“Don’t worry,” he said without looking up from his work. “I’m employing a two-step approach. First a big net, then a smaller net.”
Ballard just nodded, a bit embarrassed that she had been caught.
She soon started her own two-step process and stopped paying attention to Bosch, realizing that she was only slowing her own work down by watching him. After a long stretch of silence and after putting a large stack of cards into the no-interest pile, Ballard spoke.
“Can I ask you something?” she began.
“What if I said no?” Bosch replied. “You’d ask anyway.”
“How did Daisy’s mother end up living in your house?”
“It’s a long story, but she needed a place to stay. I had a room.”
“So this is not a romantic thing?”
“No.”
“But you let this stranger stay in your house.”
“Sort of. I met her on an unrelated case. I helped her out of a jam and then I found out about Daisy. I told her I’d look into the case and she could use the room I had while I investigated. She’s from Modesto. I assume that if we close this thing, I’ll get my room back and she’ll go home.”
“You couldn’t do that if you were with the LAPD.”
“There’s a lot I couldn’t do if I were still with the LAPD. But I’m not.”
They both went back to the cards but almost immediately Ballard spoke again.
“I still want to talk to her,” she said.
“I told her that,” Bosch said. “Anytime you like.”
A half hour went by and they both managed to finish off the cards in their respective boxes. Bosch went out into the hallway and brought a fresh box in for Ballard and then repeated the process for himself.
“How long can you do this?” Ballard asked.
“You mean tonight?” Bosch asked. “Till about five thirty. I have a thing at six up in the Valley. It may run through most of the day. If it does, I’ll be back tomorrow night.”
“When do you sleep?”
“When I can.”
They were ten minutes into their next boxes when Ballard’s radio squawked. Ballard responded and Munroe told her that a detective was requested on the burglary of an occupied dwelling on Sunset Boulevard.
Ballard looked at the stack of FI cards in front of her and radioed back.
“You sure they need a detective, L-T?”
“They asked. You in the middle of something or what?”
“No, I’m rolling now.”
“Roger that. Lemme know what you’ve got out there.”
Ballard stood up and looked at Bosch.
“I need to go and I can’t leave you here,” she said.
“You sure?” he asked. “I’ll stay here and keep chopping wood.”
“No, you’re not LAPD. I can’t leave you here unsupervised. I’d take a hit for that if someone came in and found you here.”
“Whatever. So, what do I do, go with you?”
Ballard thought about that. It would work.
“You can do that,” she said. “Take a stack of those with you and sit in the car while I check this call out. Hopefully, it’s not a long one.”
Bosch reached down into the box next to his desk and used two hands to pull out a good-size stack of cards.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The burglary call was less than five minutes from the station. The address was familiar to Ballard but she did not place it until they arrived and saw that it was a strip bar called Sirens on Sunset. And it was still open, which made the question of burglary a bit baffling.
There was one patrol car blocking the valet zone. Ballard pulled in behind it. She knew two units had already responded and assumed the other car was in the alley behind the station.
“This should be interesting,” Bosch said.
“Not for you,” Ballard said. “You wait here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I hope this is just bullshit and I’ll be right back out. Start thinking about code seven.”
“You’re hungry?”
“Not right now but I’m gonna need a lunch break.”
Ballard grabbed the rover out of the console charger and got out of the car.
“What’s open?” Bosch asked.
“Almost nothing,” she said.
She closed the door and headed toward the front door of Sirens.
The interior entry area was dimly lit in red. There was a pay station with a bouncer and cashier, and a velvet-roped channel that led to an arched doorway to the dance floor. Ballard could see three small stages outlined in red below faux Tiffany atrium ceilings. There were women in various stages of undress on the stages but very few customers. Ballard checked her watch. It was 2:40 a.m. and the bar was open until 4. Ballard badged the bouncer.
“Where are the officers?” she asked.
“I’ll walk you back,” the bouncer said.
He opened a door that matched the walls in red-velvet paisley and led her down a dark hallway to the open door of a well-lit office. He then headed back to the front.
Three officers were crowded into the small room in front of a desk where a man sat. Ballard nodded. The blue suiters were Dvorek in charge and Herrera and Dyson, whom Ballard knew well because they were a rare female team, and the women on the late show often took code seven together. Herrera was the senior lead officer and had four hash marks on her sleeves. Her partner had one. Both women wore their hair short to avoid having it grabbed and pulled by suspects. Ballard knew that most days they worked out in the gym after their shifts and their shoulders and upper arms showed the results. They could hold their own in a confrontation and the word on Dyson was that she liked to start them.
“Detective Ballard, glad you could make it,” Dvorek said. “This is Mr. Peralta, manager of this fine establishment, and he requested your services.”
Ballard looked at the man behind the desk. He was in his fifties, overweight, with slicked-back hair and long, sharply edged sideburns. He wore a garish purple vest over a black collared shirt. On the wall behind his chair was a framed poster of a naked woman using a stripper pole to strategically cover her privates, but not quite enough to hide that her pubic hair had been trimmed to the shape of a small heart. To his right was a video monitor that showed sixteen camera angles of the stages, bars, and exits of the club. Ballard saw herself in one of the squares from a camera over her right shoulder.
“What can I do for you, sir?” she asked.
“This is like a dream come true,” Peralta said. “I didn’t realize the LAPD was almost all women. You want a part-time job?”
“Sir, do you have a problem that requires police involvement or not?” Ballard replied.
“I do,” Peralta said. “I’ve got a problem — someone is going to break in.”
“Going to? Why would someone break in when they can walk in the front door?”
“You tell me. All I’m saying is, it’s going down. Look at this.”
He turned to the video monitor and pulled out a drawer beneath it, revealing a keyboard. He hit a few keys and the camera angles were replaced with a schematic of the premises.
“I’ve got every opening in the building wired,” Peralta said. “Somebody’s on the roof fucking with the skylights. They’re going to come down through there.”
Ballard leaned across the desk so she could see the screen better. It was showing breaches at two of the skylights over the stages.
“When did this happen?” she asked.