9

FARRELL THOUGHT HE WOULD SEARCH a little more to the west on Mulholland, but even though the fog was burning off, he hesitated. Yes, the air was clearing, but time was growing short. He wondered if taking a chance would give him a sense of clarity, if only because it concentrated what he had to think about.

The cop was almost like a relative. Shirushi had arrested Farrell when he was young and they had improbably stayed in touch. Making her a kind of cousin, or something. She was Japanese American, restrained, but precise, although she had a sense of humor and liked to crack a joke by raising a brow. Oh? she liked to suggest, do you think I buy that? Shirushi wasn’t much older than Farrell, and they met for a meal or drinks a couple of times a year.

At seventeen, Farrell had stolen a motorcycle every Friday night and had thrown it in the Los Angeles River every Sunday. The Los Angeles River is not much more than a large cement trench, and since he dropped the motorcycles in the same spot, he had made a pile of motorcycles. Shirushi had dark eyes and a brooding presence, as though she was always working out an integral equation. She had been standing next to the pile of motorcycles on a Sunday evening when Farrell put the last one over the edge of the embankment at the top of the LA River. That had been a long time ago, and Shirushi, with her short hair, cut so that it was just beneath her ears, was now a detective. After she had arrested Farrell, she had arranged things so that he had only done a month in the California Youth Authority camp in Malibu during August so he could still get to Berkeley as a freshman in the fall. Farrell had to wear boots with lead in the soles when he was in Malibu, since this guaranteed he would not try to escape. Not unless he wanted to do it in bare feet through that landscape.

He called Shirushi from his kitchen. The bright colors of the Paris Métro map left him thinking, If I could only get there.

“Why, Farrell, it’s been awhile. How are you doing?” said Shirushi when she answered her phone.

“Fine, fine,” he said.

“Uh-oh,” she said. He could almost see that raised brow.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Your voice,” she said. “You sound like the first time I arrested you. You remember those motorcycles?”

“How could I forget?” he said.

“Is that a compliment or a plea?” she said.

“A compliment,” he said. “I’d like, you know, to say I trust you.”

“I’d be careful about that,” she said.

“How about a late lunch? Spur of the moment. The usual place. My treat. In an hour,” Farrell said.

“Short on time, too,” she said. “Well, well.”

Shirushi liked Fuyuko’s, a sushi restaurant in Santa Monica. It had a view of the Pacific, and if you met in the afternoon, as now, the Pacific appeared as a platinum sheet. Shirushi was tall, had slight freckles over her nose, and now that she was a detective, she sometimes wore silk dresses, which clung to her with a gleaming liquefaction. But only when she was in the mood. Often she wore jeans and a T-shirt, which is what she wore today.

Now, she sat with her back to the door and her face to the ocean.

She took his hand with that cool, but still friendly, touch.

“I have a favor to ask,” he said.

“All right,” she said. “But let’s, ah, define the rules of the game.”

“Just a favor,” he said.

“Well, we can talk as friends, in a purely personal way. Or you can talk to me as a cop. So?”

“A little of both,” he said.

She ordered sushi, salmon, crab, octopus, and a glass of beer, and she made a little bench from the paper wrapping that the chopsticks came in. A little piece of origami. She had taught Farrell to do this in the past, and now he made a little bench, too. It was a small thing, but he hoped it was a way to establish an old friendship, or at least a common pool of experience.

“Sometimes you can’t see things clearly,” she said. “For instance, you know why I’m sitting with my back to the door?”

“No,” he said.

“In the days of the samurai, a host always sat with his back to the door, since if an assassin came in, the host, with his back to the door, would die first.”

“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow.

“And do you know why samurai swords don’t have a blood gutter? The blood gutter makes a slight hush when the sword is being swung, and if you are sneaking up behind someone and swinging the sword you want it quiet.”

“You aren’t your usual cheerful self,” he said.

“You aren’t either,” she said. “Your voice on the phone was an illustration of Shirushi’s First Law. Sooner or later you will find the thing you are afraid of.”

The sushi had the taste of the ocean, and the wasabi burned. She kept her eyes on Farrell.

“So, what are you working on?” she said.

“Are we still talking as friends or as my friend the detective?” said Farrell.

Her eyes, for the moment, were set on the piece of salmon on sushi rice. She dipped it in the sauce with wasabi, perfectly lifted it to her mouth, and ate it with the ability of someone who knows how pleasure should be drawn out.

