There was no answer at one of the Oakland numbers; the other one drew a blank-the woman I spoke to had never heard of Michio Wakasa or Chiyoko Wakasa. Another blank in Palo Alto. And another in Eureka. No answer at the Vacaville number. Two more blanks at the Wakasa households in Southern California. Five down, three to go.
By the time I finished the last of the calls, it was after one-thirty. And Haruko still hadn’t come home.
I began to feel the same edginess I had last night when I couldn’t get hold of her. I sat on one of the fake Victorian chairs. Got up pretty soon and paced for a while. Stopped pacing and called the Oakland and Vacaville numbers again, still without getting a response at either place. Sat some more. Paced some more. Went to the bay windows and stood staring out at the empty street, at a sky that was clouding up again, building more rain.
Two o’clock. No Haruko.
Two-fifteen.
No Haruko.
Gage came clumping downstairs, poked his head into the parlor, saw me alone and pacing again, and said, “Where’s Haruko?”
“She hasn’t come back yet.”
“What?” He came over to where I was and scowled at me, as if her not being there was my fault. And maybe, damn it, it was. “She should have been back by now, even on the Muni. She said she’d be here by one o’clock at the latest, because you were coming.”
“She took the bus, you say?”
“Yes. Parking is such a hassle downtown.”
“Does she usually call if she’s going to be late?”
“She always calls.”
“Where was this nine o’clock meeting of hers?”
“On Post Street. Post and Mason.”
“Somebody’s office, or what?”
“The Sundler Agency.”
“You have their number?”
“I can look it up.”
He did that; and I called the Sundler Agency and asked a woman with a nasal voice if Haruko Gage was still there. The woman said no, she wasn’t, and sounded surprised at the question. Mrs. Gage, she said, had left their offices before lunch, at about eleven-thirty.
I put the handset down and turned to Gage and repeated the information to him. He looked worried and upset now-but not half as worried and upset as I was.
“All this time,” he said. “Where the hell could she be?”
Yeah, I thought grimly. Where the hell could she be?
Chapter Nineteen
I left the Gage house at a quarter to three. Haruko still hadn’t shown up, and Art Gage was working himself into a manic state and getting on my nerves. He was the type who can’t handle a crisis, who always starts to unravel at the first sign of one. If I’d told him what I suspected, he’d have probably broken down into gibbering hysterics. As it was, the only things I did tell him where that I was going out looking for her and that he should stay put.
But where was I going to go looking for her? If she’d been kidnapped by her psychotic admirer, and I couldn’t see any other explanation, I still had no inkling of who he was. Or what lay behind his fixation with her-the reason he’d murdered three men. And the only lead I had at the moment were those three remaining Wakasas, the two that hadn’t answered their phones and the one in Eureka who wasn’t listed.
All the way downtown, I kept thinking: This is my fault. I should have gone to see her last night, as late as it was; I should have insisted then that she go away somewhere safe. The thought was pointless and counterproductive, but I couldn’t get it out of my head. If anything happened to Haruko…
The only place I could think to go was the new office for a conference with Eberhardt and some more telephoning. When I came in he was hammering a nail into one of the walls, hanging my framed blowup of the Black Mask cover.
“Be with you in a second,” he said “Just let me get this up.”
The phones had been installed-old-fashioned black ones, thank God. I crossed to the one on my desk and called the Cage house. Artie answered instantly. He wasn’t happy to hear from me again so soon-he’d thought it might be Haruko catting-and I wasn’t happy that she still hadn’t turned up. I cut the conversation short so I wouldn’t have to listen to him break down some more.
Eberhardt was finished with the poster and watching me as I put the handset down. He said, “What’s going on? You look grim.”
I told him what was going on.
“Christ,” he said. “If you’re right and she’s snatched, it’ll be this time tomorrow before the boys at the Hall can act on it. She won’t be officially missing for twenty-four hours, not without an eyewitness or some other evidence of kidnapping.”
“And meanwhile,” I said, “she’s out there God knows where at the mercy of a lunatic.”
“Don’t jump down my throat, paisan. It’s a lousy deal, but it’s not my fault.”
“No,” I said. “I keep thinking it’s mine.”
“Why? You couldn’t have known he’d go after her so soon.”
“I suspected he might. I told you that last night, remember?”
“Bull. This’d be a hell of a world if we could run it by hindsight. You wops are as bad as us Jews when it comes to shouldering guilt.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“So what’re you planning to do?”
“Keep trying to get through to the rest of the Wakasas. Call some of her ex-boyfriends, see what that gets me. And if none of it pans out… hell, I don’t know. Go get that white jade ring and drive up to Petaluma and see if Kazuo Hama’s family can positively identify it. Maybe the cops up there will listen to me then. At least they can help me get a line on how the Wakasa woman died, if nothing else.”
“You seem convinced she’s the key,” he said.
I nodded. “I’ve got a feeling that if I can find out the how and why of her death, I’ll be able to put the rest of it together.”
