Stalking the Angel Read Online Free Page A

alongthe top of the desk, one of an overweight woman with a pleasant smile, and another of three teenage boys. One of the pictures was of a Little League team with Malcolm Denning and another man both wearing shirts that said COACH . “May I ask who referred you to me?”
    “You can ask, but I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you. Somebody tells me something, I try to protect the source. Especially if what they’ve told me can be incriminating. You see?”
    “Incriminating?”
    “
Especially
if it’s incriminating.”
    He nodded.
    “You know what the Hagakure is, Mr. Denning?”
    Nervous. “Well, the Hagakure isn’t really a piece of what we might call art. It’s a book, you know.” He put one hand on his desk and the other in his lap. There was a red mug on the desk that said DAD .
    “But it’s fair to say that whoever might have an interest in early Japanese art might also have an interest in the Hagakure, wouldn’t it?”
    “I guess.”
    “One of the original copies of the Hagakure was stolen a few days ago. Would you have heard anything about that?”
    “Why on earth would I hear anything about it?”
    “Because you’ve been known to broker a rip-off or two.”
    He pushed back his chair and stood up. The two of us in the little office was like being in a phone booth. “I think you should leave,” he said.
    “Come on, Malcolm. Give us both a break. You don’t want to be hassled and I can hassle you.”
    The outer door opened and the pretty brunettecame back into the little hall. She saw us standing there, broke into the smile, said, “Oh, I wondered where you’d gone.” Then she saw the look on Denning’s face. “Mr. Denning?”
    He looked at me and I looked back. Then he glanced at her. “Yes, Barbara?”
    Nervousness is contagious. She looked from Denning to me and back to Denning. She said, “The Kendals want to purchase the Myori.”
    I said, “Maybe the Kendals can help me.”
    Malcolm Denning stared at me for a long time and then he sat down. He said, “I’ll be right out.”
    When she was gone, he said, “I can sue you for this. I can get an injunction to bar you from the premises. I can have you arrested.” His voice was hoarse. An I-always-thought-this-would-happen-and-now-it-has voice.
    “Sure,” I said.
    He stared at me, breathing hard, thinking it through, wondering how far he’d have to go if he picked up the ball, and how much it would cost him.
    I said, “If someone wanted the Hagakure, who might arrange for its theft? If the Hagakure were for sale, who might buy it?”
    His eyes flicked over the pictures on the desk. The wife, the sons. The Little League. I watched the sad eyes. He was a nice man. Maybe even a good man. Sometimes, in this job, you wonder how someone managed to take the wrong turn. You wonder where it happened and when and why. But you don’t really want to know. If you knew, it would break your heart.
    He said, “There’s a man in Little Tokyo. He has some sort of import business. Nobu Ishida.” He told me where I could find Ishida. He stared at the pictures as he told me.
    After a while I went out through the gallery and down the stairs and along Cañon to my car. It was past three and traffic was starting to build, so it took the better part of an hour to move back along Sunset and climb the mountain to the little A-frame I have off Woodrow Wilson Drive above Hollywood. When I got inside, I took two cold Falstaff beers out of the fridge, pulled off my shirt, and went out onto my deck.
    There was a black cat crouched under a Weber charcoal grill that I keep out there. He’s big and he’s mean and he’s black all over except for the white scars that lace his fur like spider webs. He keeps one ear up and one ear sort of cocked to the side because someone once shot him. Head shot. He hasn’t been right since.
    “You want some beer?”
    He growled.
    “Forget it, then.”
    The growling stopped.
    I took out the center section of the railing that runs