Quicksilver (Nameless Detective) Read Free

in a rainstorm.
    The other call on the machine, coincidentally, was also from an Oriental woman—a Japanese this time, who said her name was Haruko Gage and that she needed the services of an investigator. That perked me up a little; maybe it was the job I’d been lusting after. I wrote down her number, then went back into the kitchen to rescue my eggs. I put them on a plate and looked at them for about ten seconds. Then I opened the refrigerator and got out a celery stalk and put that on top of the salad in my grumbling stomach. I wasn’t eating these days; I was either swallowing chicken fruit or grazing like a bloody horse.
    Kerry, I thought, the things I do for you.
    In the bedroom again, I dialed Haruko Gage’s number. A man answered, and when I asked for the lady he wanted to know who was calling; he sounded timid and wary. I told him. “Oh, right,” he said, and the wariness was gone and he sounded timid and unhappy. “Well, she had to go out for a few minutes, but she’ll be back before long. I’m her husband. Art Gage?” He made his name into a question, as if he wasn’t sure who he was.
    “What is it your wife wants to see me about, Mr. Cage?”
    “These presents she keeps getting.”
    “Presents?”
    “In the mail. It’s driving us crazy.”
    “What sort of presents are you talking about?”
    Pause. “I guess I’d better let Haruko tell you. It was her idea to hire a private detective.”
    “All right. I’ll call back a little later, then—”
    “No, no,” he said, “why don’t you just come over to the house? She’ll be back by the time you get here.”
    “Where do you live, Mr. Gage?”
    “On Buchanan, just off Bush.” He gave me the number. “It’s on the fringe of Japantown.”
    The address was only about ten minutes from my flat. I looked out through the bedroom window to see if it was still raining so hard. It wasn’t, so I said, “I think I’ve got time to stop by. Give me about half an hour.”
    “I’ll tell Haruko you’re coming.”
    We rang off, and I put some dry clothes on and combed my hair. Then I called the outfit where my office stuff was stored and made arrangements for them to deliver it to O’Farrell Street tomorrow afternoon. And then I went back into the kitchen to eat those goddamn eggs.

Chapter Two
     
    Japantown was just off Geary Boulevard in the Western Addition, a few minutes from downtown—a miniature ginza where a high percentage of San Francisco’s 11,000 citizens of Japanese descent lived and worked, and where a good many Nippon tourists either stayed or congregated. Its hub, the Japan Center, was a five-acre complex built in 1968 that housed restaurants, a large hotel, a theatre, Japanese baths, art galleries, bookstores, banks, plenty of shops, and a pedestrian mall that was supposed to look like a mountain village in the old country, complete with a meandering stream, plum and cherry trees, and fountains. On the dozen or so other blocks of Japantown, you found small businesses, hotels, a bowling alley, a couple of Japanese-language newspapers, apartment houses, and not a few old—and for the most part refurbished—stick-style Victorian houses.
    But the area surrounding the Nihonmachi wasn’t anywhere near as pleasant. There were a lot of low-income housing projects, and a lot of anger and frustration to go with them; Japantown and its residents and visitors were prime targets for young hoodlums. Security measures had been taken and police patrols increased, but it was still one of the city’s high-crime districts. That was a damned shame for several reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the Japanese were a polite, friendly, and law-abiding people. They could have given lessons to too many of the white and black population.
    There wasn’t much doing in Japantown this afternoon because of the weather. Street parking was usually at a premium, even up around Bush and Buchanan, but I found a place half a dozen doors down from the