Stalking the Angel ec-2

by Robert Crais

  I fed myself and the cat, then showered, dressed, and was turning down Century Park East Boulevard forty minutes later. It was clear and sunny and cooler than yesterday, with a lot of women on the sidewalks, all of them wearing lightweight summer outfits with no backs and no sleeves. Century City was once the back lot of Twentieth Century-Fox Studios. Now it is an orchard of high-rise office buildings done in designer shades of bronze and black and metallic blue glass, each carefully spaced for that planned-community look and landscaped with small pods of green lawn and California poplar trees. The streets have names like Constellation Boulevard and Avenue of the Stars and Galaxy Way. We are nothing if not grandiose.

  The Century Plaza Towers are a matching set of triangular buildings, thirty-five floors each of agents, lawyers, accountants, lawyers, business managers, lawyers, record executives, lawyers, and Porsche owners. Most of whom are lawyers. The Century Plaza Towers are the biggest buildings in Century City. They have to be to squeeze in the egos. Warren Investments occupied half of the seventeenth floor of the north tower. Rent alone had to exceed the Swedish gross national product.

  I stepped off the elevator into an enormous glass and chrome waiting room filled with white leather chairs that were occupied by important-looking men and women holding important-looking briefcases. They looked like they had been waiting a long time. A sleek black woman sat in the center of a U-shaped command post. She wore a wire-thin headphone set that curved around to her mouth with a microphone the size of a pencil lead. “Elvis Cole,” I said. “For Mr. Warren.”

  She touched buttons and murmured into the microphone and told me someone would be right out. The important-looking men and women glared enviously. Moments later, an older woman with gray hair in a tight bun and a nice manner led me back along a mile and a half of corridor, through a heavy glass door, and into what could only have been an executive secretary’s office. There was a double door wide enough to drive a street cleaner through at the far end. “Go right in,” she said. I did.

  Bradley Warren was sitting on the edge of a black marble desk not quite as long as a bowling alley with his arms crossed and a J. Jonah Jameson smile on his face. He was smiling at five dour-faced Japanese men. Three of the Japanese men were sitting on a white silk couch and were old the way only Asians can be old, with that sort of weathered papery skin and eternal presence. The other two Japanese men stood at either end of the couch, and were much younger and much larger, maybe two inches shorter than me and twenty pounds heavier. They had broad flat faces and eyes that stared at you and didn’t give a damn if you minded or not. The one on the right was wearing a custom-cut Lawrence Marx suit that made him look fat. If you knew what to look for, though, you knew he wasn’t fat. He was all wedges and heavy muscle. The one on the left was in a brown herringbone, and had gone to the same tailor. Odd Job and his clone. Jillian Becker sat primly on the edge of a white silk chair, framed neatly in a full wall of glass that looked north. She looked nice. Yuppie, but nice.

  “Where’s Bush?” I said. “Couldn’t he make it?”

  Bradley Warren said, “You’re late. We’ve had to wait.” Mr. Personality.

  “Why don’t we cancel this meeting and schedule another to begin in ten minutes? Then I can be early.”

  Bradley Warren said, “I’m not paying you for jokes.”

  “I throw those in for free.”

  Today Jillian Becker was wearing a burgundy skirt and jacket with a white shirt and very sheer burgundy hose with tiny leaf designs and broken-leather burgundy pumps. With her legs crossed, her top knee gleamed. I gave her a beaming smile, but she didn’t smile back. Maybe I’d go easy on the jokes for a while.

  Bradley Warren slid off his desk and said something in Japanese to the men on the couch. His speech was fluid and natural, as if he had spoken the language as a child. The older man in the center said something back to him, also in Japanese, and everybody laughed. Especially Jillian Becker. Bradley said, “These men are members of the Tashiro family, who own the Hagakure. They’re here to make sure every best effort is made to recover the manuscript.” The guy in the brown herringbone spoke softly in Japanese, translating.

  “All right.”

