Hansen marched off in the general direction indicated, and I scurried after him. Behind the backdrop of the curtain was an open area that seemed set aside for practice.
Sitting on a chair in this practice area was a small Asian man. His hair was a streaked salt and pepper, combed straight back. Around his neck was a pale blue silk scarf that tucked into a finely cut dark blue shirt. He wore dark blue slacks and white shoes. Resting across his lap was a black cane with a silver handle, and draped over the back of the seat was a large black overcoat, two very unusual accessories for Los Angeles.
The man was talking softly to a woman dressed in gray leotards and leg warmers. He was giving direction in a calm, authoritative voice, with the woman listening intently and nodding her head on occasion. The woman appeared to be in her late twenties, and I thought that she was surprisingly attractive.
“Yoshida?” Hansen called as he walked across the practice area toward the man in the chair.
He turned his head and fixed Hansen with his gaze. Dark, bushy eyebrows capped the man’s intense eyes. By his face, I judged the man to be in his sixties, but he could have been older. He was in good shape, so it was hard to tell. Deep lines etched his face, and his jaw tightened as he recognized Hansen. I knew the feeling.
He turned and said a few words to the woman, who gave Hansen and me a sour look as she walked out of the practice area and back toward the darkness of the theater.
“Officer Hansen,” the man said. His tone was flat and emotionless.
“Mr. Yoshida, this is Mr. Tanaka.” Hansen pointed at me. “As I told you on the phone, I brought him along to see if he can identify the lady who was with Matsuda.”
Yoshida’s eyes slipped past Hansen and locked onto me. I felt myself dissected by the two hard orbs. My clothes, my looks, and perhaps even my history were being absorbed, categorized, and filed by the hard eyes of Yoshida. He gave no word of greeting; instead he nodded. “I’ll go and get the girls,” he said.
As he got out of the chair, I noted that he leaned heavily on the cane, and I watched with fascination as the small Japanese limped to the back of the theater using the cane to carry part of his weight on every step.
“Who’s Yoshida?” I asked.
“He’s the stage manager at the theater,” Hansen responded. “He sort of runs things backstage, and he also coaches the girls in their routines. The guys at the station tell me he’s been doing it for years.”
Yoshida hobbled back into the practice area with two women following him. One was a Latina with a tall pile of red hair. The crimson of her lipstick made a large slash across her mouth which was picked up by the red dress she was wearing. The second woman had pale white skin and short red hair. She had a short, white terry cloth robe on and her hands were thrust in the robe’s pockets.
“This is Miss Rosie Martinez,” Yoshida said, “who dances under the name of the Mexican Firecracker, and this is Mrs. Valerie Welsh, who is known as Cutie Valentine.” He looked at me, as if expecting me to acknowledge acquaintance with one of the two women.
“Neither one of these ladies is the one I saw with Matsuda,” I said.
“Where’s the third woman?” Hansen asked.
“What are you talking about?”
“When I was here before there were three redheads. Now there are only two. What happened to the third one?”
“Ah. That’s Miss Sanchez. I’m afraid she left and hasn’t returned yet. She said she was ill.”
“When will she be back?”
Yoshida shrugged. “Who knows. The girls can sometimes be very unreliable. She didn’t call to tell me if she’ll be here for tonight’s show. I have no idea when she’ll be in.”
“I took her phone number and address,” Hansen said. “Can I borrow your phone? I’d like to call her and see if she’s home.”
Without answering, Yoshida hobbled off the stage and Hansen trailed after him. The two women started to leave.
“Excuse me a second,” I said.
The women looked at me quizzically.
“Could you answer a few questions for me?”
A look of suspicion flashed across Welsh’s face, and Martinez crossed her arms and shifted her weight onto one foot. Talk about body language.
“I’m not a cop,” I added. “So you really don’t have to answer any questions if you don’t want. I’m just a guy that’s caught up in this, and maybe the other lady is, too. Her name’s Sanchez?”
“Angela. Angela Sanchez,” Martinez said.
I focused my attention on her. “Is she really sick?”
She shrugged.
“I’m just asking because she might be in something that she really doesn’t want to be involved in. I know that’s my feeling. I saw the murdered guy on business the other night and now I’m traipsing around with this cop. I’d much rather be doing something else. Like I said, maybe Angela’s involved the same way.”
Martinez shrugged again.
“Can I ask you if she was with the Japanese gentleman who was murdered?”
Martinez looked at me, sizing me up. “You can ask,” she said.
“I’m leaving,” the pale girl announced, and turned around and walked out of the area. As Martinez also turned to leave, I touched her on the arm and said, “Please don’t go. I really need your help.”
“Ask Fred. I don’t know nothing,” the girl said.
“Who’s Fred?”
“Yoshida.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
Hansen came back with Yoshida a few minutes later.
“Nobody’s home,” Hansen remarked.
“Maybe she’s on the way,” Yoshida said. “She tends to keep her own hours, anyway. I have no idea when she’ll be back”
“Yeah. Right.”
I suppressed a giggle. It occurred to me that Detective Hansen sometimes talked like Jack Webb on the old Dragnet TV series. Maybe there was a course on talking like that at the L.A. Police Academy.
Hansen took me back to the office, and I went to pick Mariko up so we could have a quick dinner and drive out to the valley for her AA meeting.
I’ve never seen Mariko drunk. And sometimes I don’t understand why she has to go to AA meetings three or four times a week. Based on Mariko’s urging, I had educated myself a little bit about alcoholism. Contrary to what I used to think, most alcoholics aren’t sleeping in gutters. Since alcoholism is a progressive disease, they might end up that way, but for the most part alcoholics are able to hold down jobs and can even have successful careers. Mariko was able to keep a good job with a bank, but she couldn’t control her drinking, especially on weekends. For a good part of her life, she didn’t want to control her drinking.
Now a good part of her life was dominated by her desire to not drink. And tonight I was sitting on a folding chair in an effort to support her.
“This is hard,” she said. Mariko stood in front of fifty people at the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the San Fernando Valley. It was her first time as a speaker and it was at a meeting that wasn’t one of the ones she normally attended. Since it was an open meeting that anyone could attend, she asked me to go along for support. Even though we had both been puzzled by the stack of invoices in the package, and equally surprised at the disappearance of Angela Sanchez, the details of life continue. Mariko’s first time speaking at an AA meeting was important, and I wanted to be there.
“My name is Mariko and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Mariko,” the crowd said in unison, in AA fashion.
“This is my first time as a speaker and I thought it might be easier at a meeting I don’t normally attend. But as I look out at you I’m frankly glad to see at least one face I know.” She smiled at me.
“What’s strange about me being intimidated by a new group of people is that I want to be an actress and I’ve never in my life had stage fright. Yet, as I stand here, I have all the classic symptoms. I have sweating palms, a churning stomach, vertigo, and the fear that I’ll just clam up and not produce more than a croak, instead of words. I’ve been told that’s what stage fright is. Of course, maybe I just ate a bad burrito for dinner.”