Quicksilver

Chapter Sixteen

Three-twenty-nine Bassett Street was maybe ten blocks from downtown, three blocks from City Hall and the police station, and half a block from Petaluma High School. The house itself was an old frame job, painted white, with a glassed-in porch to the right of an old-fashioned walled staircase. Lights burned on the porch, and rattan blinds were only partially drawn over the windows; when I went up the stairs I could see a short, thin, wispy-haired old man sitting in there with his feet on a hassock, watching a television program.

I could still see him as I pushed the doorbell. He sat up, swiveled his head around, blinked at me from behind thick glasses, then got to his feet and blinked at me again and disappeared. Ten seconds later the door opened on a chain and he looked out at me warily. He appeared to be between seventy and eighty; his face was as wrinkled as a raisin. He didn’t say anything.

“Mr. Takeuchi? Charley Takeuchi?”

“I don’t know you,” he said.

“No, sir, you don’t. John Hama gave me your name and address.”

His expression softened a little; the grief that came into his eyes gave them a liquidy look, like chocolate pudding. “You know his father was killed?”

“Yes. That’s part of the reason I’m here.”

“Kazuo and I were friends forty-five years. That’s a long time.”

“Yes, it is. I’m sorry, Mr. Takeuchi.”

“Shikata ga nai, ” he said. “Did you know Kazuo?”

“I’m afraid we never met.”

“A good man. A good friend.” His eyes fluttered behind his glasses. “What is it you want with me?”

“To ask you about some people Mr. Hama used to know. Friends of his back in the forties.”

“The forties,” Mr. Takeuchi said. “The war. That was a bad time.”

“Wars are always bad times.”

“But that one, that war…” He shook his head.

“The two men are Simon Tamura and Sanjiro Masaoka.”

He repeated the names, slowly. Then he nodded and made a wry mouth and said, “Oh, those two. They weren’t Kazuo’s friends. He thought they were, but they weren’t. They only got him in trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Trouble,” he said, and shrugged.

“When was this? During the war?”

“Yes, the war.”

“At the Tule Lake camp?”

His mouth pinched up; the look that crossed his expressive face this time was one of pain. “That place,” he said. “Makura moto!”

“I don’t understand, Mr. Takeuchi.”

“A terrible place to sleep. To live.”

“And that was where Simon Tamura and Sanjiro Masaoka got Mr. Hama in trouble?”

“It was. Stealing, making insults, blowing bugles before dawn. Other things.”

“What other things?”

“I don’t know. I never wanted to know.”

“Mr. Hama didn’t speak about them?”

“Not about them, not about that place. He was a good boy after the war; he worked hard with his chickens. I worked hard too. And now I’m old and I have no money and my sister takes care of me.” He shrugged again.

“Did Mr. Hama have a girlfriend at Tule Lake?”

“Girlfriend? No, I don’t think so.”

“Did he know a woman there named Chiyoko Wakasa?”

Mr. Takeuchi was silent for ten seconds or so; he seemed to be searching his memory. “I don’t remember,” he said finally. “I don’t believe I ever knew a woman called Chiyoko.”

“She was about Mr. Hama’s age. She died in 1947, here in Petaluma or somewhere nearby.”

“There was a Wakasa family here once. Yes, Michio Wakasa-a gardener. But they moved away.”

“Did Michio Wakasa have a daughter?”

“I don’t remember.”

“When did the family move away?”

“A long time ago.”

“Could it have been in the late forties?”

“It could have been.”

“Do you know where they moved to?”

“No,” he said. “No.”

“Did you and Mr. Hama talk much recently?”

The question seemed to confuse him. “Recently?”

“Before he died. The past few weeks.”

“Sometimes we talked. He came to visit sometimes.”

“Did he ever mention a woman named Haruko Gage? Or Haruko Fujita?”

“All these names, all these questions,” he said. The confusion was still in his eyes. “Why do you want to know so many things?”

