Stalking the Angel (15 page)

The older man in the cheap sharkskin looked at Eddie. “You know this one?” No accent.

Eddie nodded. “He came into Ishida s.”

I said, “Wow, Eddie. Last week you’re working for Nobu Ishida, then Ishida gets osterized, and now you’re working for Yuki Torobuni. You’re really on the rise.”

Yuki Torobuni said, “How do you know who I am?”

“You’re either Torobuni or Fu Manchu.”

Torobuni dipped his chin at Eddie. “Let’s go in the back.”

Torobuni moved past me and went down the steps toward the kitchen. The midget swaggered after him the way midgets will. Pike and I went next, and Eddie trailed behind. The Butterfly Lady watched us go, lean hips moving to The Smiths, little butterfly dancing. Nice moves.

Eddie said, “You like that, huh?”

Some guys.

When we got into the kitchen, Yuki Torobuni leaned against a steel table and said, “Eddie.” Everything was Eddie. Maybe the midget was a moron.

Eddie moved to pat Pike down. Pike pushed Eddie’s hand away from his body. “No.”

The midget took out a Browning .45 automatic about eighteen sizes too big for him. The smell of sesame oil and tahini and mint was strong and the kitchen help was careful not to look our way.

Eddie and Pike were just about the same height but Eddie was heavier and his shoulders sloped more because of the insanely developed trapezius muscles. Eddie sneered at Pike’s red arrows. “Those are shit tattoos.”

Torobuni made a little forget-it gesture with his left hand. “Let’s not waste our time.” He looked at me. “What do you want?”

“I want a sixteen-year-old girl named Mimi Warren.”

Eddie Tang laughed. Torobuni smiled at Eddie, then shook his head and gave me bored. “So what?”

“Maybe you have her.”

Torobuni said, “Boy, I never heard of this girl. What is she, a princess, some kind of movie star?” Eddie thought that was a riot.

I said, “Something called the Hagakure was stolen from her parents, and whoever got it kidnapped the girl to stop the search. It’s a good bet that whoever wanted the Hagakure is also in the yakuza. Maybe that’s you.”

Torobuni’s face darkened. He barked out a couple of words of Japanese and Eddie stopped laughing. “Whoever stole the Hagakure kidnaps the girl to stop you looking for it?”

“That’s the way it looks.”

“Not too bright.”

“Geniuses rarely go into crime.”

Torobuni stared at me a moment, then walked over to a giant U.S. range where a woman was taking a fresh load of tempura shrimp from the deep fat. He mumbled something and she plucked out a shrimp on a little metal skewer and handed it to him. He took a small bite. He said, “Two years ago I had a man’s face put in here.” He gestured at the grease vat. “You ever see a fried face?”

“No. How’d it taste?”

Torobuni finished the shrimp and wiped his hands on a cloth that was lying on the steel table. He shook his head. “You’re out of your mind to come here like this. You know my name, but do you have any idea who I am?”

“Who killed Nobu Ishida?”

He leaned against the table again and looked at me. Eddie shifted closer, his eyes on Pike. The midget with the .45 beamed. Torobuni folded the towel neatly and put it down. “Maybe you killed him.”

“Sure.”

Behind us cooking fat bubbled and cleavers bit into hardwood cutting boards and damp heat billowed out of steamers. Torobuni stared at me for another couple of centuries, then spoke again in Japanese. The midget put away the gun. Torobuni came very close to me, so close the cheap sharkskin brushed my chest. He looked first in my right eye, then in my left. He said, “Yakuza is a terrible monster to arouse. If you come down here again, yakuza will eat you.” His voice was like late-night music.

“I’m going to find the girl.”

Torobuni smiled a smile to match the voice. “Good luck.”

He turned and went out the back of the kitchen, the midget swaggering behind him. Eddie Tang went with them, walking backward and keeping his eyes on Joe Pike. He stopped in the door, gave Pike a nasty grin, then peeled up his sleeves to show the tattoos. He worked his arms to make the tattoos dance, then snarled and flexed the huge traps so they grew out of his back like spiny wings. Then he left.

Pike said, “Wow.”

