Quicksilver nd-11

by Bill Pronzini

  “Down about three,” I said over my shoulder.

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all. I been starving myself for two weeks for a lousy three pounds.”

  “Well, it takes time,” she said. “You’ll lose a lot all at once. It always works that way.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “sure,” and got off the scale and into the shower. I thought about three rashers of bacon and flapjacks with maple syrup and a whole canteloupe. Then I got out and dried myself and dressed and Kerry served me two softboiled eggs and half a grapefruit for breakfast. I felt a little like bawling.

  She left for the agency at eight-twenty, while I was still working on my coffee and feeling deprived. I was in no hurry myself; I didn’t want to go knocking on doors before nine o’clock, and I couldn’t get in touch with Harry Fletcher at the DMV before nine-thirty. I picked up one of the pulps I’d loaned Kerry and tried to read a story by William Campbell Gault, one of the best of the old pulpsters; but I was too hungry and restless to enjoy it. I got up and paced around instead, finishing my coffee.

  Kerry’s apartment is big-two bedrooms, one of them converted into an office; living room, dining area, kitchen, two bathrooms, and a utility porch. Among other features, it has modernistic furniture with lots of chrome and sharp angles and whitish, tweedy-looking upholstery; massive paintings of the abstract impressionist type, emphasis on blacks and whites and oranges; an antique brass double bed, the only nonmodern furnishing in the place; and lots of bookshelves full of all sorts of fiction and nonfiction, because Kerry is a reader like me and has much more catholic tastes. I liked all of those things-they were warm and comfortable and individual and a little unconventional, just as Kerry herself was. The only thing I didn’t like about the place, in fact, was that she kept framed photographs of her parents in the bedroom, and it always seemed as though Ivan the Terrible was watching us make love and maybe thinking up evil curses to wither my immortal soul. He was an expert on the occult, after all.

  Without Kerry there, the apartment felt incomplete. It also made me feel doubly deprived-but then, I only had myself to blame for my sexual frustration. Falling asleep like that… my God! The next step was probably lapses of memory and eccentric behavior, and the one after that would be commitment to a home where a battery of nurses could take turns wiping the drool off my chin.

  Time to go to work, I thought. Busy hands are happy hands and all that crap. I put the coffee cup in the kitchen, rinsed it out, got my coat, locked the apartment door behind me with Kerry’s spare key, walked downstairs and outside, started toward where I had left my car-and came to a sudden standstill.

  Across the street and fifty yards down the block was a familiar white Ford with two Japanese guys sitting in it.

  It made me more angry than anything else The first thing I thought was that they’d followed me here from my flat last night, even though I’d been watching and hadn’t spotted them. Then I remembered that Kerry’s name had been in the news story about Tamura’s death, and that she was listed in the telephone book. After I’d surprised them yesterday, they must have switched tactics and gone to tail her instead.

  I put my hands in my overcoat pockets so the two guys wouldn’t see me clenching them. Then I walked over there, not doing it in any hurry. It wasn’t raining at the moment, although the sky was heavy with clouds, and I could see them both clearly through the windshield. They didn’t do anything except watch me in return-didn’t even move their heads.

  When I came up onto the sidewalk in front of them I saw that the driver’s window was rolled down. So I kept on going until I was abreast of it and then stopped and squatted down and looked in at them. The one with the nose like a blob of putty was behind the wheel today; he stared back at me with an expression as blank as an erased slate. The other one ran a finger slowly and rhythmically over his mustache and looked straight ahead, trancelike, as if he were a Buddhist monk trying to achieve Nirvana.

  “Something I can do for you boys?” I said.

  Neither of them responded. The putty-nosed one kept on staring through me; I might have been a lamppost or a fire hydrant, or not there at all.

  “Yesterday morning, out by China Beach,” I said. “You followed me there and I spotted you and got your license number. Remember?”

  Silence.

  “I don’t like to be followed,” I said. “And I especially don’t like having friends of mine followed. If you want something from me, suppose you just cut out the crap and get right down to it.”

