Stalking the Angel (2 page)

Bradley Warren looked around the office and frowned again. He was ten years older than Jillian, and had the manicured, no-hair-out-of-place look that serious corporate types go for. There was an $8000 gold Rolex watch on his left wrist and a $3000 Wesley Barron pinstripe suit on the rest of him and he didn’t seem too worried that I’d slug him and steal the Rolex. Probably had another just like it at home. “Are you in business by yourself, Mr. Cole?” He’d have been more comfortable if I’d been in a suit and had a couple of wanted posters lying around.

“I have a partner named Joe Pike. Mr. Pike is not a licensed private investigator. He is a former Los Angeles police officer. I hold the license.” I pointed out the framed pink license that the Bureau of Collections of the State of California had issued to me. “You see. Elvis Cole.” The license hangs beside this animation cel I’ve got of the Blue Fairy and Pinocchio. Pinocchio is as close as I come to a wanted poster.

Bradley Warren stared at the Blue Fairy and looked
doubtful. He said, “Something very valuable was stolen from my home four days ago. I need someone to find it.”

“Okay.”

“Do you know anything about the Japanese culture?”

“I read
Shōgun
.”

Warren made a quick hand gesture and said, “Jillian.” His manner was brusque and I didn’t like it much. Jillian Becker didn’t seem to mind, but she was probably used to it.

Jillian said, “The Japanese culture was once predicated on a very specific code of behavior and personal conduct developed by the samurai during Japan’s feudal period.”

Samurai. Better buckle the old seat belt for this one.

“In the eighteenth century, a man named Jōchō Yamamoto outlined every aspect of proper behavior for the samurai in manuscript form. It was called ‘Recorded Words of the Hagakure Master,’ or, simply, the Hagakure, and only a few of the original editions survive. Mr. Warren had arranged the loan of one of these from the Tashiro family in Kyoto, with whom his company has extensive business dealings. The manuscript was in his home safe when it was stolen.”

As Jillian spoke, Bradley Warren looked around the office again and did some more frowning. He frowned at the Mickey Mouse phone. He frowned at the little figurines of Jiminy Cricket. He frowned at the SpiderMan mug. I considered taking out my gun and letting him frown at that, too, but thought it might seem peevish. “How much is the Hagakure worth?”

Jillian Becker said, “A little over three million dollars.”

“Insured?”

“Yes. But the policy won’t begin to cover the millions our company will lose in business with the Tashiros unless their manuscript is recovered.”

“The police are pretty good. Why not go to them?”

Bradley Warren sighed loudly, letting us know he was bored, then frowned at the gold Rolex. Time equals money.

Jillian said, “The police are involved, Mr. Cole, but we’d like things to proceed faster than they seem able to manage. That’s why we came to you.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you came to me so Bradley could practice frowning.”

Bradley looked at me. Pointedly. “I’m the president of Warren Investments Corporation. We form real estate partnerships with Japanese investors.” He leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “I have a big operation. I’m in Hawaii. I’m in L.A., San Diego, Seattle.” He made an opera out of looking around my office. “Try to imagine the money involved.”

Jillian Becker said, “Mr. Warren’s newest hotel has just opened downtown in Little Tokyo.”

Bradley said, “Thirty-two stories. Eight million square feet.”

I nodded. “Big.”

He nodded back at me.

Jillian said, “We wanted to have the Hagakure on display there next week when the Pacific Men’s Club names Bradley Man of the Month.”

Bradley gave me more of the eyebrows. “I’m the first Caucasian they’ve honored this way. You know why? I’ve pumped three hundred million dollars into the local Asian community in the last thirty-six months. You got any idea how much money that is?”

“Excuse me,” I said. I pushed away from my desk, pitched myself out of my chair onto the floor, then got up, brushed myself off, and sat again. “There. I’m finished being impressed. We can go on.”

Jillian Becker’s face went white. Bradley Warren’s face went dark red. His nostrils flared and his lips tightened and he stood up. It was lovely. He said, “I don’t like your attitude.”

