by Robert Crais
“Yeah.”
“Even though you knew the police and the Feds were searching for her.”
I said, “She looked safe at Asano’s so I let her sit until I knew what was going on and then I talked with her. She was a mess, Ito. She had run away and couldn’t go home because her father was sexually molesting her.”
Poitras said, “Jesus Christ.”
Ito took a breath, let it out, and shook his head. He looked out off the ridge toward the valley. The hawk was gone.
I said, “I wanted to get the kid some help before she’d have to deal with you people.”
Across the ridge top, the woman from the district attorney’s office opened the coroner’s van and showed Jillian Becker and the short man what was inside. Jillian stood stiff and nodded, then turned and quickly walked back to her BMW. The short man went with her. VP from the company, no doubt.
Poitras said, “Why’d she kill him?”
“I don’t know.”
Griggs was staring at his hands. “Maybe she just had to,” he said, quietly.
Ito looked at Griggs, then took off his sunglasses and stared at them as if there was a bad smudge on the lense. He put the sunglasses back on. Poitras said, “As far as you know, she still staying at Asano’s?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go get her.”
We got into the blue sedan, Poitras driving, me and Griggs riding in back. I told Poitras to go west on Mulholland toward Beverly Glen. He did. The cop sedan with its heavy-duty suspension rolled easily along Mulholland’s curves. Poitras had the windows up and the air conditioning on and no one said anything. All you could hear in the car was the hiss and chatter of the radio. I couldn’t understand what the radio voices said, but Poitras and Griggs and Ito could. Cops get special ears for that.
When we got to Kira Asano’s, Griggs said, “Man, this guy must be loaded.”
The gate was open. We went up the drive without announcing ourselves and stopped about halfway to the house. We had to stop because Frank was lying facedown in the drive. His legs were bent and his right arm was under his body and the left half of his head was missing. Poitras and Griggs both leaned to the side to free their guns and Ito called in a request for backup. I said, “There were about a dozen kids here. Some of them were wearing gray uniforms. There was another guy like the one on the drive named Bobby, and Asano, and Bobby probably has a gun.”
Poitras steered the car out onto the lawn around Frank’s body and stopped by the front door. The front door was open.
Poitras and Griggs went around the side past the garage, and Ito and I went in through the front. No one tried to shoot us. There wasn’t anyone around to try.
Cabinets had been emptied and furniture upended and Asano’s paintings torn from the walls in every room. Poitras and Griggs came in from the back and said they’d found a guy who was probably Bobby with two bullets in his chest out by the little fruit trees. They’d seen no sign of the girl or anyone else.
We found Asano in his office. He was lying on the floor in front of his desk, clutching the grip of a samurai sword. He had been shot once in the chest and once in the side of the neck. The sword was bloodied. There was a short, muscular man sitting on Asano’s couch. The man and the couch were sprayed with blood, and the man’s eyes were slightly crossed and sightless. There was a slash along the top of his left shoulder and two puncture marks in his abdomen and a black automatic pistol in his right hand as if Asano had attacked him with the sword and he had killed Asano and then staggered to the couch to finish dying. The little finger was missing from his left hand. Somebody said, “Sonofabitch.” I think it was Griggs.
Ito looked at the left hand and then at me. “You say Asano had the book.”
“Yeah.”
Ito looked at the left hand again. “Yakuza.”
We looked through the rest of the house. In an upstairs bedroom we found two girls holding each other under some rags in a closet. They screamed when we opened the door and begged us not to kill them and it was quite a while before they believed that we would not. One of them was Kerri.
We went through every room and every closet. There was no sign of either the Hagakure or Mimi Warren. When we had made the complete circuit and were back at the front of the house again, Ito shook his head. “So,” he said. “You left her here because she was safe, huh?”
I didn’t bother to look at him.
31
We brought Kerri and the other girl down to the big open room with the French doors and put them on a couch beneath an enormous watercolor of an old woman sharpening a sword. The old woman was sitting in the snow, and was barefoot, but did not look cold.
The girls were scared and the smaller one had red puffy eyes from crying. We offered them blankets even though it was eighty degrees outside. Kerri kept sneaking glances at me, probably because she had seen me before. She said, “Are you a policeman?”
“Private eye,” I said. I gave her a little eyebrow wiggle. Elvis Cole, Master of Instant Rapport.
“You’re the guy who came here looking for Mimi.”
“Yeah. You know where she is?”
“They took her.”
Poitras said, “Who’s they?”
The other girl pulled her knees up to her chin and locked her arms around her shins. She squeezed her eyes shut. Kerri said, “These four men came. They just came in and started yelling and shooting and tearing up the house. I saw them shoot Bobby, and then I ran.”
Terry Ito said, “All Japanese men?”
Kerri nodded.
Poitras asked her when.
Kerri looked at the other girl but the other girl’s chin was between her knees and her eyes were still clamped shut. Kerri said, “I dunno. Maybe seven. I had just got up. I dunno. I ran into the bedroom with Joan and we hid.” Joan was the quiet one.
Poitras looked at me. “That was before she called Bradley?”
