Traci nodded, sniffling.

"Man." I stared out the front of the Rabbit at the Administration Building. It was large and clean and old with thick Spanish walls and a red tile roof. The hedges and the lawn and the trees were neat and well-groomed. Small knots of girls still moved along the walks, some carrying books, some not, but almost all were smiling. I shook my head.

Traci Louise Fishman picked at the steering wheel some more, then gave me the Special Secret look again. Like there was something else I'd never heard before, and something Traci had never been able to tell, and now she wanted to. "You want me to tell you something really weird?"

I looked at her.

"Last year, we were up in my room, smoking. My room is on the second floor and in the back, so I can open the window and no one knows."

"Uh-huh."

"We were smoking and talking and Mimi said, 'Watch this,' and she pulled up her shirt and put the hot part of the cigarette on her stomach and held it there." I sat in the Rabbit, listening to sixteen-year-old Traci Louise Fishman, and my back went cold. "It was so weird I couldn't even say anything. I just watched, and it seemed like she held it there forever, and I yelled, 'That's crazy, Mimi, you'll have a scar,' and she said she didn't care, and then she pushed down her pants and there were these two dark marks just above her hair down there and she said, 'Pain gives us meaning, Traci,' and then she took a real deep drag on the cigarette and got the tip glowing bright red and then she did it again." Traci Louise Fishman's eyes were round and bulging. She was scared, as if telling me these things she had been keeping secret for so long was in some way giving them reality for the first time, and the reality was a shameful, frightful thing.

I ran my tongue across the backs of my teeth and thought about Mimi Warren and couldn't shake the cold feeling. "Did she do things like that often?"

Traci Louise Fishman began to sob, great heaving sobs that shook her and made her gag. The secret had been held a long time, and it had been scary. Perhaps even incomprehensible. When the sobs died, she said, "You'll find her? You'll find her and bring her back?"

"Yes."

"I told her I was real. I told her I had purpose."

I nodded.

"She's my friend," she said. Her voice was hoarse and bubbly.

I nodded. "I know, babe."

The sobs erupted once more and took a long time to die. I gave her my handkerchief. With the pale skin and the out-from-under eyes and the heavy little-girl face, there was a quality of loneliness to her that comes when your only friend walks away and you don't know why and there's no one else and never will be. A left-behind look.

We sat like that for another few minutes, Traci rubbing at her flat nose and me breathing deeply and thinking about Mimi and Eddie Tang and what that might mean. Most of the cars had long since gone, but the red 944 still sat in its spot, music playing, girls within pretending not to stare toward Traci Louise Fishman's white Volkswagen Rabbit. After a while I said, "They're still watching us."

Traci nodded. The eyes weren't watering anymore and the nose was dry and she gave back my handkerchief. "They can't believe a good-looking guy like you is sitting here with me."

"Maybe," I said, "they can't believe a good-looking girl like you is letting me."

She smiled and looked down at her steering wheel again, and again picked at the plastic. She said, "Please bring her back."

I looked at the Porsche. The girl in the back seat was staring our way. I said, "Traci?"

She looked up at me.

I leaned across and kissed her on the lips. She didn't move, and when I pulled back she was a vivid red. I said, "Thanks for the help."

Her chin went down into her neck and she swallowed hard and looked mortified. She touched her lips and looked over at the girls in the Porsche. They were gaping at us. Traci Louise Fishman blinked at them, and looked back at me. Then she squared her shoulders, touched her lips again, and folded both hands very neatly in her lap.

I got out of the Rabbit, went back to the Corvette, and drove to my office.

Chapter 22

I parked in the bottom of my building, went into the deli, bought a pastrami sandwich with Chinese hot mustard, then used the stairs to go up to the office. Walking the stairs made it easier not to think about Mimi Warren holding a lit cigarette to her skin. Maybe Traci Louise Fishman had made up that part. Maybe she'd made up all of it. Maybe if I didn't think about Mimi Warren or Traci Louise Fishman or Eddie Tang they would all disappear and living would be easy. Elvis Cole, Existential Detective. I liked that. Not thinking, properly done, creates a pleasant numbed sensation in the brain that I like a lot. There are women who will tell you that not thinking is one of my best things.

I let myself into the office, got a Falstaff out of the little fridge, put the sandwich on a paper plate, and called Lou Poitras.

Lou said, "Don't tell me. You've cracked the case."

I said, "The girl knew Eddie Tang."

He told me to hang on and then he put me on hold. When he put me on hold, the phone started playing music. Michael Jackson singing about how bad he was. Our tax dollars at work.

Lou came back and said, "Go on."

"She used to sneak out of the house and go to clubs. She hung out and met people and one of the people she met was Tang. She might've mentioned the book to him. She told people that Eddie Tang was her boyfriend."

"She know Tang was yakuza?"

"I don't know."

"Eddie hears about the book, he maybe figures it's a good thing to steal."

"Uh-huh."

Lou Poitras didn't say anything for a while. He's got three kids. Two of them are daughters. "Thanks for the tip, Hound Dog. I'll look into it."

"Always happy to cooperate with the police."

"Right."

We hung up. I watched Pinocchio's eyes slide from side to side and ate the sandwich. Terry Ito had said Eddie Tang was on his way up. Maybe Eddie figured taking advantage of Mimi Warren and stealing the Hagakure were the keys to ascendancy. Hmmm. I finished the sandwich, then called the phone company. I asked if they had a street address for a guy named Eddie or Edward Tang. They did. Forty minutes later, I was there.

Eddie Tang lived in an apartment building in the flat part of L.A. just south of Century City off Pico Boulevard. It's older in there, and used to be middle class, but now there're lots of trendy restaurants and singles places and New Age health clubs. Eddie's complex had been redone about five years ago with mauve stucco and redwood inlays and black slate steps that twisted up from the walk in a slow curve to a glass security door. To the right of the entry a driveway angled down beneath the building and was blocked by a wrought iron gate. To either side of the garage, bougainvillea had been planted but not long enough ago to flourish. It was a good-looking building. Proof positive that crime pays.

I parked fifty yards down the block in the shade from a gum tree and waited. Maybe Eddie was home and maybe he had Mimi bound and gagged and hidden away in a closet, but maybe not. Boxes buried a couple of feet under the desert up in Sun Valley were more along the lines reserved for kidnap victims than upscale apartment houses in West Los Angeles.

At four-ten a brown unmarked copmobile pulled to a stop by the fire hydrant in front of Eddie's building. You know it's a copmobile because nobody in L.A. would buy anything as boring as a stripped-down four-door Dodge sedan except the cops. A bald-headed dick with freckles and a younger dick with a deep tan and heavy lines around his eyes climbed out and went up to the glass security door. The bald-headed guy was in a suit that looked like it hadn't been pressed in two months. The younger guy was in a dark blue Calvin Klein cord jacket and charcoal slacks with creases so sharp they could have been registered as deadly weapons. Poitras had made some phone calls and this was the follow-up.