Stalking the Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

were clean. Paper lanterns hung in front of some of the shops, and red and green and yellow and blue wind socks in front of others, and all the signs were in Japanese. The sidewalks were crowded. Summer is tourist season, and most of the white faces and many of the yellow ones had Nikons or Pentaxes slung under them. A knot of sailors in Italian navy uniforms stood at a street corner, grinning at a couple of girls in a Camaro who grinned back at them. One of the sailors carried a Disneyland bag with Mickey Mouse on the side. Souvenirs from distant lands.
    Nobu Ishida’s import business was exactly where Malcolm Denning said it would be, in an older building on Ki Street between a fish market and a Japanese-language bookstore, with a yakitori grill across the street.
    I rolled past Ishida’s place, found a parking spot in front of one of the souvenir shops they have for people from Cleveland, and walked back. There was a little bell on the door that rang as I went in and three men sitting around two tables at the rear of the place. It looked more like a warehouse than a retail outlet, with boxes stacked floor to ceiling and lots of freestanding metal shelves. A few things were on display, mostly garish lacquered boxes and miniature pagodas and dragons that looked like Barkley from
Sesame Street
. I smiled at the three men. “Nice stuff.”
    One of them said, “What do you want?” He was a lot younger than the other two, maybe in his early twenties. No accent. Born and raised in Southern California with a surfer’s tan to prove it. He was big for someone of Japanese extraction, just over six feet, with muscular arms and lean jaws and the sort of wildly overdeveloped trapezius muscles you get when youspend a lot of time with the weights. He wore a tight knit shirt with a crew neck and three-quarter sleeves even though it was ninety degrees outside. The other two guys were both in their thirties. One of them had a bad left eye as if he had taken a hard one there and it had never healed, and the other had the pinkie missing from his right hand. I made the young one for Ishida’s advertising manager and the other two for buyers from Neiman-Marcus.
    “My name’s Elvis Cole,” I said. “Are you Nobu Ishida?” I put one of my cards on the second table.
    The one with the missing finger grinned at the big kid and said, “Hey, Eddie, are you Nobu Ishida?”
    Eddie said, “You have business with Mr. Ishida?”
    “Well, it’s what we might call personal.”
    The one with the bad eye said something in Japanese.
    “Sorry,” I said. “Japanese is one of the four known languages I don’t speak.”
    Eddie said, “Maybe you’ll understand this, dude. Fuck off.”
    They probably weren’t from Neiman-Marcus. I said, “You’d better ask Mr. Ishida. Tell him it’s about eighteenth-century Japan.”
    Eddie thought about it for a while, then picked up my card, and said, “Wait here.” He disappeared behind stacks of what looked like sushi trays and bamboo steamers.
    The guy with the bad eye and the guy with no finger stared at me. I said, “I guess Mr. Ishida keeps you guys around to take inventory.”
    The guy with no finger smiled, but I don’t think he was being friendly.
    A little bit later Eddie came back without the card and said, “Time for you to go.”
    I said, “Ask him again. I won’t take much of his time.”
    “You’re leaving.”
    I looked from Eddie to the other two and back to Eddie. “Nope. I’m going to stay and I’m going to talk to Ishida or I’m going to tip the cops that you guys deal stolen goods.” Mr. Threat.
    The guy with the bad eye mumbled something else and they all laughed. Eddie pulled his sleeves up to his elbows and flexed his arms. Big, all right. Elaborate, multicolored tattoos started about an inch below his elbows and continued up beneath the sleeves. They looked like fish scales. His hands were square and blocky and his knuckles were thick. He said something in Japanese and