Stalking the Angel

  Ito looked at Poitras. Poitras shrugged. “He’s like that.”

  Ito looked back at me. “I think maybe you got shit for brains. You think that’s possible?”

  I looked from Ito to the cop at the cruller table and back to Ito. I could still smell what I’d smelled in Ishida’s office. I said, “I think somebody dropped the ball. I think someone walked in here under ZZ Top’s nose and did this and walked out again and nobody said dick.”

  The cop on the cruller table uncrossed his arms and stood up and said, “Fuck you, asshole.”

  “Good line,” I said. “Schwarzenegger, right? The Terminator.”

  Poitras said, “Cut the bullshit.”

  Ito said, “Jimmy.”

  A tall black uniform came out of the back, took off his hat, and said, “Who’d do something like that?” Then he went outside. I was breathing hard and Jimmy was breathing hard but everybody else looked bored. Jimmy sat down again but didn’t cross his arms.

  Ito turned away from Jimmy and looked at me. “How long were you outside, hotshot?”

  “Maybe six hours.”

  “You see anybody?”

  I sipped some coffee.

  Ito nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He went over to the cruller table, picked up a cup of the coffee, peeled off its top, and took a long sip. Steam was rising off the cup but the heat didn’t seem to bother him. He said, “Who’s your client?”

  “A guy named Bradley Warren. The Pacific Men’s Club is naming him Man of the Month tomorrow.”

  “Man of the Month.”

  “Yeah. You should get in on that.”

  Jimmy said, “Shit.”

  I told them who Warren was and that he had hired me to find the Hagakure and that I had turned up Nobu Ishida’s name as a place to start. Terry Ito listened and sipped the hot coffee and stared at me without blinking. Detectives and crime scene guys and uniforms moved around us. The two guys from the ME’s office went out to their van and came back with a gurney. Ito called to them.

  “When did it happen?”

  The shorter of the two said, “Maybe eight hours.”

  Ito looked at me and nodded. I shrugged. Ito looked at Jimmy, but Jimmy was staring at the floor and flexing his jaws.

  I drank coffee and told them about my first visit to Ishida’s shop and about the three guys sitting at the tables and about Ishida. I said, “The stiff upstairs with the missing finger was one of them. There was another guy with a bad left eye, and a big kid, young, named Eddie.”

  Ito looked at Jimmy again. Jimmy looked up and said, “Eddie have tattoos? Here?” He touched his arms just below the elbows.

  “Yeah.”

  Jimmy looked at Ito and nodded. “Eddie Tang.”

  I said, “About three hours after I left Ishida’s, the client’s wife got a phone call saying they’d burn the house down if the Warrens didn’t call off the cops. I wanted to work Ishida some more, maybe take a look around his house, that kind of thing, so I came back here today.”

  Jimmy said, “That’s horseshit. You don’t threaten somebody to make the cops back off.”

  I said, “Yeah. You cops are tough, all right.”

  Ito said, “You’re some smart for a guy standing where you’re standing.”

  “It’s not hard in this company.”

  Jimmy didn’t say anything.

  I could feel the pulse in my temples and a sharp pain behind my right eye. It made me blink. Ito stared at me a long time, then gave a little nod. “Yeah, you’re smart. Maybe if you’re smart enough you can get what’s in that room back there out of your head. Maybe if you’re tough enough, what you saw back there won’t bother you.” His voice was softer than you would’ve expected.

  I took a deep breath and let it out. I rolled my shoulders to try to work out some of the tension. Poitras was leaning against a shelf of tea trays and little lacquer cups with his arms crossed. Crossed like that, they looked swollen even more than normal. Ito was good, all right.

  He said, “Thing is, what’s back there ain’t so special around here. This is Little Tokyo, Chinatown. You oughta see what the Mung have going down in Little Saigon.”

  Jimmy said, “How about those pricks in Koreatown?”

  Ito nodded at him, then looked back at me. Thinking about those pricks in Koreatown made him smile. “This ain’t America, white boy. This is Little Asia, and it’s ten thousand years old. We’ve got stuff down here like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

  I said, “Yeah.” Mr. Tough.

