by Robert Crais
The cook came back and flipped the skewers. He put a little white saucer of red chili paste in front of me. It was the real stuff, the kind they make in Asia, not the junk you buy at the supermarket. Real chili paste will eat through porcelain. He gave me a big smile. “In case not hot enough.” Don’t you love a wiseass?
When the edges of the chicken and clam were blackened, he took the skewers off the grill. He dipped them in a pan of yakitori sauce, put them in a paper-lined plastic basket, put the basket beside the chili paste, then leaned back against his grill and watched me.
I took a mouthful of the chicken, chewed, swallowed. Not bad. I dipped some of the chicken in the chili paste, took another bite. “Could be hotter,” I said.
He looked disappointed and went into the back.
I sipped more tea, finished the first chicken, then started on the first geoduck. The clam was tough and hard and chewy, but I like that. The tea was good. While I was chewing, a Japanese guy wearing a Grateful Dead tee shirt came in and went up to the counter. He looked at the chalkboard where the daily menu was written, then looked at what was left of the geoduck lying beside the grill and made a face. He turned away and walked back to a pay phone they had in the rear. Some guys you can never please.
Twenty minutes later I was on my second pot of tea when Nobu Ishida came out and started up the street toward the parking garage. I paid, left a nice tip, then went out onto the sidewalk. When Ishida disappeared into the garage, I trotted back down to my car, got in, and waited. Maybe Ishida had a secret vault dug into the core of a mountain where he kept stolen treasure. Maybe he called this secret place The Fortress of Solitude. Maybe he was going there now and I could follow him and find the Hagakure and solve several heretofore unsolved art thefts. Then again, maybe not. I was three cars behind him when he pulled out in a black Cadillac Eldorado and turned right toward downtown.
We left Little Tokyo and went past Union Station and Olvera Street with its gaudy Mexican colors and food booths and souvenir shops. There were about nine million tourists, all desperately snapping pictures of how “the Mexicans” lived, and buying sombreros and ponchos and stuffed iguanas that would start to ripen about a week after they got home. We swung around the Civic Center and were sitting in traffic at Pershing Square, me now four cars behind and counting the homeless bag ladies around the Square, when I spotted the guy in the Grateful Dead tee shirt from the yakitori grill. He was sitting behind the wheel of a maroon Ford Taurus two cars in back of me and one lane over. There was another Asian guy with him. Hmmmm. When the light changed and Ishida went straight, I hung a left onto Sixth. Two cars later, the Taurus followed. I stayed on Sixth to San Pedro and went south. The Taurus came south, too. I took the Dan Wesson out of the glove box and put it between my legs. Freud would’ve loved that.
At a spotlight on the corner of Fourteenth Street and Commerce, the Taurus pulled up on my left. I looked over. The guy in the Grateful Dead shirt and the other guy were staring at me and they were not smiling. I gripped the Dan Wesson in my right hand and said, “Sony makes a fine TV.”
The guy on the passenger side said something to the driver, then turned back to me and flipped open a small black leather case with a silver and gold L.A.P.D. badge in it. “Put it over to the curb, asshole.”
“Moi?”
The Taurus bucked out ahead under the red light and jerked to the right, blocking me. They were out and coming before the Taurus stopped rocking. I put both hands on the top of the steering wheel and left them there.
The guy who had shown me the badge came directly at me. The other guy walked the long way around the car and came up from behind. The car behind us blew its horn. I said, “I swear to God, Officer. I came to a full stop.”
The one with the badge had the sort of face they hand out to bantamweights, all flat planes and busted nose, and a knotty build to go with it. I made him for forty but he could’ve been younger. He said, “Get out of the car.”
I kept my hands on the wheel. “There’s a Dan Wesson .38 sitting here between my legs.”
