Stalking The Angel

Kidnapped, all right.

Chapter 23

Mimi Warren wasn't tied up and no one was holding a gun on her. She was wearing tight white pants and a green sequined halter top and spike-heeled silver sandals. Her hair stuck out at odd angles and her nails were bright blue and she wore too much makeup the way teenage girls do when they think it's sexy. She still wasn't very pretty. Eddie pulled to the curb and gave her a big smile.

I drove past the club, turned around at Tower Records, and crept back. The Strip was bright with flashing neon signs and the sidewalks were jammed with overage hipsters trying to look like Phil Collins or Sheena Easton. There were two baby-blue spotlights on the back of a flatbed trailer parked in front of a shoe store. The lights arced in counter-rotating circles, the light shafts crisscrossing again and again like matched sabers.

When I got back, Mimi and the white-haired girl Traci Louise Fishman had identified as Kerri were climbing into the Alfa. Eddie gave Mimi a kiss. There was a lot of laughing and a lot of waving and then they drove away, heading west on Sunset across Beverly Hills. I thought about shooting out the tires, but that would have been showing off.

Eddie turned north, following Rexford as it turned into Coldwater Canyon, and climbed into the Santa Monica mountains. He wasn't bringing her home and he wasn't bringing her back to his place. Maybe he was bringing her to a party. There's always a party in Hollywood.

At the top of the mountain, Eddie turned west on Mulholland Drive. Mulholland runs along the top of the mountains like some great black python. There were no streetlights and no other cars. The only light came from the waxing moon high overhead and from the San Fernando Valley, spreading out on the right like gold and yellow and red glitter. I turned off my headlamps and dropped back and hoped nothing was lying in the road.

Just before Benedict Canyon, the Alfa's brake lights flared and it pulled into a drive cut into the hillside. The drive was private and well lit and there was a modern metal gate growing out of the rock and one of those little voice boxes so you can announce yourself. The gate rolled out of the way and the Alfa went in. Then the gate closed.

I stopped about a hundred yards short of where the Alfa disappeared, backed into another drive, and killed the engine. The air was chill and clean and there was a breeze coming up the canyons. If you listened hard, you could hear the faraway hiss of the Ventura Freeway riding the breeze. I sat for twenty minutes and then the gate opened again and the Alfa came out. Eddie was still driving, but if Mimi and Kerri were with him, they were in the trunk.

Hmmm.

I got out of the Corvette, walked up to the gate, and took a look. The drive followed the curve of the hillside for about sixty yards to where the mountain had been cut away for a large neat lawn and a large, well-lit Bauhaus house. There were garages on the right of the property with what looked like a tennis court peeking out from behind, and a guy and a girl standing just outside the entry to the house. They were both wearing pale gray pants and pale gray Nehru jackets with black leather belts. That good old Red Army look. Mimi and Kerri were framed in a large picture window to the left of the entry, talking with another boy and girl. The boy was Asian, but the girl wasn't. The girl wore the same pale gray uniform. The boy wore baggy white pants and a too-big tee shirt. The four of them stood in the window for a while, then walked out of my line of sight. There came no cries for help, no sharp crack of gunfire, no blood-curdling screams.

I went back to the Corvette, got in, and stared at the gate. Mimi was in the house, and it appeared that she planned to stay there. It also appeared that she was safe. The smart thing would be to find a phone and call the cops. It was also the obvious thing. I sat there and stared, and after a while I started up and drove west.

Just off Beverly Glen at Mulholland I found a Stop amp; Go convenience store and used their pay phone. I called the phone company again, gave them my name and the number off my license, then told them the Mulholland address, and asked who lived there. The phone company voice said that there were four numbers installed at that address, all unlisted, two being billed to something called Gray Shield Enterprises and two being billed to a Mr. Kira Asano, all billings being sent care of an accountancy firm with a Wilshire address. I said, 'Kira Asano, the artist?'

The voice said, 'Pardon me, sir?'

I hung up.

I went into the Stop amp; Go, got more change, then called the Herald Examiner and asked if Eddie Ditko was on the night desk. He was.

Eddie came on with a phlegmy cough and said, 'Elvis Cole, shit. I heard you got shot to death down in San Diego. What in hell you want?' Eddie loves me like a son.

'Know anything about a guy named Eddie Tang?'

'What, I'm supposed to know about some guy just because we got the same goddamn first name?' You see? Always the kind word.

'Try out Yuki Torobuni.'

Eddie made a gargling sound, then spit.

'How about a guy named Kira Asano?'

'Asano's the gook artist, right?'

'That's what I like about you, Eddie. Sensitive.'

'Shit. You want Asano or you want sensitive?'

'Asano.'

'Okay. Made Time back in the sixties. Back then, he was some kinda hot shit artist from Japan, mostly because of a lot of minimalist landscape work showing empty beaches and crap. He stopped painting and came here, saying America was gonna be the new Japan, and he was gonna instill the samurai spirit in American youth. Some shit, huh?'

'The Hagakure,' I said.

'Huh?'

'What else?'

Eddie made the gargling sound again, then said, 'Jesus. You wouldn't believe what I got coming out of me.' That Eddie. 'Asano founded something called the Gray Army and got a couple hundred kids to join. That was a long time ago, though. Old news. I ain't heard about him in years.'

I said, 'Is he dangerous?'

'Hell, I'm dangerous. Asano's just crazy.'

I hung up and got back in the Corvette but didn't start it. Sonofagun. Maybe Kira Asano was behind the theft of the Hagakure. Mimi would have gotten involved with his organization because she didn't have anything else in her life, and Asano would've pointed out what a grand fine place the Hagakure would have in the movement. Only now Eddie knew about the Hagakure, and wanted it, and was playing on Mimi to get to it. You and me, babe. My, my.

A fat man in baggy shorts came out of the Stop amp; Go with a brown paper bag. Inside, the Persian clerk stared at a miniature TV. The fat man looked at me, nodded, then got into a black Jaguar and drove away. When the Jaguar was gone, the little parking lot was quiet except for the insectile buzz of the street lamps. Here in the mountains, the Stop amp; Go was an island of light.

I had come to rescue Mimi, and that would be easy enough. I could call the cops, and let them do it, or I could return to Asano's, crash through the gate, and drag Mimi back to the safe tranquility of Holmby Hills and her mother and father. Only she probably wouldn't stay. Something had driven her away. Something had turned her into a kid who burned herself with cigarettes and adopted a different personality for everyone in her life and had made her want to get away from home so badly and hurt her parents so much that she had gone to incredible lengths to do it. Something wasn't right.

I sat and I stared into the warm light of the Stop amp; Go and I thought about all the different Mimis. The Mimi that I'd met and the Mimi that Bradley and Sheila knew and Traci Louise Fishman's Mimi and the Mimi who thought the kids in the gray uniforms had 'purpose.' I'm with people who love me now.