“That’s okay. I’m not selling it.” I opened the drawer in the center of my desk and tossed a cream-colored card toward him. He looked at it. “What’s this?”

“Pinkerton’s. They’re large. They’re good. They’re who you want. But they probably won’t like your attitude any more than I do.” I stood up with him.

Jillian Becker stood up, too, and held out her hand the way you do when you want things to settle down. “Mr. Cole, I think we’ve started on the wrong foot here.”

I leaned forward. “One of us did.”

She turned toward Warren. “It’s a small firm, Bradley, but it’s a quality firm. Two attorneys in the prosecutor’s office recommended him. He’s been an investigator for eight years and the police think highly of him. His references are impeccable.” Impeccable. I liked that.

Bradley Warren held the Pink’s card and flexed it back and forth, breathing hard. He looked the way a man looks when he doesn’t have any other choice and the choice he has is lousy. There’s a Pinocchio clock on the wall beside the door that leads to Joe Pike’s office. It has eyes that move from side to side. You go to the Pinkerton’s, they don’t have a clock like that. Jillian Becker said, “Bradley, he’s who you want to hire.”

After a while the heavy breathing passed and Bradley nodded. “All right, Cole. I’ll go along with Jillian on this and hire you.”

“No,” I said. “You won’t.”

Jillian Becker stiffened. Bradley Warren looked at Jillian Becker, then looked back at me. “What do you mean, I won’t?”

“I don’t want to work for you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like you.”

Bradley Warren started to say something, then stopped. His mouth opened, then closed. Jillian Becker looked confused. Maybe no one had ever before said no to Bradley Warren. Maybe it was against the law. Maybe Bradley Warren’s personal police were about to crash through the door and arrest me for defying the One True Way. Jillian shook her head. “They said you could be difficult.”

I shrugged. “They should’ve said that when I’m pushed, I push back. They also should’ve said that when I do things, I do them my way.” I looked at Bradley. “The check rents. It does not buy.”

Bradley Warren stared at me as if I had just beamed down from the
Enterprise
. He stood very still. So did Jillian Becker. They stood like that until a tic started beneath his left eye and he said, “Jillian.”

Jillian Becker said, “Mr. Cole, we need the Hagakure found, and we want you to find it. If we in some way offended you, we apologize.”

We.

“Will you help us?”

Her makeup was understated and appropriate, and there was a tasteful gold chain around her right wrist. She was bright and attractive and I wondered how
many times she’d had to apologize for him and how it made her feel.

I gave her the Jack Nicholson smile and made a big deal out of sitting down again. “For you, babe, anything.” Can you stand it?

Bradley Warren’s face was red and purple and splotched, and the tic was a mad flicker. He made the hand gesture as quick as a cracking whip, and said, “Write him a check and leave it blank. I’ll be down in the limo.”

He left without looking at me and without offering his hand and without waiting for Jillian. When he was gone I said, “My, my. Man of the Month.”

Jillian Becker took a deep breath, let it out, then sat in one of the director’s chairs and opened the Gucci briefcase in her lap. She took out a corporate checkbook and spoke while she wrote. “Mr. Cole, please understand that Bradley’s under enormous pressure. We’re on our way to Kyoto to tell the Tashiros what has happened. That will be neither pleasant nor easy.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I should be more sensitive.”

She glanced up from the check with cool eyes. “Maybe you should.”

So much for humor.

After a while, she put the check and a 3 × 5 index card on my desk. I didn’t look at the check. She said, “The card has Bradley’s home and office addresses and phone numbers. It also has mine. You may call me at any time, day or night, for anything that pertains to this case.”

“Okay.”

“Will you need anything else?”

“Access to the house. I want to see where the book was and talk to anyone who knew that the book was
there. Also, if there’s a photograph or description of the manuscript, I’ll need it.”

“Bradley’s wife can supply that. At the house.”

“What’s her name?”

“Sheila. Their daughter Mimi lives at the house, also, along with two housekeepers. I’ll call Sheila and tell her to expect you.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

We were getting along just great.

