“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.
Chapter Eighteen
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.”
“Your purpose, please?”
“Simon Tamura. Ken Yamasaki The two men in the white Ford.”
For all the reaction he gave that, I might have just recited my Christmas card list. He said, “Wait, please,” and went away with my card.
I sat there for another ten minutes, finishing my tomato juice. More people came in-tourists, mostly, with a few business types sprinkled among them. None of the customers was Japanese.
The Lump came back finally and stopped where he had before and handed me back my card. “So sorry,” he said. “It is not possible.”
“You mean Mr. Okubo won’t see me?”
“It is not possible. Good-bye, please.” And he turned and lumbered off toward the foyer.
It made me angry; it made me damned angry. I got off the stool and went after him and caught up just as he was nearing a door amidships, at the rear of the foyer. I scooted around in front of him, blocked his way. He stopped and looked at me out of those sunken eyes-the kind of look that was supposed to make me shrivel up and crawl away. I gave it right back to him, letting him see my anger.
“I’ve got a message for Mr. Okubo,” I said quietly. “Tell him that unless he agrees to see me, I’m going to start busting this place up. You know, destroy things-furniture, dishes, whatever I can lay my hands on. Maybe knock some of his people around a little too. One man can do a lot of damage in a few minutes. Then he’ll have to call the police; too many witnesses for him to do anything else. There’ll be newspaper reporters along when the cops get here, and I’ll tell them why I did it. Simon Tamura, Ken Yamasaki, the two men in the white Ford. Plus everything else I know about the Yakuza and the Kara Maru. It’ll be all over the papers tomorrow, he can bet on that. Should be great for business.”
The Lump didn’t react or move or speak.
“I know what you’re thinking, pal,” I said. “You’re thinking you’re a pretty big guy yourself and you and one or two of your friends can stop me before I do much damage. But don’t count on it; I’m just as tough as you are. Tougher, because I’m mad as hell. Tell Mr. Okubo that too. Either he and I talk like gentlemen or you and I fight like animals.”
He spent another few seconds absorbing all of that. Then some more customers came in and animated him again. He said, “Wait, please,” and made a careful sidestep around me and disappeared through the amidships door.
I went over to lean against one of the bulkheads. What I’d said about busting the place up had been a bluff; I was to old for that kind of brawl, and it would not only land me in jail, it would get my license yanked all over again-for good this time. But Mr. Okubo didn’t know any of that. He would either buy the bluff or he wouldn’t, on its own merits. It all depended on what he thought of me and how much it mattered to him whether he gave me an audience or not.
He said, “Weapons, please.”
“I’m not carrying any weapons.”
“You will please allow me to search.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. I did not want him putting his hands on me. Instead I backed off a ways, in case he had any ideas of getting rough, and opened my jacket. He didn’t move. So I took the jacket off, tossed it to him, watched him paw through it. Then I turned around in a slow circle so he could see that the only bulges on my body were made by fat deposits. “Satisfied?”
“ Hai,” he said. He let me have my jacket back and waited until I put it on. “This way, please.”
We went down the companionway, made a left-hand-turn into another one. At the far end of the second one was a closed door. The Lump tapped on the door in a deferential way, reached down to open it, and then stood aside to let me go in first.
It was a big compartment outfitted as an office, with carpeting on the deck and Japanese woodblock prints on the bulkheads and a massive teak desk set between a pair of portholes that looked out over the Bay. Some overstuffed chairs were arranged on the left side; on the right side was an elaborate teak bar. The room was soundproofed: when the Lump shut the door you couldn’t hear any of the restaurant sounds, or the cries of gulls outside.
There were two men in the compartment. One of them was standing next to the desk; the other was sitting stiffly in the nearest of the overstuffed chairs. I took the standing one to be Hisayuki Okubo. He was a good deal older, better dressed-a tan suit made out of silk, from the looks of it-and had an air of authority about him. Still, he wasn’t such-a-much. Short, a little on the plump side, with bland features and slicked-down hair like a gangster in an old George Raft movie.
Nobody moved for a few seconds. Then the guy in the silk suit came over to me, bowed slightly, and introduced himself. Okubo, all right. The Yakuza godfather. Not such-a-much in most ways, maybe, but when you saw his eyes up close like this, you could tell what he was made of. They were as cold and flat and hard as steel boilerplate, and they made a lie of the politeness in his voice and his manner.
I said, “I’ll make this short and sweet, Mr. Okubo; we’ve both got better things to do. I’m here to ask you to leave me alone, quit having me followed. I didn’t have anything to do with Simon Tamura’s murder, so there’s nothing for you to find out. Besides, it’s annoying and it makes me nervous and it’s interfering with my work.”
Okubo was silent. So were the Lump and the guy in the chair, who looked tense and worried. It was so quiet in there I could hear myself breathing.
“Well, Mr. Okubo?” I said finally.
“Tell me, please, what work it is you are presently engaged in.”
I told him. What I didn’t tell him was that there was some kind of connection between the Tamura homicide and Haruko Gage’s secret admirer. I did not want to get into that with him unless I was forced to.
He said, “You went to Mr. Tamura’s bathhouse to speak with Ken Yamasaki-correct?”
“That’s right. Mrs. Gage gave me his name along with a number of others, all former boyfriends. I’ve been trying to talk to Yamasaki ever since, but he hasn’t been around.”
“Why do you wish to speak with him?”
“The same reason I went to the bathhouse. And also because it’s his car those two boys of yours are using to follow me around. But then, you already know that.”
“Yes,” Okubo said, “now I do.”
“How was that again?”
