Quicksilver

Chapter Eight

Haruko said, “What’s the matter? Why are you looking at it that way?”

“Have you ever seen a medallion like this before?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“So it’s not a common type or design.”

“No. It’s just a piece of damascene.”

“What’s damascene?”

She told me: a process that involved chiseling fine lines on a steel foundation, inlaying them with gold and silver, corroding the steel with acid, and then lacquering and polishing. “They make damascene in Kyoto,” she said. “One of the old arts.”

“And it isn’t expensive, even with the gold and silver inlays?”

“No. Not unless it’s a large piece, where a lot of precious metal is used. You can buy most damascene for a few dollars.”

I set the box down on the table again. “What about the design on the medallion?” I asked her. “Does that have any significance?”

“To me? No.”

“Historical or religious significance, maybe?”

“Not that I know of. But I’m a Sansei; I was born here, not in Japan.”

“Did you know Simon Tamura?”

The abrupt shift in questions made her blink. “The man who owns Tamura’s Baths?”

“Yes.”

“I met him when I was seeing Ken Yamasaki, and I saw him again a few months ago. Why are you asking about Mr. Tamura?”

“You didn’t know he was murdered last night?”

“ Murdered? My God, no.”

“It was all over this morning’s paper.”

“We don’t take the morning paper.” She was frowning and she looked a little edgy now. “What happened to him?”

“Somebody hacked him to death with a samurai sword,” I said. “In his office at the bathhouse. I had the bad luck to find the body when I went there to talk to your friend Yamasaki.”

Her gaze slid away from my face and down to my hands, as if she were looking for bloodstains. A little shiver ran through her; you could see that violence, even the discussion of it, upset her. “I don’t understand,” she said after a time. “What does that have to do with me?”

“Maybe nothing. But there was a framed photograph beside Tamura’s body that had been knocked off the wall-three young men, one of them Tamura, taken between thirty and forty years ago. He was wearing a medallion in the photo just like this one.”

She started to speak, but there were thumping noises on the hall stairs just then and her mouth hinged shut on whatever the words were. Art Gage’s voice called, “Haruko? Where are you?” and I heard him do some more thumping in the hall. But I kept my eyes on Haruko. Her face was pale; anxiety crouched like shadows behind the dull light in her eyes.

Gage came into the room with a big sheet of draftsman’s paper flapping in one hand. He saw me, stopped, and said, “Oh.” Then Haruko’s expression registered on him and his reaction was almost Chaplinesque: a seriocomic look of shock and consternation, followed by a rush to her side and some solicitous pawing. She didn’t look at him or try to move away. All she did was start gnawing on her lower lip like a beaver working on a twig.

“What is it, hon?” Gage asked her. When she didn’t answer he swung his head and glared at me. “What did you say to her? Why is she-?”

“Your wife and I are having a private discussion, Mr. Gage,” I said. “How about if you leave us alone so we can finish it.”

He shook the sheet of draftsman’s paper at me. It had some kind of fleur-de-lis design on it, intermingled with stylistic sunbursts, so the gesture was more humorous than threatening. Chaplin would have liked that too.

“Listen,” he said, “I don’t have to-”

“Art.” She said it soft, with none of yesterday’s sharpness, but he was so used to hearing it that it had the same effect: he shut his mouth immediately. “Go back to the studio,” she said. “Go finish the design.”

“But-”

“I’ll tell you what this is about later.”

He hesitated. “Well, if you’re sure…”

“Go on, Artie.”

He went. He was one of those people who were destined to wander through life delivering half-finished sentences, one of those people nobody ever listened to, and I felt a little sorry for him. But not much.

When I heard him on the stairs again I said to Haruko, “The times you saw Tamura-was he wearing anything that might have been this medallion? Take your time. Think about it.”

She took fifteen or twenty seconds, with her eyes half shut. “I’m not sure,” she said finally. “I think… I seem to remember a leather thong like that being around his neck. But I never saw what was on it.”

“Suppose it was the medallion,” I said. “Do you have any idea why anyone would want to send it to you?”

“No. God, no.”

“Ken Yamasaki, maybe. Would he have a reason?”

She shook her head.

“Just how well do you know Yamasaki?”

“Not very well,” she said. “I told you that yesterday. We dated off and on for a few weeks, that’s all.”

“What does he look like?”

The question puzzled her, but she answered it without questions of her own. “He’s a year or two older than me, slim, sensitive-looking. He wears glasses.”

So neither of the two guys in the white Ford this morning had been Yamasaki, even though the car was registered in Yamasaki’s name. Curiouser and curiouser.

Haruko said, “You don’t think that Ken…?”

“I don’t think anything, Mrs. Gage,” I said. “I’m only trying to make some sense out of what’s going on. What broke things up between you and Yamasaki?”

“I don’t remember. Nothing specific; we just weren’t compatible and we drifted apart.”

“Did you know he and Simon Tamura were Yakuza?”

