Stalking The Angel

'No.'

'Yuki Torobuni owns a dance club downtown called Mr. Moto's. It's very new wave, very hip, cocaine in the bathrooms, that kind of place. Yuki Torobuni also heads the yakuza here in L. A. Do you know what the yakuza is?'

'Like the mafia.'

'Yeah. How about a guy named Eddie Tang? Ever heard his name?'

'No.' Impatient. 'Why are you asking if I've heard of these people? Do you think Bradley's involved with them?'

'It crossed my mind.'

She lifted her glass and took a careful sip, thinking about that. She thought about it for a very long time. When she put the glass down, she said, 'All right. It's reasonable for you to consider every possible solution to a problem.' Business school. 'But Bradley is not involved with organized crime. I see where the money comes from, and I see where it goes. If there were something shady going on, I'd know it, or at least suspect it, and I don't.'

'Maybe it's very well hidden.'

She shook her head. 'I'm too good for that.'

I nodded. 'Okay. Let's try this. I talked to a guy at Mr. Moto's who told me that Mimi came there often, and that she came with friends.'

'Mimi?' Everybody does it.

'Uh-huh. A girl named Carol and another girl named Kerri.'

Jillian took another sip of her drink. 'She's never mentioned them to me. Not that she necessarily would.'

'How about other friends?'

Jillian shook her head again. 'I'm sorry. Mimi always seemed very withdrawn. Sheila complains endlessly that she never leaves the house.' Jillian put her glass down and eyed it coolly. 'Sheila is something else.'

The waiter came with a little stand and all of our plates on a large oval tray. He put the stand down by the table, then the tray on the stand. He set out Jillian's crab salad, then my chicken and broccoli and home fries, and then he took the tray and the stand and left. The chicken smelled wonderful. It always did.

Jillian said, 'Bradley's not going to pay you a dime, you know. He intends to sue you, if he has to, to recover the money he's already paid.'

'He won't have to do that.' Bradley Warren's blank check was still in my wallet. I took it out, tore it in quarters, and put it on the table by Jillian Becker's plate.

Jillian Becker looked at the check and then at me. She shook her head. 'And you're still going to look for Mimi?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'I told Mimi I would take care of her.'

'And that's enough.'

I shrugged. 'It's an ugly job, but somebody has to do it.'

Jillian frowned and ate some of the crab salad. I had some of the chicken, then a couple of the home fries. Excellent.

I said, 'I need to find out who Mimi hangs out with. Bradley and Sheila might be able to tell me. If they won't talk to me, maybe you could talk to them for me.'

Jillian frowned more deeply and put her fork in the crab but only played with it. 'Bradley had to fly to Kyoto.'

The Dos Equis was cold and bitter. I sipped it. I had a little more of the chicken. I had a little of the broccoli. Two guys at the edge of the bar crowd were looking our way. One of the guys was overweight and balding. The other guy was very tall with dark hair and thick glasses and a heavy jaw. He looked like Stephen King. The shorter guy was drinking what looked like scotch rocks. The taller, Campari and soda. They were staring at Jillian and the taller guy was smiling. 'His daughter is gone,' I said, 'but business continues.'

Jillian Becker's lips tightened and she put down her fork and I thought she was going to stand. She didn't. She said, 'Bradley has been very fair to me. He's treated me just as he's treated everyone else in his organization. He's recognized and rewarded my abilities. It's a good job.'

'And you've got the BMW to prove it.'

'It's so easy for you, isn't it? Tearing up checks. Standing on your head in your office.'

'How about Sheila? You think I could talk with her?'

Silence.

'Sheila went with him.'

Slow nod.

I finished off the Dos Equis. 'Parents of the Year, all right.'

Jillian started to say something, then stopped. She looked angry and embarrassed.

I said, 'You could get me into their house. We could look in Mimi's room.'

'Bradley would fire me.'

'Maybe.'

Her jaw worked and she sipped some water and didn't say anything for a long time. When she did, she said, 'I don't like you.'

I nodded.

Her jaw flexed again, and she stood up. 'God damn you,' she said. 'Let's go. I have a key.'

Chapter 19

We took two cars, Jillian pulling out in her white BMW and me following her west along Sunset toward Beverly Hills, then up Beverly Glen to the Warrens'. Jillian parked by the front of the house and I parked next to her. She had the front door open by the time I got out of my car. She said, 'Mimi's room is in the rear. I'll walk back with you.' She walked in ahead without waiting.

The big house was as cold as a mausoleum, and our footsteps echoed on the terrazzo entry. I hadn't heard it when I'd been in the house before, but when I was in the house before there'd been other people and things going on. Now the house seemed abandoned and desolate. Life in an Andrew Wyeth landscape.

Mimi's room was big and white and empty the way I remembered it. The single bed was made and tight and the desk was neat and the walls bare and the high shelf of Britannica and Laura Ingalls Wilder just as it had been before. I had hoped that since the last time I had seen the room, posters would have gone up on the walls and someone would have doodled on the desk and a pile of dirty clothes would've grown in the corner. Jillian said, 'Sixteen years old.' She was standing with her arms crossed and her hands cupping her upper arms, feeling the cold.

I nodded. 'Uh-huh.'

She looked at me. 'As long as I'm here, I may as well help you.'

'Take the desk.'

'What are we looking for?'

'Address books, yearbooks, letters, a diary. Anything that might have names and phone numbers. Search one drawer at a time. Empty it item by item, then put it back together. Make yourself go slowly.'

Jillian went over to the desk and opened the large bottom drawer. Hesitant. She said, 'You do this a lot, don't you? Look through people's things.'

'Yes. People keep secrets. You have to look into personal places to find them.'

'It makes me uncomfortable.'

'It makes me uncomfortable, too, but there's no other way.'

She looked at me some more, then bent to the drawer and started taking out things. I went to the bed, stripped down the covers, threw them into the center of the room, and lifted the mattress off the box springs. No hidden diary. No secret compartments cut into the side of the mattress. I tilted the bed up on its edge. Nothing