All very mysterious and unsettling. And it got even more so when I used the cafe’s public phone to ring back Harry Fletcher at the DMV.
The white Ford was registered to Kenneth Yamasaki, 261 °California Street, San Francisco.
There was plenty of activity at the Ogada Nursery when I got there just past noon. Half a dozen vans and two pick-up trucks, some with the names of prominent florists painted on their sides, were pulled up on the blacktopped area fronting the greenhouses; and a mix of Caucasian and Oriental men were loading and unloading potted plants and flowers, clay pots, sacks of loam and mulch and fertilizer. They all seemed to be in a hurry, either because it was the lunch hour or because of the weather. The rain had stopped for the moment, but the dark threatening clouds to the west said it would begin again before long.
I parked out of the way and wandered over to one of the workers and asked him if Edgar Ogada was around. He told me to go look in the greenhouse, and pointed to the first building in the nearest row.
It was cold and damp inside the big, high-roofed enclosure, and smelled thickly and richly of moist earth and growing things. Ferns and other house plants filled it-rows upon rows of them, in beds and in pots on long benches or hanging from a latticework of wire strung horizontally some eight feet off the ground. The only person in evidence was Ogada Senior; he was back toward the rear, doing something with one of the valves that operated a sprinkler system.
He looked at me without recognition when I reached him and said, “Afternoon, Mr. Ogada.” He appeared even more tired than he had yesterday; his eyes had the dull sheen of someone who has been burning a lot of midnight oil. “I was here yesterday afternoon to speak with your son.”
“ Hai, he said, and nodded. “Yes, I remember.”
“Would Edgar be here now?”
Another nod. “In the next shed… So. Here he comes.”
I half-turned to follow the direction of his gaze. A young guy had just come through a door in the opaque fiberglass wall that adjoined the next greenhouse. As he approached I saw that he was about thirty, tallish, wiry, good-looking in a careless sort of way. Bristly mustache, hair that fanned down over his shoulders, eyes that had the light of mischief in them. He wore running shoes and faded Levi’s and a sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off; on the front of the sweatshirt were the words NO NUKES in bright red letters.
“Hey, Pop,” he said, “what happened to those live seafoam and shooting-star miniatures? I don’t see them anywhere.” Pop, like Number One Son addressing Charlie Chan. He didn’t even glance at me.
“Gone,” his father said.
“Gone? You mean you sold them?”
“Yes.”
“Pop, I told you yesterday morning the Crawley brothers wanted them. What’s the matter? You going senile on me?”
Mr. Ogada didn’t say anything. So I said, “Everybody forgets things now and then, particularly when they’ve been working hard.”
The young guy, Edgar, put his eyes on me for the first time. There was no hostility in the look, nor even any annoyance; it was just a look with a question: Who are you?
I said, “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes, if you don’t mind. A personal matter.”
“The washers in this valve need to be changed,” Mr. Ogada said, “Will you do it, Edgar? I have invoices to prepare.”
“If I’ve got time.”
“ Hai,” Mr. Ogada said, and bowed slightly in my direction, and went away toward the outside door.
Edgar said, “What’s this personal matter you want to talk about?”
“A former girlfriend of yours. Haruko Gage.”
His forehead wrinkled slightly; that was the extent of his reaction to Haruko’s name. “Why?” he said. “Who are you, anyway?”
“A private detective.” I gave him my name and showed him the photostat of my license. “Mrs. Gage hired me to investigate a little problem she’s having.”
“You mean Haruko’s in trouble?”
“No, nothing like that.”
I told him what the problem was, and he didn’t react much to that either. A little surprise and a little puzzlement, nothing else.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Anybody who’d do something like that has to be nuts.”
“That’s what Haruko is afraid of.”
“But why talk to me? I don’t know anything about it.” He paused and frowned again. “Hey, she doesn’t think I’m the one who’s doing it, does she?”
“No. Your name was one of several she gave me-old boyfriends, men who’ve been serious about her in the past.”
“Well, that lets me out. I’ve never been serious over any girl. There’s too many of ’em, you know? Too many sakana in the umi.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We had some fun, Haruko and me,” Edgar said. He grinned. “I brought her here once and we were, you know, getting it on over at the house and Pop almost caught us. That would have been a heavy scene. Pop’s old-fashioned; he doesn’t think people ought to screw unless they’re married.”
“Is that how your mother feels too?”
The grin vanished. “My mother’s dead,” he said in a different, softer voice. “She died last summer. It’s been rough on Pop; that’s why he works so hard.”
Rough on Edgar, too, judging from his tone. I said, “How do you feel about Haruko now that she’s married?”
“Same as I’ve always felt about her. We’re still friends, only without the sex.”
“No regrets about that?”
“A few, sure. I wouldn’t mind getting it on with her again if she ever dumps Art the Fart; we were good together, real good. But it’s no big deal. A guy can always get laid.”
“I take it you don’t like her husband much.”
“He’s a jerkoff. I don’t know why she married him, unless it’s because he lets her tell him what to do. Or maybe he’s Clark Kent with his clothes on and Superman in the sack.” He shrugged. “Who knows why women do anything? I never could figure ’em out.”
That makes two of us, brother, I thought. “Do you know Ken Yamasaki?”
“Sure. Not too well, though. He thinks he’s an intellectual; I don’t think I am.”
“Could he be Haruko’s secret admirer, do you think?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“How about Kinji Shimata?”
“Shimata… no, never heard of him.”
“Nelson Mixer?”
“Is that somebody’s name?”
“Yes. A history teacher at City College.”
“I didn’t go to college,” he said and shrugged again.
I thanked him for his time, and he said, “Sure, I hope you find the nut,” and I left him and went out of the greenhouse. Most of the vehicles and workers had disappeared; so had Ogada Senior. The black-veined clouds were overhead now, scudding along in front of the sharp west wind like bales of gangrenous wool.
The rain started again, hard driving bullets of it, before I was halfway to my car.
With the exception of Ken Yamasaki, I had exhausted the list of names Haruko Gage had given me and I hadn’t learned much of anything so far. I had Yamasaki’s address, but I couldn’t look him up until I cleared it with Leo McFate. After having had my license suspended for a time five months ago, even though I hadn’t done much of anything wrong to deserve it, I could not afford to get the cops miffed at me again. And I couldn’t go down to the Hall to see McFate until four o’clock; he’d answered the homicide squeal last night, which meant he was working the four-to-midnight swing this week.
Another talk with Haruko seemed to be the only tack I had left. I could find out if she knew about Ken Yamasaki’s apparent Yakuza connections, and I could ask her some more questions about her past, maybe get a few more names worth checking out.
I came back into San Francisco on the 19th Avenue exit off Highway 280, drove straight to Japantown, and managed to find the same parking spot near the Gage Victorian that I’d occupied yesterday. When I went up and rang the bell, Haruko herself opened the door. She was wearing a tight white sweater today, and a pair of form-fitting designer slacks, and her glossy black hair was piled high on her head and held in place by a lacquered Oriental comb. Artie must have licked his chops when he saw her dressed up like that. Even I had to admit that she looked pretty sexy.