  Bradley Warren said, “Have you found it yet?” I had expected him to ask about the threat against his wife first, but there you go.

  “No.” More mumbling from the guy in the brown herringbone.

  “Are you close?”

  “Hot on its trail.”

  The guy in the brown herringbone frowned, and translated, and the old guys on the couch frowned, too. Bradley saw all the frowning going on and joined in. So that was where he got it. He said, “I’m disappointed. I expected more.”

  “It’s been two days, Bradley. In those two days I have begun identifying people who deal in or collect feudal Japanese artwork. I will do more of that. Eventually, one of the people I contact will know something about the Hagakure, or about someone who does. That’s the way it’s done. Stealing something like this is like stealing the Mona Lisa. There’s only a half dozen people on earth who would do it or be involved in it, and once you know who they are it’s only a matter of time. Collectors make no secret about what they want, and once they have it they like to brag.”

  Bradley gave the Japanese men a superior look and said, “Harumph.”

  The Japanese man sitting in the center of the couch nodded thoughtfully and said, “I think that he has made a reasonable beginning.”

  Bradley said, “Huh?”

  The Japanese man said, “Has there been a ransom demand?” He was the oldest of the three seated men, but his eyes were clear and steady and stayed with you. His English was heavily accented.

  I shook my head. “None that I’m aware of.”

  Bradley looked from the old man to me and back to the old man. “What’s this about a ransom?”

  The old man kept his eyes on me. “If a ransom is demanded, we will pay it.”

  “Okay.”

  “If you must pay for information, price is of no concern.”

  “Okay.”

  The old man looked at Bradley. “Is this clear?”

  Bradley said, “Yes, sir.”

  The old man stood, and the large men quickly moved to his side in case he needed their help. He didn’t. He stared at me for a very long time, and then he said, “You must understand this: The Hagakure is Japan. It is the heart and the spirit of the people. It defines how we act and what we believe and what is right and what is wrong and how we live and how we die. It is who we are. If you feel these things, you would know why this book must be found.”

  He meant it. He meant it all the way down deep where it is very important to mean what you say. “I’ll do what I can.”

  The old man kept the steady eyes on me, then mumbled something in Japanese and the other two old men stood up. No one said I’ll be seeing you or Nice to have met you or See you again some time. Bradley walked the Tashiros to the door, but I don’t think they looked at him. Then they were gone.

  When Bradley came back, he said, “I didn’t appreciate all the smart talk in front of the Tashiros. They’re nervous as hell and breathing down my neck. You’d be a lot farther along without the wit.”

  “Yeah, but along to where?”

  His jaw knotted but he didn’t say anything. He strode over to the glass wall and looked out. Holmby Hills was due north. With a good pair of field glasses he could probably see his house. “Now,” he said. “My wife is frightened because of this threat she received. Do you think there’s any merit to it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s not professional. You steal something, you’re looking at ten years. You kill someone, you’re looking at life. Besides that, the cops are already in and these guys know it. If they’re hanging around, that means they want something else. What else do you have that they would want?”

  “Nothing.” Offended.

  “Has there been any communication between you and them that I have not heard about
?”

  “Of course not.” Pissed.

  “Then I’d treat it seriously until we know more.”

  Bradley went back to his desk and began to flip through papers as if he couldn’t wait to get back to work. Maybe he couldn’t. “In that case, we should expand your services. I want you to oversee the security of my family.”

  “You’ve got Titan.”

  Jillian Becker said, “Sheila was not comfortable with Titan. They’ve been let go.”

  I spread my hands. “All right. I can put someone in your house.”

  Bradley Warren nodded. “Good. Just be sure that the Hagakure investigation continues to proceed.” First things first.

  “Of course.”

  “And the Man of the Month banquet is tomorrow,” he said. “We can’t forget that.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

  The frown came back and he shook his head. “Out of the question. The Tashiros will be there.” He tamped some papers together and fingered their edges and looked thoughtful. “Mr. Tashiro liked you. That’s good. That’s very, very good.” You could see the business wheels turning.

