At nine-forty the next morning my phone rang and Jillian Becker said, "Did I wake you?"

"Impossible. I never sleep."

"We're back from Kyoto. Bradley wants to see you."

I had fallen asleep on the couch, watching a two A.M. rerun of It Came from Beneath the Sea with Ken Tobey and Faith Domergue. The cat had watched it with me and had fallen asleep on my chest. He was still there. I said, "I went by Bradley's house last night. Someone called and scared the hell out of Sheila."

"That's one of the reasons Bradley wants to see you. We're at the Century City office. May we expect you in thirty minutes?"

"Better gimme a little longer. I want to think up something real funny to see if I can make you laugh."

She hung up.

I lifted off the cat, went into the kitchen, filled a large glass with water, drank it, and filled it once more when the phone rang again. Lou Poitras. He said, "I made some calls. Those two guys who sixed you yesterday were Asian Task Force cops."

"Gee, you mean Nobu Ishida isn't a simple businessman?"

"If ATF people are in, Hound Dog, it's gotta be heavy."

Poitras hung up. Asian Task Force, huh? Maybe I had been right about old Nobu. Maybe he was the mastermind of an international stolen art cartel. Maybe I would crack The Big Case and be hailed as The World's Greatest Detective. Wow.

I fed myself and the cat, then showered, dressed, and was turning down Century Park East Boulevard forty minutes later. It was clear and sunny and cooler than yesterday, with a lot of women on the sidewalks, all of them wearing lightweight summer outfits with no backs and no sleeves. Century City was once the back lot of Twentieth Century-Fox Studios. Now it is an orchard of high-rise office buildings done in designer shades of bronze and black and metallic blue glass, each carefully spaced for that planned-community look and landscaped with small pods of green lawn and California poplar trees. The streets have names like Constellation Boulevard and Avenue of the Stars and Galaxy Way. We are nothing if not grandiose.

The Century Plaza Towers are a matching set of triangular buildings, thirty-five floors each of agents, lawyers, accountants, lawyers, business managers, lawyers, record executives, lawyers, and Porsche owners. Most of whom are lawyers. The Century Plaza Towers are the biggest buildings in Century City. They have to be to squeeze in the egos. Warren Investments occupied half of the seventeenth floor of the north tower. Rent alone had to exceed the Swedish gross national product.

I stepped off the elevator into an enormous glass and chrome waiting room filled with white leather chairs that were occupied by important-looking men and women holding important-looking briefcases. They looked like they had been waiting a long time. A sleek black woman sat in the center of a U-shaped command post. She wore a wire-thin headphone set that curved around to her mouth with a microphone the size of a pencil lead. "Elvis Cole," I said. "For Mr. Warren."

She touched buttons and murmured into the microphone and told me someone would be right out. The important-looking men and women glared enviously. Moments later, an older woman with gray hair in a tight bun and a nice manner led me back along a mile and a half of corridor, through a heavy glass door, and into what could only have been an executive secretary's office. There was a double door wide enough to drive a street cleaner through at the far end. "Go right in," she said. I did.

Bradley Warren was sitting on the edge of a black marble desk not quite as long as a bowling alley with his arms crossed and a J. Jonah Jameson smile on his face. He was smiling at five dour-faced Japanese men. Three of the Japanese men were sitting on a white silk couch and were old the way only Asians can be old, with that sort of weathered papery skin and eternal presence. The other two Japanese men stood at either end of the couch, and were much younger and much larger, maybe two inches shorter than me and twenty pounds heavier. They had broad flat faces and eyes that stared at you and didn't give a damn if you minded or not. The one on the right was wearing a custom-cut Lawrence Marx suit that made him look fat. If you knew what to look for, though, you knew he wasn't fat. He was all wedges and heavy muscle. The one on the left was in a brown herringbone, and had gone to the same tailor. Odd Job and his clone. Jillian Becker sat primly on the edge of a white silk chair, framed neatly in a full wall of glass that looked north. She looked nice. Yuppie, but nice.

"Where's Bush?" I said. "Couldn't he make it?"

Bradley Warren said, "You're late. We've had to wait." Mr. Personality.

"Why don't we cancel this meeting and schedule another to begin in ten minutes? Then I can be early."

Bradley Warren said, "I'm not paying you for jokes."

"I throw those in for free."

Today Jillian Becker was wearing a burgundy skirt and jacket with a white shirt and very sheer burgundy hose with tiny leaf designs and broken-leather burgundy pumps. With her legs crossed, her top knee gleamed. I gave her a beaming smile, but she didn't smile back. Maybe I'd go easy on the jokes for a while.

Bradley Warren slid off his desk and said something in Japanese to the men on the couch. His speech was fluid and natural, as if he had spoken the language as a child. The older man in the center said something back to him, also in Japanese, and everybody laughed. Especially Jillian Becker. Bradley said, "These men are members of the Tashiro family, who own the Hagakure. They're here to make sure every best effort is made to recover the manuscript." The guy in the brown herringbone spoke softly in Japanese, translating.

"All right."

Bradley Warren said, "Have you found it yet?" I had expected him to ask about the threat against his wife first, but there you go.

"No." More mumbling from the guy in the brown herringbone.

"Are you close?"

"Hot on its trail."

The guy in the brown herringbone frowned, and translated, and the old guys on the couch frowned, too. Bradley saw all the frowning going on and joined in. So that was where he got it. He said, "I'm disappointed. I expected more."

"It's been two days, Bradley. In those two days I have begun identifying people who deal in or collect feudal Japanese artwork. I will do more of that. Eventually, one of the people I contact will know something about the Hagakure, or about someone who does. That's the way it's done. Stealing something like this is like stealing the Mona Lisa. There's only a half dozen people on earth who would do it or be involved in it, and once you know who they are it's only a matter of time. Collectors make no secret about what they want, and once they have it they like to brag."

Bradley gave the Japanese men a superior look and said, "Harumph."

The Japanese man sitting in the center of the couch nodded thoughtfully and said, "I think that he has made a reasonable beginning."

Bradley said, "Huh?"

The Japanese man said, "Has there been a ransom demand?" He was the oldest of the three seated men, but his eyes were clear and steady and stayed with you. His English was heavily accented.

I shook my head. "None that I'm aware of."

Bradley looked from the old man to me and back to the old man. "What's this about a ransom?"

The old man kept his eyes on me. "If a ransom is demanded, we will pay it."

"Okay."

"If you must pay for information, price is of no concern."

"Okay."

The old man looked at Bradley. "Is this clear?"

Bradley said, "Yes, sir."

The old man stood, and the large men quickly moved to his side in case he needed their help. He didn't. He stared at me for a very long time, and then he said, "You must understand this: The Hagakure is Japan. It is the heart and the spirit of the people. It defines how we act and what we believe and what is right and what is wrong and how we live and how we die. It is who we are. If you feel these things, you would know why this book must be found."