Pike's mouth twitched. "You missed all the fun," he said. "While you were out, somebody phoned for reinforcements."

Chapter 17

The older man in the cheap sharkskin looked at Eddie. "You know this one?" No accent.

Eddie nodded. "He came into Ishida's."

I said, "Wow, Eddie. Last week you're working for Nobu Ishida, then Ishida gets osterized, and now you're working for Yuki Torobuni. You're really on the rise."

Yuki Torobuni said, "How do you know who I am?"

"You're either Torobuni or Fu Manchu."

Torobuni dipped his chin at Eddie. "Let's go in the back."

Torobuni moved past me and went down the steps toward the kitchen. The midget swaggered after him the way midgets will. Pike and I went next, and Eddie trailed behind. The Butterfly Lady watched us go, lean hips moving to The Smiths, little butterfly dancing. Nice moves.

Eddie said, "You like that, huh?"

Some guys.

When we got into the kitchen, Yuki Torobuni leaned against a steel table and said, "Eddie." Everything was Eddie. Maybe the midget was a moron.

Eddie moved to pat Pike down. Pike pushed Eddie's hand away from his body. "No."

The midget took out a Browning.45 automatic about eighteen sizes too big for him. The smell of sesame oil and tahini and mint was strong and the kitchen help was careful not to look our way.

Eddie and Pike were just about the same height but Eddie was heavier and his shoulders sloped more because of the insanely developed trapezius muscles. Eddie sneered at Pike's red arrows. "Those are shit tattoos."

Torobuni made a little forget-it gesture with his left hand. "Let's not waste our time." He looked at me. "What do you want?"

"I want a sixteen-year-old girl named Mimi Warren."

Eddie Tang laughed. Torobuni smiled at Eddie, then shook his head and gave me bored. "So what?"

"Maybe you have her."

Torobuni said, "Boy, I never heard of this girl. What is she, a princess, some kind of movie star?" Eddie thought that was a riot.

I said, "Something called the Hagakure was stolen from her parents, and whoever got it kidnapped the girl to stop the search. It's a good bet that whoever wanted the Hagakure is also in the yakuza. Maybe that's you."

Torobuni's face darkened. He barked out a couple of words of Japanese and Eddie stopped laughing. "Whoever stole the Hagakure kidnaps the girl to stop you looking for it?"

"That's the way it looks."

"Not too bright."

"Geniuses rarely go into crime."

Torobuni stared at me a moment, then walked over to a giant U.S. range where a woman was taking a fresh load of tempura shrimp from the deep fat. He mumbled something and she plucked out a shrimp on a little metal skewer and handed it to him. He took a small bite. He said, "Two years ago I had a man's face put in here." He gestured at the grease vat. "You ever see a fried face?"

"No. How'd it taste?"

Torobuni finished the shrimp and wiped his hands on a cloth that was lying on the steel table. He shook his head. "You're out of your mind to come here like this. You know my name, but do you have any idea who I am?"

"Who killed Nobu Ishida?"

He leaned against the table again and looked at me. Eddie shifted closer, his eyes on Pike. The midget with the.45 beamed. Torobuni folded the towel neatly and put it down. "Maybe you killed him."

"Sure."

Behind us cooking fat bubbled and cleavers bit into hardwood cutting boards and damp heat billowed out of steamers. Torobuni stared at me for another couple of centuries, then spoke again in Japanese. The midget put away the gun. Torobuni came very close to me, so close the cheap sharkskin brushed my chest. He looked first in my right eye, then in my left. He said, "Yakuza is a terrible monster to arouse. If you come down here again, yakuza will eat you." His voice was like late-night music.

"I'm going to find the girl."

Torobuni smiled a smile to match the voice. "Good luck."

He turned and went out the back of the kitchen, the midget swaggering behind him. Eddie Tang went with them, walking backward and keeping his eyes on Joe Pike. He stopped in the door, gave Pike a nasty grin, then peeled up his sleeves to show the tattoos. He worked his arms to make the tattoos dance, then snarled and flexed the huge traps so they grew out of his back like spiny wings. Then he left.

Pike said, "Wow."

We went out through the dining room and past the bar. The kid I'd talked to was gone. The Butterfly Lady was busy with customers. People ate. People drank. Life went on.

When we got back to the Big Boy lot, Pike said, "He knows something."

"You got that feeling, huh?"

Nod.

"Somebody else might know something, too. Mimi Warren used to come here."

The sunglasses moved. "Mimi?" He was doing it, too.

"She came with friends and she hung out and she probably met a wide variety of sleazy people. Maybe whoever grabbed her was someone she met here and bragged to about what her daddy had sitting in his home safe."

"And if we can find the friends, they might know who."

"That's it."

The sunglasses moved again. "Uh-huh."

Forty minutes later I pulled the Corvette into my carport, parked, went in through the kitchen, and phoned Jillian Becker at her office. She said, "Yes?"

"It's Elvis Cole. I'd like to talk with you about Mimi and her father and all of this."

"You were fired."

"That may be, but I'm going to find her. Maybe you can help me do that."

There was a pause, and sounds in the background. "I can't talk now."

"Would you have dinner with me tonight at Musso and Frank?"

Another pause. Thinking about it. "All right." She didn't sound particularly enthusiastic. "What time?"

"Eight o'clock. You can meet me there, or I'll pick you up. Whichever you prefer."

"I'll meet you there." It was clear what she preferred.

Chapter 18

After we hung up I pulled off my clothes, took a shower, then fell into a deep uneasy sleep.

I woke just after six feeling drained and stiff, as if sleeping had been hard work. I went downstairs and flipped on the TV news, and after a while there was something about Mimi's kidnapping.

A blond woman who looked like she played racquet-ball twice a day gave the update standing in front of the New Nippon Hotel, "site of the kidnapping." She said the police and the FBI still had no information as to Mimi's whereabouts or condition, but were working diligently to effect a positive resolution. The screen cut to a close-up of a photograph of Mimi with a phone number beneath her chin. After the blond woman asked anyone who might have information to call the number, the news anchor segued nicely into a story about a recruitment drive the L.A.P.D. was launching. There was a number to call for that, too.

Mimi Warren had been given seventeen seconds.

At seven o'clock I went into the kitchen, drank two glasses of water, then went upstairs to shave and shower. I ran the water hot and rubbed the soap in hard and after the shower I felt a little better. Maybe I was getting used to the pain. Or maybe it was just the thought of dinner with an MBA.

When I was dry and deodorized, I stood in the door to my closet and wondered what I should wear. Hmmm. I could wear my Groucho Marx nose, but Jillian already thought I joked around too much. My Metaluna Mutant mask? Nah. I pulled on a pair of brown outback pants and gray CJ Bass desert boots and a white Indian hiking shirt and a light blue waiter's jacket. I looked like an ad for Banana Republic. Maybe Banana Republic would give me a job. They could put my picture in their little catalog and under it they could say: Elvis Cole, famous detective, outfitted for his latest adventure in rugged inner-city climes! Did Banana Republic sell shoulder holsters?