eased the Corvette into gear and drove away. It's a good thing Pike's tough.
Chapter 9
Little Tokyo was jammed with the lunch hour rush. Every restaurant on the block had a line of Caucasian secretaries and their bosses queued up out front, and the smell of hot peanut oil and vinegar sauces made my stomach rumble.
A small CLOSED sign was taped in the door at Nobu Ishida's place. It was one of those cruddy hand-lettered things and not at all what you would expect from a big-time importer and art connoisseur, but there you go. I turned into the alley behind Ishida's just to check, and, sure enough, it looked closed from back there, too. Probably out for lunch.
I turned back to Ki, then went up Broadway past the Hollywood Freeway into Chinatown. Chinatown is much bigger than Little Tokyo and not as clean, but the best honey-dipped duck and spring rolls in America can be had at a place called Yang Chow's on Broadway just past Ord. If bad guys can break for lunch, so can good guys.
I parked in front of a live poultry market and walked back to Yang Chow's and bought half a duck, three spring rolls, fried rice, and two Tsingtao to go. They put extra spice in the spring rolls for me.
Ten minutes later I was back on Ki Street, pulling into a parking lot sandwiched between two restaurants. It was crowded but all of the lots this time of day were crowded. I was a block and a half down from Ishida's, and if anyone went into his shop through the front or came out through the front or turned over the CLOSED sign, I'd be able to see it. If they came or went through the back I was screwed. You learn to live with failure.
The parking attendant said, 'You here to eat?'
'Yeah.'
'Three-fifty.'
I gave him three-fifty.
'Park anywhere. Give me the key.'
I took a spot at the front of the lot, blocking in a white Volvo so that I had an easy eyes-forward view of Ishida's shop. I got out of the Corvette, pulled the top up to cut the sun, then climbed back in. I opened a Tsingtao, drank some, then went to work on the rice.
'I thought you here to eat.' The parking attendant was standing by my door.
I showed him the rice.
'In there.' He pointed at one of the restaurants.
I shook my head. 'Out here.'
'You no eat out here. In there for eating.'
'I'm a health inspector. I go in there I'll close the place down.'
'You got to give me key.' Maybe he didn't believe me.
'No key. I keep the key.'
He pointed at the Volvo. 'What if owner come out? I got to move.' He rapped knuckles on the Corvette's door.
'I'm here. I'll move it.'
'You no insured here.'
'Okay. I'll get out and let you move it.'
'What if you leave.'
'If I leave, I'll give you the key.' People like this are put here to test us.
He was going to say more when two Asian women and a black man came out of the restaurant. The black man wore a navy suit and had a small mustache and looked successful. The attendant hustled over to them, got a claim check, then hustled to the back of the lot. One of the Asian women said something to the black man and they all laughed. The attendant drove up in a Mercedes 420 Turbo Diesel. Bronze. He closed the door after each woman, and the black man gave him a tip. Maybe the tip made him feel better about things. He went back to the little attendant's shack and looked at me but left me alone.
The honey-dipped duck was wonderful.
Four hours and twenty minutes later the Volvo was gone and the first of the early evening dinner crowd were starting to show up. The lot had emptied after lunch and another attendant had come on duty, an older man who looked at me once and didn't seem to care if I stayed or left or homesteaded. No one had gone into Ishida's shop or come out or touched the little CLOSED sign. Maybe nobody would, ever again.
At ten minutes after five the cop who had made me in the yakitori grill walked past carrying a large white paper bag and a six-pack of diet Coke. The Grateful Dead tee shirt was gone. Now it was ZZ Top. I got out of the car and watched him saunter down Ki Street and turn into a doorway next to the yakitori grill. I waited to see if he would come out and when he didn't I did a little sauntering myself and took a look. He and a cop I hadn't seen before were across from Ishida's in a State Farm Insurance office above the yakitori grill. Those sneaky devils.
I walked back along Ki, crossed over at the little side street, and turned up the alley behind Ishida's shop. It looked the way it looked when I drove past six hours earlier. Empty. I went up to the loading dock doors and didn't like the lock and went over to the people door and took out the wires I keep in my wallet and opened it. If the cops had had the rear of the place staked out there would be trouble, but all the cops were on the street side eating cheeseburgers.
I let myself in, eased the door shut behind me, and waited for my eyes to adjust. I was in a dim, high- ceilinged freight room. Dirty light came through the little window beside the door and a skylight twenty feet up, but that was it. Boxes and crates were stacked ten feet up the wall. Some were wooden but most were cardboard, and most had Styrofoam packaging pellets or shredded Japanese newspapers spilling out. There was a metal stair against one wall that went up to a steel-grate catwalk and loft. There were more boxes and crates up there and a little office. If the Hagakure were here it should only take about six years to find it.
I went through a hall at the head of the freight room and past shelves of bamboo steamers and into the showroom. The two desks were still there but the Hagakure hadn't been left sitting on them. No one had left a note suggesting a safe place to store the manuscript or a photograph of the new owner with his prize collectible. There were memo pads and paper clips and a little purple stapler and assorted pens and pencils and a Panasonic pencil sharpener and an old issue of
I went into the brighter light near the front of the shop, put my hands in my pockets, and wondered what to do. From the edge of the shadows you could see into the insurance office above the yakitori grill. The cop I didn't know was sitting a few feet back from the window with his feet up, drinking a diet Coke out of a can with a straw.
I went back into the freight room. Ishida had come from the back. Maybe the little office on the catwalk was where he worked. Maybe there would be a little desk with pictures of the kids and a note to bring home some sushi and a Rolodex or some personal correspondence that would tell me where he lived.
I climbed the steel stair and went along the narrow catwalk and opened the white door with the pebbled glass panel in it and smelled the blood and the cold meat and the death. It's the smell that comes only from a great quantity of blood and human waste. It can sting your nose and throat like a bad smog. It's a smell so strong and so alive that it has a taste and the taste is like when you were a kid and found a nickel in the winter and the metal was cold and you put it in your mouth to see what it would be like and your mother screamed that you would die from the germs and so you spit it out but the cold taste and the fear of the germs stayed.
The little office was heavy with shadow. I took out my handkerchief and found the light switch and snapped it on. The guy with the missing finger who'd been out front my first time around was curled atop a gray metal file cabinet. His head and his right arm were hanging over the edge. His neck was limp, the front and side of it purple as if he had been hit there very hard. Someone had cleared Nobu Ishida's desk of papers and ledgers and pencil can and phone. They had put all that on his swivel chair along with his clothes and then pushed the chair out of the way and tied Ishida spread-eagled on his desk, naked, arms and legs bound to the desk legs with brown electrical cord. They had used a knife on him. There were cuts on his arms and his legs and his torso and his face and his
