As it turned out, I had to stand there worrying about three more minutes. Then the screen door at the weathered house next door opened and a woman came out and down her porch steps. She stopped at the foot of them, put her hands on her hips, and peered at the white Ford. Pretty soon she moved in a purposeful way to her front gate and said something that I didn’t catch to the two kobun. But it must have been a threat—to call the county cops on them for loitering in front of her house, maybe—because it wasn’t long before the Ford’s engine revved up and the car pulled out and went past me and the Masaoka house. Not far, though; it turned the corner at the nearest intersection and angled off onto the verge again.
The woman had also followed the Ford’s progress and that allowed her to notice me. She peered in my direction the way she had peered at the Ford, then walked out through her gate and came down the street and stopped before Masaoka’s gate. She was around sixty, sun-cured and bony and gray-haired, wearing a tattered sweater with suede elbow patches. A tough old bird. Which suited me just fine.
“Hey, you,” she said. To me, not to the Doberman. “What’re you doing in there?”
What does it look like I’m doing? I thought. I’m standing here waiting for the Hound of the Baskervilles to tear out my throat. But I said quietly, so as not to stir up the dog, “I came to see Mr. Masaoka on a business matter. There’s nobody home except Fido here.”
“Oh,” she said in a funny kind of voice. Then she said, “His name’s Tomodachi. That means ‘friend’ in Japanese.”
“Yeah,” I said, “sure.”
“What’d you do, just walk in on him?”
“I didn’t see him. Or any Beware of Dog sign.”
“Used to be a sign. Some kids stole it.”
“Look, ma’am, you suppose you could do something about getting me out of here? I don’t like the way he keeps staring at me.”
“Well, he can be vicious sometimes,” she said. “Tomodachi! Get away! Leave the man alone!”
The Doberman turned his head and gave her a quick look. But he didn’t obey; he swung his gaze back to me and snarled some more and shuffled his front paws. I got ready to defend myself, but nothing happened.
“Damn,” the woman said. “I never could talk to him. Or get near him unless Sanjiro was around. Might be a way, though. I’ll be right back; you stay where you are.”
Lady, I thought, where am I going to go?
She trotted away to her own property, disappeared inside her house for about two minutes, reappeared, and came hurrying back to the Masaoka gate. When she neared it I could see what it was she was holding in one hand: a couple of beaten-up old tennis balls.
“Tomodachi likes to play ball,” she told me. “He likes it more than just about anything.”
“More than attacking strangers, I hope.”
“I’ll try to get him to fetch,” she said. “Then I’ll open the gate and you make a run for it.”
“Like a world-class sprinter,” I said.
“Ball!” she said loudly to the Doberman. “Ball, Tomodachi! Let’s play ball!”
It got his attention. His ears pricked up again, his head came around, and his tongue rolled out of his mouth like a flag unfurling. The woman showed him one of the tennis balls, kept on chattering at him until she succeeded in getting him half turned around and dividing his attention between the two of us. At which point she pulled her arm back and yelled “Fetch!” and uncorked a throw Willie Mays would have been proud of, over toward where the tree stumps were piled.
The Doberman wheeled, she got ready to yank open the gate, I got ready to run like hell ... and the dog ran five feet and stopped and came back and snarled at me some more.
The woman said, “Shit.” Which were my sentiments exactly.
So we had to go through the whole thing again, only longer this time, like extended foreplay, in order to get the dog all hot and bothered over the idea of playing fetch. She teased him with words, juggled the ball from one hand to the other, pretended three or four times that she was going to throw it. The last time she cocked her arm, he scooted away a few feet in anticipation; he was as ready then as he would ever be. And so was I.
The woman glanced at me, and I nodded, and she hauled her arm back again and yelled “Fetch!” and let fly, in the general direction of the hippie-relic bus. The Doberman and I both took off at the same time. I sailed down over the four porch steps without touching any of them, stumbled when I landed, saw that the woman had the gate open, saw that the dog had put on the brakes and was starting to twist back toward me with his fangs bared, caught my balance, and charged ahead slipping and sliding on the muddy path. I got to the opening just as the dog launched himself at my backside, and went galumphing through. The woman slammed the gate shut; the Doberman must have barreled right into it because I heard him yelp. But if he got his dignity wounded, so did I : I had been running so fast that I couldn’t slow down soon enough and I caromed off the side of my car, did a crazy pirouette to one side, tripped, and splashed down into one of the rain puddles.
I said some things that ought to have blistered the paint off the car. The woman didn’t even flinch; she’d come over to the edge of the puddle and was trying not to laugh at me. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m just dandy.” I got onto my feet and sloshed to the car and leaned against the front fender. The Doberman was making lemme-at-him noises and glaring at me through the wood-stake fence; I glared back at him in the same malevolent way. Dogs. Phooey.
The woman said, “Come on over to my place. I’ll let you use a towel.”
“Thanks. And thanks for the rescue.”
“Always glad to be neighborly,” she said. She was still trying not to laugh at me.
We went to her house and she gave me the towel and the use of her bathroom to repair some of the damage to my suit. When I came out she had a cup of coffee for me. She said her name was Ethel Pinkham, grimaced to let me know she hated both ends of it, and told me to call her Pink. Everyone did, she said, and went on to explain that when her late husband was alive he’d been Pink One and she’d been Pink Two. I gave her my name, but not what I did for a living or what my business was with Masaoka. And she didn’t ask.
She said, “Poor Tomodachi. I been feeding him—scraps over the fence; he won’t let me come in the yard either. But he needs care and a new home. One of Sanjiro’s cousins was supposed to come pick him up three days ago. If she doesn’t get here by tomorrow morning I’m calling the SPCA.”
“I don’t follow, Pink. Why does the dog need a new home?”
“Oh, that’s right—you don’t know. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come looking for Sanjiro.”
“Don’t know what?”
“He’s dead,” she said. “Been dead eight days now.”
It took me a couple of seconds to absorb that. Then I said, “How did he die?”
“Some kind of fall. Nobody knows for sure.”
“Where did it happen? His house?”
“No. Out toward the point. He’d been abaloneing by himself, like usual, and he must have fallen off the rocks. One of those freak accidents.”
“This happened eight days ago, you say?”
She nodded. “Early in the morning. Couple of kids found him wedged in amongst the rocks. Hadn’t been dead more than a few hours at the time.”
“Was he married?”
“Widower. His wife died three ... four years back.”
“So he lived alone?”
“Just him and Tomodachi.”
“What about this cousin? Does she live around here?”
“Nope. Over in Fresno.”
“Where she and Masaoka close, do you know?”
“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.
Chapter Twelve
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 aroun
d 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?”
Quicksilver (Nameless Detective) Page 10