Stalking The Angel

Chapter 33

It was twenty of ten in the morning. The metal garage gate lifted and Eddie's Alfa cruised past and swung down into his garage. The Alfa was spotted and dust-streaked and there were mud splashes behind the wheel wells. Eddie had driven a long way.

Pike said, "Now or later?"

"Let's see what unfolds."

We sat. We waited.

One hour and ten minutes later a long white stretch limo came slowly up from Olympic and stopped in front of Eddie's building. The driver was the midget with the stupid eyes who'd been with Torobuni at Mr. Moto's. "Better," I said.

The midget got out of the limo, strutted over to the glass door, and buzzed Eddie's apartment. He got up on his toes for the intercom, then swaggered back to the limo and leaned against the door. He didn't even make it up to the top of the car.

Eddie came out three minutes later in light blue slacks and a navy jacket and a yellow shirt with a white button-down collar and a pink tie. Sweet. Maybe Eddie had been away taking yuppie lessons. The midget climbed in behind the wheel and Eddie got in back, and a few minutes later we followed them down to Olympic, then west to the San Diego Freeway, then south. The limo stayed in the right lane and took it slow. Just before lunchtime, traffic was light, and it was easy to stay back and not worry about being seen. We went south past the Mormon Temple and the Santa Monica Freeway, then took the Century Boulevard exit toward LAX.

I said, "If he gets on a plane, we've got trouble."

"No," Pike said. "We just shoot it down."

I looked at him. You never know.

We stayed two cars back and followed the limo onto Century Boulevard and past the airport hotels and into the LAX complex. Los Angeles International Airport is designed in two levels, the lower level for arriving flights, the upper level for departing flights. Eddie's limo didn't mount the ramp for the departure level. Pike looked disappointed. There went the ground-to-air.

The limo followed the huge U-shaped design of the airport around to the Tom Bradley Terminal, where international flights are based, then pulled to the pickup curb and parked. Eddie got out and went inside. After a while, he reappeared with three Japanese men and a redcap with a load of baggage. Two of the men were in their late fifties and dignified, with dark hair shot through by gray, powerful faces, and stern mouths. The third man was in his early thirties and taller than the other two, almost as tall as Eddie, with a hard bony face and broad shoulders. His hair was short except for a lock growing directly out the back of his head. The lock was long and braided and fell down his back. Well, well, well. "How much you want to bet," I said, "that those gentlemen run the yakuza in Japan?"

"A visit from the home office?"

"Yep."

"The Hagakure," Pike said.

I nodded. "Eddie gives it to Torobuni, Torobuni gives it to them. Everybody moves up."

Eddie and the three men got into the limo while the redcap and the midget loaded the trunk. When all the bags were stowed, Eddie leaned out of the car, gave the redcap a tip, and then the limo pulled away.

We looped back around to the San Diego Freeway again, headed north to the I-10, then went east across the center of Los Angeles. We cut just south of the downtown area, then up past Monterey Park, and pretty soon downtown and its skyscrapers fell away to an almost endless plain of small stucco and clapboard houses. Past El Monte and West Covina, the traffic thinned and the houses gave way to undeveloped land and railroad spur lines and industrial parks. The limo settled into the number two lane and stayed there for a very long time, and for a very long time there was nothing to see. We rolled past Pomona and Ontario and by early afternoon we approached San Bernardino. Service roads appeared, lined with Motel 6's and Denny's Coffee Shops and middle-of-nowhere shopping malls featuring BEDROOM SPECIALISTS and INDIAN DINING and UNFINISHED FURNITURE. At the southern edge of San Bernardino, we turned north on the San Bernardino Freeway toward Barstow.

I said, "How we doing for gas?"

Pike didn't answer.

The San Bernardino forked to the right under a sign that said MOUNTAIN RESORTS, and that's the way we went. A little bit later it forked again, and this time when we followed we began a long slow climb into the San Bernardino Mountains toward Lake Arrowhead. The limo stayed in the slow lane and Pike dropped very far back. Maybe these guys were on their vacation. Maybe they were going to do a little fishing and water-skiing on the lake and grill some wienies down on the dock. That would be fun.