We went out through the dining room and past the bar. The kid I’d talked to was gone. The Butterfly Lady was busy with customers. People ate. People drank. Life went on.

When we got back to the Big Boy lot, Pike said, “He knows something.”

“You got that feeling, huh?”

Nod.

“Somebody else might know something, too. Mimi Warren used to come here.”

The sunglasses moved. “Mimi?” He was doing it, too.

“She came with friends and she hung out and she probably met a wide variety of sleazy people. Maybe whoever grabbed her was someone she met here and bragged to about what her daddy had sitting in his home safe.”

“And if we can find the friends, they might know who.”

“That’s it.”

The sunglasses moved again. “Uh-huh.”

Forty minutes later I pulled the Corvette into my carport, parked, went in through the kitchen, and phoned Julian Becker at her office. She said, “Yes?”

“It’s Elvis Cole. I’d like to talk with you about Mimi and her father and all of this.”

“You were fired.”

“That may be, but I’m going to find her. Maybe you can help me do that.”

There was a pause, and sounds in the background. “I can’t talk now.”

“Would you have dinner with me tonight at Musso and Frank?”

Another pause. Thinking about it. “All right.” She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic. “What time?”

“Eight o’clock. You can meet me there, or I’ll pick you up. Whichever you prefer.”

“I’ll meet you there.” It was clear what she preferred.

After we hung up I pulled off my clothes, took a shower, then fell into a deep uneasy sleep.

I woke just after six feeling drained and stiff, as if sleeping had been hard work. I went downstairs and flipped on the TV news, and after a while there was something about Mimi’s kidnapping.

A blond woman who looked like she played racquet-ball twice a day gave the update standing in front of the New Nippon Hotel, “site of the kidnapping.” She said the police and the FBI still had no information as to Mimi’s whereabouts or condition, but were working diligently to effect a positive resolution. The screen cut to a close-up of a photograph of Mimi with a phone number beneath her chin. After the blond woman asked anyone who might have information to call the number, the news anchor segued nicely into a story about a recruitment drive the L.A.P.D. was launching. There was a number to call for that, too.

Mimi Warren had been given seventeen seconds.

At seven o’clock I went into the kitchen, drank two
glasses of water, then went upstairs to shave and shower. I ran the water hot and rubbed the soap in hard and after the shower I felt a little better. Maybe I was getting used to the pain. Or maybe it was just the thought of dinner with an MBA.

When I was dry and deodorized, I stood in the door to my closet and wondered what I should wear. Hmmm. I could wear my Groucho Marx nose, but Jillian already thought I joked around too much. My Metaluna Mutant mask? Nah. I pulled on a pair of brown outback pants and gray CJ Bass desert boots and a white Indian hiking shirt and a light blue waiter’s jacket. I looked like an ad for Banana Republic. Maybe Banana Republic would give me a job. They could put my picture in their little catalog and under it they could say:
Elvis Cole, famous detective, outfitted for his latest adventure in rugged inner-city climes!
Did Banana Republic sell shoulder holsters?

I went downstairs, put out food for the cat, then locked up and drove down into deepest, darkest Hollywood. Yep. Thinking about dinner with Jillian was working wonders.

At two minutes before eight, I parked behind Musso and Frank’s Grill on Hollywood Boulevard and went in. Jillian Becker walked in behind me. She was wearing a conservative eggshell pants suit over a light brown shirt and beige pumps. Her nails and her lip gloss were one of those colors between pink and flesh, and went well with the eggshell. Her fingers were slim and manicured and there was a single strand of white pearls around her neck. She looked tired and harassed, but I couldn’t tell that until she was closer. She said, “I’m sorry I’m late.” It was one minute after eight.

“Would you like a drink?”

“At the table.”

A bald man led us into Musso’s huge back room to a very nice booth. There’s a long bar back there and leather booths and it looks very much the way it looked in 1918, when Musso’s opened. A busboy came with sourdough bread and water, then a waiter appeared, giving us menus and asking if we cared for something to drink. I ordered a Dos Equis. Jillian Becker ordered a double Stoly on the rocks. Must have been some kind of day.

“This room,” I said, “is where Dashiell Hammett first laid eyes on Lillian Hellman. It was a romance that lasted ages.”

