Without taking his eyes from me, he spoke more French into the phone, nodded at something I couldn't hear, then hung up. There were four photographs along the top of the desk, one of an overweight woman with a pleasant smile, and another of three teenage boys. One of the pictures was of a Little League team with Malcolm Denning and another man both wearing shirts that said COACH. "May I ask who referred you to me?"

"You can ask, but I'm afraid I couldn't tell you. Somebody tells me something, I try to protect the source. Especially if what they've told me can be incriminating. You see?"

"Incriminating?"

"Especially if it's incriminating."

He nodded.

"You know what the Hagakure is, Mr. Denning?"

Nervous. "Well, the Hagakure isn't really a piece of what we might call art. It's a book, you know." He put one hand on his desk and the other in his lap. There was a red mug on the desk that said DAD.

"But it's fair to say that whoever might have an interest in early Japanese art might also have an interest in the Hagakure, wouldn't it?"

"I guess."

"One of the original copies of the Hagakure was stolen a few days ago. Would you have heard anything about that?"

"Why on earth would I hear anything about it?"

"Because you've been known to broker a rip-off or two."

He pushed back his chair and stood up. The two of us in the little office was like being in a phone booth. "I think you should leave," he said.

"Come on, Malcolm. Give us both a break. You don't want to be hassled and I can hassle you."

The outer door opened and the pretty brunette came back into the little hall. She saw us standing there, broke into the smile, said, "Oh, I wondered where you'd gone." Then she saw the look on Denning's face. "Mr. Denning?"

He looked at me and I looked back. Then he glanced at her. "Yes, Barbara?"

Nervousness is contagious. She looked from Denning to me and back to Denning. She said, "The Kendals want to purchase the Myori."

I said, "Maybe the Kendals can help me."

Malcolm Denning stared at me for a long time and then he sat down. He said, "I'll be right out."

When she was gone, he said, "I can sue you for this. I can get an injunction to bar you from the premises. I can have you arrested." His voice was hoarse. An I-always-thought-this-would-happen-and-now- it-has voice.

"Sure," I said.

He stared at me, breathing hard, thinking it through, wondering how far he'd have to go if he picked up the ball, and how much it would cost him.

I said, "If someone wanted the Hagakure, who might arrange for its theft? If the Hagakure were for sale, who might buy it?"

His eyes flicked over the pictures on the desk. The wife, the sons. The Little League. I watched the sad eyes. He was a nice man. Maybe even a good man. Sometimes, in this job, you wonder how someone managed to take the wrong turn. You wonder where it happened and when and why. But you don't really want to know. If you knew, it would break your heart.

He said, "There's a man in Little Tokyo. He has some sort of import business. Nobu Ishida." He told me where I could find Ishida. He stared at the pictures as he told me.

After a while I went out through the gallery and down the stairs and along Canon to my car. It was past three and traffic was starting to build, so it took the better part of an hour to move back along Sunset and climb the mountain to the little A-frame I have off Woodrow Wilson Drive above Hollywood. When I got inside, I took two cold Falstaff beers out of the fridge, pulled off my shirt, and went out onto my deck.

There was a black cat crouched under a Weber charcoal grill that I keep out there. He's big and he's mean and he's black all over except for the white scars that lace his fur like spider webs. He keeps one ear up and one ear sort of cocked to the side because someone once shot him. Head shot. He hasn't been right since.

"You want some beer?"

He growled.

"Forget it, then."

The growling stopped.

I took out the center section of the railing that runs around the deck, sat on the edge, and opened the first Falstaff. From my deck you can see across a long twisting canyon that widens and spreads into Hollywood. I like to sit there with my feet hanging down and drink and think about things. It's about thirty feet from the deck to the slope below, but that's okay. I like the height. Sometimes the hawks come and float above the canyon and above the smog. They like the height, too.

I drank some of the beer and thought about Bradley and Sheila and Jillian Becker and Malcolm Denning. Bradley would be sitting comfortably in first class, dictating important business notes to Jillian Becker, who would be writing them down and nodding. Sheila would be out on her tennis court, bending over to show Hatcher her rear end, and squealing, Ooo, these darn laces! Malcolm Denning would be staring at the pictures of his wife and his boys and his Little League team and wondering when it would all go to hell.

"You ever notice," I said to the cat, "that sometimes the bad guys are better people than the good guys?"

The cat crept out from beneath the Weber, walked over, and sniffed at my beer. I poured a little out onto the deck for him and touched his back as he drank. It was soft.

Sometimes he bites, but not always.

Chapter 4

The next morning it was warm and bright in my loft, with the summer sun slanting in through the big glass A that is the back of my house. The cat was curled on the bed next to me, bits of leaf and dust in his fur, smelling of eucalyptus.

I rolled out of bed and pulled on some shorts and went downstairs. I opened the glass sliding doors for the breeze, then went back into the living room and turned on the TV. News. I changed channels. Rocky and Bullwinkle. There was a thump upstairs and then the cat came down. Bullwinkle said, "Nothing up my sleeve!" and ripped off his sleeve to prove it. Rocky said, "Oh, no, not again!" and flew around in a circle. The cat hopped up on the couch and stared at them. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is his favorite show.

I went back out onto the deck and did twelve sun salutes to stretch out the kinks. I did neck rolls and shoulder rolls and the spine rock and the cobra and the locust, and I began to sweat. Inside, Mr. Peabody and Sherman were setting the Way Back Machine for the Early Mesopotamian Age. I put myself into the peacock posture with my legs straight out behind me and I held it like that until my back screamed and the sweat left dark splatters on the deck, and then I went into the Dragon kata from the tae kwon do, and then the Crane kata, driving myself until the sweat ran in my eyes and my muscles failed and my nerves refused to carry another signal and I sat on the deck and felt like a million bucks. Endorphin heaven. So clients weren't perfect. So being a private cop wasn't perfect. So life wasn't perfect. I could always get new cards printed up. They would say: Elvis Cole, Perfect Detective.

Forty minutes later I was on the Hollywood Freeway heading southeast toward downtown Los Angeles and Little Tokyo and feeling pretty good about myself. Ah, perfection. It lends comfort in troubled times.

I stayed with the Hollywood past the Pasadena interchange, then took the Broadway exit into downtown L.A… Downtown Los Angeles features dirty inner-city streets, close-packed inner-city skyscrapers, and aromatic inner-city street life. The men who work there wear suits and the women wear heels and you see people carrying umbrellas as if it might rain. Downtown Los Angeles does not feel like Los Angeles. It is Boston or Chicago or Detroit or Manhattan. It feels like someplace else that had come out to visit and decided to stay. Maybe one day they'll put a dome over it and charge admission. They could call it Banal-land.