The mountains were vertical giants, rocky and bare except for their shoulders and ridges, which were laced with a stegosaurus-like spine of ponderosa pine trees. Every couple of miles there were signs that said DEER CROSSING or SLOWER TRAFFIC USE TURNOUTS or BEWARE FALLING ROCKS.

It took a half hour to reach a sign that said 5000 FEET ELEVATION, then the highway stopped climbing and leveled out in a heavy forest of ponderosas so improbably tall that we might have been in Oz. Two miles later the road forked again and another sign said BLUE JAY. An arrow pointed toward the left fork. That's where the limo went. That's where we went.

The road was narrow and winding and little clapboard cabins and weekender houses began to pop up amidst the pines. Most had small boats out front or muddy motorcycles leaning against native-stone garage walls. More and more houses sprouted, and pretty soon there was a Pioneer Chicken and a couple of banks and a shopping center and two coffee shops and a Jensen's Market and a U.S. Post Office and crowds of people and we were in Blue Jay. Up so high, Lake Arrowhead was a good twenty degrees cooler than San Bernardino below, and every summer the hordes ascended, desperate to escape the sweltering weather down in the flatland.

The limo didn't stop. It rolled slowly through the three-block stretch that was urban Blue Jay, and then the road forked once more. The town ended and houses reappeared but now the houses were larger and more expensive, big two- and three-story structures with lots of decking and stairs and high slanted roofs to shed the snow. We climbed, then leveled off, and we could see the lake, big and wide and gleaming in the summer sun. There were dozens of boats and skiers on the water, the powerboats and jet skis buzzing like angry mutant wasps.

On the north shore, the limo turned off the main road and eased down a gravel and tarmac lane for a mile and a half past large older homes. Big money was on the north shore. These were old vacation mansions built back in the thirties and forties for Hollywood celebrities and movie moguls who hoped to get away for a little hunting and fishing. Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart and those guys. Wonder what Bogie would think if he knew a scumbag like Yuki Torobuni was living in his house?

Pike pulled off the road and parked. "We follow down there," he said, "they'll spot us."

We got out and trotted after them on foot.

A quarter of a mile ahead, the limo stopped at a private gate. The rear window on the driver's side went down and Eddie Tang said something to an Asian man who was leaning against a cranberry-colored Chevrolet Caprice. The guard opened the gate and the limo went in. Pike and I moved off the lane into the woods and made our way past another couple of houses until we got to Torobuni's place. There was a native-stone wall running from the road back into the woods. We followed it until we were hidden from the road, then I went up for a look and Pike continued on toward the lake.

The grounds were ten acres easy, with a looping gravel drive and a huge stone mansion with a mansard roof and a smaller carriage house to the side. Ponderosas and Douglas firs grew naturally about the grounds, and in back there were gardens and flower beds and stone pathways and swings for lazy summer afternoons. The property ran a good four hundred feet in a gentle slope down to the lake. At the lake there was a stone entertaining pier and boat house and four boat slips. The three men Eddie Tang had brought were smiling and shaking hands with Yuki Torobuni at the limo while a lot of guys who were probably just hired muscle watched. Torobuni made a big deal out of pumping each man's hand and bowing and there was a lot of back slapping. Home office, all right.

After they'd had their fill, Torobuni and the Big Shots went inside, and Eddie went over to a thin guy with nothing for a mustache and said something to him. The thin guy went into the main house and Eddie strolled around to the carriage house. After a while the thin guy came out of the big house with Mimi Warren and walked her over to the carriage house. He knocked once, the door opened, Mimi went in, and then the door closed. The thin guy took a walk down to the water.

I stayed at the top of the wall between the branches of a Douglas fir and I did not move until something touched my leg. Joe Pike was on the ground below me.

"Not now," he said. "It's too light, and they're too many. Later. Later, we can get her."