  He said, “If Nobu Ishida wanted you out of the picture, he wouldn’t do it by calling up some broad and making a threat.” He swiveled around and looked at Jimmy. “Call Hollenbeck Robbery and see who has this book thing. Find out what they know.”

  “Sure, Terry.” Jimmy didn’t move.

  I said, “What’s the big deal with Nobu Ishida?”

  Ito looked back at me and thought about it for a while. Like maybe he would tell me and maybe he wouldn’t. “You know what the yakuza is?”

  “Japanese mafia.”

  Jimmy smiled, wide and mindless, the way a pit bull smiles before he bites you. He said, “How about that, Terry. You think we got something as pussy as the mafia down here?”

  Ito said, “Call Hollenbeck.”

  I said, “Ishida was in the yakuza?”

  Jimmy smiled some more, then pushed off the cruller table and walked out. Ito turned back to me. “The yakuza is big in white slavery and dope and loan-sharking like the mafia, but that’s where it stops. The stiff in back with the missing finger, he’s what you would think of as a mafia soldier. But the mafia doesn’t have any soldiers like him. These guys, they’ve got a little code they live by. Somewhere along the line this guy screwed up and the code required him to chop off his own finger to make up for it. I’ve seen guys with three, four fingers missing from one hand.”

  I drank more coffee.

  Ito said, “The real headcases get their entire body tattooed from just below the elbows to just above the knees. Those guys are yakuza assassins.” He touched his forehead. “Bug fuck.”

  “Eddie,” I said.

  Ito nodded. “Yeah. Eddie’s a real up-and-comer. Local kid. Arrest record could fill a book. We got him made for half a dozen killings but we can’t prove it. That’s the bitch with the yakuza. You can’t prove it. People down here, something happens, they don’t see it and they don’t talk about it. So you’ve got to put a guy like Ishida’s business under surveillance for eight months and pray some hotshot private license doesn’t come along and tip him that he’s being watched and blow the whole thing. You don’t want that to happen because Ishida is overseeing a major operation to import brown heroin from China and Thailand for a guy named Yuki Torobuni who runs the yakuza here in L.A. and if you get Ishida maybe you get Torobuni and shut the whole fucking thing down.” Behind us, the two guys from the coroner’s office wheeled out the gurney. There was a dark gray body bag sitting on it. Whatever was in the bag looked rumpled.

  I said, “If they’re moving dope in, the guys down in Watts and East L.A. aren’t going to like it. Maybe what happened in back is an effort to eliminate competition.”

  Ito looked at Poitras. “You were right, Poitras. This boy is bright.”

  “He has his days.”

  “Unless,” I said, “it has something to do with the Hagakure.”

  Terry Ito smiled at me, then walked over to the cruller box and selected one with green icing. He said, “You’re smart, all right, but not smart enough. This isn’t your world, white boy. People disappear. Entire families vanish in the most outrageous manner. And there’s never a witness, never a clue.” Ito gave me a little more of the smile. “Have you read a translation of the Hagakure?”

  “No.”

  The smile went nasty. “There’s a little thing in there called Bushido. Bushido says that the way of the warrior is death.” Ito stopped smiling. “Whoever took your little book, pray it’s not the yakuza.” He stare
d at me for a little while longer, then he took his cruller and went into the back.

  Poitras uncrossed the huge arms and shook his head. “Sometimes, Hound Dog, you are a real asshole.”

  “Et tu, Brute?”

  He walked away.

  They kept me around until a dick from Hollenbeck got there and took my statement. It was 3:14 in the morning when they finished with me, and Poitras had long since gone. I went out into the cool night air onto streets that were empty of round-eyed faces. I thought about the yakuza and people disappearing and I tried to imagine things like nothing I’d ever seen. I tried, but all I kept seeing was what someone had done to Nobu Ishida.

  The walk to the car was long and through dark streets, but only once did I look behind me.

