Bill Pronzini: Quicksilver

On the way over from the Gage house-I’d walked because it was only two blocks and the rain had stopped for a while-I had tried to decide on the best way to handle this job. I was still deciding. It was one of those oddballs that come along now and then: no crime had been committed, not even a misdemeanor; technically, whoever had sent the presents to Haruko Gage wasn’t even guilty of harassment. So normal investigative channels weren’t going to be of any use. And I had to be careful not to say or do anything that could get anybody after me for harrassment. About the only tack I could see to take was the straightforward one-be upfront about who I was and what I was doing, see how things developed with each of the people I talked to, and let instinct guide me the rest of the way.

It figured to be routine and pretty dull work; nothing stimulating, nothing that called for deduction or fancy footwork. Just flatfoot stuff-a lot of running around and interviewing. But that was okay. You couldn’t always get challenging cases; and the pulp private eyes could have the exotic ones that involved slinky blondes and guys with guns. All I really wanted anyway was something to occupy my mind for the next few days, so I could keep it off Jeanne Emerson, my diet, Eberhardt, and the new joint office.

It took five minutes for the dignified-looking Japanese to convince the dowager that her Noh mask would “most definitely” be in her hands by the twentieth of the month. She didn’t look at me as she went out, but the toy poodle gave me a baleful glare. I glared back at it, thinking: The hell with you too, pooch.

The Japanese guy came over to where I was standing in front of one of the display cubes. There was an air of reserve about him, but it wasn’t the snooty kind. He wore a three-piece suit, charcoal black, with a maroon-and-silver tie. He had a mouth so thin and straight that it might have been drawn on with a ruler and a flesh-colored marking pen, and over his eyes were a pair of tinted Mr. Moto glasses. The glasses looked better on him than they ever had on Peter Lorre.

“Konnichiwa, ” he said politely. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon. Mr. Shimata? Kinji Shimata?”

He bowed. “How may I help you, sir?”

I told him my name and what I did for a living. Nothing changed in his expression then, and nothing changed in it when I said, “I’m conducting an investigation on behalf of Mrs. Haruko Cage.”

“Yes?” he said.

“You know Mrs. Gage, of course.”

“I am acquainted with her. Why is it she would need a private detective?”

“Somebody’s been bothering her,” I said.

“Bothering?”

“Sending her anonymous presents in the mail. Expensive presents, one with a love note included.”

Five seconds of silence went by. Then he said, “Does she believe I am responsible?” His voice sounded a little stiffer than it had before, but that was all. Behind the Mr. Moto glasses, his eyes were about as emotionally expressive as a carp’s.

“No,” I said, “she doesn’t have any idea who’s responsible. I’m trying to find out.” I paused. “Whoever the man is, he’s probably someone she knows.”

“I see.”

“And he has money-quite a bit of it.”

“Ah?”

“The presents are all pieces of valuable jewelry.”

“I do not sell jewelry,” Shimata said. “Or give it as a gift.”

“Any idea who might want to give it as a gift?”

“None whatever.”

“It’s pretty obvious that the man’s in love with her,” I said. “You were in love with her once, weren’t you, Mr. Shimata?”

“Ah. She told you I once proposed marriage.”

“She did.”

“A mistake,” he said. “A grave mistake. She did not do me the honor of accepting; for this, I am now grateful.”

“Why is that?”

“She would not have made me a good wife.”

“No? Why not?”

“She is a demanding woman. A materialist. I am surprised she wishes no more of this expensive jewelry.”

“She’s worried the admirer might want something in return one of these days.”

“Ah. Yes, I understand.”

I wasn’t getting anywhere with him. His voice revealed nothing more than his words, and his eyes still resembled a carp’s. If there was any hot and unrequited passion for Haruko Cage burning inside him, he had it buried deep and under control, at least as far as outward appearances were concerned.

I said, “Well, I won’t keep you any longer, Mr. Shimata. I appreciate your talking to me.”

“Not at all.” He bowed slightly. “Sayonara. ”

“Sure-sayonara. ”

So much for Kinji Shimata. One down, three to go.

On the Buchanan Mall across the street I found a public telephone kiosk and looked up the address and telephone number of Tamura’s Baths. The bathhouse was only about six blocks from here, just outside the unofficial boundary of Japantown. I wrote the numbers down in my notebook, then put a dime in the coin slot and rang the place up.

The woman who answered told me in a thick Japanese accent that Ken Yamasaki didn’t come to work until six o’clock. I asked for his address, but she wouldn’t give it to me. So I thanked her, broke the connection, and looked up his name in the directory. That didn’t do me any good either; there were seven Yamasaki’s listed, none of whom was named Ken or Kenneth.

I flipped back to the M’s. Nelson Mixer was listed-an address out on 46th Avenue-but when I dialed his number nobody answered. My watch said it was quarter of four; there was still a chance I could catch him on campus at the city college.

It took me twenty minutes to drive out to where CCSF was located on Phelan Avenue off Ocean. It was a good-sized complex, built on hilly terrain, with a domed science building and its own fieldhouse and football and track stadium. A bunch of students were milling around under umbrellas in front of the campus bookstore; I asked one of them where the registrar’s office was. He told me-Colan Hall-and pointed it out, and I got myself rained on pretty good before I got there.

I also got rained on inside, figuratively speaking. “I’m sorry, sir,” the woman at the registrar’s desk said. “Professor Mixer isn’t teaching today. He’s ill.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes, sir. He has the flu. We’ve had a large number of absentees because of it-the weather, you know.”

“Uh-huh. Will he be in tomorrow, do you think?”

“I really couldn’t say.”

So I left her and got a little wetter on my way back to the car. Now what? I could drive all the way across town to Mixer’s residence, but I decided against it. He hadn’t answered the phone earlier, which meant he either wasn’t home or he was too ill to get out of bed. Either way, I would probably be wasting my time.

Nelson Mixer, I thought as I started the engine. What the hell kind of name was that, anyway? It didn’t sound like a man; it sounded like a brand of quinine water.

When I located the Ogada Nursery in South San Francisco it was almost five o’clock and fully dark. My headlights picked up the rain-washed sign first, mounted at the edge of a muddy private road that branched off El Camino Real-WHOLESALE ONLY the sign said-and then the buildings and some open fields beyond. There were two long rows of attached greenhouses made out of corrugated, opaque fiberglass sheets, half a dozen in each row, with the rows set at right angles to each other. In the ell between them was a smaller wooden structure that might have been a potting shed. Off to one side, where the road ended, was a modest white frame house with some cypress shrubbery surrounding it.

There weren’t any lights on in the greenhouses or in the frame house, but the windows of the smaller wooden building shone a misty yellow through the rain. I parked on a blacktopped area under the overhang of the shed’s roof, next to an old pickup truck with a bashed-in front fender and broken headlight. I got out and ran over and whacked on the door with my hand.