered Oriental comb. Artie must have licked his chops when he saw her dressed up like that. Even I had to admit that she looked pretty sexy.

“Oh, good,” she said when she saw me. “Did you get my message?”

“Message?”

“The one I left on your answering machine.”

“No, I didn’t get it. I haven’t been home.”

“Are you here because you found out something... ?”

“I’m afraid not. I talked to Shimata and Mixer and Ogada, but no luck so far. I just wanted to ask you a few more questions.”

“Damn,” she said angrily, but the anger wasn’t directed at me. “Well, I called you this morning because I received another package.”

“Oh? The same sort as before?”

“Not exactly. Come in and I’ll show you.”

She led me into the cluttered, ersatz-antique parlor where we’d held yesterday’s conference. On the coffee table were a small white gift box with the lid on and some package wrapping and twine. There was no sign of her wimpy husband.

I picked up the wrapping paper. All that was printed on it this time, in the familiar crabbed, childlike scrawl, was a single word:
Chiyoko
.

Haruko said, “He didn’t mail it this time; he must have brought it here himself and left it on the porch beside the mailbox. Art found it at nine-thirty, when he went out to buy coffee.”

“What does ‘Chiyoko’ mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s my middle name.” She seemed to think that needed explanation; she said, “If Japanese-Americans have middle names at all, they’re usually American names; but my father liked to be different. Haruko Chiyoko. It sounds strange.”

It didn’t sound strange to me, but what did I know? I said, “So do you make a secret of it, then? Or is it common knowledge?”

She shrugged. “Everybody who knows me knows it’s my middle name,” she said. “I’m not ashamed of it.”

“Is there anyone who calls you by that name?”

“No. No one ever has.” She watched me put the wrapping paper back on the table and pick up the gift box. Then she said, “Whoever he is, he’s getting bolder, isn’t he.”

“Not necessarily.”

“It sure seems that way.” Her expression turned wry. “And now he’s not even sending me anything worthwhile.”

“Pardon?”

“His latest present—it’s not valuable like the others.”

“Another piece of jewelry?”

“A medallion,” she said in insulted tones. “An old, cheap, used one.” She reached over and pulled the lid off the box I held in my hands. “There, you see? Damascene, that’s all. It’s probably not worth more than twenty dollars.”

I stared at it. A lacquered thing shaped like a St. Christopher’s medal, with an inlaid design comprised of gold and silver lines. Once it must have had a rich, high polish; now it was dulled and one corner was chipped. Through an eyehook on top was a loop of stiff, new rawhide, so that the medallion could be worn around the neck.

I kept on staring at it. Because I had seen it before—it, or one very similar. And I did not like the connection it formed in my mind; I didn’t like it at all.

The medallion was what the young Simon Tamura had been wearing in the broken-framed photograph lying next to his corpse.

Haruko said, “What’s the matter? Why are you looking at it that way?”

“Have you ever seen a medallion like this before?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“So it’s not a common type or design.”

“No. It’s just a piece of damascene.”

“What’s damascene?”

She told me: a process that involved chiseling fine lines on a steel foundation, inlaying them with gold and silver, corroding the steel with acid, and then lacquering and polishing. “They make damascene in Kyoto,” she said. “One of the old arts.”

“And it isn’t expensive, even with the gold and silver inlays?”

“No. Not unless it’s a large piece, where a lot of precious metal is used. You can buy most damascene for a few dollars.”

I set the box down on the table again. “What about the design on the medallion?” I asked her. “Does that have any significance?”

“To me? No.”

“Historical or religious significance, maybe?”

“Not that I know of. But I’m a Sansei; I was born here, not in Japan.”

“Did you know Simon Tamura?”

The abrupt shift in questions made her blink. “The man who owns Tamura’s Baths?”

“Yes.”

“I met him when I was seeing Ken Yamasaki, and I saw him again a few months ago. Why are you asking about Mr. Tamura?”

“You didn’t know he was murdered last night?”

“
Murdered?
My God, no.”

“It was all over this morning’s paper.”

“We don’t take the morning paper.” She was frowning and she looked a little edgy now. “What happened to him?”

“Somebody hacked him to death with a samurai sword,” I said. “In his office at the bathhouse. I had the bad luck to find the body when I went there to talk to your friend Yamasaki.”

Her gaze slid away from my face and down to my hands, as if she were looking for bloodstains. A little shiver ran through her; you could see that violence, even the discussion of it, upset her. “I don’t understand,” she said after a time. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Maybe nothing. But there was a framed photograph beside Tamura’s body that had been knocked off the wall—three young men, one of them Tamura, taken between thirty and forty years ago. He was wearing a medallion in the photo just like this one.”

She started to speak, but there were thumping noises on the hall stairs just then and her mouth hinged shut on whatever the words were. Art Gage’s voice called, “Haruko? Where are you?” and I heard him do some more thumping in the hall. But I kept my eyes on Haruko. Her face was pale; anxiety crouched like shadows behind the dull light in her eyes.

Gage came into the room with a big sheet of draftsman’s paper flapping in one hand. He saw me, stopped, and said, “Oh.” Then Haruko’s expression registered on him and his reaction was almost Chaplinesque: a seriocomic look of shock and consternation, followed by a rush to her side and some solicitous pawing. She didn’t look at him or try to move away. All she did was start gnawing on her lower lip like a beaver working on a twig.

“What is it, hon?” Gage asked her. When she didn’t answer he swung his head and glared at me. “What did you say to her? Why is she—?”

“Your wife and I are having a private discussion, Mr. Gage,” I said. “How about if you leave us alone so we can finish it.”

He shook the sheet of draftsman’s paper at me. It had some kind of fleur-de-lis design on it, intermingled with stylistic sunbursts, so the gesture was more humorous than threatening. Chaplin would have liked that too.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t have to—”

“Art.” She said it soft, with none of yesterday’s sharpness, but he was so used to hearing it that it had the same effect: he shut his mouth immediately. “Go back to the studio,” she said. “Go finish the design.”

“But—”

“I’ll tell you what this is about later.”

He hesitated. “Well, if you’re sure ...”

“Go on, Artie.”

He went. He was one of those people who were destined to wander through life delivering half-finished sentences, one of those people nobody ever listened to, and I felt a little sorry for him. But not much.

When I heard him on the stairs again I said to Haruko, “The times you saw Tamura—was he wearing anything that might have been this medallion? Take your time. Think about it.”

She took fifteen or twenty seconds, with her eyes half shut. “I’m not sure,” she said finally. “I think ... I seem to remember a leather thong like that being around his neck. But I never saw what was on it.”

“Suppose it was the medallion,” I said. “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to send it to you?”

“No. God, no.”

“Ken Yamasaki, maybe. Would he have a reason?”

She shook her head.

“Just how well do you know Yamasaki?”

“Not very well,” she said. “I told you that yesterday. We dated off and on for a few weeks, that’s all.”

“What does he look like?”

The question puzzled her, but she answered it without questions of her own. “He’s a year or two older than me, slim, sensitive-looking. He wears glasses.”