Free Stalking the Angel by Robert Crais Page B

happen?”
    The shorter of the two said, “Maybe eight hours.”
    Ito looked at me and nodded. I shrugged. Ito looked at Jimmy, but Jimmy was staring at the floor and flexing his jaws.
    I drank coffee and told them about my first visit to Ishida’s shop and about the three guys sitting at the tables and about Ishida. I said, “The stiff upstairs with the missing finger was one of them. There was another guy with a bad left eye, and a big kid, young, named Eddie.”
    Ito looked at Jimmy again. Jimmy looked up and said, “Eddie have tattoos? Here?” He touched his arms just below the elbows.
    “Yeah.”
    Jimmy looked at Ito and nodded. “Eddie Tang.”
    I said, “About three hours after I left Ishida’s, the client’s wife got a phone call saying they’d burn the house down if the Warrens didn’t call off the cops. I wanted to work Ishida some more, maybe take a look around his house, that kind of thing, so I came back here today.”
    Jimmy said, “That’s horseshit. You don’t threaten somebody to make the cops back off.”
    I said, “Yeah. You cops are tough, all right.”
    Ito said, “You’re some smart for a guy standing where you’re standing.”
    “It’s not hard in this company.”
    Jimmy didn’t say anything.
    I could feel the pulse in my temples and a sharp pain behind my right eye. It made me blink. Ito stared at me a long time, then gave a little nod. “Yeah, you’re smart. Maybe if you’re smart enough you can get what’s in that room back there out of your head. Maybe ifyou’re tough enough, what you saw back there won’t bother you.” His voice was softer than you would’ve expected.
    I took a deep breath and let it out. I rolled my shoulders to try to work out some of the tension. Poitras was leaning against a shelf of tea trays and little lacquer cups with his arms crossed. Crossed like that, they looked swollen even more than normal. Ito was good, all right.
    He said, “Thing is, what’s back there ain’t so special around here. This is Little Tokyo, Chinatown. You oughta see what the Mung have going down in Little Saigon.”
    Jimmy said, “How about those pricks in Koreatown?”
    Ito nodded at him, then looked back at me. Thinking about those pricks in Koreatown made him smile. “This ain’t America, white boy. This is Little Asia, and it’s ten thousand years old. We’ve got stuff down here like nothing you’ve ever seen.”
    I said, “Yeah.” Mr. Tough.
    He said, “If Nobu Ishida wanted you out of the picture, he wouldn’t do it by calling up some broad and making a threat.” He swiveled around and looked at Jimmy. “Call Hollenbeck Robbery and see who has this book thing. Find out what they know.”
    “Sure, Terry.” Jimmy didn’t move.
    I said, “What’s the big deal with Nobu Ishida?”
    Ito looked back at me and thought about it for a while. Like maybe he would tell me and maybe he wouldn’t. “You know what the yakuza is?”
    “Japanese mafia.”
    Jimmy smiled, wide and mindless, the way a pit bull smiles before he bites you. He said, “How about that, Terry. You think we got something as pussy as the mafia down here?”
    Ito said, “Call Hollenbeck.”
    I said, “Ishida was in the yakuza?”
    Jimmy smiled some more, then pushed off the cruller table and walked out. Ito turned back to me. “The yakuza is big in white slavery and dope and loan-sharking like the mafia, but that’s where it stops. The stiff in back with the missing finger, he’s what you would think of as a mafia soldier. But the mafia doesn’t have any soldiers like him. These guys, they’ve got a little code they live by. Somewhere along the line this guy screwed up and the code required him to chop off his own finger to make up for it. I’ve seen guys with three, four fingers missing from one hand.”
    I drank more coffee.
    Ito said, “The real headcases get their entire body tattooed from just below the elbows to just above the knees. Those guys are yakuza assassins.” He