  I said, “Bradley.”

  The frown.

  “If someone is genuinely committed to killing you or your family, there isn’t much we can do to stop them.”

  The skin beneath his left eye began to tic, just like it had in my office.

  “You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  His phone buzzed and he picked it up. He listened for a few seconds, still staring at me, then broke into a Cheshire cat smile and asked someone on the other end of the line how the Graintech takeover had gone. He glanced at Jillian Becker and made a dismissal gesture with his free hand. Jillian stood up and showed me to the door. Bradley laughed very loud at something and put his feet up and said he’d like to get some of those profits into a new hotel he was building on Maui.

  When we got to the door, Bradley cupped a hand over the receiver’s mouthpiece, leaned out of his chair, and called, “Cole. Keep me posted, will you?”

  I said sure.

  Bradley Warren uncupped the receiver, laughed like he’d just heard the best joke he’d heard all year, then swiveled back toward the big glass wall.

  I left.

  With the security of his family now in my trusted hands, apparently it was safe to resume business.

  8

  Twenty minutes after Bradley and Jillian resumed business, I drove down to a flat, gray building on Venice Boulevard in Culver City, and parked beside a red Jeep Cherokee with a finish like polished glass. It’s industrial down there, so all the buildings are flat and gray, but most of them don’t have the Cherokee or an electronically locked steel door or a sign that says BARTON’S PISTOL RANGE. I had to ring a bell and someone inside had to buzz open the steel door before I could enter.

  The lobby is big and bright, with high ceilings and Coke machines and posters of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry and Sylvester Stallone as Rambo. Someone had put up a poster of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, with a little sign on it that said WE ARE THE NRA. These gun nuts. There was a long counter filled with targets and gun cleaning supplies and pistols you could rent, and a couple of couches you could sit on while you were waiting for a shooting stall to open up. Three men in business suits and a woman in a jogging suit and another woman in a dress were waiting to shoot, but they weren’t waiting on the couches. They were at the head of the counter and they didn’t look happy. One of the men was tall and forty pounds too fat and had a red face. He was leaning over the counter at Rick Barton, saying, “I made an appointment, goddamnit. I don’t see why I have to stand around and wait.”

  Rick Barton said, calmly, “I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience, sir, but we’ve had to momentarily close the range. It will open again in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Closed my ass! I hear somebody shooting back there!”

  Rick Barton nodded, calmly. “Yes, sir. Another fifteen minutes. Excuse me, please.” Rick came down the long counter and nodded at me. He was short and slight and had put in twelve years in the Marine Corps. Eight of those years he had shot on the Marine Corps pistol team. He said, “Thank Christ you walked in. I hadda ‘sir’ that fat fuck one more time, I’da lubed his gear box for him.”

  “Ah, Rick. You always did have a gift for the public.”

  Rick said, “You want to pop some caps?”

  I shook my head. “The gun shop said Joe was here.”

  Rick looked at his watch. “Go on back. Tell him he’s got another ten, then I chuck his ass out.”

  He tossed me a set of ear covers, and I went back toward the range. Behind me, the fat guy said, “Hey, how come he gets to go back there?”

  You go through the door, then down a long, dim corridor with a lot of signs that say things like EAR AND EYE PROTECTION MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES and NO RAPID FIRING, and then you go through another sound-proofed door and you’re on the firing range. There are twelve side-by-side stalls from which people can shoot at targets that they send down-range using little electric pulleys. Usually, the range is bright, and well lighted, but now the lights had been turned off so that only the targets were lit. A tape player had been hooked up, and Bob Seger was screaming I like that old time rock ’n’ roll … so loud that you could hear him through the ear covers. Anyone else would find his partner on the golf course or the tennis courts.

