“The FBI.”
“You know something I don’t know?”
“I haven’t exactly been sitting on my ass. They say when the bureau took it or why?”
“They weren’t told why. FBI agent just came in with the warrant and took it. Checked it out last September and hasn’t brought it back since. Didn’t give a reason. The Fucking-B-I doesn’t have to.”
Bosch was quiet while he thought about this. They knew all along. Wish knew about Meadows and the tunnels and everything else he had just told her. It had all been a show.
“Harry, you there?”
“Yeah, listen, did they show you a copy of the paperwork or know the name of the agent?”
“No, they couldn’t find the subpoena receipt and nobody remembered the agent’s name, except that she was a woman.”
“Take this number where I’m at. Go back to them in records and ask for another file, just see if it’s there. My file.”
He gave Edgar the pay phone number, his date of birth, social security number and his full name, spelling out his real first name.
“Jesus, that’s your first name?” Edgar said. “Harry for short. How’d your momma come up with that one?”
“She had a thing about fifteenth-century painters. It goes with the last name. Go check on the file, then call me back. I’ll wait here.”
“I can’t even pronounce it, man.”
“Rhymes with ‘anonymous.’”
“Okay, I’ll try that. Where you at, anyway?”
“A pay phone. Outside the FBI.”
Bosch hung up before his partner could ask any questions. He lit a cigarette and leaned on the phone booth while watching a small group of people walking in a circle on the long green lawn in front of the building. They were holding up homemade signs and placards that protested a proposal to open new oil leases in Santa Monica Bay. He saw signs that said Just Say No to Oil and Isn’t the Bay Polluted Enough? and United States of Exxon and so on.
He noticed a couple of TV news crews on the lawn filming the protest. That was the key, he thought. Exposure. As long as the media showed up and put it on the six o’clock news, the protest was a success. A sound-bite success. Bosch noticed that the group’s apparent spokesman was being interviewed on camera by a woman he recognized from Channel 4. He also recognized the spokesman but he wasn’t sure from where. After a few moments of watching the man’s ease during the interview in front of the camera, Bosch placed him. The guy was a TV actor who used to play a drunk on a popular situation comedy that Bosch had seen once or twice. Though the guy still looked like a drunk, the show wasn’t on anymore.
Bosch was on his second cigarette, leaning on the phone booth and beginning to feel the heat of the day, when he looked up at the glass doors of the building and saw Agent Eleanor Wish walking through. She was looking down and digging a hand through her purse and hadn’t noticed him. Quickly and without analyzing why, he ducked behind the phones and, using them as a shield, moved around them as she walked by. It was sunglasses she had been looking for in the purse. Now she had them on as she walked past the protestors without even a glance in their direction. She headed up Veteran Avenue to Wilshire Boulevard. Bosch knew the federal garage was under the building. Wish was walking in the opposite direction. She was going somewhere nearby. The phone rang.
“Harry, they have your file, too. The FBI. What’s going on?”
Edgar’s voice was urgent and confused. He didn’t like waves. He didn’t like mysteries. He was a straight nine-to-five man.
“I don’t know what’s going on, they wouldn’t tell me,” Bosch replied. “You head into the office. We’ll talk there. If you get there before me, I want you to make a call over to the subway project. Personnel. See if they had Meadows working there. Try under the name Fields, too. Then just do the paper on the TV stabbing. Like we said. Keep your end of our deal. I’ll meet you there.”
“Harry, you told me you knew this guy, Meadows. Maybe we should tell Ninety-eight it’s a conflict, that we ought to turn the case over to RHD or somebody else on the table.”
“We’ll talk about it in a little while, Jed. Don’t do anything or talk to anybody about it till I get there.”
Bosch hung up the phone and walked off toward Wilshire. He could see Wish already had turned east toward Westwood Village. He closed the distance between them, crossed to the other side of the street and followed behind. He was careful not to get too close, so that his reflection would not be in the shop windows she was looking in as she walked. When she reached Westwood Boulevard she turned north and crossed Wilshire, coming to Bosch’s side of the street. He ducked into a bank lobby. After a few moments he went back out on the sidewalk and she was gone. He looked both ways and then trotted up to the corner. He saw her a half block up Westwood, going into the village.
Wish slowed in front of some shop windows and came to a stop in front of a sporting goods store. Bosch could see female manikins in the window, dressed in lime-green running shorts and shirts. Last year’s fad on sale today. Wish looked at the outfits for a few moments and then headed off, not stopping until she was in the theater district. She turned into Stratton’s Bar & Grill.
Bosch, on the other side of the street, passed the restaurant without looking and went up to the next corner. He stood in front of the Bruin, below the old theater’s marquee, and looked back. She hadn’t come out. He wondered if there was a rear door. He looked at his watch. It was a little early for lunch but maybe she liked to beat the crowd. Maybe she liked to eat alone. He crossed the street to the other corner and stood below the canopy of the Fox Theater. He could see through the front window of Stratton’s but didn’t see her. He walked through the parking lot next to the restaurant and into the rear alley. He saw a public access door at the back. Had she seen him and used the restaurant to slip away? It had been a long while since he had been on a one-man tail, but he didn’t think she had made him. He headed down the alley and went in the back door.
Eleanor Wish was sitting alone in the row of wooden booths along the restaurant’s right wall. Like any careful cop she sat facing the front door, so she didn’t see Bosch until he slid onto the bench across from her and picked up the menu she had already scanned and dropped on the table.
He said, “Never been here, anything good?”
“What is this?” she said, surprise clearly showing on her face.
“I don’t know, I thought you might want some company.”
“Did you follow me? You followed me.”
“At least I’m being up front about it. You know, you made a mistake back at the office. You played it too cool. I walk in with the only lead you’ve had in nine months and you want to talk about liaisons and bullshit. Something wasn’t right but I couldn’t figure out what. Now I know.”