  11

  The next morning Jillian Becker called me at eight-fifteen and asked me if I had yet recovered the Hagakure. I told her no, that in the fourteen hours that had passed since we last spoke, I had not recovered it, but should I stumble upon it as I walked out to retrieve my morning paper, I would call her at once. She then reminded me that today was the Pacific Men’s Club Man of the Month banquet. The banquet was to begin at one, we were expected to arrive at the hotel by noon, and would I please dress appropriate to the occasion? I told her that my formal black suede holster was being cleaned, but that I would do the best I could. She asked me why I always had something flip to say. I said that I didn’t know, but having been blessed with the gift, I felt obliged to use it.

  At ten minutes after ten I pulled into the Warrens’ drive and parked behind a dark gray presidential stretch limousine. The driver was sitting across the front seat, head down, reading the Times sports section. There was a chocolate-brown 1988 Rolls-Royce Corniche by the four-car garage with a white BMW 633i beside it. I made the BMW for Jillian Becker. Pike’s red Jeep was at the edge of the drive out by the gate. It was as far from the other vehicles as possible. Even Pike’s transportation is anti-social.

  When I rang the bell, Jillian Becker answered, her face tight. She said, “They’ve just gotten another call. This time the caller said they’d hurt Mimi.”

  She led me back along the entry and into the big den. Sheila Warren was sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs, feet pulled up beneath her, an empty glass on the little table beside the chair. She was wrapped in a white terry bathrobe. Joe Pike was leaning against the far wall, thumbs hooked in his Levi’s, and Mimi Warren was on the big couch across from the bar. Her eyes were large and glassy, and she looked excited. Bradley Warren came in from his library at the back of the den, immaculate in a charcoal three-piece suit, and said, “Sheila. You’re just sitting there. We don’t want to be late.”

  I looked back at Jillian Becker. “Tell me about the call.”

  She said, “A half hour after you and I spoke the phone rang. Whoever it was started talking to Mimi, then must’ve realized she wasn’t an adult and asked for her father.”

  “What’d they say, Bradley?”

  Bradley looked annoyed. He adjusted each cuff and examined himself in the mirror behind the bar. Sheila Warren watched him, shook her head, and drained her glass. He said, “They told me that they knew we hadn’t stopped searching for the Hagakure and that they were growing angry. They said they would be at the Man of the Month banquet and that if I knew what was good for me and my family, I’d call it off.”

  Sheila Warren said, “Bastards.” Her s’s were a little slurred.

  Bradley said, “They told me they knew our every move and we were at their mercy and if I didn’t do what they said they’d kill Mimi.”

  I looked at Mimi. She was in a shapeless brown silk dress and flat shoes and her hair was pulled back. There still wasn’t any makeup. I said, “Pretty scary.”

  She nodded.

  I looked back at Bradley Warren. He was picking at something on his right lapel. “Is that the way they said it, using those words?”

  “As near as I can remember. Why?” Not used to being questioned by an employee.

  “Because it is so theatrical. ‘If you know what’s good for you.’ ‘Know your every move.’ ‘At their mercy.’ Most of the crooks I know have better imaginations. Also, it’s pretty clear now that we aren’t just talking about robbery. The calls you’re getting seem like harassment calls. Someone wants to hurt your business and embarrass you, and that’s probably why the Hagakure was stolen.”

  I went over to the big couch and sat down next to Mimi. She was watching everything the way a goldfish watches the world from its bowl, all big eyes and vulnerability and with an assumption of invisibility. Maybe that was easy to assume when Bradley and Sheila were your parents. I said, “What’d they say to you, babe?”

  Mimi giggled.

  Sheila said, “For Christ’s sake, Mimi.”

  Mimi blinked. Serious. “He told me it wasn’t ours. He told me it is the last legacy of Japan’s lost heart and that it belongs to the spirit of Japan.”

  Sheila Warren said, “Spirit my ass.” She got up from the chair and brought her glass over to the bar. She wasn’t wearing anything under the robe. “Well, I guess it’s time to get ready for the Man of the Month’s divine moment.” She said it loudly, then turned away from the bar and leered at Joe Pike. “Want to stand guard while I’m in the bath, rough guy?”

  Jillian Becker coughed. Pike stood solemn and catlike, mirrored lenses filled with the empty life of a television after a station sign-off. Bradley Warren found a hair out of place and leaned toward the mirror to adjust it. Mimi’s face grew dark and blotched. At the bar, Sheila shook her head at no one in particular, mumbled something about there being no takers, then left.