The word Yakuza had the effect of a small, sharp slap; she put a hand up to her face as if to rub away the sting. “Ken?” she said. “No, you must be wrong…”

“I don’t think so. It’s a certainty Tamura was one of them; take a look at today’s paper. Yamasaki worked for him, and he disappeared from the baths last night after Tamura was killed. This morning a couple of hard-looking guys followed me around for a while in Yamasaki’s car. I don’t know how that looks to you, but to me it means he’s connected.”

She wagged her head again, loosely this time, as if what I’d just told her was too much to absorb all at once. She backed away from me, bumped into the coffee table, made a kind of graceless sidestep around it, and flopped onto the claw-footed couch. I watched her sit there, waiting for her to say something. All I heard was the thin whispering rhythm of the rain outside.

After awhile I went over and sat on the other end of the couch. “I’m sorry if I upset you, Mrs. Gage,” I said. “But that’s the way things are. I don’t like them any more than you do.”

She nodded. “It’s just that… all of this about murder and the Yakuza…”

“I know, it scares me a little too.”

“I thought detectives didn’t get scared.”

“Some don’t, but I wouldn’t want to be one of them. Fearless people aren’t too bright, usually; they go banging around on their own little ego trips and wind up causing other people grief.”

For some reason that seemed to reassure her. She nodded again, and pretty soon she said, “If Ken is or was Yakuza he never said anything about it to me. And I never heard it from anyone else.”

“What about Tamura?”

“The same. I had no idea he was one of them.”

“The last time you saw Yamasaki… how long ago was it?”

“A few months. Late this past summer.”

“Before you started receiving the presents.”

“Yes.”

“How did he act toward you?”

“The same as always. A little shy; he didn’t talk much.”

“Did he give you any indication that he might still be interested in you?”

“No. We were only together a couple of minutes.”

“Did he mention Tamura at all?”

“Well, Mr. Tamura was there too.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. It was a Japanese festival, a local celebration of Bon Odori — the Feast of the Lanterns to commemorate the dead. A lot of people were there.”

“Did you speak to Tamura?”

“Just a few words, that’s all.”

“And you haven’t heard from Yamasaki since that day?”

Another headshake, and some more gnawing on her lower lip. She seemed to have undergone a subtle transformation in the past few minutes. The strength and determination were masked now by her anxiety and she looked young and vulnerable. I had a moronic impulse to lean over and pat her hand, but I did not give in to it. I was a detective, not a half-assed father figure.

Instead, I stood up. I had run out of questions to ask her; and this was not the time to probe for the names of other men in her life. I said, “I guess that’s all for now, Mrs. Gage,” and then dipped my chin at the gift box on the table. “I’d like to take the medallion with me, if you don’t mind.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Talk to the police,” I told her. “If the medallion belonged to Simon Tamura, they’ll want it as evidence. I also want to find out if they’ve turned up Yamasaki yet and whether or not they think he had anything to do with Tamura’s murder. If he did, and if he’s your secret admirer, your troubles are over.”

“Why would he send me the medallion after all that expensive jewelry? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe it makes sense to him.”

She had not offered any protest, so I took the medallion out of the box, wrapped it in the tissue paper it had come in, and put it into my coat pocket. There wasn’t much chance of fingerprints, because she and probably Artie had handled it, but I was careful with it just the same.

I told her not to worry-an empty reassurance that seemed to linger in the stillness like a dying echo. She didn’t say anything, just kept sitting there with her hands in her lap and her eyes remote. Little girl scared, peering into the dark corners of her imagination as I went away into the rain.

Eberhardt and his new furniture were both sitting in the O’Farrell Street office when I walked in a few minutes before three. The desk was all right-simulated oak with a highly polished top and a lot of drawers-but the rest of it was the kind of white elephant stuff salesmen unload on people who don’t know what they’re buying. An old-fashioned swivel chair with a curved back that looked as if it had come out of somebody’s attic; a couple of filing cabinets painted a mustard yellow and made out of compressed particle board so that they probably weighed about five hundred pounds each; a metal typewriter table so shaky-looking I would have been afraid to set a pen on it, much less a typewriter. He had even bought a water cooler, one of those porcelain jobs with a trough at the bottom.

The desk was over in front of the side-wall window, the one that looked out on the blank brick wall of the neighboring building. The other stuff was over there too, everything except the cooler thing; that was sitting next to the door, waiting for somebody to haul in a bottle of Alhambra Water. He’d left me the space in front of the middle two windows, under the skylight-which was decent of him, I supposed, since that space was opposite the door and would put me in the position of authority. But I still felt depressed. I had felt depressed the instant I came in.

Eberhardt was tilted back in the swivel chair with his feet up on the desk and a styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand. He waggled a shoe at me and said, “So what do you think? Do I look like a private dick?”

“You look like a dick, all right. A big one.”

“You’re a hoot, you are. How do you like the furniture?”

“Just dandy. Except that your file cabinets clash with the paint on the linoleum.”

“Yeah, I don’t like that yellow color much. Looks like baby crap. But I got a good price and I can always paint ’em white or something.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You think my stuff will look okay with yours?”

“Terrific. The Pinkertons’ll be envious as hell.”

