and about Ishida. I said, 'The stiff upstairs with the missing finger was one of them. There was another guy with a bad left eye, and a big kid, young, named Eddie.'
Ito looked at Jimmy again. Jimmy looked up and said, 'Eddie have tattoos? Here?' He touched his arms just below the elbows.
'Yeah.'
Jimmy looked at Ito and nodded. 'Eddie Tang.'
I said, 'About three hours after I left Ishida's, the client's wife got a phone call saying they'd burn the house down if the Warrens didn't call off the cops. I wanted to work Ishida some more, maybe take a look around his house, that kind of thing, so I came back here today.'
Jimmy said, 'That's horseshit. You don't threaten somebody to make the cops back off.'
I said, 'Yeah. You cops are tough, all right.'
Ito said, 'You're some smart for a guy standing where you're standing.'
'It's not hard in this company.'
Jimmy didn't say anything.
I could feel the pulse in my temples and a sharp pain behind my right eye. It made me blink. Ito stared at me a long time, then gave a little nod. 'Yeah, you're smart. Maybe if you're smart enough you can get what's in that room back there out of your head. Maybe if you're tough enough, what you saw back there won't bother you.' His voice was softer than you would've expected.
I took a deep breath and let it out. I rolled my shoulders to try to work out some of the tension. Poitras was leaning against a shelf of tea trays and little lacquer cups with his arms crossed. Crossed like that, they looked swollen even more than normal. Ito was good, all right.
He said, 'Thing is, what's back there ain't so special around here. This is Little Tokyo, Chinatown. You oughta see what the Mung have going down in Little Saigon.'
Jimmy said, 'How about those pricks in Koreatown?'
Ito nodded at him, then looked back at me. Thinking about those pricks in Koreatown made him smile. 'This ain't America, white boy. This is Little Asia, and it's ten thousand years old. We've got stuff down here like nothing you've ever seen.'
I said, 'Yeah.' Mr. Tough.
He said, 'If Nobu Ishida wanted you out of the picture, he wouldn't do it by calling up some broad and making a threat.' He swiveled around and looked at Jimmy. 'Call Hollenbeck Robbery and see who has this book thing. Find out what they know.'
'Sure, Terry.' Jimmy didn't move.
I said, 'What's the big deal with Nobu Ishida?'
Ito looked back at me and thought about it for a while. Like maybe he would tell me and maybe he wouldn't. 'You know what the yakuza is?'
'Japanese mafia.'
Jimmy smiled, wide and mindless, the way a pit bull smiles before he bites you. He said, 'How about that, Terry. You think we got something as pussy as the mafia down here?'
Ito said, 'Call Hollenbeck.'
I said, 'Ishida was in the yakuza?'
Jimmy smiled some more, then pushed off the cruller table and walked out. Ito turned back to me. 'The yakuza is big in white slavery and dope and loan-sharking like the mafia, but that's where it stops. The stiff in back with the missing finger, he's what you would think of as a mafia soldier. But the mafia doesn't have any soldiers like him. These guys, they've got a little code they live by. Somewhere along the line this guy screwed up and the code required him to chop off his own finger to make up for it. I've seen guys with three, four fingers missing from one hand.'
I drank more coffee.
Ito said, 'The real headcases get their entire body tattooed from just below the elbows to just above the knees. Those guys are yakuza assassins.' He touched his forehead. 'Bug fuck.'
'Eddie,' I said.
Ito nodded. 'Yeah. Eddie's a real up-and-comer. Local kid. Arrest record could fill a book. We got him made for half a dozen killings but we can't prove it. That's the bitch with the yakuza. You can't prove it. People down here, something happens, they don't see it and they don't talk about it. So you've got to put a guy like Ishida's business under surveillance for eight months and pray some hotshot private license doesn't come along and tip him that he's being watched and blow the whole thing. You don't want that to happen because Ishida is overseeing a major operation to import brown heroin from China and Thailand for a guy named Yuki Torobuni who runs the yakuza here in L.A. and if you get Ishida maybe you get Torobuni and shut the whole fucking thing down.' Behind us, the two guys from the coroner's office wheeled out the gurney. There was a dark gray body bag sitting on it. Whatever was in the bag looked rumpled.
I said, 'If they're moving dope in, the guys down in Watts and East L.A. aren't going to like it. Maybe what happened in back is an effort to eliminate competition.'
Ito looked at Poitras. 'You were right, Poitras. This boy is bright.'
'He has his days.'
'Unless,' I said, 'it has something to do with the Hagakure.'
Terry Ito smiled at me, then walked over to the cruller box and selected one with green icing. He said, 'You're smart, all right, but not smart enough. This isn't your world, white boy. People disappear. Entire families vanish in the most outrageous manner. And there's never a witness, never a clue.' Ito gave me a little more of the smile. 'Have you read a translation of the Hagakure?'
'No.'
The smile went nasty. 'There's a little thing in there called Bushido. Bushido says that the way of the warrior is death.' Ito stopped smiling. 'Whoever took your little book, pray it's not the yakuza.' He stared at me for a little while longer, then he took his cruller and went into the back.
Poitras uncrossed the huge arms and shook his head. 'Sometimes, Hound Dog, you are a real asshole.'
'Et tu, Brute?'
He walked away.
They kept me around until a dick from Hollenbeck got there and took my statement. It was 3:14 in the morning when they finished with me, and Poitras had long since gone. I went out into the cool night air onto streets that were empty of round-eyed faces. I thought about the yakuza and people disappearing and I tried to imagine things like nothing I'd ever seen. I tried, but all I kept seeing was what someone had done to Nobu Ishida.
The walk to the car was long and through dark streets, but only once did I look behind me.
Chapter 11
The next morning Jillian Becker called me at eight-fifteen and asked me if I had yet recovered the Hagakure. I told her no, that in the fourteen hours that had passed since we last spoke, I had not recovered it, but should I stumble upon it as I walked out to retrieve my morning paper, I would call her at once. She then reminded me that today was the Pacific Men's Club Man of the Month banquet. The banquet was to begin at one, we were expected to arrive at the hotel by noon, and would I please dress appropriate to the occasion? I told her that my formal black suede holster was being cleaned, but that I would do the best I could. She asked me why I always had something flip to say. I said that I didn't know, but having been blessed with the gift, I felt obliged to use it.
At ten minutes after ten I pulled into the Warrens' drive and parked behind a dark gray presidential stretch limousine. The driver was sitting across the front seat, head down, reading the
