Free Stalking the Angel by Robert Crais Page A

showed their badges to Leonard and then they went into the rear. When they passed me, the one in the ZZ Top tee shirt said, “You’re in deep shit, asshole.”
    Lou Poitras came back around the bamboo steamers and said, “Jesus Christ.” He looked pale.
    I nodded.
    The blond kid came out like it was nothing. He went back to Leonard and said, “You should see that, Lenny.” His voice was loud.
    In fifteen minutes the place was swarming with cops like flies on a nervous dog. Someone had found a Dunkin’ Donuts and brought back two boxes of crullers and about twenty little Styrofoam cups of coffee. Crime scene specialists from the Hollenbeck Division were dusting everything and snapping pictures and asking me every two minutes if I had moved anything before they got there, and every time they asked I said no.Two guys came in from the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s Office, but neither of them looked like Jack Klugman. One of them had a twitch. More than one cop came out of the back and sat down with his face in his hands, and everybody pretended not to notice when they did.
    I was working on my second cup of coffee when the bell tinkled and the ATF cop with the bantamweight’s face came in. He was wearing tan chinos and a pale lavender rugby shirt and a light khaki windbreaker and Topsiders with no socks. Like he’d been at home about to sit down to dinner with his family. Poitras went over and talked with him and then they went into the back. When they came back, ZZ Top was with them. Poitras and the bantamweight came over to me. ZZ Top pushed aside the cruller box, sat on the table, crossed his arms, and glared at me. Cops are tough when they’ve got you outnumbered.
    Poitras said, “This is Terry Ito. He works out of the Asian Task Force, Japanese sub-unit.”
    I put out my hand. Ito didn’t take it. He said, “What were you doing with Nobu Ishida?”
    “Taking chopsticks lessons.” The muscles in the tops of my shoulders and down through my mid-back were tight and aching.
    Ito looked at Poitras. Poitras shrugged. “He’s like that.”
    Ito looked back at me. “I think maybe you got shit for brains. You think that’s possible?”
    I looked from Ito to the cop at the cruller table and back to Ito. I could still smell what I’d smelled in Ishida’s office. I said, “I think somebody dropped the ball. I think someone walked in here under ZZ Top’s nose and did this and walked out again and nobody said dick.”
    The cop on the cruller table uncrossed his arms and stood up and said, “Fuck you, asshole.”
    “Good line,” I said. “Schwarzenegger, right?
The Terminator
.”
    Poitras said, “Cut the bullshit.”
    Ito said, “Jimmy.”
    A tall black uniform came out of the back, took off his hat, and said, “Who’d do something like that?” Then he went outside. I was breathing hard and Jimmy was breathing hard but everybody else looked bored. Jimmy sat down again but didn’t cross his arms.
    Ito turned away from Jimmy and looked at me. “How long were you outside, hotshot?”
    “Maybe six hours.”
    “You see anybody?”
    I sipped some coffee.
    Ito nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He went over to the cruller table, picked up a cup of the coffee, peeled off its top, and took a long sip. Steam was rising off the cup but the heat didn’t seem to bother him. He said, “Who’s your client?”
    “A guy named Bradley Warren. The Pacific Men’s Club is naming him Man of the Month tomorrow.”
    “Man of the Month.”
    “Yeah. You should get in on that.”
    Jimmy said, “Shit.”
    I told them who Warren was and that he had hired me to find the Hagakure and that I had turned up Nobu Ishida’s name as a place to start. Terry Ito listened and sipped the hot coffee and stared at me without blinking. Detectives and crime scene guys and uniforms moved around us. The two guys from the ME’s office went out to their van and came back with a gurney. Ito called to them.
    “When did it