I turned back to the phone and dialed the Oakland and Vacaville numbers again. Still no answer at either one. The telephone installer had left a couple of brand-new directories; I opened the white pages to the number of the Shimata Art Gallery in Japantown.
Eberhardt said, “I’ll go downstairs and get us some coffee. You look like you could use a cup.”
I looked at my watch. Three-thirty. “Okay, Eb, thanks-but make it quick, will you? If I’m still drawing blanks in fifteen minutes, I’d better get out of here and on the road to Petaluma. The rush-hour traffic’ll be bad enough as it is.”
He hustled out and I called the Shimata number. A woman’s voice answered; she said Kinji Shimata wasn’t there and was not expected back today. She wouldn’t tell me where I could find him. Maybe there was something in that, and maybe he was out playing golf or getting a tooth filled or any one of a hundred other mundane things.
I called Nelson Mixer’s house. No answer. Still at CCSF, maybe, which meant I couldn’t reach him by phone. But I called there anyway, on the chance that he might have left for the day and signed out at the registrar’s office. But as far as the woman I spoke to was concerned, he was presently conducting his three o’clock lecture on nineteenth-century U.S. history.
Ogada’s Nursery wasn’t listed in the San Francisco directory; I got the number from San Mateo County Information. No answer. Which didn’t have to mean anything either; Edgar and his father both might be out somewhere doing mundane things of their own.
I considered calling Ken Yamasaki’s number and decided that would be an exercise in futility. Even if the Yakuza had let him go with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, he didn’t figure to be the man I was after. The probable time of Haruko Gage’s abduction was between eleven-thirty and twelve, after she left the Sundler Agency and before she was able to board a bus for home, and at that time Yamasaki had been sitting and sweating in Hisayuki Okubo’s private compartment on the Kara Maru.
Frustration and a mounting sense of desperation made me try the unanswered Oakland number again, even though it had only been ten minutes since I’d last dialed it. But someone had come h
ome in those ten minutes-a teenage girl from the sound of her voice, probably just in from school. She picked up on the fourth ring and said, “Hi. Andy?”
“Not,” I said, and identified myself and said it was urgent that I locate either a man named Michio Wakasa who had once worked as a gardener in Petaluma, or any of his relatives. Silence. I thought at first that it was because she was disappointed I was not someone named Andy, but that wasn’t it at all. Pretty soon she said, “My grandfather’s name was Michio. My dad’s father. He died about ten years ago.”
“Did he once live in Petaluma?”
“I think so.”
My hand was tight around the receiver now; I could feel the tension in my bad arm and across my back. “Did he have a daughter named Chiyoko?”
Pause. “That was my aunt’s name. How come you’re asking all this stuff about my family?”
“It’s complicated,” I said, “and I don’t have the time to explain it so it’ll make sense to you. But I’m a detective and I’m trying to find someone-a lady who’s in serious trouble.”
“She’s not in my family, is she? This lady?”
“No. You don’t know her. Tell me about your Aunt Chiyoko.”
“Well, I don’t know much about her. She died before I was born. In Petaluma, I think.”
“How did she die?”
“I don’t know. Nobody in the family ever talks about it.”
Damn! “When will your mother and father be home?”
“My father’s out of town on business. My mother’ll be home around six. She works in San Francisco.”
“She does? Where?”
“Embarcadero Center.”
“Where in the Embarcadero Center?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you that…”
“Please, it’s very important.”
“Well… Carnaby’s. That’s a shop in Number Two.”
“Thanks, honey,” I said. “Thanks very much.”
I was putting the receiver down when Eberhardt came back with the coffee. He read the look on my face and said, “You get something?”
“Looks that way. The name of Chiyoko Wakasa’s sister-in-law and the place where she works-right here in the city.” I took one of the styrofoam cups he was carrying, unlidded it, drank a slug of coffee, and then put the cup down on the desk and started for the door. “I’ll call you if it leads anywhere definite.”
“Luck, huh?”
“It’s not me who needs it,” I said. “It’s Haruko Gage.”
The Embarcadero Center is a four-block complex opposite the Ferry Building, and not far from my previous office on Drumm Street. It had been built progressively over the past several years-high-rise office buildings, with arcades on the lower two levels full of artwork and yellow crysanthemums and lots of shops and cafes. You could get from one block to another via covered and open-air areaways spanning the streets, but that wasn’t how I entered Number Two. I parked illegally on its Sacramento Street side, because it was four-thirty and raining again and the streets were full of departing office workers and both curbside and garage parking were time-consuming chores, and I went in through the main ground-floor entrance.
Carnaby’s, according to the lobby directory, was up on the first level. I took the escalator and found the shop easily enough. It was one of those places that sold package wrapping items, greeting cards, papercraft, decorator candles that sort of thing; now, because it was December, all the stuff was aimed at the Christmas trade. A music tape was playing “Jingle Bells” when I came in. As tense as I was right then, the holiday song grated on my nerves like a file screeching on metal.
