He told the woman on the reception desk that he was there to see Ralph Linden. She sent him down to the lower floor, where he repeated his request to another receptionist there. No, he didn’t have an appointment; it was a personal matter. One of his business cards persuaded her to call into the inner sanctum. Before long a fresh-faced young Japanese woman appeared through a doorway, smiled at him in exactly the same bright impersonal way as the two receptionists, asked him to wait please, and went back inside with his card. Short wait. She returned in less than five minutes, and this time it was him she took inside.
Two other employees, one Japanese male and one Caucasian female, offered bright impersonal smiles in the hallway; another Japanese male did the same from inside one of the offices. One big happy family at Yumitashi International. Or the smiles were company policy designed to convey that impression. Either way, the effect on Runyon wasn’t the one they intended. All the smiley faces gave him an off-center feeling, as if he’d stumbled into a training center for pod people.
Ralph Linden wasn’t one of the clones. He was on his feet behind his desk, mouth turned down instead of up, muddy brown eyes behind thick-lensed glasses betraying a nervous bewilderment, when the smiling woman bowed Runyon into his small office. The business card was between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, the way you’d hold something that might explode. He looked at it again as the woman retreated. When the door closed softly behind her, he said, “I don’t know you, Mr. Runyon, I don’t understand why you’re here. What would a private investigator want with me?”
“Information.”
“What sort of information? You mean about me?”
“Not directly.”
“My wife? Someone in my family?”
“No.”
That seemed to make Linden even twitchier. He was a bulky man pushing fifty, immaculately dressed in a three-piece gray suit, white shirt with gold cuff links, conservative tie. But he didn’t wear the clothes well; he wouldn’t wear any clothes well. There was a rumpled, ungainly look about him, as if he’d been fitted together out of mismatched spare parts. Wrinkly bald head, long jaw, heavy beard shadow, large ears, thin neck, long arms, big hands with knobby wrists, narrow upper body, broad hips. Uneasy on his feet, too, unlike a lot of big men. Even standing still he conveyed the impression of being loose-jointed, awkward. He would shamble when he walked, and prefer sitting down in any kind of interview or social situation, preferably with something like his gray-metal desk like a barricade between himself and anybody else. He’d relax a little then, be easier to talk to.
Runyon said, “All right if I have a seat?”
“This won’t take long, will it? I’m very busy, and the company discourages personal-” A thought seemed to strike him. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Yumitashi International, does it? If it does-”
“It doesn’t. I just have a few questions.”
“Well,” Linden said again, and immediately lowered himself into his chair.
Runyon wedged his body into a molded plastic chair that was more comfortable than it looked. The office was a fifteen-foot-square box, neatly kept, the walls painted an antiseptic white, with one small window that faced west and provided an oblique view of one of the other high-rises on the bayshore side of the freeway and a small piece of the Bay Bridge approach. The desk, the two chairs, a computer workstation, and the two of them filled it and made it seem even smaller. Some sort of graph or chart was displayed on a side wall, headed with the words EXPANDING HORIZONS — ironic in this tight, cramped space. He wondered how anybody could stand to spend eight or more hours a day, five days a week, cooped up in here. He’d been in the office two minutes and already he felt claustrophobic.
He waited until Linden was settled. Right-the man was more at ease sitting down. Then he said, “I’m here about your rental unit, Mr. Linden.”
“My… what?”
“Rental unit.”
“You must be mistaken. I don’t own any rental property…”
“Granny unit on your property in the city.”
“Oh, Christ.” The words seemed to pop out of him. And he was nervous again, wearing a pained, mournful look in place of his frown. “I knew it. I knew this would happen someday… How did you find out?”
“Does it matter?”
“Did somebody report it? Is that how?”
Runyon said nothing.
Linden lifted his hands, held them palm up and stared into them as if he were trying to read something in their crosshatching lines. “It wasn’t my idea,” he said, “I want you to know that.”
“No?”
“My wife, Justine, it was her idea. Her mother didn’t even want to move out here, for God’s sake. She was perfectly happy in Toledo.”
Again Runyon was silent.
“But she had to have her way,” Linden said. “Her brother’s the one who built the unit, not me.”
“Is that right?”
“Ted Mason. He’s a contractor, one of those gypsy contractors. He built it himself on weekends and holidays. Oh, sure, I helped him, but what choice did I have? It was the only way I could keep peace in the family.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wanted to apply for a permit, but he said we didn’t need one. He said there were ways around it as long as none of the neighbors complained. He was right, damn him, but I’ve never felt comfortable about it. I knew we’d get caught someday.” Linden shook his head. “All that money, and she only lived there two years. My mother-in-law. Two years, and Justine found her dead in bed one morning and then what we were going to do? The building was just sitting there, empty.”
Rambling a little now in his eagerness to defend himself, shift the blame, self-justify.
“It was Justine’s idea to rent it,” he said. “I didn’t want to go that route, it left us wide open, but we needed the extra money back then. The job I had wasn’t nearly as good as this one, and she- Oh, good Christ! There’s not going to be any publicity on this, is there?” He lowered his voice. “Yumitashi is a very conservative company, very conservative. You understand?”
“I understand. You don’t have to worry about publicity.”
“Well, that’s good, that’s a relief. I can’t afford to lose my job, especially in this economy. And I suppose there’ll be penalties-fines, back taxes. How much are we going to have to pay?”
“Not a cent, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Nothing? But…”
“I don’t work for the Housing Authority,” Runyon said. “Or any other city agency. That’s not why I’m here.”
Linden stared at him. His eyes, magnified behind the lenses of his glasses, seemed to bulge like a frog’s. “Why are you here then? What do you want? Money not to report us?”
“I told you, the only thing I’m interested in is information.”
“What information?”
“About your current tenant.”
“Is that what this is all about? You’re not investigating us?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, for God’s sake.” Relief put a slump in his shoulders. He took off the glasses, pinched and rubbed his eyes before he put the glasses back on. His expression had modulated again, this time into one of chagrin and embarrassment. “Why didn’t you say so? Why did you let me-” Then, in a small voice, “You scared the devil out of me.”
“Let’s talk about your tenant,” Runyon said.
“What’s he done?”
“He hasn’t done anything as far as I know.”
“Then why are you investigating him?”
“It’s nothing for you to be concerned about. And nothing for you to discuss or even mention to him. Forget this conversation after we’re finished and I’ll forget what you told me about the rental unit.”