For the second time that day I lied into the face of grief-the same lies I had told Janet Ito and John Hama. And this time, they got me nothing at all. They didn’t even get me invited inside Charley Takeuchi’s house, where I might have been able to chip a little more out of his memory; instead, they had the opposite effect.

“Lawyers,” he said, and made the wry mouth again. “I don’t like lawyers. I had trouble with lawyers once, when my wife died. Questions, questions, and then legal tricks and all my money was gone.”

“I’m not that kind of lawyer, Mr. Takeuchi-”

“That’s what they said. You leave now. My sister will be home soon; I have to help her cook dinner.”

And he shut the door gently, almost politely. A moment later I heard the snicking sound of a dead-bolt being thrown inside.

I went back down to the car. I would have liked to look through the back files of Petaluma’s newspaper-the Argus-Courier; I’d seen the building on Petaluma Boulevard North-for some mention of how Chiyoko Wakasa had died in 1947. I would also have liked to make the rounds of Japanese families in the area until I located somebody who had either known Chiyoko Wakasa or who had been at the Tule Lake camp during the war and could tell me more about the Tamura-Hama-Masaoka triumvirate. But I couldn’t reasonably do either of those things tonight, and I had no desire to stay over because there were also things I wanted to do in San Francisco. Like getting Haruko to give me the white jade ring, the gold locket, and the medallion, then turning them over to the police and pleading with either Jack Logan or McFate to run a check on the items that would verify their origins. And like finding out more background on the Tule Lake Relocation Center, from a man who ought to know and who I’d been planning to talk to again anyway: Nelson Mixer.

But the main reason I was heading back was Haruko herself. I was more convinced than ever, after what the Hama family had told me and what I’d seen tonight at Cypress Hill Cemetery, that her unknown admirer was a homicidal psychopath. He hadn’t done anything to Haruko except shower her with presents taken off men he’d murdered, but the line between love and hate was a fine one in the sanest of individuals; in the mind of a psycho, it was almost invisible. I was going to have to tell her that, like it or not, because I wanted her and Artie to go away somewhere for a while, out of harm’s way. Just in case.

As soon as I got home I checked the answering machine-one message, Kerry saying she felt better and would I call her-and then dialed the Gage number. No answer. Out somewhere, dinner or something; it was a quarter of eight. But I could feel a vague uneasiness stirring around inside my head.

Instead of calling Kerry right away, I headed into the kitchen. Food before love, food to soothe the nerves: I was famished. The only things in the refrigerator were eggs and carrots and the container of pineapple yogurt and a package of gray-looking ground sirloin that had been there a while. I sniffed the meat. It didn’t smell too bad; and there weren’t any funny little white things crawling around in it. So I broiled it in the oven, soft-boiled three eggs, and ate two carrots and the yogurt while I waited. None of it tasted very good, but it did combine to fill the rumbling hole under my breastbone.

Back in the bedroom, I looked up Wakasa in the San Francisco telephone directory. No listing for anyone by that name. I would have to call Harry Fletcher at the DMV again tomorrow, I thought. Even if Michio Wakasa was no longer alive, there might be suriving members of his family still living in California-somebody, maybe, who had known the woman Chiyoku and who could answer my questions about her.

I tried the Gage number again. Still no answer.

So I called Kerry and talked to her a while. I told her about my trip to Petaluma and I told her about the two kobun; I didn’t tell her the Yakuza had been following her around too, because I didn’t want to upset her. We both would have liked me to go over and spend the night at her place, but it was late and we both had to be up early in the morning. And tomorrow night was out because she had a business dinner with her boss and an agency client. So we had to settle for Tuesday night at my place; her neighbors were fighting again, which usually meant constant yelling and things being broken against walls.

Still nobody home at the Gage house.

I rang up Eberhardt. It took him six rings to answers, and when he did he sounded sleepy and disgruntled. “I feel asleep,” he said. “I was watching this movie, The Horse Soldiers, pretty good old Western with John Wayne, and I just corked off. Christ, I must be getting old.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Maybe I ought to stock up on some Geritol. So what’ve you been up to since Friday? The Yakuza still bothering you?”