The store was moderately crowded with after-work shoppers, and the three salesladies were busy. Only one of the three was Japanese — a short, harried woman with graying hair and big pendant earrings that danced every time she moved. She wasn’t working the cash register, which made it easier for me to coax her off to one side, confirm that she was Mrs. Wakasa, and then explain to her who I was and why I was there.
She didn’t want to talk to me at first. She kept telling me she was too busy, she couldn’t take the time, her boss would fire her, but the real reason was the topic itself; you could see the reluctance in her eyes, and something. else, too, that might have been a deeply ingrained sense of familial disgrace. But I kept after her, repeating how important it was, saying that the information might help save a woman’s life. And I got it out of her finally-in grudging little chunks, without all the details, but everything I needed to know.
“Chiyoko died by her own hand,” Mrs. Wakasa said.
“You mean she committed suicide?”
“Yes. Poison.”
“Why?”
“She couldn’t live with her shame.”
“What shame?”
“The thing that happened to her at the camp.”
“The Tule Lake camp, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her there?”
“She was… attacked.”
“Raped? She was raped?”
“By three boys. Not long before the war ended.”
“Who were the three boys?”
“She couldn’t identify them; it was too dark. Another boy heard her cries and chased them away, but it was too late.”
“Do you know who that other boy was?”
“I don’t remember his name.”
“Did he know Chiyoko before the attack?”
“Yes. They were friends.”
“Was she hurt? Physically, I mean.”
“They… she could not have children.”
“Is that part of the reason she killed herself?”
“Yes. She wanted children very badly.”
“After she died, a man Kazuo Hama built a mausoleum for her to be buried in. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why he did it?”
“My husband’s father had no money and Mr. Hama did.”
“He was a friend of Chiyoko’s, then?”
“He knew her in the camp, he said.”
“But Mr. Hama wasn’t the one who chased away the three rapists?”
“No.”
That was all she had to tell me. But she also had one thing to show me-the last little quicksilver bead that put the whole thing together. I asked her if the family had kept any photographs of Chiyoko, and she said yes, she had one among other family photos in her purse, of her husband and Chiyoko taken just after they were released from Tule Lake, and she got her purse and showed it to me.
Chiyoko Wakasa and Haruko Gage looked enough alike to have been sisters.
Outside in the car, with the office workers and the rush-hour traffic streaming wetly around me, I sat remembering things.
I remembered a pickup truck with a bashed-in fender and a busted headlight. I remembered eyes that had the dull sheen of someone who had been burning a lot of midnight oil-or so I’d thought at the time. I remembered a son asking his father what had happened to some live seafoam and shooting-star miniatures, and thought that both those things could be types of roses. I remembered that same son telling me his mother had died this past summer and how rough her death had been on his father. I remembered that the Feast of the Lanterns had also taken place this past summer, and that it was a festival to commemorate the dead, and the names of those I’d been told were there.
And when I got done remembering these things, I was pretty sure I knew who had murdered Simon Tamura and Sanjiro Masaoka and Kazuo Hama, and who had sent those presents to Haruko Gage, and who had almost surely abducted her this afternoon.
The nursery man-Edgar Ogada’s father.
Chapter Twenty
It was dark and raining heavily when I got to the Ogada Nursery. My headlights made a silver curtain of the rain as I came bouncing in on the boggy access road; they shone in thin bright spatters off the fiberglass walls of the greenhouses ahead. They also picked up somebody at the door of the nearest greenhouse, the only
lighted one — somebody in a yellow slicker and rain hat.
The figure stood looking in my direction for a moment; then it moved away from the greenhouse door and broke into a run. I took the car over next to the potting shed, where its roof gave some shelter from the driving rain. When I stepped out, the running figure was only twenty yards away and slowing. Enough sidespill from the headlights let me recognize him: Edgar Ogada.
He had slowed to a walk by the time he got to me. He stopped and said, “Oh, it’s you,” and he sounded troubled. He looked troubled, too; his face was set in tight lines under the rain hat. “I thought you were my uncle; I called him a while ago and he said he’d be right over.”
“Something wrong at the greenhouse?”
Edgar hesitated. Then, “I’m not sure. My father’s got himself locked inside. He won’t let me in.”
“Is he alone?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t hear anybody else. But with the rain, it’s hard to tell. He was in there when I got home a half hour ago.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Who knows? Whatever it is, he keeps talking to himself while he’s doing it. In Japanese.”
“What is it he’s saying?”
“Mixed-up stuff; I couldn’t make out half of it. He… well, he’s been acting weird lately. He works too hard.”
“Weird in what way?”
“Talking to himself, running around until two or three in the morning, not filling orders, selling stuff that’s already been sold. Or doing something with it; a lot of flowers have just disappeared.”
“What kind of flowers?”
“Mostly roses-bushes and cut pieces.”
“Edgar, was your father at the Tule Lake camp during World War II?”
“Tule Lake? Why do you want to know that?”
“Was he there?”
“Yeah. He was there.”
“Was he married to your mother at the time?”
“No, he was only fourteen when they put him in that place-eighteen when the war ended. He met my mother in 1948.”
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