“More friend than cop,” she said. “But, if I were you, I’d be careful.”

The wasabi made his eyes water.

“Why don’t you give up sex crimes?” he said. “After all, you can take your pick now, can’t you?”

“Yes,” she said. “But with sex crimes sooner or later someone always gets killed.”

She pushed her hair behind one ear, her black eyes, not like coal but like the depths of a well, made her expression so attractive as to exert a kind of gravity.

“All right,” she said. “Enough foreplay. Before we get to the favor, you have to do something for me.”

“What’s that?”

She smiled, just brushed her fingers over his hand. An artery throbbed in her neck, with a slight, almost invisible pulse. She shifted on her seat.

“How much do you contribute to the Santa Monica Police Benevolent Society, or to, say, Tommy Black, you know, the guy who runs supervised detention, when he needs financial help? A house he wants to buy, having his kids’ teeth fixed, something like that? You know, so that when you call him, he can give you a detail or something.”

“Now, you wouldn’t want me to be indiscreet,” he said.

She stared at him as though she had the key to a hotel room in her handbag. He wondered where she kept her sidearm. And if flirting was a part of her being a very good cop.

She raised an eyebrow. Then she took a piece of tuna, dipped it, and put it into her mouth. He took a bite, too, keeping his eyes on the small, almost invisible artery.

“I help out,” he said. “I’ve helped Tommy. A donation helps.”

She shrugged. “The thing about cops,” she said. “Is that we aren’t as stupid as you think.”

“Does Tommy Black tell you about me? When I ask him for help? Is he making me into a rat who pays him? A confidential informant, who gives him money?”

“You wouldn’t want me to be indiscreet, would you?” she said. She took another bite, then a drink of the cold beer to go with the sushi. “What’s the favor?”

“There’s a man, Karicek . . .” said Farrell.

“I know who you mean,” said Shirushi.

“Can you check his DNA profile against someone?”

“That’s privileged information,” she said.

“I’m asking a favor,” he said.

“You may think I don’t know what you do,” she said. “But you have to understand that the best thing is not to get involved in a pissing match with a skunk.”

“Who’s the skunk?” he said.

“Could be me,” she said. “Could be people who keep secrets. Could be all kinds of people. Some more dangerous than others.”

He looked down at the sushi boat, at once cute and oddly bizarre.

“The studio lawyers, who have irregular connections, production company lawyers, the people who work with them, the investigators. The newspapers. TV. Web gossip sites. Here’s the way it is. It can be a real mess. And, there you are, exposed, and people get curious.”

“I understand,” he said.

“So, I might let you get away with the occasional . . . irregular resolution of something. But these things can blow up. And you might end up holding a bag. A very big bag.”

“Would you help me?” said Farrell.

“A few motorcycles are one thing, but . . .” She shrugged. “If you think I don’t know a lot about what you do, you are mistaken. Not everything, but I could go to work.”

“So you want something, too?” said Farrell. “It can’t be money, can it? Not that.”

“No, not money. Just remember me. If something comes up.”

She smiled again.

He wrote Terry Peregrine on a napkin and passed it over.

“Karicek and this guy,” said Farrell. “You already have a sample from Terry. In some database somewhere.”

“Yes,” she said. “Maybe I can do that. But you have to remember me. A reliable tip is always useful. A moment where two birds can be killed with one stone.”

“They aren’t birds,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were dangerous,” he said.

She expertly and with exquisite delicacy picked up her last piece of tuna, which she put into her mouth. It wasn’t so much eating as something like a promise. Yes, he thought. She really is dangerous.

“You want to know the secret of police work?” she said. “You don’t chase someone down. You just wait for them to do the same stupid thing a second or a third time . . . You know, Farrell, after all these years, the least I can say is that I warned you.”

“Well, that makes me feel a lot better,” he said.

The waiter put the check on the table. Farrell picked it up, glanced at it, and took some cash out of his pocket, and put the bills in the little tray.

She slipped her card under his fingers.

“That,” she said, pointing to a hand-printed number, “is my cell, which you’ve got. The other is a landline at my house.”

The silver film on the ocean made the surface appear burnished.

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s always nice to see you.”

“Don’t be too sure,” she said. That same smile. “Don’t worry about the dead. They’ve been taken care of. It’s the living you have to worry about.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Farrell.

“So, you believe in ghosts now?” said Shirushi.

“In LA, you’d have to be crazy not to.”