Nobu Ishida had lived in an older split-level house on a Leave-It-to-Beaver street in Cheviot Hills, a couple of miles south of the Twentieth Century-Fox lot. It was dark, just after nine when we rolled past his home, rounded the block, and parked at the curb fifty yards up the street. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked.

The house was brick and board and painted a light, bright color you couldn't make out at night. Ishida's Eldorado was in the drive, with a tiny, two-tone Merkur behind it. There was an enormous plate glass picture window to the left of the front door, ideal for revealing the house's brightly lit interior. A woman in her fifties passed by the window talking to a young man in his twenties. Both the woman and the man looked sad. Mrs. Ishida and a son. With Dad not yet cold in the grave, there was plenty to be sad about.

Pike said, "Me or you?"

"Me."

I got out of the car as if I were out for an evening stroll. A block and a half down, I turned, came back, slipped off the walk into the shadows, and went to the west side of the Ishida house. There were two frame windows off what looked like a bedroom. The bedroom was dark. Past the windows, there was a redwood gate with a neatly painted sign that said BEWARE OF DOG. I whistled softly through my teeth, then broke off a hedge branch and brushed it against the inside of the gate. No dog. I slipped back to the street, then followed a hedgerow to the east side of the house. The garage was on that side, locked tight and windowless, with a narrow chain link gate leading to the back yard. I eased open the gate and walked along the side of the house to a little window about midway down. A young woman in a print dress sat at the dining room table, holding a baby. She touched her nose to the baby's and smiled. The baby smiled back. Not exactly a yakuza stronghold.

I went back to the car. Pike sad, "Just family, right?"

"Or clever impersonators."

Forty minutes later the front door opened and the young man and the woman with the baby came out. The young man had a pink carry-bag with teddy bears on the side, probably stuffed with Pampers and baby bottles and teething rattles and Bert and Ernie dolls. Mrs. Ishida kissed everyone good-bye and watched them walk out to the little Merkur and waved as they drove away. "You see that?" I said.

Pike nodded.

"Classic yakuza misdirection."

Pike said, "You're a pip on stakeout."

Just before midnight, an L.A.P.D. prowl car turned the corner and cruised the block, arcing its big spot over the houses to scare away burglars and peepers. At one-twenty, two men jogged down the middle of the street, one white, one black, breathing in unison, matching strides. By three, I was stiff and hungry. Pike had not moved. Maybe he was dead. "You awake?"

"If you're tired, go to sleep."

Some partner.

At twenty-five minutes after five, an Alta-Dena milk truck rolled down the street and made four stops. By six-oh-five, the sky in the east was starting to pinken, and lights were on in two houses down the block. At fourteen minutes after eight o'clock, after jobs had been gone to and children had been brought to school and lives had been put under way, Nobu Ishida's widow came out of her house carrying a Saks Fifth Avenue shopping bag and wearing a black suit. She locked the door, walked to the Eldorado, got in, and drove away.

I said, "Let's do it."

We climbed out of the Corvette, went through the little chain link gate next to the garage, then around to the back. There was a standard frame door off the kitchen, and French doors opening off the family room to a small, kidney-shaped swimming pool. We went in through the French doors.

Pike said, "I'll take the back of the house."

"Okay."

He disappeared down the hall without making a sound.

The family room was a nice-sized space with Early American furniture and pictures of the kids and a Zenith console color TV and absolutely nothing to indicate that Nobu Ishida had an interest in feudal Japanese artifacts. People magazine sat on the hearth and a box of Ritz crackers was on the coffee table and someone was reading the latest Jackie Collins. Imagine that. Portrait of the criminal as a Middle-Class American.

There was a yellow dial phone on a little table beside a Barcalounger chair across from the Zenith. Beneath the phone was an address book with listings for things like paramedics, doctor, fire, police, Ed and Diane Waters, and Bobby's school. Probably code names for yakuza thugs. I put the address book down and went into the kitchen. There were messages held to the refrigerator by little plastic magnets that looked like Snoopy and Charlie Brown and baskets of flowers. A picture of Ishida's wife sat on the counter in a frame that said KISS THE COOK. She looked like a nice woman and a good mom. Did she know what her husband had done for a living? When they were young and courting, had he said, "Stick with me, babe, I'm gonna be the biggest thug in Little Tokyo," or had he simply found himself there while she found herself with children and PTA and a loving husband who kept business to himself and made a comfortable life? Maybe I should introduce her to Malcolm Denning's wife. Maybe they would have a lot to talk about.

Pike materialized in the doorway. "Back here," he said.

We went back through the family room and down a short hall to what had probably once been a child's bedroom. Now, it wasn't.

"Well, well, well," I said. "Welcome to Nippon."

We were in a small room with a lot of furniture and all the furniture was lacquered rosewood. There was a low table in the center of the room with a pillow for a chair and one of those lacquered boxes with a phone inside. A matching file cabinet stood in the corner, and a low table ran along two walls. On the table were four little stands, each stand holding a pair of horizontal samurai swords, a longer one on the bottom, a shorter one above it. The swords were inlaid with pearls and gems and had silk ribbons wound about the handles. Separating the stands were very old samurai battle helmets shaped like the helmets the Federation Storm Troopers had worn in Star Wars. A beautiful silk robe was framed on the wall above the helmets. It looked like a giant butterfly. There were wood-block prints on the opposite walls and a silk-screened watercolor under glass that looked so delicate that a ripple of air might fray it, and two tiny bonsai trees growing in glass globes. On the outside wall, shoji screens softened and filtered the early morning sunlight. It was a beautiful room.

Pike went to the low table and said, "Look."

Three books were stacked on the edge of the table. The top book was an excerpted English translation of the Hagakure. The second book was a different translation. The third was titled Bushido: The Warrior's Soul. Pike thumbed through the top Hagakure translation. "They've been read a lot."

"If Ishida had the real thing, maybe someone found out and wanted it bad enough to try to make him turn it over to them."

"Uh-huh." Pike found something he liked and stopped to read.

"Perhaps we can find a clue as to whom."

Pike kept reading.

"As soon as we finish reading."

Joe read a moment longer, then put the book back on the table. "I'll go up front and keep watch."

When he was gone, I looked around. There was nothing on the low desk but the books and the phone, and nothing on the wall tables but the swords and the helmets. Not even dust. The file cabinet was absolutely clean, too, but at least there were the drawers to look into. The top drawer had neatly labeled files devoted to home and family: the kids' schools, medical payments, insurance policies. The bottom drawer held art catalogs, vacation brochures, and supply catalogs from Ishida's import business. There were no financial records from his business. Those were probably with his accountant. Filed under C for Crime.