Stalking the Angel (26 page)

Eddie and the three men got into the limo while the redcap and the midget loaded the trunk. When all the bags were stowed, Eddie leaned out of the car, gave the redcap a tip, and then the limo pulled away.

We looped back around to the San Diego Freeway again, headed north to the 1-10, then went east across the center of Los Angeles. We cut just south of the downtown area, then up past Monterey Park, and pretty soon downtown and its skyscrapers fell away to an almost endless plain of small stucco and clapboard houses. Past El Monte and West Covina, the traffic thinned and the houses gave way to undeveloped land and railroad spur lines and industrial parks. The limo settled into the number two lane and stayed there for a very long time, and for a very long time there was nothing to see. We rolled past Pomona and Ontario and by early afternoon we approached San Bernardino. Service roads appeared, lined with Motel 6’s and Denny’s Coffee Shops and middle-of-nowhere shopping malls featuring
BEDROOM SPECIALISTS
and
INDIAN DINING
and
UNFINISHED FURNITURE
. At the southern edge of San Bernardino, we turned north on the San Bernardino Freeway toward Barstow.

I said, “How we doing for gas?”

Pike didn’t answer.

The San Bernardino forked to the right under a sign that said
MOUNTAIN RESORTS
, and that’s the way we went. A little bit later it forked again, and this time when we followed we began a long slow climb into the San Bernardino Mountains toward Lake Arrowhead. The limo stayed in the slow lane and Pike dropped very far back. Maybe these guys were on their vacation. Maybe they were going to do a little fishing and water-skiing on the lake and grill some wienies down on the dock. That would be fun.

The mountains were vertical giants, rocky and bare except for their shoulders and ridges, which were laced with a stegosaurus-like spine of ponderosa pine trees. Every couple of miles there were signs that said
DEER CROSSING
or
SLOWER TRAFFIC USE TURNOUTS
or
BEWARE FALLING ROCKS
.

It took a half hour to reach a sign that said
5000 FEET ELEVATION
, then the highway stopped climbing and leveled out in a heavy forest of ponderosas so improbably tall that we might have been in Oz. Two miles later the road forked again and another sign said
BLUE JAY
. An arrow pointed toward the left fork. That’s where the limo went. That’s where we went.

The road was narrow and winding and little clapboard cabins and weekender houses began to pop up amidst the pines. Most had small boats out front or muddy motorcycles leaning against native-stone garage walls. More and more houses sprouted, and pretty soon there was a Pioneer Chicken and a couple of banks and a shopping center and two coffee shops and a Jensen’s Market and a U.S. Post Office and crowds of people and we were in Blue Jay. Up so high, Lake Arrowhead was a good twenty degrees cooler than San Bernardino below, and every summer the hordes ascended, desperate
to escape the sweltering weather down in the flatland.

The limo didn’t stop. It rolled slowly through the three-block stretch that was urban Blue Jay, and then the road forked once more. The town ended and houses reappeared but now the houses were larger and more expensive, big two- and three-story structures with lots of decking and stairs and high slanted roofs to shed the snow. We climbed, then leveled off, and we could see the lake, big and wide and gleaming in the summer sun. There were dozens of boats and skiers on the water, the powerboats and jet skis buzzing like angry mutant wasps.

On the north shore, the limo turned off the main road and eased down a gravel and tarmac lane for a mile and a half past large older homes. Big money was on the north shore. These were old vacation mansions built back in the thirties and forties for Hollywood celebrities and movie moguls who hoped to get away for a little hunting and fishing. Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart and those guys. Wonder what Bogie would think if he knew a scumbag like Yuki Torobuni was living in his house?

Pike pulled off the road and parked. “We follow down there,” he said, “they’ll spot us.”

We got out and trotted after them on foot.

