"I hate to be the wet blanket," I said, "but maybe we should forego the Man of the Month celebration."

Bradley frowned. "I told you before. That's impossible."

I said, "The banquet will be in a large ballroom at the hotel. There will be a couple of hundred people plus the hotel and kitchen employees. People will want to speak with you before the presentation and after, and with your wife, and your family will be spread all to hell and back. If we assume that there is merit to the threats you've received, you'll be vulnerable. So will your wife and daughter."

Mimi's left eye began to twitch in the same way that Bradley's had. What a trait to inherit. Her face was small and pinched and closed, but her eyes were watchful in spite of the tic, and made me think of a small animal hiding at the edge of a forest.

Bradley said, "Nothing's going to happen to my best girl." He went over to her with an Ozzie Nelson smile and put his hands on her shoulders.

Mimi jumped when he touched her as if an electrical current had arced between them. He didn't notice. He said, "My best girl knows I have to attend. She knows that if we're not at the banquet, the Tashiros will see me as weak."

His best girl nodded. Dutifully.

Bradley turned the Ozzie Nelson smile on me. "There. You see?"

"Okay," I said. "Go without your family. Pike will stay with them, here, and I'll go with you."

Ozzie Nelson grew impatient. "You don't seem to understand," he said. "What you're asking would be bad for business."

"Silly me," I said. "Of course."

Jillian Becker stared out the front window toward a grove of bamboo. Joe Pike moved to the bar and crossed his arms the way he does when he's disgusted. I took a deep breath and told myself to pretend Bradley Warren was a four-year-old. I spoke slowly and wished Mimi wasn't with us. I said, "A threat was made to your wife, and now a threat has been made to your daughter. A person who may or may not have been connected with the theft of the Hagakure was murdered. Whether the two are linked or not, I don't know, but the situation is worsening and it would be smart to take these threats seriously."

Jillian Becker turned from the window. "Bradley, maybe we should call the police. They could help with extra security."

Bradley made a face like she'd pissed on his leg. He said, "Absolutely not."

Mimi stood, then, and went over to her father. "I put on this dress especially for the banquet. Isn't it pretty?"

Bradley Warren looked at her and frowned. "Can't you do something about your hair?"

Mimi's left eye fluttered like a moth in a jar. She rubbed at the eye and opened her mouth and closed it, and then she left.

Joe Pike shook his head and he left, too.

Bradley Warren looked at himself in the mirror again. "Maybe I should change shoes," he said. Then he started out, too.

I said, "Bradley."

He stopped in the door.

"Your daughter is terrified."

"Of course she's frightened," he said. "Some maniac said he was going to kill her."

I nodded. Slowly. "The right thing for you to do is to call this off. Stay home. Take care of your family. They're scared now, and possibly in danger, and they need your help."

Bradley Warren gave me the famous Bradley Warren frown, then shook his head. "Don't you see?" he said. "A lot of cops would ruin the banquet."

I nodded. Of course. I looked at Jillian Becker, but she was busy with her briefcase.

Chapter 12

"Who heads security at Bradley's hotel?"

Jillian Becker said, "A man named Jack Ellis."

"May I have his phone number?"

Jillian Becker held my gaze for a moment, then turned away and found Jack Ellis's number in her briefcase. I used the phone behind the bar, called Ellis at the hotel, told him what was going on and that I had been hired by Mr. Warren for Mr. Warren's personal security. Jillian Becker took the phone and confirmed it. Ellis had a thick, coarse voice that put him in his fifties. He said, "What do the cops think about all this?"

"The cops don't know. Mr. Warren thinks they'd be bad for business." When I said it Jillian Becker pursed her lips and went back to shuffling papers within the briefcase. Disapproving my tone of voice, no doubt.

Ellis said, "You like that?"

"I think it's lousy." More disapproval. The down-turned mouth. The posture. That kind of thing.

Ellis said, "I'll bring in my night people. That'll be enough to cover the Angeles Room, where they're gonna be, follow him in and out, watch the kitchen and the hallways." There was a pause. "He didn't tell the cops, huh?"

"Bad for business. Also, too many unsightly cops might ruin the banquet." Jillian Becker put the Cross pen down and looked at me with the cool eyes.

"Son of a bitch."

"That's right."

I hung up and looked at Jillian Becker looking at me. I smiled. "Want to hear my Mel Gibson imitation?"

She said, "If you knew more about Bradley, you wouldn't dislike him the way you do."

"I don't know. I sort of like disliking him."

"That's obvious. Either way, as long as you're in his employ, you might be more circumspect in sharing your feelings with fellow employees. It breeds discontent."

"Discontent. How Upper Management."

The nostrils tightened.

I said, "I think he's behaving like a self-absorbed ass, and so do you."

Her left eyebrow arched. "However he's behaving, he's still my employer. I will treat him accordingly. So should you." My country right or wrong.

Pretty soon Joe Pike came back, scrubbed and fresh and bright-eyed. It's never easy to tell if someone is bright-eyed when they're wearing sunglasses, but one makes certain assumptions.

He put his gym bag on the floor, then leaned with his back against the bar and his elbows up on the bar rail and stared out at infinity. "You really know how to pick'm," he said.

A little bit after that Bradley Warren came back resplendent in different shoes, and Sheila Warren came back smelling fresh and clean, and Mimi Warren came back looking and smelling pretty much the same, and we were all together. One big happy family. We trooped out to the limo, Bradley and Jillian and Sheila and me and Mimi and Pike, all single file. I broke into "Whistle While You Work," but no one got it. Pike might've got it, but he never tells. Bradley and Jillian took the forward-facing seat and Mimi and Sheila and I got the seat facing the rear, Sheila and Mimi on either side of me, Sheila sitting so that her leg was pressed against mine. Sheila said, "Don't they have a bar in these damn things?" Everyone ignored her. Pike said something to the limo driver, then went over to his Jeep. Sheila Warren said, "He's not coming with us?"

"Nope."

"Mother fuck."

Traffic was light. We went down Beverly Glen to Wilshire, then east. We stayed on Wilshire through Beverly Hills and past the La Brea tar pits with the full-sized models of the mammoths they have there and past MacArthur Park and into downtown L.A. until Wilshire ended at Grand. We went up to Seventh, then over on Broadway, and pulled up under the entrance of the New Nippon Hotel.

One thing you could say about Bradley Warren, he built a helluva hotel. The New Nippon was a thirty-two-story cylindrical column of metallic blue glass and snow-white concrete midway between Little Tokyo, Chinatown, and downtown L.A. There were dozens of limos and taxis and MBs and Jaguars. Suitcases were going in and out and doormen in red uniforms were whistling for the next taxi in line and guys I took to be tourists who looked like they made a lot of money were with tall slender women who looked like they cost a lot of money to keep up. None of them looked like gunsels or thugs or art thief-maniacs, but you can never be sure.