Jillian Becker glanced at her watch. “What did you want to talk about?” So much for romance.

“Have the cops come up with anything?”

“No.”

“Have there been any demands from the kidnappers?”

“No. The police and the FBI talk to us a dozen times a day. They have a tap on Bradley’s home phone. They have a tap on the office phone. But there’s been nothing.”

The waiter came back with the drinks. Usually it takes about a year to get your drinks, but sometimes they’re fast. “Are you ready to order?” he said, pencil poised.

Jillian said, “I’ll have the crab salad.”

The waiter looked at me.

“Grilled chicken. Home fries. Broccoli.”

He nodded twice and wrote it down and left. Jillian lifted her glass and took a long drink.

“Rough day?”

“Mr. Cole, I’d rather not discuss my day if it’s all
the same to you. You could have asked me what the police had over the phone.”

“But then I wouldn’t have been able to admire your beauty.”

She tapped her glass with a manicured fingernail. Guess we’d proceed directly to business.

I said, “Have you ever heard the name Yuki Torobuni?”

“No.”

“Yuki Torobuni owns a dance club downtown called Mr. Moto’s. It’s very new wave, very hip, cocaine in the bathrooms, that kind of place. Yuki Torobuni also heads the yakuza here in L.A. Do you know what the yakuza is?”

“Like the mafia.”

“Yeah. How about a guy named Eddie Tang? Ever heard his name?”

“No.” Impatient. “Why are you asking if I’ve heard of these people? Do you think Bradley’s involved with them?”

“It crossed my mind.”

She lifted her glass and took a careful sip, thinking about that. She thought about it for a very long time. When she put the glass down, she said, “All right. It’s reasonable for you to consider every possible solution to a problem.” Business school. “But Bradley is not involved with organized crime. I see where the money comes from, and I see where it goes. If there were something shady going on, I’d know it, or at least suspect it, and I don’t.”

“Maybe it’s very well hidden.”

She shook her head. “I’m too good for that.”

I nodded. “Okay. Let’s try this. I talked to a guy at Mr. Moto’s who told me that Mimi came there often, and that she came with friends.”

“Mimi?” Everybody does it.

“Uh-huh. A girl named Carol and another girl named Kerri.”

Jillian took another sip of her drink. “She’s never mentioned them to me. Not that she necessarily would.”

“How about other friends?”

Jillian shook her head again. “I’m sorry. Mimi always seemed very withdrawn. Sheila complains endlessly that she never leaves the house.” Jillian put her glass down and eyed it coolly. “Sheila is something else.”

The waiter came with a little stand and all of our plates on a large oval tray. He put the stand down by the table, then the tray on the stand. He set out Jillian’s crab salad, then my chicken and broccoli and home fries, and then he took the tray and the stand and left. The chicken smelled wonderful. It always did.

Jillian said, “Bradley’s not going to pay you a dime, you know. He intends to sue you, if he has to, to recover the money he’s already paid.”

“He won’t have to do that.” Bradley Warren’s blank check was still in my wallet. I took it out, tore it in quarters, and put it on the table by Jillian Becker’s plate.

Jillian Becker looked at the check and then at me. She shook her head. “And you’re still going to look for Mimi?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I told Mimi I would take care of her.”

“And that’s enough.”

I shrugged. “It’s an ugly job, but somebody has to do it.”

Jillian frowned and ate some of the crab salad. I
had some of the chicken, then a couple of the home fries. Excellent.

I said, “I need to find out who Mimi hangs out with. Bradley and Sheila might be able to tell me. If they won’t talk to me, maybe you could talk to them for me.”

Jillian frowned more deeply and put her fork in the crab but only played with it. “Bradley had to fly to Kyoto.”

The Dos Equis was cold and bitter. I sipped it. I had a little more of the chicken. I had a little of the broccoli. Two guys at the edge of the bar crowd were looking our way. One of the guys was overweight and balding. The other guy was very tall with dark hair and thick glasses and a heavy jaw. He looked like Stephen King. The shorter guy was drinking what looked like scotch rocks. The taller, Campari and soda. They were staring at Jillian and the taller guy was smiling. “His daughter is gone,” I said, “but business continues.”