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.
Chapter Eight
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.”