Jillian Becker closed the Gucci briefcase, snapped its latch, stood, and went to the door. Maybe she hadn’t always been this serious. Maybe working for Bradley brought it out in her.

“You do that well,” I said.

She looked back. “What?”

“Walk.”

She gave me the cool eyes again. “This is a business relationship, Mr. Cole. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Sure.”

She opened the door.

“One more thing.”

She turned back to me.

“You always look this good, or is today a special occasion?”

She stood like that for a while, not moving, and then she shook her head. “You really are something, aren’t you?”

I made a gun out of my hand, pointed it at her, and gave her another dose of the Nicholson. “I hope he pays you well.”

She went out and slammed the door.

When the door closed I looked at the check. Blank. She hadn’t dated it 1889 or April 1. It had been signed by Bradley Warren and, as far as I could tell, in ink that wouldn’t vanish. Maybe a better detective would have known for sure about the ink, but I’d have to risk it. Son of a gun. My big chance. I could nick him for a hundred thousand dollars, but that was probably playing it small. Maybe I should put a one and write zeros until my arm fell off and endorse it Elvis Cole, Yachtsman.

I folded the check in half, put it in my wallet, and took a Dan Wesson .38 in a shoulder rig out of my top right-hand drawer. I pulled a white cotton jacket on to cover the Dan Wesson, then went down to my car. The car is a Jamaica-yellow 1966 Corvette convertible that looks pretty snazzy. Maybe with the white jacket and the convertible and the blank check in my pocket, someone would think I was Donald Trump.

I put the Corvette out onto Santa Monica and
cruised west through Beverly Hills and the upper rim of Century City, then north up Beverly Glen past rows of palm trees and stuccoed apartment houses and Persian-owned construction projects. L. A. in late June is bright. With the smog pressed down by an inversion layer, the sky turns white and the sun glares brilliantly from signs and awnings and reflective building glass and deep-waxed fenders and miles and miles of molten chrome bumpers. There were shirtless kids with skateboards on their way into Westwood and older women with big hats coming back from markets and construction workers tearing up the streets and Hispanic women waiting for buses and everybody wore sunglasses. It looked like a Ray Ban commercial.

I stayed with Beverly Glen up past the Los Angeles Country Club golf course until I got to Sunset Boulevard, then hung a right and a quick left into upper Holmby Hills. Holmby is a smaller, more expensive version of the very best part of Beverly Hills to the east. It is old and elegant, and the streets are wide and neat with proper curbs and large homes hidden behind hedgerows and mortar walls and black wrought iron gates. Many of the houses are near the street, but a few are set back and quite a few you can’t see at all.

The Warrens’ home was the one with the guard. He was sitting in a light blue Thunderbird with a sticker on its side that said
TITAN SECURITIES
. He got out when he saw me slow down and stood with his hands on his hips. Late forties, big across the back, in a brown off-the-rack Sears suit. Wrinkled. He’d taken a couple of hard ones on the bridge of his nose, but that had been a long time ago. I turned into the drive, and showed him the license. “Cole. They’re expecting me.”

He nodded at the license and leaned against the
door. “She sent the kid down to tell me you were on the way. I’m Hatcher.” He didn’t offer to shake my hand.

I said, “Anyone try storming the house?”

He looked back at the house, then shook his head. “Shit. I been out here since they got hit and I ain’t seen dick.” He shot me a wink. “Leastways, not what you’re talking about.”

I said, “Are you tipping me off or is something in your eye?”

He smirked. “You been out before?”

“Uh-uh.”

He gave me some more of the smirk, then ambled back to the Thunderbird. “You’ll see.”

Bradley Warren lived in a French Normandy mansion just about the size of Kansas. A large Spanish oak in the center of the motor court put filigreed shadows on the Normandy’s steep roof, and three or four thousand snapdragons spilled out of the beds that bordered the drive and the perimeter of the house. There was a porchlike overhang at the front of the house with the front door recessed in a wide alcove. It was a single door, but it was a good nine feet high and four feet wide. Maybe Bradley Warren had bought the place from the Munsters.