I called Joe Pike.

"Gun shop."

"It's me. I found the girl."

He grunted.

"I lost her again."

He said, "You been drinking?"

"No." I sounded fine to me.

He said, "You at home?"

"Uh-huh."

He hung up.

Half an hour later Pike was in the living room. I hadn't heard him knock or use a key. Maybe it was teleportation. He was dressed exactly as always: sweatshirt with no sleeves, faded Levi's, blue Nike running shoes, mirrored sunglasses. I said, "Are those new socks?"

There was a pretty good-sized pyramid of Falstaff cans on the coffee table. He looked at it, then went into the kitchen and rattled around. After a while he said, "Come to the table."

He had put out a ranch omelet with cheese and tomatoes, and whole wheat toast with butter and strawberry jam. There was coffee and a small glass of milk and a little bottle of Tabasco sauce and two glasses of water. The water was all he was having. I sat down and ate without saying anything. The omelet was fluffy and moist and perfectly cooked. The cat door made its noise and the cat walked through the kitchen and hopped up onto the table. The cat watched me eating, his nose working at the odors, then he walked over and sat down in front of Pike and purred. Pike's the only person besides me that the cat will let touch him.

When I finished, I closed my eyes and held my head and Pike said, "Can you tell it now?"

"Yes." I drank more coffee and then I told him what had happened to Bradley Warren and I told him why. I told him everything I knew about Mimi Warren, and how she was, and why she was that way. I told him about finding Mimi at Asano's and arranging to bring her to Carol Hillegas's and Eddie Tang and the Hagakure. I told him that there were things that didn't add up and that I didn't have answers for and that maybe I didn't give a damn anymore. Pike listened without moving. Sometimes, Pike might not move for as long as you watch him. There are times I suspect that he does not move for days. When I finished he nodded to himself and said, "Yes."

"And you're thinking you had something to do with her killing her father."

I nodded.

Pike took a bit of egg off my plate and held it up for the cat. "You were doing your best for her, something that no one in her life has ever done."

"Sure." Mr. Convinced.

"Ever since the Nam, you've worked to hang on to the childhood part of yourself. Only here's a kid who never had a childhood and you wanted to get some for her before it was too late." Joe Pike moved his head and you could see the cat reflected in his glasses. The cat finished the bit of egg.

I said, "I want to find her, Joe. I want to bring her back."

He didn't move.

"I want to finish it."

Pike's mouth twitched. I cleared my place and washed the dishes. I went back upstairs, took another shower, then dressed and put the Dan Wesson under my arm.

When I went downstairs again, Joe Pike was waiting.

Chapter 32

It was midafternoon when we got to Mr. Moto's. The lunch crowd was gone and so were most of the employees, except for a couple of busboys mopping the floor and setting up for happy hour. The manager with the hi-tone topknot was sitting at a table with the Butterfly Lady, going through receipts. He stood up when he saw us and started to say something about us not being welcome when I grabbed his throat and walked him halfway across the dining room, bent him back over a table, and put the Dan Wesson in his mouth. "Yuki Torobuni," I said.

The Butterfly Lady stood up. Pike pushed her back down. He pointed at the busboys, then pointed at the floor. They went down fast.

I said, "Yuki Torobuni."

Mumbles.

"I can't hear you."

More mumbles.

I took the Dan Wesson out of his mouth. He coughed and licked at his lips and shook his head. "He's not here."

I let the gun rest against his jaw. "Where is he?"

"I don't know."

I dug my fingers into his throat and squeezed. I said, "Remember Mimi Warren? I am going to find her and I won't think twice if I have to kill you to do it."

His eyes opened wider and his face got purple and after a while he gave us Yuki Torobuni's address.

Torobuni lived in a treesy section of Brentwood, just east of Santa Monica, in a large sprawling ranch house more appropriate to a western star than a yakuza chieftain. There were wagon wheels lining the drive and a genuine old west buckboard converted into a flower planter and a gate featuring a rack of longhorn horns. Ben and Little Joe were probably out back. Joe Pike stared at it all and said, "Shit."

Ben and Little Joe weren't around, and neither was anyone else. No Torobuni. No guys with tattoos and missing fingers and stupid eyes. After a lot of knocking and looking in windows we turned up a Nicaraguan housekeeper who said that Mr. Torobuni wasn't home. We asked her when he had left. She said he wasn't home. We asked her when he might be back. She said he wasn't home. We asked her where he had gone. She said he wasn't home.

Pike said, "I guess he's not home."

"Maybe he's with Eddie Tang," I said. "Maybe they're reading the Hagakure and celebrating Eddie's promotion."

Pike liked that. "Maybe we should go see."

When we got to Eddie Tang's there was a black-and-white parked at the fire hydrant out front with the same nondescript cop sedan I'd seen before double-parked beside it. Pike said, "I'll wait in the Jeep. One of them might know me."

I nodded and got out. The glass security door was propped open by a large potted plant so the cops could come and go as they wanted. I trotted up the little curved steps and through the open door like I owned the place. There was a landing and a couple of indoor trees and a circular step-down lobby with a brace of nice semicircular couches for waiting and chatting. There was a small elevator to the right and a very attractive suspended staircase to the left that curved up to the second floor. A chandelier that looked like a spaceship hung from the high ceiling and a door under the staircase probably went down to the garage and the laundry facility.

Two kids maybe eleven or twelve were standing by the elevator. One of the kids had a skateboard with a picture of a werewolf on it and the other had thick glasses. The kid with the glasses looked at me. I said, "What's going on with the cops?"

The kid with the glasses said, "I dunno. They went upstairs looking for some guy."

"Yeah? They find him?"

"Nah." Well, well.

The other kid said, "We thought they were gonna bust down the door or something but the manager let'm in."

I said, "What room is that?"

"212."

"The cops still up there?"

"Yeah. They're talking with the manager. She wants to screw one of them."

The kid with the skateboard smacked the kid with the glasses on the arm. The kid with the glasses said, "Hey, she screws everybody."

I said, "Well, you guys take it easy." I walked across the little lobby and out through the rear door and down one flight of bare cement steps to the garage. There was a little hall with a laundry room across from the stairs. The other end of the hall opened out to the garage. I went out to the garage and walked around. Nope. No dark green Alfa Romeo. Eddie was out, all right.

I went back to the laundry room and lifted myself atop an avocado-colored Kenmore dryer and waited. After about ten minutes I heard the door at the top of the stairs open, so I hopped off the dryer, fed in a couple of quarters, and turned it on. A uniformed cop in his early forties with tight sunburned skin came downstairs and looked in. I frowned at him and shook my head. "Damn towels take forever," I said.

He nodded, continued on out into the garage, then went back up the stairs. I gave it another hour, then I went up to the lobby and looked out front. The cops were gone, and Pike had parked the Jeep across the street. I opened the door for him. We took the stairs to the second floor, went down the hall to 212, and let ourselves in.