It was getting dark when Haruko finally did call. She’d got in touch with Mike Kanaya, she said, and he was willing to talk to me; but the soonest he could make it was tomorrow noon, because of business obligations today and tonight and family obligations tomorrow morning. I sighed a little and said all right. Kanaya had suggested meeting at a Japan Center sushi bar; I agreed to that too.
Not being able to see Kanaya until tomorrow pretty much left me with a free evening. It was too late to drive up to Petaluma, especially on a blind lead and with nobody home at the Hama ranch. And there wasn’t any other business I could conduct this late either. What I-might as well do, I thought, was call up Kerry and invite her over for dinner. That way, we could go to bed early and I could get at least one of my little problems taken care of.
So I dialed her number, and she was home. She was also tired and grouchy and coming down with something, and all she wanted to do, she said, was crawl into bed. I offered to come over and crawl into bed with her, but she didn’t think that was a good idea. She wasn’t in the mood for sex or even companionship, she said. She just needed to sleep, she said. Call me tomorrow and we’ll see how I feel then, she said. Good-bye, she said.
I put the phone down. I looked at the four walls and thought again about climbing them. I got my coat and hat and went out into the rain.
I had a big evening for myself. Yes I did. I ate a low-calorie meal at a cafe on Chestnut Street, after which I went to a double feature at one of the revival houses downtown, after which I drove home and went to bed.
The food was awful. So were the movies. And so was sleeping alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Mike Kanaya turned out to be a heavy-set guy in his mid-thirties, with a squarish chin, bushy eyebrows, and bright restless eyes. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, conservative blue-and-gray tie. He struck me as the earnest and inquisitive type, which meant, if true, that he was probably a very good newspaperman.
He was already waiting when I got to the Minami Sushi Bar in the Japan Center just before noon on Sunday. Haruko Gage must have described me to him because he popped up from his table immediately and came over and introduced himself. We shook hands, sizing each other up the way people do when they’re meeting for the first time. Then we went to his corner table, and a waitress followed us over with a pot of tea and a couple of menus.
Kanaya poured tea for both of us. “Have you eaten sushi before?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “Other kinds of Japanese food, yes, but not sushi. ”
“You know what it is?”
“Different kinds of raw fish.” And very trendy these days, among those Caucasians who like to consider themselves as being “with it.” Which was why I had never tried sushi myself, even though Kerry had suggested it a time or two. I’m not a “with it” guy; as Leo McFate could testify, I’m just a peon.
Kanaya said, “You have no taste for raw fish?”
“I don’t mind it, I guess. I kind of like sashimi. ”
“Ah. Will you join me, then?”
“Sure,” I said, because I did not want to get this meeting off to a bad start by insulting him. “Why not?”
He beckoned to the waitress and said something to her in Japanese. She went over and said something in turn to the chef behind the glass “bar” where all the sushi was laid out on a bed of crushed ice, and he got to work with a good deal of enthusiasm.
I decided to get down to business too. “Did Mrs. Gage tell you why I’m interested in the Yakuza?” I asked Kanaya. “The details, I mean.”
“Some, but not all.” He lifted his cup of tea, held it without drinking; his squarish face was serious now. “The murder of Simon Tamura, yes?”
“Yes. But I’m not investigating it; I’m trying to get disentangled from it. The Yakuza, or somebody in the Yakuza, seems to think I’m involved. A couple of men who are probably kobun have been following me around since I found Tamura’s body. I tried talking to them a couple of times; they wouldn’t talk back.”
Kanaya nodded thoughtfully.
“The car they’re using is registered to Ken Yamasaki,” I said. “You know him?”
“Not personally. An employee of Tamura’s Baths.”
“Also Yakuza. And a former boyfriend of Haruko Gage.”
“You don’t believe Haruko is Yakuza…?”
“No. Did she tell you I’m working for her?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And why?”
“Yes.”
“Well, there might be some connection between that and Tamura’s death. If it wasn’t a Yakuza killing, that is.”
“Perhaps it wasn’t,” Kanaya said.
“Why do you say that?”
