the out-from-under eyes and the heavy little-girl face, there was a quality of loneliness to her that comes when your only friend walks away and you don't know why and there's no one else and never will be. A left-behind look.
We sat like that for another few minutes, Traci rubbing at her flat nose and me breathing deeply and thinking about Mimi and Eddie Tang and what that might mean. Most of the cars had long since gone, but the red 944 still sat in its spot, music playing, girls within pretending not to stare toward Traci Louise Fishman's white Volkswagen Rabbit. After a while I said, 'They're still watching us.'
Traci nodded. The eyes weren't watering anymore and the nose was dry and she gave back my handkerchief. 'They can't believe a good-looking guy like you is sitting here with me.'
'Maybe,' I said, 'they can't believe a good-looking girl like you is letting me.'
She smiled and looked down at her steering wheel again, and again picked at the plastic. She said, 'Please bring her back.'
I looked at the Porsche. The girl in the back seat was staring our way. I said, 'Traci?'
She looked up at me.
I leaned across and kissed her on the lips. She didn't move, and when I pulled back she was a vivid red. I said, 'Thanks for the help.'
Her chin went down into her neck and she swallowed hard and looked mortified. She touched her lips and looked over at the girls in the Porsche. They were gaping at us. Traci Louise Fishman blinked at them, and looked back at me. Then she squared her shoulders, touched her lips again, and folded both hands very neatly in her lap.
I got out of the Rabbit, went back to the Corvette, and drove to my office.
Chapter 22
I parked in the bottom of my building, went into the deli, bought a pastrami sandwich with Chinese hot mustard, then used the stairs to go up to the office. Walking the stairs made it easier not to think about Mimi Warren holding a lit cigarette to her skin. Maybe Traci Louise Fishman had made up that part. Maybe she'd made up all of it. Maybe if I didn't think about Mimi Warren or Traci Louise Fishman or Eddie Tang they would all disappear and living would be easy. Elvis Cole, Existential Detective. I liked that. Not thinking, properly done, creates a pleasant numbed sensation in the brain that I like a lot. There are women who will tell you that not thinking is one of my best things.
I let myself into the office, got a Falstaff out of the little fridge, put the sandwich on a paper plate, and called Lou Poitras.
Lou said, 'Don't tell me. You've cracked the case.'
I said, 'The girl knew Eddie Tang.'
He told me to hang on and then he put me on hold. When he put me on hold, the phone started playing music. Michael Jackson singing about how bad he was. Our tax dollars at work.
Lou came back and said, 'Go on.'
'She used to sneak out of the house and go to clubs. She hung out and met people and one of the people she met was Tang. She might've mentioned the book to him. She told people that Eddie Tang was her boyfriend.'
'She know Tang was yakuza?'
'I don't know.'
'Eddie hears about the book, he maybe figures it's a good thing to steal.'
'Uh-huh.'
Lou Poitras didn't say anything for a while. He's got three kids. Two of them are daughters. 'Thanks for the tip, Hound Dog. I'll look into it.'
'Always happy to cooperate with the police.'
'Right.'
We hung up. I watched Pinocchio's eyes slide from side to side and ate the sandwich. Terry Ito had said Eddie Tang was on his way up. Maybe Eddie figured taking advantage of Mimi Warren and stealing the Hagakure were the keys to ascendancy. Hmmm. I finished the sandwich, then called the phone company. I asked if they had a street address for a guy named Eddie or Edward Tang. They did. Forty minutes later, I was there.
Eddie Tang lived in an apartment building in the flat part of L.A. just south of Century City off Pico Boulevard. It's older in there, and used to be middle class, but now there're lots of trendy restaurants and singles places and New Age health clubs. Eddie's complex had been redone about five years ago with mauve stucco and redwood inlays and black slate steps that twisted up from the walk in a slow curve to a glass security door. To the right of the entry a driveway angled down beneath the building and was blocked by a wrought iron gate. To either side of the garage, bougainvillea had been planted but not long enough ago to flourish. It was a good-looking building. Proof positive that crime pays.
I parked fifty yards down the block in the shade from a gum tree and waited. Maybe Eddie was home and maybe he had Mimi bound and gagged and hidden away in a closet, but maybe not. Boxes buried a couple of feet under the desert up in Sun Valley were more along the lines reserved for kidnap victims than upscale apartment houses in West Los Angeles.
At four-ten a brown unmarked copmobile pulled to a stop by the fire hydrant in front of Eddie's building. You know it's a copmobile because nobody in L.A. would buy anything as boring as a stripped-down four-door Dodge sedan except the cops. A bald-headed dick with freckles and a younger dick with a deep tan and heavy lines around his eyes climbed out and went up to the glass security door. The bald-headed guy was in a suit that looked like it hadn't been pressed in two months. The younger guy was in a dark blue Calvin Klein cord jacket and charcoal slacks with creases so sharp they could have been registered as deadly weapons. Poitras had made some phone calls and this was the follow-up.
They stood at the glass door and pretty soon a young woman in jeans and no shoes and a Sports Connection T-shirt came and opened the door. Manager. The younger cop showed her his badge and they all went inside and about fifteen minutes later they all came back out again. Eddie wasn't home, and Mimi hadn't been in a closet. The bald-headed cop went out to the car. The younger cop stood at the security door and talked to the woman for a while, both of them smiling a lot. When the woman went back inside, the younger cop watched her closely. Probably alert for suspicious moves. The cops left.
Just before five, Eddie Tang came down the street in a dark green Alfa Romeo Spider. There might've been blood stains on Eddie's shirt, but if there were, I couldn't see them. The garage gate lifted and Eddie Tang disappeared beneath his building and the gate closed and I waited.
At a quarter after six, the garage gate lifted again and Eddie and the Alfa turned north past me, heading toward Olympic. I followed him. We turned west on Olympic, then south to Washington, and stayed on Washington until we came to a clapboard warehouse in Culver City three blocks from MGM. Eddie pulled into the warehouse, then almost lost me when he pulled out again while I was looking for a place to park. We went west into Marina del Rey. Eddie drove slowly, as if he wasn't sure where he was going, and that made it tough. I had to keep cars between us and I had to drop further and further back to do it. In the Marina, we turned off Washington onto Via Dolce Drive and passed tall, cubist houses on little tiny lots that sold for over a million bucks each. Eddie parked at the curb of a brick and wood monstrosity with a sea horse in the window and got out of the Alfa carrying a red nylon gym bag. A slender man with a beard and thick glasses opened the door, took the gym bag without a word, then closed the door. Criminals rarely observe the social graces. We went back out to Washington and drove east. After a while Eddie stopped at a Texaco station and used the pay phone, then drove south to pick up the I-10 freeway. In Hollywood, a heavily muscled black guy in a tank top climbed into Eddie's car and the two of them talked, the black guy getting agitated and waving his arms. Eddie threw a snapping backfist, and after that the arm-waving stopped. The black guy put a handkerchief to his mouth for the bleeding. There was more driving and more stops and more phone calls and not once did I see anyone dressed like a ninja or carrying a sword.
At eight-twenty that evening, Eddie Tang turned west onto Sunset from Fairfax, drove two blocks, and pulled to the curb at a new wave dance place called the Pago Pago Club. We were right in the heart of the Sunset Strip. There were two men and three women waiting for him. One of the women was Mimi Warren.
