She laughed and said, “You got it.”
“Okay. When and where do you want to meet?”
He looked at his watch. It was almost three.
“Maybe around six?” she said. “That would give me time to finish here and look through this package on your Juan Doe.”
“Should I come there?”
His pager began to chirp. He cut it off with a well-practiced move with his right hand to his belt.
“No, let’s see,” she said. “Can you meet me at the Red Wind? We can wait out the rush hour.”
“I’ll be there,” Harry said.
After hanging up he checked the number on his pager, recognized it as a pay phone exchange and dialed it.
“Bosch?” a voice said.
“Right.”
“Rickard. I worked with Cal Moore. The BANG unit?”
“Right.”
“I got something for you.”
Bosch didn’t say anything. He felt the hairs on the top of his hands and forearms begin to tingle. He tried to place the name Rickard with a face but couldn’t. The narcs kept such odd hours and were a breed unto themselves. He didn’t know who Rickard was.
“Or, I should say, Cal left something for you,” Rickard spoke into the silence. “You wanna meet? I don’t want this to go down in the station.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got my reasons. We can talk about that when I see you.”
“Where’s that gonna be?”
“You know a place on Sunset, the Egg and I? It’s a diner. Decent food. The hypes don’t hang out here.”
“I know it.”
“Good. We’re in the last booth in the back, right before the kitchen door. The table with the only black guy in the place. That’s me. There’s parking in the back. In the alley.”
“I know. Who’s ‘we’?”
“ Cal ’s whole crew is here.”
“That where you guys always hang out?”
“Yeah, before we hit the street. See ya soon.”
7
The restaurant’s sign had been changed since the last time he had been there. It was now theAll-American Egg and I, which meant it had probably been sold to foreigners. Bosch got out of his Caprice and walked through the back alley, looking at the spot where Juan Doe #67 had been dumped. Right outside the backdoor of a diner frequented by the local narc crew. His thoughts on the implications of this were interrupted by the panhandlers in the alley who came up to him shaking their cups. Bosch ignored them but their presence served to remind him of another shortcoming in Porter’s meager investigation. There had been nothing in the reports about vagrants in the alley being interviewed as possible witnesses. It would probably be impossible to track them down now.
Inside the restaurant, he saw four young men, one of them black, in a rear booth. They were sitting silently with their faces turned down to the empty coffee cups in front of them. Harry noticed a closed manila file on the table as he pulled a chair away from an empty table and sat at the end of the booth.
“I’m Bosch.”
“Tom Rickard,” the black one said. He put out his hand and then introduced the other three as Finks, Montirez and Fedaredo.
“We got tired of being around the office,” Rickard said. “ Cal used to like this place.”
Bosch just nodded and looked down at the file. He saw the name written on the tab was Humberto Zorrillo. It meant nothing to him. Rickard slid the file across the table to him.
“What is it?” Harry asked, not yet touching it.
“Probably the last thing he worked on,” Rickard said. “We were going to give it over to RHD but thought what the hell, he was working it up for you. And those boys down there at Parker are just trying to drag him through the shit. Ain’t going to help with that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they can’t let it be that the man killed himself. They hafta dissect his life and figure out exactly why he did this and why he done that. The man fucking killed himself. What else is there to say about it?”
“You don’t want to know why?”
“I already know why, man. The job. It will get us all in the end. I mean, I know why.”
Bosch just nodded again. The other three narcs still hadn’t said anything.
“I’m just letting off steam,” Rickard said. “Been one of those days. Longest fucking day of my life.”
“Where was this?” Harry asked, pointing to the file. “Didn’t RHD already go through his desk?”
“Yeah, they did. But that file wasn’t in it. See, Cal left it in one of the BANG cars-one of those undercover pieces of shit we use. In the pocket behind the front seat. We never noticed it during the week he was missing because today was the first time any of us rode in the back of the car. We usually take two cars out on operations. But today we all jumped in one for a cruise on the Boulevard after we came in and heard the news. I saw it shoved down into the pocket. It’s got a little note inside. Says to give it to you. We knew he was working on something for you ’cause of that night he peeled off early to go meet with you at the Catalina.”
Bosch still hadn’t opened the file. Just looking at it gave him an uneasy feeling.
“He told me that night at the Catalina that the shoeflies were on him. You guys know why?”
“No, man, we don’t know what was going down. We just know they were around. Like flies on shit. IAD went through his desk before RHD. They took files, his phone book, even took the fucking typewriter off the desk. That was the only one we had. But what it was about, we don’t know. The guy had a lot of years in and it burns my ass that they were gunning for him. That’s what I meant before about the job doing him in. It’ll get all of us.”
“What about outside the job? His past. His wife said-”
“I don’t want to hear about that shit. She’s the one who put the suits on him. Made up some story when he walked out and dropped the dime on him. She just wanted to bring him down, you ask me.”
“How do you know it was her?”
“ Cal told us, man. Said the shoeflies might come around asking questions. Told us it came from her.”
Bosch wondered who had been lying, Moore to his partners or Sylvia to himself. He thought about her for a moment and couldn’t see it, couldn’t see her dropping the dime. But he didn’t press it with the four narcs. He finally reached down and picked up the file. Then he left.
He was too curious to wait. He knew that he should not even have the file. That he should pick up a phone and call Frankie Sheehan at RHD. But he unconsciously took a quick look around the car to make sure he was alone and began to read. There was a yellow Post-it note on the first page.
Give to Harry Bosch.
It was not signed or dated. It was stuck to a sheet of paper with five green Field Interview cards held to it with a paper clip. Harry detached the FI cards and shuffled through them. Five different names, all males. Each had been stopped by members of the BANG unit in October or November. They were questioned and released. Each card held little more information than a description, home address, driver license number, and date and location of the shakedown. The names meant nothing to Bosch.
He looked at the sheet the cards had been attached to. It was markedINTERNAL MEMO and had a subheading that said BANG Intelligence Report #144. It was dated November 1 and had aFILED stamp mark on it that was dated two days after that.
In the course of gathering intelligence on narcotics activities in Reporting District 12 officers Moore, Rickard, Finks, Fedaredo and Montirez have conducted numerous field interrogations of suspects believed to be involved in drug sales in the area of Hollywood Boulevard. In recent weeks it has come to these officers’ attention the fact that individuals were involved in the sale of a drug known as “black ice” which is a narcotic combining heroin, cocaine and PCP in rock form. The demand for this drug remains low on the street at this time but its popularity is expected to increase. Officers assigned to this unit believe several transient-type individuals are engaged in the street level sale of “black ice.” Five suspects have been identified through investigation but no arrests have followed. The street sales network is believed to be directed by an individual whose identity is not known to officers at this time. Informants and users of “black ice” have revealed that the predominant form of the drug sold at street level in the reporting zone comes from Mexico, rather than Hawaii where ice originated-refer to DEA advisory 502-and still is imported to the mainland in large quantities. Reporting officers will contact DEA for intelligence on sources of this narcotic and will continue to monitor activities in RD12. Sgt. C. V. Moore #1101