Grateful Dead had a gun under my ear before I finished the sentence. The other cop brought his gun out, too, and put it in my face and reached through the window and lifted out the Dan Wesson. Grateful Dead pulled me out of the Corvette and shoved me against the fender and frisked me and took my wallet. Other horns were blowing but nobody seemed to give a damn.
I said, “Why are you guys watching Nobu Ishida?”
The bantamweight saw the license and said, “PI.”
Grateful Dead said, “Shit.” He put away his gun.
The boxer tossed my wallet into the Corvette and dropped the Dan Wesson into the roof bay behind the driver’s seat. I said, “How about those search and seizure laws, huh?”
They got back in their Taurus and left, and pretty soon the horns stopped blowing and traffic began to move. Well, well, well.
I drove back to my office and called the cops. A voice said, “North Hollywood detectives.”
“Lou Poitras, please.”
I got put on hold and had to wait and then somebody said, “Poitras.”
“There’s an importer down on Ki Street in Little Tokyo named Nobu Ishida.” I spelled it for him. “I was on him today when two Asian cops come out of my trunk and take me off the board.”
Lou Poitras said, “You got that four bucks you owe me?” These cops.
“Don’t be small, Lou. I call up with a matter of great import and you bring up a paltry four dollars.”
“Great import. Shit.”
“They took me out just long enough to lose Ishida. They don’t say three words. They flash their guns all over Pershing Square and they don’t even rub my nose in it the way you cops like to do. Maybe they’re cops. Maybe they’re just two guys pretending to be cops.”
He thought about that. I could hear him breathe over the phone. “You see a badge?”
“Not long enough to get a number.”
“How about a tag?”
“Maroon Ford Taurus. Three-W-W-L-seven-eight-eight.”
Poitras said, “Stick around. I’ll get back to you,” and hung up.
I got up, opened the glass doors that lead out to the little balcony, went back to my desk, and put my feet up. Stick around.
Half an hour later I got up again and went out onto the balcony. Sometimes, when the smog is gone and the weather is clear, you can stand on the balcony and see all the way down Santa Monica Boulevard to the ocean. Now, the heat was up and the smog was in and I felt lucky to see across the street.
I went back in the office, dug around in the little refrigerator I have there, and found a bottle of Negra Modelo beer. Negra Modelo is a dark Mexican beer and may be the best dark beer brewed anywhere in the world. I sipped some and watched the Pinocchio clock. After a while I turned on the radio and tuned to KLSX. Bananarama singing it was a cruel summer. They’re not George Thoroughgood, but they’re not bad. I went back onto the balcony and looked out over Los Angeles and thought about what it would be like to marry and have children. I would have two or three daughters and we would watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers together and then roll around on the floor like puppies. When they grew up they would like Kenneth Tobey movies. Would they look like me, or their mother? I went back into the office, closed the glass doors, and sat in one of the director’s chairs. You think the damnedest things when you’re waiting for a call.
Maybe Lou Poitras had lost my phone number and was desperately searching the police computers in his attempts to contact me. Maybe he had obtained forbidden information concerning the two cops who’d fronted me and was now lying dead in a pool of blood behind the wheel of his Oldsmobile. Maybe I was bored stiff.
At five minutes after seven I was flat on my back on the floor, staring at the ceiling and wondering if aliens from space had ever visited the earth. At ten minutes after seven, the phone rang. I got up off the floor as if I had not been waiting most of the day, sauntered over, and casually picked up the r
eceiver. “Laid-back Detectives, where your problems are no problem.”
It wasn’t Lou Poitras. It was Sheila Warren. She was crying. She said, “Mr. Cole? Are you there? Who is this?” The words spilled out around coughing sobs. It was tough to understand her. She still sounded drunk.
I said, “Is anyone hurt?”
“They said they would kill me. They said they would kill Bradley and me and that they would burn the house down.”
“Who?”
“The people who stole the book. You’ve got to come over. Please. I’m terrified.” She said something else but she was sobbing again and I couldn’t make it out.
I hung up. One thing about this business, it doesn’t stay boring for long.
