Bill Pronzini: Quicksilver

It opened after about ten seconds, revealing a short, stoop-shouldered Japanese of indeterminate middle-age. His black hair was shot through with streaks of white, but the skin of his face and hands was mostly free of wrinkles. He looked tired, as if he’d been working long hours without much rest. He had a trowel in one hand; bits of soil and mulch clung to the fingers of the other.

“Yes, please?” he said.

“I’m looking for Mr. Ogada-”

“I am Mr. Ogada.”

“No, sir, I mean Edgar Ogada. Your son?”

“Yes, Edgar is my son. But he isn’t here.”

“When do you expect him back?”

He shrugged. “Tonight. Tomorrow he must deliver all of these.” He opened the door a little wider and gestured with the trowel. It was a potting shed, all right, among other things, and right now it was jammed with Christmas poinsetta plants; they were lined up in rows on several benches and on the floor.

“But you don’t know what time tonight he’ll be back?” I asked.

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Or where I might find him?”

“No. Edgar comes and goes as he pleases. You are a friend of his?”

“We’ve never met. I have a small personal matter to discuss with him.”

“Come back tomorrow afternoon,” Mr. Ogada said. “After twelve o’clock. The poinsettas will be delivered by then.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

He shut the door and I ran back to the car. So far I had not accomplished much in the way of earning my fee; I hadn’t even been able to track down Yamasaki, Mixer, or Edgar Ogada yet. What with the rain and the hunger pains that were starting up again in my stomach, not to mention Eberhardt and the new office, it had not been an all-star day.

But there was still time to salvage it. I could talk to Ken Yamasaki later tonight, for one thing. And much more important than that, I was going to spend the evening with Kerry. The whole night with her, maybe.

Like the song says: Who could ask for anything more?

Kerry was reading a pulp magazine when I got to her apartment on Diamond Heights. She had it open in her hand as she let me in — an early forties issue of Midnight Detective, one of a batch I had loaned her at her request. I recognized it from the garish cover painting of two Caucasian guys getting ready to blow up an Oriental in a mandarin robe; they had two sticks of dynamite apiece and the Oriental had a hatchet in one long-nailed claw and a big automatic in the other, and there was a half-naked girl lying on the ground to one side, tied up and looking terrified. It was a typical pulp cover: none of it made much sense.

She shut the door, gave me a quick kiss, and started to poke her nose back into the magazine. I said, “Is that all I get?”

“For now.”

“Must be a pretty interesting story you’re reading.”

“It is. One of Russ Dancer’s.”

“Good old Russ.”

“Mmm. I’ll be done in a minute; I only have two more pages to go.” She turned back toward the living room.

“I think I’ll have a beer,” I said casually.

“No you won’t,” she said. “There’s diet soda in the fridge. Tab and Fresca.”

Tab and Fresca, I thought. Fifty-four years old, I come in from a hard day on the job, and what am I supposed to drink? Crap with saccharine in it that had croaked a lot of laboratory animals. Tab and Fresca. Bah.

Instead of making for the kitchen, I followed Kerry into the living room and watched her curl up on her modernistic couch with the copy of Midnight Detective. She was nice to watch-anytime, anywhere, no matter what she was doing. Tall, willowy without being skinny, terrific legs, and a fanny to start a monk drooling into his cowl. Shoulder-length auburn hair; dark green chameleon eyes that changed shades according to her moods; humor lines crinkled around the eyes and a wide, soft mouth. Fifteen years younger than me, a fact which upset the hell out of her father, an ex-pulp writer called-by me, anyway-Ivan the Terrible. The thought of old Ivan being upset made me smile. I liked Ivan about as much as I liked being on a diet.

As for Kerry-hell, I loved her and I didn’t care who knew it.

She finished the story pretty soon and put the magazine down. “That,” she said, “was pure hokum. But I loved every word of it.”

I couldn’t remember which of Dancer’s stories was in that issue. I asked, “One of the Rex Hannigans?”

“No. Straight suspense, not a private eye story. All about midgets and burial crypts and a four-foot headless ghost that really isn’t a ghost at all.”

“Oh, yeah, that one. What was it called?”

“‘No Head for My Short Bier.’ ”

“Uh-huh. Inspired titles back then.”

“Dumb titles, you mean. The writing’s good, though. Dancer was a craftsman in those days.”

“He was,” I said, and let it go at that. Dancer had, since the demise of the pulps in the early fifties, turned into a hack writer of paperback originals and a full-fledged alcoholic. One of the reasons was Kerry’s mother, Cybil, who was also an ex-pulp writer; Dancer had been in love with her back in the forties and had never gotten over it. I’d found that out during a pulp convention earlier in the year that had reunited the Wades and Dancer and a bunch of other pulpsters after thirty years, and at which I had met Kerry. The reunion had led to murder and a case of plagiarism, among other things… but that was another story.

“I thought you were going to have something to drink,” Kerry said. “If you don’t want a diet soda, I can make coffee.”

“Not right now.” My stomach was jumpy enough as it was, looking for something to digest, without putting caffein into it. “Aren’t you going to ask me how my day was?”

“How was your day?”

“Lousy,” I said.

“How come?”

“Well, to start it off, Eberhardt found us an office.”

“Oh boy. Where?”

“On O’Farrell, near Van Ness.”

I told her about it. She laughed when I mentioned the brass testicles on the light fixture, but by the time I finished, she was wearing a serious expression.

“It doesn’t sound too bad, really,” she said. “But are you sure …?”

“No, I’m not sure. Let’s not get into that again, okay?”

“Okay. When does the partnership open for business?”

“On Monday. Eb went out shopping for office furniture today. Mine’s being delivered tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well, all I can say is I hope it works out.”

“Not as much as I hope so,” I said. “Meanwhile, I picked up a three-day job this afternoon-my last solo investigation.” I did not like the sound or taste of those last four words as I said them.

Kerry said, “Is it anything interesting?”

“Not particularly,” and I told her about Haruko Gage and her secret admirer.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Kerry said, “it sounds kind of interesting to me.

“Yeah? Why?”

“It appeals to my romantic nature. You know, the mystery of it. It’s a little frightening to have a determined secret admirer, but it’s also pretty exciting.”

“Mrs. Gage didn’t seem to think so.”

“Not that she let on. But then why did she wait so long to call in a detective?”

“She’s a materialist. She likes expensive jewelry.”

“I’ll bet that’s not all, though.”

“Maybe not. Listen, how would you like to go visit a bath with me tonight?”

“What?”

“A public bath. You know, with other people.”

“Are you being funny?”

“Nope. I thought I’d stop in and talk to one of Mrs. Gage’s ex-boyfriends for a few minutes; it happens he works evenings in a Japanese bathhouse on Pine Street.”

She made a face. Then her expression changed shape and became thoughtful. “A Japanese bathhouse?” she said. “I’ve never been inside one of those and I’ve always wondered what they’re like.”