A quarter of a mile ahead, the limo stopped at a private gate. The rear window on the driver’s side went down and Eddie Tang said something to an Asian man who was leaning against a cranberry-colored Chevrolet Caprice. The guard opened the gate and the limo went in. Pike and I moved off the lane into the woods and made our way past another couple of houses until we got to Torobuni’s place. There was a native-stone wall
running from the road back into the woods. We followed it until we were hidden from the road, then I went up for a look and Pike continued on toward the lake.

The grounds were ten acres easy, with a looping gravel drive and a huge stone mansion with a mansard roof and a smaller carriage house to the side. Ponderosas and Douglas firs grew naturally about the grounds, and in back there were gardens and flower beds and stone pathways and swings for lazy summer afternoons. The property ran a good four hundred feet in a gentle slope down to the lake. At the lake there was a stone entertaining pier and boat house and four boat slips. The three men Eddie Tang had brought were smiling and shaking hands with Yuki Torobuni at the limo while a lot of guys who were probably just hired muscle watched. Torobuni made a big deal out of pumping each man’s hand and bowing and there was a lot of back slapping. Home office, all right.

After they’d had their fill, Torobuni and the Big Shots went inside, and Eddie went over to a thin guy with nothing for a mustache and said something to him. The thin guy went into the main house and Eddie strolled around to the carriage house. After a while the thin guy came out of the big house with Mimi Warren and walked her over to the carriage house. He knocked once, the door opened, Mimi went in, and then the door closed. The thin guy took a walk down to the water.

I stayed at the top of the wall between the branches of a Douglas fir and I did not move until something touched my leg. Joe Pike was on the ground below me.

“Not now,” he said. “It’s too light, and they’re too many. Later. Later, we can get her.”

Riding back toward Blue Jay, Joe Pike said, “We can wait for dusk, then come in from the water. If we come in behind the boat house, the guards won’t be able to see us, then we can move up along the wall to the carriage house.”

I nodded.

“Or we could call the cops.”

I looked at him.

Pike’s mouth twitched. “Just kidding.”

At Blue Jay, we turned east along the southern edge of the lake and drove to Arrowhead Village. The village is a two-tiered shopping and hotel complex on the southeast rim of the lake. On the upper tier there’s a Hilton hotel and a Stater Brothers market and a video rental place and a narrow road that brings you down to the lake. On the lakeside level there’s a McDonald’s and an ice cream shop and an arcade and a couple of million gift shops and clothing stores and real estate
offices. There is also a place that will rent you a boat.

Joe parked in a spot by the ice cream shop, and took a canvas Marine Corps duffel bag from the Jeep’s cargo space and slung it over his shoulder. Probably packed a big lunch. We walked down past the McDonald’s to the lake, stopped by a wharf they have there, and looked out. This close, the lake was huge, all dark flat planes and black deep water. There was a little girl with very curly hair on the wharf, throwing white bread to the ducks. She was maybe eight and pretty and gave me a happy smile when she saw me. I smiled back.

Then I looked across the lake again and the smile faded. There was about an hour of light left. Plenty of time to call the cops. I said, “If we call the cops, they might blow it. The guys across the lake are pros. They’re there to protect Torobuni and those other guys, and they won’t hesitate to pull the trigger. I want the girl and I want her safe and if it’s me over there I won’t be worrying about something else when I should be worrying about her.”

He looked at me through the mirrored lenses with no expression. “You mean us over there.”

“Yeah.”

The little girl tossed her last piece of bread, then ran back up the wharf into the arms of a tall man with glasses. The tall man scooped her up and heaved her toward the sky. Both of them laughed.

Pike said, “You’re riding the edge on this one.”

I nodded.

“Be careful.”

I nodded again. “No one has ever been there for her, Joe.”

The little girl and the tall man walked back toward the parking lot. Holding hands.

Pike and I went along the shore past boat slips and a tour boat dock and several small shops to a wooden wharf with a flotilla of little aluminum boats around it. There were kids on the wharf, and moms and dads wondering whether or not it would be safe to rent one of the boats so late in the day. At the end of the wharf there was a wooden shed with a rail-thin old man in it. He needed a shave. We went out on the wharf past the moms and dads and kids and up to the shed. I said, “We’d like to rent a boat, please.”

