“I’d like your permission to talk to him.”
“About what?”
“The case I’m working on. The secret admirer.”
“All right. But just that. Understood?”
“Understood.”
Eberhardt had finished lighting his pipe with one of the little wooden matches he uses. He made a show of looking around for an ashtray that wasn’t there, then threw the match in the general direction of the wastebasket. But his aim was off by about ten feet: the match landed in the middle of McFate’s upholstered chair and lay there smoldering.
McFate made a wounded noise when the match landed, lunged at the chair, picked the match up, and hurled it into the wastebasket. “For God’s sake!” he said. “Can’t you be more careful?”
“Sorry, Leo,” Eberhardt said blandly. He got to his feet, and I followed suit. “I won’t bring my pipe next time I stop by for a chat.”
We left McFate looking exasperated and walked out of the squadroom to the elevators. I said, “Now you know what it’s like on the other side of the fence.”
“Yeah. And I think I’m going to like it on your side.” He grinned a little. “Especially when Leo’s around.”
“You really did a number on him in there. How come?”
“Like I told him, he’s got no sense of humor. I always did enjoy getting a rise out of him.”
“Is that the only reason?”
He gave me a sidewise look. “What do you think?”
“I think McFate is an asshole.”
“Bingo,” he said.
We rode the elevator down to the Property Room, where the SFPD keeps evidence, weapons, and confiscated items of all types, among other things. The sergeant in charge was a friend of Eberhardt’s, and he was the one who’d taken McFate’s call, so we had no trouble getting through security. The sergeant brought the photograph out and stood by while Eb and I bent over one of the tables, peering at it.
The medallions seemed to match, all right, when I laid the one I’d gotten from Haruko Gage next to the one in the print. As grainy as the old photo was, the blowup of it made the medallion and its odd design clearly visible.
Eberhardt grunted. “So they’re the same,” he said. “I hate to sound like McFate, but what does it prove?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I studied the photo itself for a time. The three men, Simon Tamura in the middle, their arms around one another and their faces split by wide grins. The wire-mesh fence behind them, and the distant, blurred buildings beyond. None of that told me anything.
Who were the other two men? I wondered. And then I turned the photograph over and slipped it out of its broken frame, and I had my answer. Simon Tamura was one of those people who write information on the backs of photos; there were some Japanese characters drawn in ink, and also some words in English. The English words said: With Sanjiro Masaoka and Kazuo Hama — 1945.
I wrote the names down in my notebook. Then I turned the photo over again and looked at it a while longer, fixing the two faces that flanked Tamura’s in my mind. Then I said to Eb and to the sergeant, “Okay, that should do it,” and a couple of minutes later we were on our way out of the building.
Eberhardt asked, “What next, mastermind?”
“Nothing, today.” It was six o’clock and dark and still raining; I’d had enough of today as far as work went. “Tomorrow I go see Ken Yamasaki. And run a check on those two names in the photo; there might be an angle there if Masaoka and Hama are still alive and still living around here.”
“Uh-huh. You sure you’re not running off half-cocked on this thing?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not sure.”
“But that won’t stop you from going ahead, right?”
“If it ever does I’ll get out of the business.”
“I figured. Anything else you want me to do?”
“I guess not. I’ll take it from here, Eb. Thanks.”
I dropped him at his car on O’Farrell Street and drove on up to Pacific Heights. There was no sign of the white Ford, or of any other car full of Japanese, in the vicinity of my building. I circled the block a couple of times to make sure. So maybe they’d given up on me, after the little episode out by China Beach this morning. I hoped so; I did not want to be anybody important or even interesting as far as the Yakuza was concerned.
The first thing I did when I entered the flat was to check the telephone book for a local listing on either Sanjiro Masaoka or Kazuo Hama. No luck; it wasn’t going to be that easy.
My answering machine had one message on it-from Jeanne Emerson, asking again if I would please call her as soon as possible. No, I would not please call her as soon as possible. I would call her tomorrow-maybe. On the other hand, if I ignored her she might just go away; and that might be the best solution for all of us. Especially for me, craven coward that I was when it came to women.
I called Kerry instead and asked her if I could come over and tell her about my day and maybe continue our discussion on primitive mating habits. She said, “I know you, you’ve got lust in your heart,” and I said, “Yup,” and she said, “All right, then, I’ll risk it. Come ahead. I’ll see what I can find for dinner.”
What she’d found for dinner, I discovered when I got there, was a tuna fish salad with hardboiled eggs and some crackers and an apple for dessert. She saw me looking at it and told me to quit making faces and sit down and eat. I obeyed; I would have eaten anything right then, including the asparagus fem she had hanging in one corner of the dining area.
Over coffee I gave her a rundown of my day. We discussed matters for a while, to no particular conclusion. Then I made a fire with a Presto-log and we sat on the couch and watched the rain patter down outside her picture window, distorting the lights of the city. The fire and the rain made me drowsy and amorous at the same time. So I showed her a few of my primitive moves, the preliminary ones, and she suggested I show her the rest of my repertoire in the bedroom. We got up and walked in there holding hands.
Well, it should have been a terrific finale after all that buildup. It should have been passion and excitement and atavism and fulfillment, followed by tenderness and languor and gentle touching. It should have been a lot of things like that, but it wasn’t any of them. It wasn’t any damned thing at all.
I fell asleep waiting for her to come out of the bathroom in her sexy black negligee.
Chapter Ten
I didn’t get any loving in the morning, either. Kerry was already up and in the shower when I woke up at seven-thirty; I remembered groggily that even though it was Saturday, she had an early meeting at Bates and Carpenter. I lurched into the bathroom with the idea of getting something started in the shower, but by the time I got there she was on her way out. I made a grab at all that pink and glowing flesh; she swatted me with her towel, hard enough to sting.
“Well, well,” she said, “the big lover’s alive after all.”
“Ah, hell, I’m sorry I fell asleep. But I had a rough day. Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“I tried to wake you up. You’ve probably got bruises all over you from me trying to wake you up.”
I made another grab for her, and she smacked me again with the towel. “I don’t have time now, Don Juan,” she said. “You had your chance.”
I said something petulant.
“Go weigh yourself,” she said.
“What? What kind of suggestion is that?”
“ Weigh, you idiot, not lay. Go weigh yourself on my scale. Let’s see how much weight you’ve lost so far.”
Grumbling, I went and stepped on the scale. It was one of those fancy jobs with frilly covers that women
