“Why’d it open up?”
“Paisley got a duey.”
“Paisley?”
“Guy I replaced. Other drivers told me he was a piece of work, man. Show up with forty kids in his charge, eyes all glassy. Even the union wouldn’t protect him after the last time. Drove the bus off the side of the Legion Highway, right?” Dontelle was laughing in disbelief. “Damn near tipped it. Gets out to take a piss. This is at six-thirty in the ante meridiem, feel me? He gets back in, tries to pull back off the shoulder, but now the bus does tip. That’s Lawsuit City there, man. Forty times over.”
“Paisley,” Patrick said.
“Edward Paisley,” Dontelle said, “like the ties.”
Paisley lived on Wyman Street in a gray row house with fading white trim. There was a front porch with an old couch on it. Bosch drove by the place and then circled the block and went by again before finding a parking space at the curb a half block away. By adjusting his side-view mirror he had a bead on the front door and porch. He liked doing one-man surveillances this way. If somebody was looking for a watcher they usually checked windshields. Parking with his back to his target made him harder to see. Edward Paisley may have had nothing to do with the murder of Letitia Williams all those years ago. But if he did, he hadn’t survived the last fifteen years without checking windshields and being cautious.
All Bosch was hoping for, and that he’d be happy with, was to see some activity at the home to confirm that Paisley was at the address. If he got lucky, Paisley would go out and grab a cup of coffee or a bite to eat at lunch. Bosch would be able to get all the DNA he’d need off a discarded cup or a pizza crust. Maybe Paisley was a smoker. A cigarette butt would do the trick as well.
Harry pulled a file out of the locking briefcase he took on trips and opened it to look at the enlargement of the photo he’d pulled the day before from the Massachusetts RMV. It was taken three years earlier. Paisley was white, balding, and then fifty-three years old. He no longer had the driver’s license, thanks to the suspension that followed the DUI arrest six months ago. Paisley tipped a school bus and then blew a point-oh-two on the machine and with it blew his job with the school district and possibly his freedom. The arrest put his fingerprints into the system, where they were waiting for Bosch. Sometimes Harry got lucky that way. If he had pulled the Williams case eleven months earlier and submitted the prints collected at the crime scene for electronic comparison, there would have been no resulting match. But Bosch pulled the case four months ago and here he was in Boston.
Two hours into his surveillance Bosch had seen no sign of Paisley and was growing restless. Perhaps Paisley had left the house for the day before Bosch could set up on the street. Bosch could be wasting his time, watching an empty house. He decided to get out and do a walk-by. He’d seen a convenience store a block past the target address. He could walk by Paisley’s address, eyeball the place up close, then go down and pick up a newspaper and a gallon of milk. Back at the car he would pour the milk into the gutter and keep the jug handy if he had to urinate. It could be a long day watching the house.
The paper would come in handy as well. He’d be able to check the late baseball scores. The Dodgers had gone into extra innings the night before against the hated Giants and Bosch had gotten on the plane not knowing the game’s outcome.
But at the last moment Bosch decided to stay put. He watched a dinged-up Jeep Cherokee pull into a curbside slot directly across the street from his own position. There was a lone man in the car and what made Bosch curious was that he never got out. He stayed slumped a bit in his seat and appeared to be keeping an eye on the same address as Bosch.
Bosch could see he was on a cell phone when he first arrived, but then for the next hour the man remained behind the wheel of his Jeep, simply watching the goings-on on the street. He was too young to be Paisley. Late thirties or early forties, wearing a baseball cap and a thin gray hoodie over a dark blue graphic T. Something about the cap gave Bosch pause until he realized it was the first one he’d seen in a city filled with them that didn’t have a B on it. Instead it had what appeared to be a crooked smiley face on it, though Bosch couldn’t be positive from the other side of the street. It looked to Bosch like the guy was waiting for somebody, possibly the same somebody Bosch was waiting for.
Eventually, Bosch realized he had become a similar object of curiosity for the man across the street, who was now surreptitiously watching Bosch as Bosch was surreptitiously watching him.
They kept at this careful cross-surveillance until a siren split the air and a fire truck trundled down the road between them. Bosch tracked the truck in the side mirror, and when he looked back across the street he saw that the Jeep was empty. The man had either used the distraction of the passing fire truck to slip out, or he was lying down inside.
Bosch assumed it was the former. He sat up straight and checked the street and the sidewalk across from him. No sign of anyone on foot. He turned to check the sidewalk on his own side and there at the passenger window was the guy in the baseball hat. He’d turned the hat backward, the way gang squad guys often did when they were on the move. Bosch could see a silver chain descending from the sides of his neck into his graphic T, figured there was a badge hanging from it. Definitely a gun riding the back of the guy’s right hip, something boxy and bigger than a Glock. The man bent down to put himself at eye level with Bosch. He twirled his finger at Bosch, a request to roll the window down.
The guy with the Hertz NeverLost GPS jutting off his dashboard looked at Patrick for a long moment but then lowered his window. He looked like he was mid-fifties and in good shape. Wiry. Something about him said cop. The wariness in his eyes for one; cop’s eyes — you could never believe they truly closed. Then there was the way he kept one hand down in his lap so he could go inside the sport coat for the Glock or the Smith if it turned out Patrick was a bad guy. His left hand.
“Nice move,” he said.
“Yeah?” Patrick said.
The guy nodded over his shoulder. “Sending the fire truck down the street. Good distraction. You with District Thirteen?”
A true Bostonian always sounded like he was just getting over a cold. This guy’s voice was clean air; not light exactly but smooth. An out-of-towner. Not a trace of Beantown in that voice. Probably a fed. Minted in Kansas or somewhere, trained down in Quantico and then sent up here. Patrick decided to play along as long as he could. He tried to open the door but it was locked. The guy unlocked it, moved his briefcase to the back seat, and Patrick got in.
“You’re a bit away from Center Plaza, aren’t you?” Patrick said.
“Maybe,” he said. “Except I don’t know where or what Center Plaza is.”
“So you’re not with the Bureau. Who are you with?”
The man hesitated again, kept that left hand in his lap, then nodded like he’d decided to take a flier.
“LAPD,” he said. “I was going to check in with you guys later today.”
“And what brings the LAPD out to JP?”
“JP?”
“Jamaica Plain. Can I see some ID?”
He pulled a badge wallet out and flipped it open so Patrick could study the detective’s badge and the ID. His name was Hieronymus Bosch.
“Some name you’ve got. How do you say that?”
“Harry’s good.”
“Okay. What are you doing here, Harry?”
“How about you? That chain around your neck isn’t attached to a badge.”
“No?”