He smiled faintly. “Newspapermen have eyes and ears-and friends. The Yakuza, I am told, does not know who murdered Mr. Tamura. Or why.”
So much for McFate’s informant, I thought, and for McFate’s theory. I said at length, “I take it Yamasaki isn’t highly placed in the local chapter?”
“No. He is much too young.”
“Only elders hold positions of power?”
“Except in rare cases, yes.” Kanaya sipped his tea. “How much do you know of the Yakuza?”
“Not much, really. General facts, but sketchy. Very little of its background and almost nothing of how it operates.”
“Few outside the Yakuza know how it operates,” he said. “It is a secret and very disciplined organization, unlike any in the Western world. It pretends to believe in a code of honor and loyalty established by the sixteenth-century samurai. As proof of their loyalty, some Yakuza have cut off the first joint of the little finger and ceremoniously offered it to their oyabun — gang boss-in atonement for an error in judgment.”
“I didn’t know they could be that fanatical.”
“Yes. More so than the Mafia.”
“What else, Mr. Kanaya?”
“In Japan,” he said, “the Yakuza controls all the major criminal activities-drugs, extortion, prostitution, gun-running, loan-sharking, pornography. But that isn’t all. It also controls more than twenty-five thousand legitimate businesses, and is an important force in politics and among the corporate elite. It operates openly — far more so than any Western criminal organization. Many Yakuza offices display the gang emblem on their doors; members wear syndicate lapel pins as if they were brothers in a college fraternity.” He allowed himself a small wry smile. “Believe it or not, the Yakuza even publishes its own magazine- Yamaguchi-gumi Jiho. Legal advice side by side with poetry and biographical features.”
“Good God.”
“And yet,” Kanaya went on, “members of the Yakuza are self-admitted outcasts in Japanese society. Many come from the poor, undereducated classes; from Korean or Chinese minorities; even from the burakumin — an ancestral group ostracized for complicated reasons that involve the handling of dead animals and animal products. The word Yakuza itself… do you know what it means?”
“Not.”
“It translates as the numbers eight, nine, and three. Those numbers make up the lowest possible hand in the gambling game called hanafuda. A loser’s hand, you see?”
I nodded. But the truth was, I saw very little. The Yakuza was a complex entity, all right; and if the Japanese themselves couldn’t figure it out, or its methods, how was somebody like me supposed to? How was I supposed to get the Yakuza off my back now that it was clamped on like a damned suckerfish?
The waitress arrived with two plates and a couple of little dishes and a covered bowl of rice, set everything down in front of us, and went away again. The sushi looked pretty appetizing, at that. Lots of little bite-size pieces of raw fish wrapped around seasoned rice, some decorated with green stuff that was probably seaweed or yellow stuff that looked to be egg. All very attractive. My stomach started growling as I looked. The hell with attractive, it was saying, throw some of that raw fish down here and be quick about it.
I picked up my chopsticks-I’d gotten so I could us
e them without making a fool of myself-and poked at a piece of something on my plate. “What’s this?” I asked Kanaya.
“Hamachi, he said. “Yellowtail.”
“And this?”
“Toro. Tuna belly.”
“Tuna… belly?”
“The best part of the tuna,” he said. “You’ll see. But first, the sauce. It’s the same as for sashimi. ”
The dipping sauce was what the little dishes were for. You poured in a little soy sauce and added a blob of greenish horseradish, and the result was a moderately hot concoction that tasted pretty good. It did with sashimi — raw tuna-anyway. I got mine made and tried some of the yellowtail. Yeah. Not bad at all.
Kanaya started to spoon out some rice for me, but I shook my head and said, “No, I’ll pass on the extra rice. I’m on a diet.”
“Ah,” he said.
I tasted the tuna belly. He was right: it was even better than whatever part they used for sashimi. When I was done chewing I said, “Tell me about the local Yakuza, Mr. Kanaya. How powerful is it, for starters?”
“In the Japanese community, quite powerful,” he said. “Outside the community, not so powerful as it would like to be.”
“How large is the local contingent?”
