Stalking The Angel

Evinrude motor gave us a steady dependable push. Halfway across we could make out the houses that dotted the north shore, and a little past that I turned to a westerly heading, looking for Torobuni's.

Pike took the Colt Python out of the duffel and clipped it over his right hip. He snapped a little leather ammo pouch beside it. The pouch held two six-round cylinder reloads. He went back into the duffel and came out with a sawed-off Remington automatic shotgun and a bandolier of Hi-Power shotgun shells. It was a 12-gauge skeet gun with a cut-down barrel and an extended magazine and a pistol grip for a stock. It looked like an over/under, but the bottom tube was the magazine and had been modified to hold eight rounds. Pike had done the modifications himself. He put the bandolier around his waist, then took out eight shells and fed them into the shotgun. Buckshot.

Torobuni's elaborate dock with its boat house and slips and bright yellow sun awning wasn't hard to spot. The stonework was intricate and beautiful and gave a sense of enduring wealth. It was easy to imagine long-ago times when life resembled an Erte painting and men and women wearing white stood on the dock sipping champagne. I said, 'You see it?'

Pike nodded.

From the water you could see up past the dock and the boat house and along the walks that wound through the trees up to Torobuni's mansion. The carriage house was to the right of the main house and about sixty yards up from the lake. On both sides of the property big walls started at the water. There were two guys sitting under the awning and another guy walking up toward the carriage house. One of the guys under the awning went into the boat house, then came back with a third guy. A man and a woman on jet skis buzzed around the point, looped into the cove, then out again. The woman was maybe twenty-five and had a lean body and the world's smallest bikini. One of the guys under the awning pointed at her and the other two laughed. Nothing like America.

Pike said, 'Property to the right is what I was talking about. We put the boat in there and come around the wall, the guys under the awning won't be able to see us.'

The home next to Torobuni's was a sprawling Cape Cod with a sloping back lawn and a new wooden dock. The trees had mostly been cleared from the east side of its property, but Torobuni's side was still wooded and trees kneed out into the water. A sleek fiberglass ski boat was in one of the house's two slips, tied down and tarped, and the house was shuttered tight. Whoever owned the Cape Cod probably wouldn't be up until the weekend.

We stayed well out in the cove until we were past Torobuni's, then turned in and crept back along the shoreline. The sun was painting the western rim of the mountains and the sky was green and murky and cool. End of the day, and you could smell burning charcoal as people fired their barbeques. We tied up by the ski boat, then crept along the shore to the clump of pines at the end of Torobuni's wall. We stepped into the lake and went around the wall and into the trees, Pike keeping the Remington high and out of the water. There were voices from the far side of the boat house and music from the main house and somewhere someone smoked a cigarette, and men laughed. We waited.

The sun sank further and the sound of ski boats was replaced by crickets and pretty soon there were fireflies.

We moved up along the wall to the carriage house and waited some more and pretty soon a short guy with thick shoulders and no hair drifted out of the main house carrying a couple of Coors. He came over to the carriage house, kicked at the door, and said something in Japanese. The door opened and the guy with the cheap mustache stepped out. The mustache took one of the Coors, and the two of them headed down to the lake. Pike and I looked in a side window. One large room with a double bed and two lamps and an old wing-back chair and a half bath and no Mimi. I said, 'Main house.'

We slipped through the shadows to the main house, then along its base to an empty room at the front corner of the house. There were two windows and both windows were dark, though the door across the room was open and showed a dimly lit hall. I cut the bottom of the screen, reached through to unlatch the frame, then pulled myself up and went in.

The room had at one time been a child's bedroom. There were two little beds and a very old chest and a high shelf of toys that hadn't been touched in many years. Other people's toys. Torobuni had probably bought the place furnished and hadn't bothered changing the little bedroom. Maybe he had never even been in it. Pike handed up the shotgun, then came in and took the shotgun back. Standing in the dark I could hear voices, but the voices were far away.

We went out the door and along the dim hall, first me, then Pike. The dim hall opened onto a wider hall that ran toward the center of the house. There were a lot of old landscapes on the walls and a double door into what was probably a den or trophy room with antelope heads. Halfway down, a guy was sitting in a brown leather wingback chair, smoking a cigarette, and flipping through a Life magazine that had to be thirty years old. I took out the Dan Wesson, held it down at my side and a little bit behind, then stepped into the hall and walked toward him. When he looked up I gave him one of my best smiles. 'Mr. Torobuni said there was a bathroom down here but I can't find it.'

He said something in Japanese, then stood up and I hit him on the left temple with the Dan Wesson. It knocked him sideways into the chair and I caught him on the way down and dragged him back into the shadows. No one shouted and no one fired shots. The voices from the back of the house went on. Pike took him from me and said, 'Go on. I'll catch up.' His glasses shone catlike in the dark.

I said, 'Joe.'

He said, 'I'll catch up.' His voice was quiet, soft in the darkness. 'You want the girl?'

We stood like that, both of us holding the man, and then I nodded and let Pike have him. I went back into the larger hall and followed it past the den and into the entry. When Pike caught up with me, there was a fine spray of blood across his sweatshirt.

The main entry was paneled and wide and open the way they made them in elegant old houses. To our right was the front door, and across from the front door there was a stair going up to the second floor. I said, 'If they want her out of the way she'll be upstairs. Maybe the third floor. Old house, the servants' quarters were up under the roof.'

We went up. There was an ornate landing and a long hall running the width of the house and no one sitting in chairs. At the west end of the hall there was another, narrower stair that went down to the kitchen and up to the third floor. Servants' stair. I said, 'Check the rooms on this floor. I'll go up to three.'

On the third floor, the walls were plain and the carpet was worn and it was still very warm from the summer sun. There was a rectangular landing with a tiny bath and two closed doors. I tried the first door. It was locked. I knocked lightly. 'Mimi?'

Inside, Mimi Warren said, 'Huh?'

I put my shoulder against the door and pushed hard and the old jamb gave. Mimi was sitting cross-legged and naked on a queen-sized bed with satin sheets. There were yellow roses in a vase by the bed. Her hair was brushed and her skin was bright and she was wearing a thin gold chain around her ankle. She didn't look scared and she didn't look crazy. She looked better than I had ever seen her. When she saw me, her whole body gave a jerk and her mouth opened. I touched my finger to my lips and said, 'I'm going to get you out of here.'

She screamed.

I ran to her and put my hand over her mouth and pulled her close to me. She made a sound like uhn and flailed and hit and tried to bite and the roses crashed to the floor. There was a tall skinny window in the room, open for air, and down on the terrace there were shouts and the sound of running men and then the heavy undeniable boom! of Pike's shotgun.

I let Mimi scream and took her around the waist and carried her down the stairs to the second floor. Pike was at the top of the main stair, firing down toward the front entry. I said, 'Back here. Stairs down to the kitchen.'

He fired off three quick rounds, then fell back, reloading as he came.

The servants' stair was long and steep, and a man with one eye appeared at the bottom when we were halfway down. I shot him once in the head and lifted Mimi over him and then we were off the stairs. We went through the laundry and across the kitchen and through a swinging door into the dining room just as Yuki Torobuni and the midget with stupid eyes and the three guys from Japan came in from the outside. Torobuni and the midget had guns. The guy from Japan with the pony tail had the Hagakure. The midget shouted something and Torobuni raised his gun and I shot him twice in the chest. He fell back into the guy with the pony-tail, knocking free the