  Bradley Warren stepped away from the mirror, temporarily satisfied with his appearance, and looked at his daughter. “Finish dressing, Mimi. We’re going to leave soon.”

  “I hate to be the wet blanket,” I said, “but maybe we should forgo the Man of the Month celebration.”

  Bradley frowned. “I told you before. That’s impossible.”

  I said, “The banquet will be in a large ballroom at the hotel. There will be a couple of hundred people plus the hotel and kitchen employees. People will want to speak with you before the presentation and after, and with your wife, and your family will be spread all to hell and back. If we assume that there is merit to the threats you’ve received, you’ll be vulnerable. So will your wife and daughter.”

  Mimi’s left eye began to twitch in the same way that Bradley’s had. What a trait to inherit. Her face was small and pinched and closed, but her eyes were watchful in spite of the tic, and made me think of a small animal hiding at the edge of a forest.

  Bradley said, “Nothing’s going to happen to my best girl.” He went over to her with an Ozzie Nelson smile and put his hands on her shoulders.

  Mimi jumped when he touched her as if an electrical current had arced between them. He didn’t notice. He said, “My best girl knows I have to attend. She knows that if we’re not at the banquet, the Tashiros will see me as weak.”

  His best girl nodded. Dutifully.

  Bradley turned the Ozzie Nelson smile on me. “There. You see?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Go without your family. Pike will stay with them, here, and I’ll go with you.”

  Ozzie Nelson grew impatient. “You don’t seem to understand,” he said. “What you’re asking would be bad for business.”

  “Silly me,” I said. “Of course.”

  Jillian Becker stared out the front window toward a grove of bamboo. Joe Pike moved to the bar and crossed his arms the way he does when he’s disgusted. I took a deep breath and told myself to pretend Bradley Warren was a four-year-old. I spoke slowly and wished Mimi wasn’t with us. I said, “A threat was made to your wife, and now a threat has been made to your daughter. A person who may or may not have been connected with the theft of the Hagakure was murdered. Whether the two are linked or not, I don’t know, but the situation is worsening and it would be smart to take these threats seriously.”
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  Jillian Becker turned from the window. “Bradley, maybe we should call the police. They could help with extra security.”

  Bradley made a face like she’d pissed on his leg. He said, “Absolutely not.”

  Mimi stood, then, and went over to her father. “I put on this dress especially for the banquet. Isn’t it pretty?”

  Bradley Warren looked at her and frowned. “Can’t you do something about your hair?”

  Mimi’s left eye fluttered like a moth in a jar. She rubbed at the eye and opened her mouth and closed it, and then she left.

  Joe Pike shook his head and he left, too.

  Bradley Warren looked at himself in the mirror again. “Maybe I should change shoes,” he said. Then he started out, too.

  I said, “Bradley.”

  He stopped in the door.

  “Your daughter is terrified.”

  “Of course she’s frightened,” he said. “Some maniac said he was going to kill her.”

  I nodded. Slowly. “The right thing for you to do is to call this off. Stay home. Take care of your family. They’re scared now, and possibly in danger, and they need your help.”

  Bradley Warren gave me the famous Bradley Warren frown, then shook his head. “Don’t you see?” he said. “A lot of cops would ruin the banquet.”

  I nodded. Of course. I looked at Jillian Becker, but she was busy with her briefcase.

  12

  “Who heads security at Bradley’s hotel?”

  Jillian Becker said, “A man named Jack Ellis.”

  “May I have his phone number?”

  Jillian Becker held my gaze for a moment, then turned away and found Jack Ellis’s number in her briefcase. I used the phone behind the bar, called Ellis at the hotel, told him what was going on and that I had been hired by Mr. Warren for Mr. Warren’s personal security. Jillian Becker took the phone and confirmed it. Ellis had a thick, coarse voice that put him in his fifties. He said, “What do the cops think about all this?”

  “The cops don’t know. Mr. Warren thinks they’d be bad for business.” When I said it Jillian Becker pursed her lips and went back to shuffling papers within the briefcase. Disapproving my tone of voice, no doubt.