  Silence. The putty-nosed one turned his head slightly and I saw his eyes flicker to the CB radio unit mounted under the dash.

  “Go ahead,” I said, “call up whoever you’re working for. Tell him I’m here waiting. Tell him to come talk to me so we can get this business finished.”

  More silence. The other guy quit stroking his mustache, but that was all that happened. They just sat there. I had the thought that if I reached in and smacked one or the other they wouldn’t even try to retaliate. Not without orders.

  There wasn’t anything more for me to say. I straightened, put my back to the Ford, and recrossed the street to where my car was parked. When I got inside I rolled the window down and adjusted the side-view mirror so I could watch them while I started the engine and let it warm up. The putty-nosed guy was talking into the CB microphone; I could see the handset and the cord even from this distance.

  Ten to one they get the same orders they got yesterday, thought. Cease and desist-for the time being.

  But I would have lost the bet. Damned if they didn’t pull out behind me as I drove off, and damned if they didn’t follow me all the way to my flat in Pacific Heights.

  The Department of Motor Vehicles was open half a day on Saturday. I got through to Harry Fletcher at nine-forty, spelled out the two names that had been on the back of the photograph, told him their approximate ages, and asked him to get me addresses for all California residents who matched up. Neither name seemed particularly common, although I was no expert on Japanese nomenclature. Fletcher wasn’t either; he said to give him an hour, just in case.

  I decided there were better things to do with that hour than hang around the flat. I checked the answering machine, discovered that nobody had called me since last evening, and went back out to my car. When I glanced up at the rear-view mirror after half a block, the white Ford was right there in my wake again.

  I considered trying a few maneuvers to shake them. But I was too old for fast driving games; and I would have had to detour all the way downtown to try shaking them in traffic. Besides which, they would only show up at my flat again later on. Or worse, go bother Kerry again. The best thing to do was to let them tag along and see that I wasn’t doing anything sinister or thrilling, and maybe that would convince them to go away. If not, I would have to find some way to deal with them later on.

  So I drove straight out California Street without paying much attention to the Ford. Number 2610 was an old, beige, stucco apartment house a few blocks this side of Children’s Hospital-the kind with a wide front stoop and fire escapes zig-zagging down its facade like livid scars. There was a bus zone in front of it; I parked there illegally. The two kobun drove on by, turned the corner, and stopped alongside a fire hydrant, which was even more illegal.

  I went up onto the front stoop of 2610 and hunted among the mailbox nameplates until I found K. Yamasaki, Apt. 7. I pushed the button next to that one and kept my finger on it for fifteen seconds or so. Nothing happened, except that an elderly Japanese lady came down the flight of stairs inside, opened the door, and stepped out.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said. “Do you know Ken Yamasaki?”

  She gave me one of those looks people reserve for strangers who might also be insurance or household accessory salesmen: half wary, half blank. “Yes?” she said.

  “He doesn’t seem to be in. Would you happen to know where I can find him?”

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Where would that
be?”

  “Yes?”

  “Ma’am… do you speak English?”

  “Yes?”

  “Terrific. Sorry to have bothered you.” I started down the steps, paused, and said, “Uh, sayonara. ”

  “Yes,” she said, without the question mark this time, and bobbed her head and grinned as she followed after me.

  I was pretty slow this morning: It didn’t occur to me until I was getting into the car that she probably did speak English and had been putting me on the whole time.

  I stopped at a Chevron station out near Park Presidio Drive, and while an attendent fed the car I went to the phone booth nearby and rang up the DMV again. There were two sixtyish Kazuo Hamas living in California, Fletcher told me, only one up here in the northern part of the state; that one’s residence was Hama Egg Ranch, Rainsville Road, Petaluma. Petaluma was close to San Francisco-about forty miles away to the north. The other Kazuo Hama lived in Orange County, in some town I had never heard of. I took down his address too.

  The DMV records showed a single Sanjiro Masaoka: 72 West Point Avenue, Princeton. Which was even closer to the city, Princeton being a small fishing village snuggled up to the larger community of Half Moon Bay, some twenty-five miles south on Highway One.