“That is difficult to estimate There are chapters in Los Angeles and Honolulu, closely linked with the one here; members shift back and forth from one area to another. There are possibly two hundred active Yakuza on the West Coast at present, with perhaps a third in San Francisco.”
“I understand Tamura was one of the local higher-ups,” I said. “But he wasn’t the godfather, right?”
“No. The San Francisco oyabun is Hisayuki Okubo.”
“Does he live in the city, this Okubo?”
“Yes. On the Kara Maru.”
“The restaurant ship?”
“The same.”
“You mean the Yakuza runs that operation?”
“Oh, yes. A very respectable front for them.”
The Kara Maru was an old Japanese freighter anchored at China Basin that had been turned into an expensive waterfront restaurant some years back. I had never been there, but it was supposed to be musty and dimly lighted and atmospheric as hell. For that reason, and because of the Bay view and because the food was said to be terrific, the tourists loved it; and so did the same “with it” crowd that frequented quaint little sushi bars like this one.
I said, “How accessible is Okubo?”
“Accessible?”
“Does he surround himself with bodyguards and security precautions? Or can a guy like me get in to see him without too much trouble.”
“He has a bodyguards,” Kanaya said. “One doesn’t enter his private quarters unless invited. And he seldom leaves the Kara Maru.”
“Uh-huh. I was afraid of that.”
“Were you thinking of going to see him?”
“I was. I’m still considering it.”
Kanaya seemed to want to say something else. Instead he picked up his bowl of rice and began to eat. I tried a piece of something that tasted like clam. Which was what it was, I found out from Kanaya. Mirugai. Giant clam.
I asked him some more qustions about the Yakuza, without finding out much that I didn’t know or suspect already. It was reputed to have a bunch of politicians in its pocket, not all of them in Japan. It was also reputed to be making a concerted effort to dominate the lucrative Japanese tourist business in San Francisco and Los Angeles by either taking over restaurants, bars, gift shops, and entertainment facilities, or controlling them through extortion. For these reasons, it preferred to keep a low profile in this country and stay out of trouble with law enforcement agencies. Which meant, Kanaya said reassuringly, that it resorted to violence against gaijin only in extreme cases.
I also asked him about Simon Tamura’s personal life, but there was nothing there for me either. Tamura had been a family man, had lived quietly and traditionally, hadn’t gone in for the usual vices. The names Sanjiro Masaoka and Kazuo Hama meant nothing to Kanaya. Nor did he know anything about the old photograph in Tamura’s office; he had never seen it.
By this time we were almost finished eating. My last piece of sushi was a plump gray-white thing; I hoisted it up, eyed it some more, and ate it. Not too great, but then not too bad either. Chewy. Like a chunk of fish-flavored rubber.
Kanaya asked, “Have I been of any help to you?”
“Some, yes. I appreciate your candor, Mr. Kanaya.”
“It was my pleasure. Perhaps there will be a story for me to write, eventually.”
“If there is,” I said, “you’ll be the first person I tell it to.”
“Ah.”
“Meanwhile, lunch is on me.”
He made a slight bow with his head. “Arigato gozaimas’. You enjoyed the sushi, then?”
“It was fine. Except for that last piece. Grayish thing, sort of chewy?”
“Tako,” he said. “Octopus.”
I was sorry I’d asked.
When I got outside, the rain and the white Ford were both there waiting for me-another pair of joyless certainties, like death and taxes, that I seemed to be cursed with these days. One of the kobun, the putty-nosed guy, had followed me inside the Japan Center and hung around out in the mall somewhere while I had my meeting with Mike Kanaya; he was behind me again now, and when I crossed to where my car was parked on Post Street he went and rejoined his friend in the Ford, half a block away.
I was still fed up with having them around all the time, but what Kanaya had told me about Yakuza policy toward non-Japanese had taken some of the edge off my anxiety. And the thought of the two of them sitting a cold, cramped watch all night in the rain, as they had probably done, made me feel there might be some justice in this world after all.
The rain slackened to a fine mist as I drove back up the hill to Pacific Heights. I took the only legal parking space on my block, so that the Ford had to pull over and stop in somebody’s driveway. They were still parked there, watching, as I entered my building.