  Joe Pike was shooting at six targets that he had placed as far down-range as possible. He was firing a Colt Python .357 Magnum with a four-inch barrel, moving left-to-right, right-to-left, shooting at the targets in precise time with the music. That kind of music just soothes the soul … He was wearing faded Levi’s and blue Nike running shoes and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off and a big steel Rolex and mirrored pilot’s glasses. The gun and the glasses and the Rolex gleamed in the darkness as if they had been polished to a high luster. Pike moved without hesitation or doubt, as precise and controlled as a well-made machine. Bang bang bang. The Python would move, and flash, and a hole would burst near the center of a target. The dark glasses seemed not to adversely affect his vision. Maybe the sunglasses didn’t matter because Pike had his eyes closed. Maybe somehow Pike and the target were one, and we could write a book titled Zen and the Art of Small Arms Fire and make a fortune. Wow.

  He stopped to reload, still facing down-range, and said, “Want to shoot a few?” You see? Cosmic.

  I went to the stall where he had set up Rick’s tape player and clicked off the music. “How’d you know I was here?”

  Shrug.

  “We’ve got a job.”

  “Yeah?” Pike loves to talk.

  We walked down-range, collected his targets, then examined them. Every shot had been within two inches of center. He was delighted. You could tell because the corner of his mouth twitched. Joe Pike does not smile. Joe Pike never smiles. After a while you get used to it. I said, “Eh. Not bad.”

  We gathered his things and walked back along the dim corridor, me telling him about Bradley and Sheila and the stolen Hagakure and the phone call from person or persons unknown that had scared the hell out of Sheila Warren.

  He said, “Threat like that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe there wasn’t a threat. Maybe somebody’s having a little fun.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe the lady made it up.”

  “Maybe. But we don’t know that. I figure you can stay with the woman and the kid while I look for the book.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Pike was pulling off his sweatshirt when we walked out into the lobby. The fat man said, “Well, it’s about goddamned time,” and then he saw Joe Pike and shut up. Pike is an inch taller than me, and more heavily muscled, and when he was in Vietnam he’d had a bright red arrow tattooed on the outside of each deltoid. The arrows pointed forward. There is an ugly pucker scar high on the left side of his chest from the time a Mexican in a zoot su
it shot him with a gold Llama automatic, and two more scars low on his back above his right kidney. After the fat guy looked at the tattoos and the muscles, he looked at the scars and then he looked away. Rick Barton was grinning from ear to ear.

  Pike said, “Use your shower, Rick?”

  “No problem, bo.”

  While Pike was in the shower I used a pay phone to call Sheila Warren. “I’m on the way over,” I said. “Bradley hired me to look out for you.”

  “Well,” she said, “I should hope so.”

  “I’m bringing my partner, Joe Pike. He’ll make sure the house and grounds are secure and be there in case there’s a problem.”

  There was a pause. “Who’s Joe Pike?”

  Maybe I had lapsed into Urdu the first time. “My partner. He owns the agency with me.”

  “You won’t be here?”

  “Somebody has to look for the book.”

  “Maybe this Joe Pike should look for the book.”

  “I’m better at finding. He’s better at guarding.”

  You could hear her breathing into the phone. The breaths were deep and irregular and I thought I could hear ice move in a glass but maybe that was the TV. I said, “You were pretty gone last night. How’s your head?”

  “You go to hell.” She hung up.

  Five minutes later Pike came back with a blue leather gym bag and we drove across town, me leading and Pike following in the Cherokee. When we got to the Warren house, Pike parked in the drive, then got out with the gym bag, walked back, and climbed into my car. Hatcher and his T-bird were gone. I told Pike about Berke Feldstein in the Sun Tree Gallery and Nobu Ishida and the two Asian Task Force cops.

  “Asian Task Force are tough dudes,” Pike said. “You think Ishida’s got the book?”

  “I think that a couple of hours after I saw him, someone threatened the Warrens. If Ishida doesn’t have it, maybe he’ll want to find out who does. Maybe he’ll ask around.”

  Pike nodded. “And maybe you’ll be there when he gets some answers.”