  I thanked Fletcher, promised him a couple of bottles of Johnnie Walker Red Label-he wouldn’t take money from me because he said it made him feel dishonest-and went back and ransomed the car. When I left the station I swung over to Geary and drove out to the Great Highway and then pointed the car south toward Highway One. I didn’t have anything better to do, the rain was still holding off, and Princeton was a good place to get a seafood lunch, if nothing else. Or it would have been if I hadn’t had my unwanted company.

  The white Ford stayed behind me all the way down.

  Chapter Eleven

  The road that led into Princeton angled off Highway One and skirted the edge of the small Half Moon Bay airfield. There wasn’t much to the central part of the village-an old inn, a grocery store, a couple of restaurants, and some craft stores that catered to tourists. Straight ahead was a communal pier and the white-flecked water of Pillar Point Harbor, where a bunch of fishing boats rocked at anchor and geometrically laid out rock jetties marked the channels.

  Off to the west were a fish-processing plant and a boatyard and three or four square blocks of private houses. I turned that way in front of the inn. All the rough-paved streets were named after colleges; West Point Avenue was one of the longest and easy enough to find. I crawled along it in deference to its potholes, past a variety of houses ranging from comfortable old frame to tumbledown shacks; past bright green, fieldlike lots and boggy yards full of boats large and small, some up on drydock davits and some that were little more than rotting hulks.

  Number 72 was near the inner sweep of the harbor-a smallish two-story shingled house painted box-car red, shaded in front by a line of cypress trees and enclosed by a mossy woodstake fence. In the yard behind the fence I could see stacks of cordwood and old tree stumps, and the rusted skeleton of a bus that appeared to serve now as a shed or workshop. The bus had once belonged to a tribe of hippies, judging from the remnants of flower decals that decorated its sides; it sat there like a relic from some ancient and curious civilization. And in a way, maybe it was.

  I parked in front, between a pair of rain puddles that resembled miniature ponds. The air had a sharp salt tang mingled with the smell of ozone; it was going to rain again pretty soon. As I approached the gate I could see that all of the house’s facing windows, downstairs and upstairs both, had shades drawn over them. It gave the place a closed-up, abandoned look.

  The gate was latched; I reached over and opened it and went inside along a short muddy path. The porch stairs made little popping, creaking noises as I climbed them. Except for the distant racket of gulls, those pops and creaks were the only sounds in the heavy quiet.

  On the front door was one of those old-fashioned doorbells that you have to twist to ring, like winding up an alarm clock. Nobody answered the ratchety summons. I tried it again, with the same nonresults, and decided Sanjiro Masaoka was somewhere else this morning and that maybe one of his neighbors could tell me where that might be. I turned from the door, took one step, and immediately quit moving again.

  There was a dog down at the bottom of the porch stairs, sitting on its haunches and staring at me with bright yellow eyes.

  It was a Doberman and it was big and it looked menacing as hell, even though it wasn’t doing anything except sitting there. The hackles went up on my neck. Usually I get along all right with dogs, as long as they’re kept on leashes and not allowed to crap all over sidewalks and people’s lawns. But a Doberman is something else again. Dobermans stir up some sort of primitive fear in me; I don’t like them one bit and I steer clear of them whenever our paths happen to cross.

  Neither of us moved. We just kept looking at each other for what seemed like a long time. Where the hell had he come from? I’d closed the gate behind me, so he hadn’t wandered in off the street. Which meant he’d been on the property the whole time, somewhere out back. Which in turn probably meant that he belonged here-Sanjiro Masaoka’s dog-and if he belonged here, he knew I didn’t.

  I worked up some saliva, swallowed it to lubricate my throat, and said, “Easy, boy. Easy. Nice dog,” to see what would happen.

  The Doberman pricked up his ears. Then he began to growl low in his throat. Otherwise he didn’t move; his little stub of a tail was as stiff as if it was welded onto his rump.

