Free Quicksilver (Nameless Detective) by Bill Pronzini Page B

said. “I’m not ashamed of it.”
    “Is there anyone who calls you by that name?”
    “No. No one ever has.” She watched me put the wrapping paper back on the table and pick up the gift box. Then she said, “Whoever he is, he’s getting bolder, isn’t he.”
    “Not necessarily.”
    “It sure seems that way.” Her expression turned wry. “And now he’s not even sending me anything worthwhile.”
    “Pardon?”
    “His latest present—it’s not valuable like the others.”
    “Another piece of jewelry?”
    “A medallion,” she said in insulted tones. “An old, cheap, used one.” She reached over and pulled the lid off the box I held in my hands. “There, you see? Damascene, that’s all. It’s probably not worth more than twenty dollars.”
    I stared at it. A lacquered thing shaped like a St. Christopher’s medal, with an inlaid design comprised of gold and silver lines. Once it must have had a rich, high polish; now it was dulled and one corner was chipped. Through an eyehook on top was a loop of stiff, new rawhide, so that the medallion could be worn around the neck.
    I kept on staring at it. Because I had seen it before—it, or one very similar. And I did not like the connection it formed in my mind; I didn’t like it at all.
    The medallion was what the young Simon Tamura had been wearing in the broken-framed photograph lying next to his corpse.

Chapter Eight
     
    Haruko said, “What’s the matter? Why are you looking at it that way?”
    “Have you ever seen a medallion like this before?”
    “I don’t think so. Why?”
    “So it’s not a common type or design.”
    “No. It’s just a piece of damascene.”
    “What’s damascene?”
    She told me: a process that involved chiseling fine lines on a steel foundation, inlaying them with gold and silver, corroding the steel with acid, and then lacquering and polishing. “They make damascene in Kyoto,” she said. “One of the old arts.”
    “And it isn’t expensive, even with the gold and silver inlays?”
    “No. Not unless it’s a large piece, where a lot of precious metal is used. You can buy most damascene for a few dollars.”
    I set the box down on the table again. “What about the design on the medallion?” I asked her. “Does that have any significance?”
    “To me? No.”
    “Historical or religious significance, maybe?”
    “Not that I know of. But I’m a Sansei; I was born here, not in Japan.”
    “Did you know Simon Tamura?”
    The abrupt shift in questions made her blink. “The man who owns Tamura’s Baths?”
    “Yes.”
    “I met him when I was seeing Ken Yamasaki, and I saw him again a few months ago. Why are you asking about Mr. Tamura?”
    “You didn’t know he was murdered last night?”
    “ Murdered? My God, no.”
    “It was all over this morning’s paper.”
    “We don’t take the morning paper.” She was frowning and she looked a little edgy now. “What happened to him?”
    “Somebody hacked him to death with a samurai sword,” I said. “In his office at the bathhouse. I had the bad luck to find the body when I went there to talk to your friend Yamasaki.”
    Her gaze slid away from my face and down to my hands, as if she were looking for bloodstains. A little shiver ran through her; you could see that violence, even the discussion of it, upset her. “I don’t understand,” she said after a time. “What does that have to do with me?”
    “Maybe nothing. But there was a framed photograph beside Tamura’s body that had been knocked off the wall—three young men, one of them Tamura, taken between thirty and forty years ago. He was wearing a medallion in the photo just like this one.”
    She started to speak, but there were thumping noises on the hall stairs just then and her mouth hinged shut on whatever the words were. Art Gage’s voice called, “Haruko? Where are you?” and I heard him do some more thumping in the hall. But I kept my eyes on Haruko. Her face was pale; anxiety crouched like