“Still following me around, yeah. But it’s not the Yakuza I’m worried about right now.” And I told him what I’d been up to since Friday, what I was worried about.

He didn’t say much until I was finished. “Sounds like you might be onto something pretty hairy, all right,” he said then. “But where’s your proof all three of those Japanese guys were killed by the same. person? Where’s the motive? Hell, you can’t even prove murder in two of the deaths.”

“I know it,” I said. “But I can’t just sit on it, Eb. What if this loony decides to go after Haruko Gage next?”

“Talk to her. Tell her to take a little vacation.”

“I intend to. But she can’t stay on vacation indefinitely.”

“You got some leads to follow up. Maybe you can prove a connection between the Tamura homicide and the Gage woman.”

“I’ve got a connection, remember? The medallion. And that white jade ring links her to Kazuo Hama’s death. And the gold locket links her to Sanjiro Masaoka’s death.”

“So you say. But all McFate and the local boys are interested in is the Tamura case-unless you can show ’em hard evidence that it’s linked to the other two. Which means you got to establish those pieces of jewelry belonged to the three dead guys.”

“I thought maybe Jack Logan would listen to reason.”

“I doubt it. He goes by the book, the same as McFate. The same as I used to, for that matter. But I’ll tell you what: I’ll go talk to Jack myself in the morning, lay it out for him. He’s more liable to listen to me anyhow; and if he buys it, you can take it from there. Sound okay?”

“Sounds fine. Thanks, Eb.”

“ De nada.”

He asked me for the details again-names, dates-and wrote them down as I talked. I was feeling pretty kindly toward him just then. Maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad having Eberhardt for a partner after all. In fact, maybe it was going to be damned good having him around.

When I was done filling him in he said, “Check with me at the office after ten sometime; that’s when the telephone company guy’s coming in to install the phones. If you can’t get there for any reason, why don’t you call that custom-shirt outfit on the floor below? Slim-Taper Shirts, I think the name is. I’ll stop by there in the morning and ask them to send somebody up to get me if you call.”

“Good idea.”

“What color phone you want, by the way?”

“Any color,” I said, “except pimp yellow.”

Another call to the Gage house. Another dozen rings without a response. I was starting to get worried now, even though it was still relatively earty-not yet ten o’clock.

I went and ran some bathwater and got into the tub with a 1948 issue of New Detective. There were some good writers in that issue — John D. MacDonald, William Campbell Gault-but I was too tense to stay with any of the stories. I gave it up at a quarter to eleven, dried off, put on my old chenille robe, and headed for the phone again.

And this time, on the fourth ring, there was an answering click and I heard Haruko Gage’s voice.

I let out a breath and told her who was calling, resisting an impulse to ask her where the hell she’d been; it was none of my business, really, now that I knew she was safe. Then I asked her if the name Chiyoko Wakasa meant anything to her, and she said no, she didn’t know anyone named Wakasa. She sounded honestly puzzled.

“Do you know anybody who was at the Tule Lake Relocation Center during World War II?” I asked.

“No… well, yes, one or two people, I guess. Mr. Tamura was; Ken Yamasaki told me that. What does Tule Lake have to do with anything? And who is Chiyoko Wakasa?”

“I wish I knew. What I do know is too complicated to go into on the phone; suppose we let it wait until morning. I can come by your place around nine…”

“I have a business appointment at nine, downtown. With a representative of one of the companies Art and I design for. I could probably break it at the last minute, but…”

“How long do you expect it’ll last?”

“Until noon or so. I should be back here no later than one o’clock.”

“How about if I meet you at your place at one?”

“All right. Are you sure… I mean, there’s nothing I ought to know right away, is there?”

“No. Don’t worry, Mrs. Gage,” I said. “There isn’t anything to worry about.”

And I hoped I was telling her the truth.