6
When I got to the Warren home it was still standing. There was no fire, no hazy smoke blotting out a blood-red sun, no siege tower breaching the front wall. It was dark and cool and pleasant, the way it gets at twilight just as the sun settles beneath the horizon. Hatcher sat in the same light blue Titan Securities Thunderbird and watched me pull into the drive and park. He came over. He didn’t look too worried.
I said, “Everything all right?”
“She phone you about the call?”
“Seemed pretty upset.”
“Yeah. Well.” He hacked up something thick and phlegmy and spit it at the bushes. Sinus.
I said, “You don’t act like anything out of the ordinary has happened.”
He patted his jacket below his left arm. “Anything out of the ordinary comes around here, I’ll give it some of this.”
“Wow,” I said. “I’m surprised she bothered to call me with you out here.”
Hatcher snorted and went back to the T-bird. “You’ll see. You’re around here enough, you’ll see.”
The voice of experience.
I walked over to the front door, rang the bell twice, and waited. In a little bit, Sheila Warren’s voice came from behind the door. “Who’s there?”
“Elvis Cole.”
The locks were thrown and the door opened. She was wearing a silver satin nightgown that looked like it had been poured over her body and silver high-heeled sandals. Her eyes were pink and puffy and her mascara had run and been wiped away and not fixed. She was holding a handkerchief with dark blue smudges on it. The mascara. She said, “Thank God it’s you. We’ve been terrified.”
I shrugged toward the front gate. “Not much is going to get past Wyatt Earp.”
“He could’ve been clubbed.”
Some things you can’t argue. I went in past her, watched her lock the door, then followed her back through the house. She walked with a slight lean to the right as if the floor wasn’t quite level, and she cut too short through the doorways, brushing her inside shoulder. “Who’s home?” I said.
“Just myself and Mimi. Mimi’s in the back.”
She led me to the den. The bar was in the den.
“Tell me about the call.”
“I thought it was Tammy. Tammy’s my girlfriend. We play tennis, we go to movies, like that. But it was a man.” There was a capless bottle of Bombay gin and a short heavy glass with a couple of melting ice cubes in it sitting on the bar. She picked up the glass and finished what was left, and said, “Would you like something to drink?”
“You got a Falstaff?” I walked over to the big French doors that open out to the rear, and looked behind the drapes. Each door was locked and secure.
“What’s that?” she said.
“This beer they brew in Tumwater, Washington.”
“All we have are Japanese beers.” Her voice took on an edge when she said it.
“That’ll be fine.”
She went behind the bar, put more ice in her glass, and glugged in some of the gin. That brought the Bombay down about to the halfway point. The bottle cap was sitting in an ashtray at the end of the bar. A strip of bright clean Bonded paper was lying beside it. The Bombay had been full when she’d started. She disappeared down behind the bar for a little bit, then stood up with a bottle of Asahi. There was a tight smile on her face and a smear of mascara on her left cheek like a bruise. “Did I tell you that I find you quite attractive?”
“It was the first thing you said to me.”
“Well, I do.”
“Everyone says I look like John Cassavetes.”
“Do they?”
“I think I look like Joe Isuzu.”
She cocked her hips and her head and rested her drink along her jawline, posing. She still hadn’t given me the beer. “I think you look like Joe Theismann,” she said. “Do you know who Joe Theismann is?”
“Sure. Used to quarterback for the Redskins.”
She gave me a giggle. “No, you silly. Joe Theismann is married to Cathy Lee Crosby.”
“Oh. That Joe Theismann.”
She opened the Asahi, put a paper coaster that said New Asia Hotels on the bar, then set the Asahi on the coaster. She took an icy beer mug from somewhere beneath the bar and put it beside the bottle. I ignored the mug. “You were telling me about the call.”
