Bill Pronzini - Quicksilver

I remember old Charley Takeuchi telling me that Kazuo Hama had blown bugles before dawn. I asked Mixer, “Was it only the Hokoku members who blew horns?”

“No. Other young men did it too.”

So Kazuo Hama may or may not have been a dissident during his stay at Tule Lake; ditto Simon Tamura and Sanjiro Masaoka. But even if they had been dissidents, I couldn’t see any connection between that and their being killed forty years later; or between that and their jewelry being sent to Haruko Gage.

“Those two camp murders you mentioned,” I said. “Were they both solved?”

“One was. The other, no.”

“Who was the victim of the unsolved one?”

“The general manager of the camp cooperative, a man named… I believe it was Noma, Takeo Noma. He was stabbed to death. The theory at the time, which seems probable, is that he was killed because he was an inu.”

“What’s an inu? ”

“Literally, the word means dog. In the camps it meant an informer, a cheat, a traitor. Noma was hated by nearly everyone at Tule Lake; they considered his death a blessing.”

“There were no leads to who killed him?”

“Several leads. And several men were put into the stockade-the probable killers, in fact. But none was ever indicted; the evidence was too circumstantial.”

“I don’t suppose you remember the names of those men?”

“Not offhand. Do you want me to look them up?”

“If you can do it here and now.”

He nodded, got out of his chair and went to one of the wall shelves and began rummaging through the books there. He picked one out and thumbed through it; put it back and found another and thumbed through that until he located the list of names. He read them off to me, close to a dozen of them.

No Hama. No Tamura. No Masaoka. No Wakasa. And no Fujita.

Zip.

Mixer put the book away, adjusted his mauve jacket and his yellow shirt cuffs in a way that suggested a fox preening itself, and made a small production out of consulting his watch. “Is there anything else you want to know?” he said. “I have an eleven o’clock class.”

“That should do it.”

“Should I expect you to bother me again?”

“Why? Don’t you like my company?”

“Frankly, no.” The persecuted look came back into his eyes. “I’m a peaceful man. I hate violence.”

“I don’t remember getting violent with you.”

“You would have if I hadn’t told you what you wanted to know.”

“Well, you know how it is with us private eyes,” I said. “We like to talk tough and beat up on people once in a while. Just so we don’t get rusty.”

He looked at me as if he were afraid I might jump him after all. “I’m a peaceful man,” he said again.

“Sure you are. A lover, not a fighter.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Yes you do.” I moved over to the door and unlocked it and opened it up. “Tell Darlene her father’s looking forward to those home movies you took the other day.”

“What?” he said. “ What?”

I went out and shut the door softly behind me.

There were public telephone booths on the main floor of Batmale Hall, and I used one of them to look up the number of the Slim-Taper Shirt Company and then to dial it. Somebody at Slim-Taper went and got Eberhardt for me, but the three of us might have saved the effort it took. Jack Logan had been up to his ears in a drug-related triple homicide in Visitacion Valley, Eberhardt said, and not inclined to spend any time at all checking out either jewelry or deaths in Princeton and Petaluma. Besides, the Tamura killing was McFate’s case-we should go talk to McFate.

Yeah.

I told Eberhardt I would see him later and rang off. It was all up to me now, like it or not.

Another call to the DMV. Fletcher, had the list ready for me: eight Wakasas with California driver’s licenses, none of them named Michio; three in the Bay Area, one in Fresno, one in Eureka, one in Vacaville, and two in Southern California. Of the three locals, two lived in Oakland and one in Palo Alto. I wrote down all the names and addresses, thanked Fletcher, again, assured him I wouldn’t bother him any more for a while, and rang off.

I still had two hours until my meeting with Haruko Gage, and as I crossed the campus I decided to go home and use the time to telephone Wakasas. But I changed my mind when I came out on Phelan Avenue and again confronted the white Ford and the two kobun sitting inside it. Enough was enough. The Wakasa telephoning would have to wait a while.

The time had come for me to deal with the Yakuza, one way or another.

The Kara Maru Restaurant was on China Basin Boulevard a block or so off Third Street, tucked up between Pier 52 and a marine salvage company. It had once been a small ocean-going freighter and it still looked seaworthy; or it would have except for the canopied gangplank that led up to it from the wharfside, the silk banner proclaiming its name in English letters and Japanese ideographs, and the big sign in front that said you could get lunch, dinner, and cocktails every day except Sunday.

There was a parking area off to one side, mostly empty this early in the day, and I put my car into one of the slots. The white Ford stopped back on the street, alongside the long Pier 52 shed. When I got out I could see the two of them through the Ford’s windshield; if they were surprised that I’d led them here, you couldn’t tell it from their actions or their expressions.

It was cold this close to the Bay, and cold inside the Kara Maru, too, despite the unit heaters that had been mounted on the bulkheads. Cold and damp and a little musty, like an empty cargo hold or a shore cottage that has been closed up for several months. Creaks and groans from mooring hawsers and old caulked joints. A suggestion of movement underfoot, although the boat was tightly anchored to the wharf to keep it steady and its customers from throwing up on each other in bad weather. Teakwood tables and chairs, big soft-cushioned ship’s couches in the bar lounge and restaurant booths, and lots of highly polished brass fittings-nautical clocks, compasses, sextants, and the like-to complete the decor.

The lounge was off to the left as you came in; there wasn’t anybody in it except for a black-jacketed bartender. Straight ahead was a kind of foyer with another black-jacketed Japanese holding forth behind a podium thing built to resemble a ship’s wheel housing. Behind him was the main dining room: thirty or forty tables, half that many booths. Only two of the tables and one of the booths were occupied at the moment.

I went ahead to the guy at the podium. He smiled and bowed and said, “ Yoku irasshaimash’ta! One for lunch, sir?”

“No,” I said. “I’m here to see Mr. Okubo. Hisayuki Okubo.”

The smile vanished and his face went blank; it was as if some part of him had been switched off. He said in a flat voice, “Please wait in the lounge, sir.”

“Don’t you want my name or anything?”

“Please wait in the lounge, sir.”

So I went into the lounge and sat at the bar and ordered a plain tomato juice. Nothing happened until I was halfway through the drink; then a lump of a guy in a dark blue suit came in and approached me. He had no hair, not much in the way of ears, and eyes sunk so deep in heavy flesh that they were like holes poked in bread dough. The sumo wrestler type. The bouncer and bodyguard type.

He stopped next to my stool and said, “Yes, please?”

“I want to see Mr. Okubo.”

“Your name, please?”

I had already gotten out one of my business cards; I handed it to him.

Without looking at the card he said, “Your purpose?”

“A personal matter.”