He leaned against the table again and looked at me. Eddie shifted closer, his eyes on Pike. The midget with the.45 beamed. Torobuni folded the towel neatly and put it down. 'Maybe you killed him.'
'Sure.'
Behind us cooking fat bubbled and cleavers bit into hardwood cutting boards and damp heat billowed out of steamers. Torobuni stared at me for another couple of centuries, then spoke again in Japanese. The midget put away the gun. Torobuni came very close to me, so close the cheap sharkskin brushed my chest. He looked first in my right eye, then in my left. He said, 'Yakuza is a terrible monster to arouse. If you come down here again, yakuza will eat you.' His voice was like late-night music.
'I'm going to find the girl.'
Torobuni smiled a smile to match the voice. 'Good luck.'
He turned and went out the back of the kitchen, the midget swaggering behind him. Eddie Tang went with them, walking backward and keeping his eyes on Joe Pike. He stopped in the door, gave Pike a nasty grin, then peeled up his sleeves to show the tattoos. He worked his arms to make the tattoos dance, then snarled and flexed the huge traps so they grew out of his back like spiny wings. Then he left.
Pike said, 'Wow.'
We went out through the dining room and past the bar. The kid I'd talked to was gone. The Butterfly Lady was busy with customers. People ate. People drank. Life went on.
When we got back to the Big Boy lot, Pike said, 'He knows something.'
'You got that feeling, huh?'
Nod.
'Somebody else might know something, too. Mimi Warren used to come here.'
The sunglasses moved. 'Mimi?' He was doing it, too.
'She came with friends and she hung out and she probably met a wide variety of sleazy people. Maybe whoever grabbed her was someone she met here and bragged to about what her daddy had sitting in his home safe.'
'And if we can find the friends, they might know who.'
'That's it.'
The sunglasses moved again. 'Uh-huh.'
Forty minutes later I pulled the Corvette into my carport, parked, went in through the kitchen, and phoned Jillian Becker at her office. She said, 'Yes?'
'It's Elvis Cole. I'd like to talk with you about Mimi and her father and all of this.'
'You were fired.'
'That may be, but I'm going to find her. Maybe you can help me do that.'
There was a pause, and sounds in the background. 'I can't talk now.'
'Would you have dinner with me tonight at Musso and Frank?'
Another pause. Thinking about it. 'All right.' She didn't sound particularly enthusiastic. 'What time?'
'Eight o'clock. You can meet me there, or I'll pick you up. Whichever you prefer.'
'I'll meet you there.' It was clear what she preferred.
Chapter 18
After we hung up I pulled off my clothes, took a shower, then fell into a deep uneasy sleep.
I woke just after six feeling drained and stiff, as if sleeping had been hard work. I went downstairs and flipped on the TV news, and after a while there was something about Mimi's kidnapping.
A blond woman who looked like she played racquet-ball twice a day gave the update standing in front of the New Nippon Hotel, 'site of the kidnapping.' She said the police and the FBI still had no information as to Mimi's whereabouts or condition, but were working diligently to effect a positive resolution. The screen cut to a close-up of a photograph of Mimi with a phone number beneath her chin. After the blond woman asked anyone who might have information to call the number, the news anchor segued nicely into a story about a recruitment drive the L.A.P.D. was launching. There was a number to call for that, too.
Mimi Warren had been given seventeen seconds.
At seven o'clock I went into the kitchen, drank two glasses of water, then went upstairs to shave and shower. I ran the water hot and rubbed the soap in hard and after the shower I felt a little better. Maybe I was getting used to the pain. Or maybe it was just the thought of dinner with an MBA.
When I was dry and deodorized, I stood in the door to my closet and wondered what I should wear. Hmmm. I could wear my Groucho Marx nose, but Jillian already thought I joked around too much. My Metaluna Mutant mask? Nah. I pulled on a pair of brown outback pants and gray CJ Bass desert boots and a white Indian hiking shirt and a light blue waiter's jacket. I looked like an ad for Banana Republic. Maybe Banana Republic would give me a job. They could put my picture in their little catalog and under it they could say:
I went downstairs, put out food for the cat, then locked up and drove down into deepest, darkest Hollywood. Yep. Thinking about dinner with Jillian was working wonders.
At two minutes before eight, I parked behind Musso and Frank's Grill on Hollywood Boulevard and went in. Jillian Becker walked in behind me. She was wearing a conservative eggshell pants suit over a light brown shirt and beige pumps. Her nails and her lip gloss were one of those colors between pink and flesh, and went well with the eggshell. Her fingers were slim and manicured and there was a single strand of white pearls around her neck. She looked tired and harassed, but I couldn't tell that until she was closer. She said, 'I'm sorry I'm late.' It was one minute after eight.
'Would you like a drink?'
'At the table.'
A bald man led us into Musso's huge back room to a very nice booth. There's a long bar back there and leather booths and it looks very much the way it looked in 1918, when Musso's opened. A busboy came with sourdough bread and water, then a waiter appeared, giving us menus and asking if we cared for something to drink. I ordered a Dos Equis. Jillian Becker ordered a double Stoly on the rocks. Must have been some kind of day.
'This room,' I said, 'is where Dashiell Hammett first laid eyes on Lillian Hellman. It was a romance that lasted ages.'
Jillian Becker glanced at her watch. 'What did you want to talk about?' So much for romance.
'Have the cops come up with anything?'
'No.'
'Have there been any demands from the kidnappers?'
'No. The police and the FBI talk to us a dozen times a day. They have a tap on Bradley's home phone. They have a tap on the office phone. But there's been nothing.'
The waiter came back with the drinks. Usually it takes about a year to get your drinks, but sometimes they're fast. 'Are you ready to order?' he said, pencil poised.
Jillian said, 'I'll have the crab salad.'
The waiter looked at me.
'Grilled chicken. Home fries. Broccoli.'
He nodded twice and wrote it down and left. Jillian lifted her glass and took a long drink.
'Rough day?'
'Mr. Cole, I'd rather not discuss my day if it's all the same to you. You could have asked me what the police had over the phone.'
'But then I wouldn't have been able to admire your beauty.'
She tapped her glass with a manicured fingernail. Guess we'd proceed directly to business.
I said, 'Have you ever heard the name Yuki Torobuni?'