I had tried calling the Hama Egg Ranch again this morning, just before I left for Japantown, and that time I’d got a busy signal; so somebody was home up there today. I intended to give it one more shot, and if I still couldn’t get through, then maybe it was time to pay my first and no doubt last visit to the Kara Maru restaurant. Maybe I couldn’t beard Hisayuki Okubo without an invitation, but there was no harm in trying. I hoped.
So I dialed the 707 area code for Petaluma, then the Hama number, and the thing rang six times before I finally heard an answering click, just as I was getting ready to hang up. A woman’s voice, hoarse and a little on the quavery side, said, “Hello? Yes, please?”
I gave my name and where I was calling from. Then I said, “I’d like to speak to Mr. Hama, Mr. Kazuo Hama.”
Silence.
“Ma’am? Hello?”
“No,” she said. “No, no.”
“You mean Mr. Hama isn’t there?”
“Not here,” she said, “Kazuo is dead!” and I heard her begin to weep just before she broke the connection.
Chapter Fourteen
I got up to Petaluma a little before three-thirty. The rain didn’t follow me all the way; it quit just north of San Rafael, and there were thin blue veins in the cloud pattern when I took the first Petaluma exit off Highway 101.
The white Ford didn’t follow me at all. But that was my choice, not theirs. When I’d left my flat I had driven down to Fisherman’s Wharf, where the traffic is always congested and the tourists are out even in wet weather, and did some tricky maneuvers involving other cars and stop signals; the last I’d seen of the Ford had been at an intersection near The Cannery, tangled up behind a smoke-belching Muni bus. It’s not all that difficult to shake a tail if you set your mind to it and expend some effort. And I just did not feel like going all the way to Petaluma with those two dragging after me like a couple of loose anchors.
The main street used to be called that, Main Street
. Now it was called Petaluma Boulevard South and Petaluma Boulevard North, with the dividing line being the middle of town. The place used to be a small agricultural community with a population of around ten thousand, built mostly on the west side of Petaluma Creek-a narrow salt-water estuary that wound down through fourteen miles of tule marshes to San Pablo Bay. Now it was a place where San Francisco office workers lived and commuted from, a bedroom community with a population of over forty thousand, most of whom lived on the east side of the Petaluma River-creek becoming river by act of the state legislature. Once it had been famous as “The Egg Basket of the World” because it was the world’s leading producer of chickens and chicken fruit in the early years of the century, shipping millions of eggs annually from dozens of surrounding ranches. Now it was famous as the “Hell no, we won’t grow” city, the place that in 1972 had passed a limited-growth ordinance hailed by environmentalists and traditionalists, fought bitterly by developers who had gobbled up most of the land in and out of the city limits. In the old days, riverboats and barges and cargo schooners used to make regular runs up and down the creek, carrying hay, alfalfa, eggs, livestock, and passengers. In the new days, speedboats and small yachts traveled the river and tied up in the basin behind the old brick complex of restaurants and shops that had once been a feed mill.
Progress. Changing times. Some liked the idea, some didn’t. I didn’t, but then I had no stake in the town’s past or in its future. Why should I cry for Petaluma? Petaluma wasn’t going to cry for me.
I stopped at a service station and got directions to Rainsville Road. Following them, I drove out Petaluma Boulevard North to Stony Point Road, turned west on Stony Point, and came to Rainsville after less than half a mile. Another half-mile brought me to a rain-puddled gravel driveway and a sign that said: HAMA EGG RANCH. Below that, in smaller letters, were the words: ONE OF PETALUMA’S LARGEST.
And in still smaller letters: EGGS, FRYERS, ROASTING HENS, BABY CHICKS FOR SALE.
One of Petaluma’s largest, I thought as I swung into the driveway. But that didn’t mean much these days. The egg industry up here was only a gaunt shadow of what it once had been. One conglomerate outfit owned most of the ranches; there were only a few independents like Hama left. And all the hatcheries and feed companies that had once flourished were long gone. Now Kazuo Hama was gone too. How? And why?
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