They got back in their Taurus and left, and pretty soon the horns stopped blowing and traffic began to move. Well, well, well.

I drove back to my office and called the cops. A voice said, "North Hollywood detectives."

"Lou Poitras, please."

I got put on hold and had to wait and then somebody said, "Poitras."

"There's an importer down on Ki Street in Little Tokyo named Nobu Ishida." I spelled it for him. "I was on him today when two Asian cops come out of my trunk and take me off the board."

Lou Poitras said, "You got that four bucks you owe me?" These cops.

"Don't be small, Lou. I call up with a matter of great import and you bring up a paltry four dollars."

"Great import. Shit."

"They took me out just long enough to lose Ishida. They don't say three words. They flash their guns all over Pershing Square and they don't even rub my nose in it the way you cops like to do. Maybe they're cops. Maybe they're just two guys pretending to be cops."

He thought about that. I could hear him breathe over the phone. "You see a badge?"

"Not long enough to get a number."

"How about a tag?"

"Maroon Ford Taurus. Three-W-W-L-seven-eight-eight."

Poitras said, "Stick around. I'll get back to you," and hung up.

I got up, opened the glass doors that lead out to the little balcony, went back to my desk, and put my feet up. Stick around.

Half an hour later I got up again and went out onto the balcony. Sometimes, when the smog is gone and the weather is clear, you can stand on the balcony and see all the way down Santa Monica Boulevard to the ocean. Now, the heat was up and the smog was in and I felt lucky to see across the street.

I went back in the office, dug around in the little refrigerator I have there, and found a bottle of Negra Modelo beer. Negra Modelo is a dark Mexican beer and may be the best dark beer brewed anywhere in the world. I sipped some and watched the Pinocchio clock. After a while I turned on the radio and tuned to KLSX. Bananarama singing it was a cruel summer. They're not George Thorogood, but they're not bad. I went back onto the balcony and looked out over Los Angeles and thought about what it would be like to marry and have children. I would have two or three daughters and we would watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers together and then roll around on the floor like puppies. When they grew up they would like Kenneth Tobey movies. Would they look like me, or their mother? I went back into the office, closed the glass doors, and sat in one of the director's chairs. You think the damnedest things when you're waiting for a call.

Maybe Lou Poitras had lost my phone number and was desperately searching the police computers in his attempts to contact me. Maybe he had obtained forbidden information concerning the two cops who'd fronted me and was now lying dead in a pool of blood behind the wheel of his Oldsmobile. Maybe I was bored stiff.

At five minutes after seven I was flat on my back on the floor, staring at the ceiling and wondering if aliens from space had ever visited the earth. At ten minutes after seven, the phone rang. I got up off the floor as if I had not been waiting most of the day, sauntered over, and casually picked up the receiver. "Laid-back Detectives, where your problems are no problem."

It wasn't Lou Poitras. It was Sheila Warren. She was crying. She said, "Mr. Cole? Are you there? Who is this?" The words spilled out around coughing sobs. It was tough to understand her. She still sounded drunk.

I said, "Is anyone hurt?"

"They said they would kill me. They said they would kill Bradley and me and that they would burn the house down."

"Who?"

"The people who stole the book. You've got to come over. Please. I'm terrified." She said something else but she was sobbing again and I couldn't make it out.

I hung up. One thing about this business, it doesn't stay boring for long.

Chapter 6

When I got to the Warren home it was still standing. There was no fire, no hazy smoke blotting out a blood-red sun, no siege tower breaching the front wall. It was dark and cool and pleasant, the way it gets at twilight just as the sun settles beneath the horizon. Hatcher sat in the same light blue Titan Securities Thunderbird and watched me pull into the drive and park. He came over. He didn't look too worried.

I said, "Everything all right?"

"She phone you about the call?"

"Seemed pretty upset."

"Yeah. Well." He hacked up something thick and phlegmy and spit it at the bushes. Sinus.

I said, "You don't act like anything out of the ordinary has happened."

He patted his jacket below his left arm. "Anything out of the ordinary comes around here, I'll give it some of this."

"Wow," I said. "I'm surprised she bothered to call me with you out here."

Hatcher snorted and went back to the T-bird. "You'll see. You're around here enough, you'll see."

The voice of experience.

I walked over to the front door, rang the bell twice, and waited. In a little bit, Sheila Warren's voice came from behind the door. "Who's there?"

"Elvis Cole."

The locks were thrown and the door opened. She was wearing a silver satin nightgown that looked like it had been poured over her body and silver high-heeled sandals. Her eyes were pink and puffy and her mascara had run and been wiped away and not fixed. She was holding a handkerchief with dark blue smudges on it. The mascara. She said, "Thank God it's you. We've been terrified."

I shrugged toward the front gate. "Not much is going to get past Wyatt Earp."

"He could've been clubbed."

Some things you can't argue. I went in past her, watched her lock the door, then followed her back through the house. She walked with a slight lean to the right as if the floor wasn't quite level, and she cut too short through the doorways, brushing her inside shoulder. "Who's home?" I said.

"Just myself and Mimi. Mimi's in the back."

She led me to the den. The bar was in the den.

"Tell me about the call."

"I thought it was Tammy. Tammy's my girlfriend. We play tennis, we go to movies, like that. But it was a man." There was a capless bottle of Bombay gin and a short heavy glass with a couple of melting ice cubes in it sitting on the bar. She picked up the glass and finished what was left, and said, "Would you like something to drink?"

"You got a Falstaff?" I walked over to the big French doors that open out to the rear, and looked behind the drapes. Each door was locked and secure.

"What's that?" she said.

"This beer they brew in Tumwater, Washington."

"All we have are Japanese beers." Her voice took on an edge when she said it.

"That'll be fine."

She went behind the bar, put more ice in her glass, and glugged in some of the gin. That brought the Bombay down about to the halfway point. The bottle cap was sitting in an ashtray at the end of the bar. A strip of bright clean Bonded paper was lying beside it. The Bombay had been full when she'd started. She disappeared down behind the bar for a little bit, then stood up with a bottle of Asahi. There was a tight smile on her face and a smear of mascara on her left cheek like a bruise. "Did I tell you that I find you quite attractive?"

"It was the first thing you said to me."

"Well, I do."

"Everyone says I look like John Cassavetes."

"Do they?"

"I think I look like Joe Isuzu."

She cocked her hips and her head and rested her drink along her jawline, posing. She still hadn't given me the beer. "I think you look like Joe Theismann," she said. "Do you know who Joe Theismann is?"

"Sure. Used to quarterback for the Redskins."

She gave me a giggle. "No, you silly. Joe Theismann is married to Cathy Lee Crosby."