The smile went away. She looked down into her drink and swirled it and her eyes began to redden and puff. “He had an ugly voice. He said he had that goddamned book, and that he knew we had the police involved and that we had hired a private investigator. He said that was a mistake. He said if we didn’t stop looking he was going to do things.” Her voice got higher, probably the way it had been ten years ago. It was nice. “He said they were watching me and could strike at any time. He told me when I left the house this morning and what I was wearing and who I met and when I came back. He knew my perfume. He knew I use Maxipads. He knew Tammy came over at four and that we played tennis and that Tammy was wearing green shorts and a halter top and—” She closed her eyes and took more of the gin and said, “Damn.”
“Did you call the police?”
She shook her head, keeping her eyes closed. “Bradley would shit.”
“Calling the cops is the smart thing.”
“We do things Bradley’s way, mister, or we never hear the end of it.” She shook her head again and had more gin. “God damn him.”
I said, “Did you recognize the voice?”
She took a deep breath, let it out, then came around to my side of the bar and stood next to me. Petulant. The first fright was past and the gin was working. She said, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. I needed someone here.” I guess she hadn’t recognized the voice.
“I know. I’ll check the house and make sure it’s tight. You’ll be all right. A guy calls like this, it’s only to scare you. If he was going to do anything, he’d have done it.”
She gave her head a flick to get the hair out of her face. Her hair was lush and rich and if it was dyed it was a helluva good job. She reached out and touched my forearm with her finger. “I’ll walk with you.”
I moved my arm. “You look cold,” I said. “Go put something on.”
She looked down at herself. The silver gown made an upside-down V over each breast with a thin silver cord running from the apex of one V up her chest and around behind her neck and back down to the apex of the other V. Her shoulders were smooth and bare and tanned. She said, “I’m not cold. See?” She picked up my hand in both of hers and brought it to her chest.
I said, “Your daughter’s in the house.”
“I don’t give a good goddamn who’s in the house.”
“I do. And even if she wasn’t, your husband hired me, and he didn’t hire me to lay his wife.”
“Do you have to be hired for that?”
“Go put something on.”
She pressed against me and kissed me. The silver gown felt warm and slick. I eased her back. “Go put something on.”
“Fuck you.” She slid past me and hurried out of the room, bouncing a thigh off the near couch as she left. She hadn’t seen her daughter standing in one of the doorways leading from the rear of the house, as motionless as a reed in still air. Neither had I.
I put the Asahi on the bar. “I’m sorry that happened,” I said. “She’s very scared and she’s had too much to drink.”
Mimi Warren said, “She’s very good in bed. Everyone says so.” Sixteen.
I didn’t say anything to her and she didn’t say anything to me, and then she turned and walked away. I watched little drops of condensation sprout on the Asahi until their weight pulled them down to the bar, then I took a rambling tour of the house, checking each window and door and making sure they were tight and locked and that the alarms were armed. I looked for the girl.
At the back of the house, a little hall branched away from the kitchen with a couple of doors on one side and glass looking out toward the pool on the other. If you looked out the glass you could see down across the lawn to the flat mirrored surface of the pool and the dark silhouette of palm trees behind it. I watched the quarter moon bounce on the pool’s still surface, then tried the first door. It was open and the room was dark. I turned on the light.
Mimi was lying on her back across a single bed, legs straight up against the wall, head hanging down over the bedside, eyes wide and unfocused. I said, “You okay?”
She said nothing.
“You want to talk to your mom, we can do it together. That might be easier.”
She did not move. The room was white on white, as stark and cold as the Wyeth landscapes she had been staring at earlier. There were no posters on the walls or record albums on the floor or clothes spilling out of a hamper or diet soda cans or anything at all that would mark the room as a sixteen-year-old girl’s. On a glasstopped white desk at the foot of the bed there were three oversized art books by someone named Kiro Asano and a paperback edition of Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. The Mishima looked as if it had been read a hundred times. There was a small Hitachi color TV on the desk, and a scent in the room that might have been marijuana, but if it was it was not recent.
