Ford, not there on the waterfront and not anywhere on my way to Japantown.
Art Gage opened the Victorian’s front door in answer to my ring and said, “Haruko’s not back yet.” He looked and sounded short-tempered; his eyes, under their blond brows, were hostile.
Don’t mess with me, kid, I thought. Not today. “I’ll wait inside. That is, if you don’t mind.”
“Why should I mind? Come on in.”
He took me into the familiar junk-filled parlor, said he had work to do upstairs in the studio, and started out. I said, “Wait a second. Is it all right if I use your phone?”
“What for?”
“To make some calls on. That’s what people generally use phones for, isn’t it?”
He made a prissy, disgusted noise with his lips. “What the hell, go ahead,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what I say, anyway.”
It would, I thought, if you had anything to say.
He went out of the room and I moved over to where the telephone sat on a wobbly-looking table with rails around the top. I glanced at my watch as I picked up the receiver. It was just one o’clock.
I made Information calls first, to get the numbers of the eight Wakasas living in California. Seven were listed; the one in Fresno either had an unlisted number or no phone at all. Then I called each of those seven, starting with the ones in Oakland and Palo Alto. I did all of it by direct-dialing; the Gages would have to pay message-unit and long-distance charges regardless of whether they were on the phone bill or on my expense list.
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