“Yeah.” I said, “Kerri, was Eddie Tang one of the men?”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head.
“You sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
Ito said, “You know what they were after?”
“They wanted this book.”
Ito gave me a look, then he and Griggs went out to the car. Pretty soon the same uniforms who had been at Bradley’s murder site came, along with a couple of dicks from Beverly Hills and three more guys from Asian Task Force. The uniforms got the girls’ names and parents’ phone numbers and made some calls to try to get them picked up. The ATF guys brought in big photo albums with known yakuza members and had each of the girls look through them. One of the uniforms and I made instant coffee in the kitchen. I put three cups of coffee on a plate and brought it out and sat by the girls while they turned the pages. I said, “Kerri, did Mimi say anything to you about leaving here?”
“No.”
“I was supposed to come get her this morning. She and I had talked about it and she said okay.”
Kerri turned each page slowly, lifting the next page and scanning the pictures at the same time. “I think she changed her mind.”
“Why?”
“Eddie came over last night.” Eddie. Great.
“What happened?”
“They had this big fight. She said he didn’t really love her. She said all he wanted was the book and that he didn’t care about her and that no one cared about her. Then he left.” Joan finished one album and started another. She hadn’t said a word in hours.
“But he didn’t come back?”
“Uh-uh.”
In a little bit a couple of the ATF cops came over and Kerri and Joan identified three of the four men who had raided the house. One of the three was the stiff in Asano’s office.
A short ATF cop with a puckered scar running along his right jawline said, “You think this is connected with the torture-murder down in Little Tokyo?” He got a kick out of saying torture-murder.
Ito said, “Yeah. I think our boy Eddie was making a power grab. He
figured Ishida had the book, so he did Ishida to get it. Only Ishida didn’t have it. Asano did. So he went after the girl. When she wouldn’t come across, he sent in some goons this morning.” He looked at me. “Sound good to you?”
I gave it a shrug. “Some of it. Some of it has holes you could put a Cadillac through.”
The short cop with the scar smirked.
Ito put his hands in his pockets. “I’m listening.”
I said, “Eddie was working the girl a long time before Ishida was done. He’d know Asano had the book.”
“Okay. What about this morning?”
“If the yakuza grabbed her, how’d she get away to kill her old man?”
Ito said, “I hear a lot of questions. You got the answers?”
“I don’t know. I just know something isn’t adding up.”
Ito thought about that, and me, then finally shook his head and walked away. “Well, you had her for a little while.”
Poitras and Griggs and I stood there and watched Ito and the guy with the scar walk away and nobody said anything. After a while, Poitras told me I looked like I’d been through a Cuisinart and asked me if I was okay. I said sure. He wondered if I needed to see a doctor. I said no. He put a hand the size of a manhole cover on my shoulder, gave me a squeeze, and said if I wanted to call him at home later that it would be fine. I said thanks. Charlie Griggs drove me back to my car. Bradley’s body was gone. There were just a couple of newsmen poking around, along with a motorcycle cop who was making out like he’d just busted the Hillside Strangler. We sat there a while, in Griggs’s car, and he asked if I wanted to have a couple of drinks. I told him maybe later. When I got home I went in through the garage and took off the bloodstained shirt and pants and washed my hands and face in the kitchen sink. I put the shirt and pants in the sink and rubbed the bloodstains with Clorox Pre-wash and let them sit while I went up and took a shower. I used a cloth and lots of soap and hot water and scrubbed myself pink. I used a small brush to get Bradley Warren’s blood from around and beneath my fingernails. When I was finished I threw the brush away. Well, you had her for a little while.
I put on a loose pair of dojo pants, then went downstairs and put the clothes into the washer. Cold water. I opened a Falstaff, drank most of it, and called Jillian Becker at her office. Her secretary was subdued and distracted and told me Ms. Becker wasn’t in. Probably with Sheila. I hung up and drank the rest of the Falstaff. It was so good I opened another. I stood with it in the center of my quiet house and thought about Mimi Warren out there wherever she was and whom she might be with and what she might be doing and I drank more beer. I opened the big glass doors to let in the air, then turned on my stereo and put on an old Rolling Stones album. Satisfaction. Great bass. I made a sandwich out of some sliced turkey breast and egg bread and tomato and had another beer. Got family problems? Hire Elvis Cole, The Family Detective. Guaranteed to make things worse or your money back!
I called Joe Pike.
“Gun shop.”
“It’s me. I found the girl.”
He grunted.
“I lost her again.”
He said, “You been drinking?”
“No.” I sounded fine to me.
He said, “You at home?”
“Uh-huh.”
He hung up.
Half an hour later Pike was in the living room. I hadn’t heard him knock or use a key. Maybe it was teleportation. He was dressed exactly as always: sweatshirt with no sleeves, faded Levi’s, blue Nike running shoes, mirrored sunglasses. I said, “Are those new socks?”
There was a pretty good-sized pyramid of Falstaff cans on the coffee table. He looked at it, then went into the kitchen and rattled around. After a while he said, “Come to the table.”
