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 around 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