  Oh, fine, I thought. Dogs that growled instead of barked and didn’t wag their tails were dangerous dogs. So why hadn’t Masaoka put out a BEWARE OF DOG sign so people like me wouldn’t wander in and maybe get themselves chewed on?

  I looked away from the Doberman, out toward the street. The white Ford had pulled up about fifty yards behind my car, in front of a weathered neighboring house with a screened-in front porch, and the two Japanese guys were staring in my direction. I had a momentary impulse to call out to them. But even if they had been inclined to help me, which they no doubt weren’t, any loud noise like a shout might set the Doberman off. You never knew with high-strung dogs like that, even if they were trained, what was liable to trigger them.

  He quit growling after another few seconds, but he didn’t take his eyes off me. I kept looking around for some avenue of escape or somebody to come along, but the former didn’t exist and the latter didn’t seem to either. The muscles in my neck and back and bad arm began to cramp up with tension. I met the dog’s gaze again and tried some man-staring-down-dumb-beast stuff. It didn’t work; he had a more forceful will than I did when it came to confrontations like this.

  A good five minutes went by. The Doberman kept staring, the Japanese guys kept staring, the cramps got worse, and I began to grow more irritated than anxious. The hell with it, I thought finally, and I took a slow, careful step toward the stairs.

  The Doberman got up, spread his forepaws, and commenced snarling.

  I froze in place. Those yellow eyes were all hot now and full of what I took to be bloodlight. I forgot about being brave and annoyed and got anxious again. Christ, how long was I going to have to stand here before somebody rescued me or the goddamn dog decided to attack?

  As it turned out, I had to stand there worrying about three more minutes. Then the screen door at the weathered house next door opened and a woman came out and down her porch steps. She stopped at the foot of them, put her hands on her hips, and peered at the white Ford. Pretty soon she moved in a purposeful way to her front gate and said something that I didn’t catch to the two kobun. But it must have been a threat-to call the county cops on them for loitering in front of her house, maybe-because it wasn’t long before the Ford’s engine revved up and the car pulled out and went past me and the Masaoka house. Not far, though; it turned the corner at the nearest intersection and angled off onto the verge again.

  The woman had also followed the Ford’s progress and that allo
wed her to notice me. She peered in my direction the way she had peered at the Ford, then walked out through her gate and came down the street and stopped before Masaoka’s gate. She was around sixty, sun-cured and bony and gray-haired, wearing a tattered sweater with suede elbow patches. A tough old bird. Which suited me just fine.

  “Hey, you,” she said. To me, not to the Doberman. “What’re you doing in there?”

  What does it look like I’m doing? I thought. I’m standing here waiting for the Hound of the Baskervilles to tear out my throat. But I said quietly, so as not to stir up the dog, “I came to see Mr. Masaoka on a business matter. There’s nobody home except Fido here.”

  “Oh,” she said in a funny kind of voice. Then she said, “His name’s Tomodachi. That means ‘friend’ in Japanese.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “sure.”

  “What’d you do, just walk in on him?”

  “I didn’t see him. Or any Beware of Dog sign.”

  “Used to be a sign. Some kids stole it.”

  “Look, ma’am, you suppose you could do something about getting me out of here? I don’t like the way he keeps staring at me.”

  “Well, he can be vicious sometimes,” she said. “Tomodachi! Get away! Leave the man alone!”

  The Doberman turned his head and gave her a quick look. But he didn’t obey; he swung his gaze back to me and snarled some more and shuffled his front paws. I got ready to defend myself, but nothing happened.

  “Damn,” the woman said. “I never could talk to him. Or get near him unless Sanjiro was around. Might be a way, though. I’ll be right back; you stay where you are.”

  Lady, I thought, where am I going to go?

  She trotted away to her own property, disappeared inside her house for about two minutes, reappeared, and came hurrying back to the Masaoka gate. When she neared it I could see what it was she was holding in one hand: a couple of beaten-up old tennis balls.

  “Tomodachi likes to play ball,” she told me. “He likes it more than just about anything.”