“I got’m with six- or nine-pony ’Rudes. Which you want?”

“Nine.”

He turned a clipboard with a rental form toward me. “Fill that out and gimme a deposit and you’re all set.”

He came around with a red plastic gas can and got into one of the boats and filled its tank. “Watch out for those rat bastard ski boats,” he said. “Damn rich kids come out here and run wild all over the goddamn lake. Swamp you sure as I shit peanuts.” He was a charming old guy.

“Thanks for the tip,” I said.

He looked at Pike’s duffel bag. “You plannin’ on doin’ some fishin’?”

Pike nodded.

The old guy shook his head and hawked up something phlegmy and spit it in the water. “Rich little bastards in their ski boats ruined that. You ain’t gonna catch shit.”

“You’d be surprised at what I catch,” Pike said.

The old man squinted at Pike. “Yeah. I guess I would.”

It took twenty minutes to cross the lake. There was mild chop and wakes from the ski boats but the little Evinrude motor gave us a steady dependable push. Halfway across we could make out the houses that dotted the north shore, and a little past that I turned to a westerly heading, looking for Torobuni’s.

Pike took the Colt Python out of the duffel and clipped it over his right hip. He snapped a little leather ammo pouch beside it. The pouch held two six-round cylinder reloads. He went back into the duffel and came out with a sawed-off Remington automatic shotgun and a bandolier of Hi-Power shotgun shells. It was a 12-gauge skeet gun with a cut-down barrel and an extended magazine and a pistol grip for a stock. It looked like an over/under, but the bottom tube was the magazine and had been modified to hold eight rounds. Pike had done the modifications himself. He put the bandolier around his waist, then took out eight shells and fed them into the shotgun. Buckshot.

Torobuni’s elaborate dock with its boat house and slips and bright yellow sun awning wasn’t hard to spot. The stonework was intricate and beautiful and gave a sense of enduring wealth. It was easy to imagine long-ago times when life resembled an Erté painting and men and women wearing white stood on the dock sipping champagne. I said, “You see it?”

Pike nodded.

From the water you could see up past the dock and the boat house and along the walks that wound through the trees up to Torobuni’s mansion. The carriage house was to the right of the main house and about sixty yards up from the lake. On both sides of the property big walls started at the water. There were two guys sitting under the awning and another guy walking up toward
the carriage house. One of the guys under the awning went into the boat house, then came back with a third guy. A man and a woman on jet skis buzzed around the point, looped into the cove, then out again. The woman was maybe twenty-five and had a lean body and the world’s smallest bikini. One of the guys under the awning pointed at her and the other two laughed. Nothing like America.

Pike said, “Property to the right is what I was talking about. We put the boat in there and come around the wall, the guys under the awning won’t be able to see us.”

The home next to Torobuni’s was a sprawling Cape Cod with a sloping back lawn and a new wooden dock. The trees had mostly been cleared from the east side of its property, but Torobuni’s side was still wooded and trees kneed out into the water. A sleek fiberglass ski boat was in one of the house’s two slips, tied down and tarped, and the house was shuttered tight. Whoever owned the Cape Cod probably wouldn’t be up until the weekend.

We stayed well out in the cove until we were past Torobuni’s, then turned in and crept back along the shoreline. The sun was painting the western rim of the mountains and the sky was green and murky and cool. End of the day, and you could smell burning charcoal as people fired their barbeques. We tied up by the ski boat, then crept along the shore to the clump of pines at the end of Torobuni’s wall. We stepped into the lake and went around the wall and into the trees, Pike keeping the Remington high and out of the water. There were voices from the far side of the boat house and music from the main house and somewhere someone smoked a cigarette, and men laughed. We waited.
The sun sank further and the sound of ski boats was replaced by crickets and pretty soon there were fireflies.