He finished his coffee and put the cup on the floor beside him. When he learned over like that you could see the scar behind his ear where one of the bullets had lodged back in August. “What’s eating you?” he said. “You getting your period, or what?”

“Now who’s a hoot? No, it’s this damn case I’m working on. I don’t like the way it’s shaping up.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Yeah, I do. We’re partners now; we might as well start confiding in each other.” I cocked a hip against the far corner of his desk. The light from the upside-down grappling hook overhead reflected off one of the clusters of brass balls, so that it looked like the damned things were winking at me. “Besides, I’m going to need your help.”

“How so?”

“I’ve got to go down to the Hall and talk to Leo McFate pretty soon. I’d like you to come with me.”

“Why? You’re not in trouble again, are you?”

“Not with the Department.”

“Who, then?”

“Maybe the Yakuza. I’m not sure.”

He swung his feet off the desk and sat up. “Christ, I thought you told me-”

“Eb, when I talked to you this morning I honestly believed there wasn’t any connection between Tamura’s death and the case I’m working on; now I think there might be one after all. But it only concerns me indirectly. I know that, but the Yakuza might not.”

“You expect me to make any sense out of that?” he said. “Start at the beginning.”

So I started at the beginning and told him the whole thing in detail. He didn’t interrupt; he’d been a good cop and good cops are good listeners. He stayed silent until after I’d shown him the damascene medallion. Then he spread his hands and said, “Well, it doesn’t look so bad to me.”

“No?”

“No. The Yakuza angle’s a little dicey, sure. But the rest of it

… I don’t know, maybe you got Mrs. Cage all stirred up for nothing.”

“You don’t buy a connection between the medallion in the photograph and this one?”

“I can see where it’s possible,” he said. “But only if this Ken Yamasaki is both the killer and Mrs. Gage’s unknown admirer. And even then I can’t figure a motive for him swiping the medallion and sending it to her.”

“Maybe he’s a psycho,” I said. “Pyschos only need reasons for doing things that satisfy themselves.”

“Also possible. But it still looks to me like you’re trying to make a big mystery out of two separate cases. Hell, you were pretty shook last night when you found Tamura; you admitted that. And you didn’t take a good close look at that photograph. The two medallions might not be the same at all.”

“They’re the same, Eb. You’ll see for yourself when you look at the photo. McFate’ll have had it tagged and brought in from the baths, probably.”

“Uh-huh. Now I get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why you want me to go down to the Hall with you,” he said. “You figure McFate might not believe this theory of yours and if he doesn’t, and you’re there alone, he won’t let you see the photo. Or tell you how his investigation is going. But if I’m there it makes you look better, gets you some answers, and buys your way into the Property Room. Right?”

“Same old Eb,” I said. “Sharp as a tack.”

He told me what I could do with a sharp tack. But that and the scowl that went with it were just for show; he was enjoying himself, enjoying the idea of the two of us working together and of getting back into harness himself. Same old Eb, all right-finally. It was good to see.

So how come I still felt depressed?

“You coming to the Hall with me or not?” I asked him.

He pretended to consider it some more. Then he said, “I guess I might as well. Keep you out of any more hot water. But don’t count on me having much influence now that I’m retired. Especially with McFate; we never did get along too good.”

Somebody started pounding on the office door. “That’ll be my furniture,” I said, and got up and went to admit the storage company guys.

It took them the better part of an hour to move in my belongings: secondhand oak desk, matching chair, a trio of chrome visitors’ chairs, two metal file cabinets, the blowup poster of an old Black Mask cover I used as a wall decoration, typewriter and stand, hot plate, and two packing boxes of miscellaneous junk. Eberhardt helped me shift the stuff around until the place looked halfway presentable. My desk covered up most of the paint stains on the linoleum, which left only the ceiling fixture and those mustard yellow file cabinets to be dealt with.

“Not too bad, is it?” Eberhardt said when we were done. “Looks kind of homey.”

“Yeah,” I said. It didn’t look too bad at that. It was a hell of a lot more my style than the last set of offices I’d occupied, down on Drumm Street, where I’d had to put up with venetian blinds and pastel walls and a pimp-yellow phone-all because I’d had the dumb idea that I needed to project a more modern image.

Eb said, “You’re not having any second thoughts, are you?” and I realized that he’d suddenly grown serious. “About the partnership, us making a go of it together?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“Well, you look kind of broody. And I want this to work out-I want it real bad.”

“Same here.”

“Not just for my sake. For yours too. Because… hell, you been a good friend and I don’t want to let you down again.”

“Eb…”

“No, I mean it. And I got to say it. If it hadn’t been for you I don’t know where I’d be right now. Or if I’d be anywhere. You… well, if I had a brother… ah hell, I’m no good with words,” and he stuck out his hand.

I took it, and we looked at each other for a time, and I felt a little tight in the throat. And no longer depressed. The mood had peeled away all at once, like a strip of dead skin. I grinned at him finally, and he grinned back, and I said, “Come on, let’s get out of here,” the way they do in the TV cop shows.

We went.