“Also, those two men are not ‘my boys,’ as you put it.”
“Sorry; I didn’t mean that as a racial slur. Kobun, then, or whatever it is you call them.”
“No,” he said.
“No? Then what are they?”
“Friends of Mr. Yamasaki’s.”
“Not Yakuza?”
“Friends of Mr. Yamasaki’s,” he repeated.
“I don’t think I understand…”
“Would you still like to speak with him?”
“Yamasaki? Yeah, I would.”
“Very well. You may.” He turned and made a gesture toward the young guy in the chair. “This is Mr. Ken Yamasaki.”
It surprised me. I hadn’t paid much attention to the young guy; now, when I looked at him, I could see just how tense and worried he was. Afraid, too: the fear was in his eyes and in the faint sheen of perspiration on his forehead. He was pretty much as Haruko had described him to me-on the near side of thirty, slender in a way that was almost girlish, with ascetic features enhanced by thick, black-rimmed glasses.
“Well, well,” I said. “You want to tell me about these friends of yours, Mr. Yamasaki?”
Yamasaki didn’t answer. He didn’t look at me either; his gaze was on his hands chafing together in his lap. But then Okubo said something to him in Japanese, sharp words that made the young guy’s head snap up and the fear flare momentarily bright in his eyes.
“I asked them to follow you,” he said to me. “Without Mr. Okubo’s permission.”
“Or my knowledge,” Okubo said.
Now I understood. It had been a private matter all along: nothing much to do with the Yakuza, really, except that Yamasaki and his two friends were low-level members of the organization. Okubo hadn’t known anything about it until I showed up a little while ago; that was why he’d refused to see me at first. But when I made my threat he’d hauled Yamasaki in-the kid had already been here for some reason that didn’t matter-and got the truth out of him.
All of which meant that the Yakuza wasn’t interested in me at all. Or hadn’t been until now. There was no telling yet which way things were going to go, although I liked my chances of getting off the hook better than I liked Yamasaki’s.
I asked, “Why did you have your friends follow me?”
“The police told me it was I you came to see at the bathhouse. I had no idea why and it concerned me. I wished to find out.”
Damn McFate and his big mouth. “So you were the one they kept talking to on the CB radio?”
“Yes. I let them use my car and borrowed my girlfriend’s; she also has a Citizen’s Band. That permitted us to communicate.”
“All you had to do,” I said, “was come and talk to me face to face. I’d have told you why I wanted to see you-gladly. There wasn’t any need for you to play games.”
Yamasaki looked at his hands again. There was embarrassment mingled with his anxiety now, as if he realized that his blunder was stupid and inexcusable and he’d lost a lot of face because of it. “ Comen nasai,” he said softly. I didn’t need a translator to know that he was saying he was sorry, as much to himself as to Okubo and me.
I turned my attention to Okubo. “What happens now? I don’t want any trouble with you people; all I want is to be left alone to do my job:”
“An admirable wish.”
“I think so.”
“Tell me this: Would you actually have carried out your threat to damage our establishment?”
“No,” I said. “That was just a ruse.”
“Ah. Very ingenious.”
“Was it? That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not I get my wish.”
“Of course,” Okubo said, as if he were surprised that I might think otherwise. “We, too, do not want any trouble; like you, we only desire to be left alone to do our work.”
I nodded, feeling relieved now. “What about Mr. Yamasaki’s two friends?”
“They will not bother you any longer. I have already seen to that — by house telephone, before you entered.”
“And Mr. Yamasaki? What happens to him?”
Okubo didn’t say anything. Nobody said anything.
I decided the smart thing
for me to do was to shut up. If I tried to argue Yamasaki’s case, it would only get Okubo down on me again. The Yakuza and its code of honor were nothing for a Caucasian to try mixing in. Besides, I doubted if they’d do anything terminal to him; he hadn’t screwed up badly enough for that sort of punishment.
Pretty soon Okubo said something to the Lump in Japanese; then he bowed to me, and I bowed to him, and the Lump led me out into the companionway. The last I saw of Ken Yamasaki, he was sitting stiff-backed in his chair with the sweat glistening on his cheeks and the fear glistening in his eyes.
The Lump walked me through the now-crowded and noisy restaurant, all the way out to the gangplank. I went down without looking at him, across the wind-swept parking area to my car. There was no sign of the white Ford, not there on the waterfront and not anywhere on my way to Japantown.
Art Gage opened the Victorian’s front door in answer to my ring and said, “Haruko’s not back yet.” He looked and sounded short-tempered; his eyes, under their blond brows, were hostile.
Don’t mess with me, kid, I thought. Not today. “I’ll wait inside. That is, if you don’t mind.”
“Why should I mind? Come on in.”
He took me into the familiar junk-filled parlor, said he had work to do upstairs in the studio, and started out. I said, “Wait a second. Is it all right if I use your phone?”
“What for?”
“To make some calls on. That’s what people generally use phones for, isn’t it?”
He made a prissy, disgusted noise with his lips. “What the hell, go ahead,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what I say, anyway.”
It would, I thought, if you had anything to say.
He went out of the room and I moved over to where the telephone sat on a wobbly-looking table with rails around the top. I glanced at my watch as I picked up the receiver. It was just one o’clock.
I made Information calls first, to get the numbers of the eight Wakasas living in California. Seven were listed; the one in Fresno either had an unlisted number or no phone at all. Then I called each of those seven, starting with the ones in Oakland and Palo Alto. I did all of it by direct-dialing; the Gages would have to pay message-unit and long-distance charges regardless of whether they were on the phone bill or on my expense list.
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