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?”
“No, of course not. I don’t have a father fixation.”
“Nobody at all over fifty?”
Nobody at all over forty,” she said. “I don’t understand. Is there some reason you think my secret admirer is over fifty?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Then why ask me that question. And who are those men-Masaoka and Hama?”
“People whose names have come up,” I said. “Friends of Simon Tamura’s.”
Silence for a time. Finally she said, “That again-the murder. You still think there’s some connection between Mr. Tamura and me, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what I think right now.”
“But what if there is some connection? What if it’s the same man and he decided to…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but it was plain enough what the rest of the words would have been.
“That’s not going to happen,” I said.
“Maybe we should call the police.”
“I’ve already talked it over with the police.”
“You have? What did they say?”
“They don’t think you have anything to worry about either.” It was time to change the subject, and quickly. I said, “You know a lot of people in the Japanese community, Mrs. Gage. Is there anyone who could give me some detailed information on the Yakuza?”
“Well,” she said, and stopped, and then said, “Yes, I suppose Mike Kanaya could.”
“Who’s Mike Kanaya?”
“A reporter for the Hokubei Mainichi. That’s a bilingual newspaper published in Japantown-half in English and half in Japanese.”
“Do you know him well enough to arrange a meeting for me?”
“Yes. But I don’t know if he’ll agree to talk about the Yakuza. It isn’t a subject Japanese discuss openly with gaijin- with non-Japanese.”
“See what you can do, Mrs. Gage. It might be important.”
“All right. When do you want to see Mike?”
“As soon as possible.”
She said she would try to get in touch with Mike Kanaya and call me back after she talked to him, and we rang off. I went out to the kitchen, where I found that most of the coffee water had boiled away; I’d forgotten I had put it on. This was not my day. I couldn’t remember, in fact, the last day that had been mine. I put some more water in the pot, the pot back on the stove, and sat down at the kitchen table to wait and brood.
The waiting got me a cup of too-strong coffee; the brooding got me nothing. I got up after awhile and paced around and watched the rain roll down the glass in the bay windows like tears down mourning faces. Then I went into the bedroom and tried to call the Hama Egg Ranch again, without any more luck than before. I debated trying Kerry’s number-she’d expected to be home from Bates and Carpenter around three-but I didn’t want to tie up the line until Haruko Gage called back.
It was getting dark when Haruko finally did call. She’d got in touch with Mike Kanaya, she said, and he was willing to talk to me; but the soonest he could make it was tomorrow noon, because of business obligations today and tonight and family obligations tomorrow morning. I sighed a little and said all right. Kanaya had suggested meeting at a Japan Center sushi bar; I agreed to that too.
Not being able to see Kanaya until tomorrow pretty much left me with a free evening. It was too late to drive up to Petaluma, especially on a blind lead and with nobody home at the Hama ranch. And there wasn’t any other business I could conduct this late either. What I-might as well do, I thought, was call up Kerry and invite her over for dinner. That way, we could go to bed early and I could get at least one of my little problems taken care of.
So I dialed her number, and she was home. She was also tired and grouchy and coming down with something, and all she wanted to do, she said, was crawl into bed. I offered to come over and crawl into bed with her, but she didn’t think that was a good idea. She wasn’t in the mood for sex or even companionship, she said. She just needed to sleep, she said. Call me tomorrow and we’ll see how I feel then, she said. Good-bye, she said.
I put the phone down. I looked at the four walls and thought again about climbing them. I got my coat and hat and went out into the rain.
I had a big evening for myself. Yes I did. I ate a low-calorie meal at a cafe on Chestnut Street, after which I went to a double feature at one of the revival houses downtown, after which I drove home and went to bed.
The food was awful. So were the movies. And so was sleeping alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Mike Kanaya turned out to be a heavy-set guy in his mid-thirties, with a squarish chin, bushy eyebrows, and bright restless eyes. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, conservative blue-and-gray tie. He struck me as the earnest and inquisitive type, which meant, if true, that he was probably a very good newspaperman.
He was already waiting when I got to the Minami Sushi Bar in the Japan Center just before noon on Sunday. Haruko Gage must have described me to him because he popped up from his table immediately and came over and introduced himself. We shook hands, sizing each other up the way people do when they’re meeting for the first time. Then we went to his corner table, and a waitress followed us over with a pot of tea and a couple of menus.
Kanaya poured tea for both of us. “Have you eaten sushi before?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Other kinds of Japanese food, yes, but not sushi. ”
“You know what it is?”
“Different kinds of raw fish.” And very trendy these days, among those Caucasians who like to consider themselves as being “with it.” Which was why I had never tried sushi myself, even though Kerry had suggested it a time or two. I’m not a “with it” guy; as Leo McFate could testify, I’m just a peon.
Kanaya said, “You have no taste for raw fish?”
“I don’t mind it, I guess. I kind of like sashimi. ”
“Ah. Will you join me, then?”
“Sure,” I said, because I did not want to get this meeting off to a bad start by insulting him. “Why not?”
He beckoned to the waitress and said something to her in Japanese. She went over and said something in turn to the chef behind the glass “bar” where all the sushi was laid out on a bed of crushed ice, and he got to work with a good deal of enthusiasm.
I decided to get down to business too. “Did Mrs. Gage tell you why I’m interested in the Yakuza?” I asked Kanaya. “The details, I mean.”
“Some, but not all.” He lifted his cup of tea, held it without drinking; his squarish face was serious now. “The murder of Simon Tamura, yes?”
“Yes. But I’m not investigating it; I’m trying to get disentangled from it. The Yakuza, or somebody in the