He had put out a ranch omelet with cheese and tomatoes, and whole wheat toast with butter and strawberry jam. There was coffee and a small glass of milk and a little bottle of Tabasco sauce and two glasses of water. The water was all he was having. I sat down and ate without saying anything. The omelet was fluffy and moist and perfectly cooked. The cat door made its noise and the cat walked through the kitchen and hopped up onto the table. The cat watched me eating, his nose working at the odors, then he walked over and sat down in front of Pike and purred. Pike’s the only person besides me that the cat will let touch him.
When I finished, I closed my eyes and held my head and Pike said, “Can you tell it now?”
“Yes.” I drank more coffee and then I told him what had happened to Bradley Warren and I told him why. I told him everything I knew about Mimi Warren, and how she was, and why she was that way. I told him about finding Mimi at Asano’s and arranging to bring her to Carol Hillegas’s and Eddie Tang and the Hagakure. I told him that there were things that didn’t add up and that I didn’t have answers for and that maybe I didn’t give a damn anymore. Pike listened without moving. Sometimes, Pike might not move for as long as you watch him. There are times I suspect that he does not move for days. When I finished he nodded to himself and said, “Yes.”
“And you’re thinking you had something to do with her killing her father.”
I nodded.
Pike took a bit of egg off my plate and held it up for the cat. “You were doing your best for her, something that no one in her life has ever done.”
“Sure.” Mr. Convinced.
“Ever since the Nam, you’ve worked to hang on to the childhood part of yourself. Only here’s a kid who never had a childhood and you wanted to get some for her before it was too late.” Joe Pike moved his head and you could see the cat reflected in his glasses. The cat finished the bit of egg.
I said, “I want to find her, Joe. I want to bring her back.”
He didn’t move.
“I want to finish it.”
Pike’s mouth twitched. I cleared my place and washed the dishes. I went back upstairs, took another shower, then dressed and put the Dan Wesson under my arm.
When I went downstairs again, Joe Pike was waiting.
32
It was midafternoon when we got to Mr. Moto’s. The lunch crowd was gone and so were most of the employees, except for a couple of busboys mopping the floor and setting up for happy hour. The manager with the hi-tone topknot was sitting at a table with the Butterfly Lady, going through receipts. He stood up when he saw us and started to say something about us not being welcome when I grabbed his throat and walked him halfway across the dining room, bent him back over a table, and put the Dan Wesson in his mouth. “Yuki Torobuni,” I said.
The Butterfly Lady stood up. Pike pushed her back down. He pointed at the busboys, then pointed at the floor. They went down fast.
I said, “Yuki Torobuni.”
Mumbles.
“I can’t hear you.”
More mumbles.
I took the Dan Wesson out of his mouth. He coughed and licked at his lips and shook his head. “He’s not here.”
I let the gun rest against his jaw. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
I dug my fingers into his throat and squeezed. I said, “Remember Mimi Warren? I am going to find her and I won’t think twice if I have to kill you to do it.”
His eyes opened wider and his face got purple and after a while he gave us Yuki Torobuni’s address.
Torobuni lived in a treesy section of Brentwood, just east of Santa Monica, in a large sprawling ranch house more appropriate to a western star than a yakuza chieftain. There were wagon wheels lining the drive and a genuine old west buckboard converted into a flower planter and a gate featuring a rack of longhorn horns. Ben and Little Joe were probably out back. Joe Pike stared at it all and said, “Shit.”
Ben and Little Joe weren’t around, and neither was anyone else. No Torobuni. No guys with tattoos and missing fingers and stupid eyes. After a lot of knocking and looking in windows we turned up a Nicaraguan housekeeper who said that Mr. Torobuni wasn’t home. We asked her when he had left. She said he wasn’t home. We asked her when he
might be back. She said he wasn’t home. We asked her where he had gone. She said he wasn’t home.
Pike said, “I guess he’s not home.”
“Maybe he’s with Eddie Tang,” I said, “Maybe they’re reading the Hagakure and celebrating Eddie’s promotion.”
Pike liked that. “Maybe we should go see.”
When we got to Eddie Tang’s there was a black-and-white parked at the fire hydrant out front with the same nondescript cop sedan I’d seen before double-parked beside it. Pike said, “I’ll wait in the Jeep. One of them might know me.”
I nodded and got out. The glass security door was propped open by a large potted plant so the cops could come and go as they wanted. I trotted up the little curved steps and through the open door like I owned the place. There was a landing and a couple of indoor trees and a circular step-down lobby with a brace of nice semicircular couches for waiting and chatting. There was a small elevator to the right and a very attractive suspended staircase to the left that curved up to the second floor. A chandelier that looked like a spaceship hung from the high ceiling and a door under the staircase probably went down to the garage and the laundry facility.
Two kids maybe eleven or twelve were standing by the elevator. One of the kids had a skateboard with a picture of a werewolf on it and the other had thick glasses. The kid with the glasses looked at me. I said, “What’s going on with the cops?”
The kid with the glasses said, “I dunno. They went upstairs looking for some guy.”
“Yeah? They find him?”
“Nah.” Well, well.
The other kid said, “We thought they were gonna bust down the door or something but the manager let’m in.”
I said, “What room is that?”
