Bosch looked around and realized it was a neighborhood of flag lots. When the neighborhood was first gridded decades before, the properties were cut into large pieces because they were meant to be horse ranches and small vegetable farms. Then the city grew out to the neighborhood and the horses and vegetables were crowded out. The lots were cut up, one property up front on the street and a narrow driveway running down the side of it to the property in the back-the flag-shaped lot.
It made observation difficult. Bosch crept down the long driveway, watching both the house on the front property and Mackey’s house on the back piece. Mackey had parked his Camaro next to a beat-up Ford 150 pickup. It meant Mackey might have a roommate.
When he got closer Bosch stopped to write down the tag number on the F150. He noticed an old bumper sticker on the pickup that said WOULD THE LAST AMERICAN TO LEAVE L.A. PLEASE BRING THE FLAG. It was just one more small brushstroke on what Bosch felt was an emerging picture.
As quietly as he could, Bosch walked down a stone pathway that ran alongside the house. The house was built on knee-high footings which put the windows too far up for him to see in. When he got to the back of the house he heard voices and then realized it was television when he saw the undulating blue glow on the shades of the back room. He started to cross the backyard when suddenly his phone started to chirp. He quickly reached for it and cut off the sound. At the same time he moved quickly back down the pathway and to the driveway. He then ran up the driveway toward the street. He listened for any sound behind him but heard none. When he made it to the street he looked back at the house but saw nothing that gave him reason to believe the chirping from his phone had been heard inside the house above the sounds of the television.
Bosch knew it had been a close call. He was out of breath. He walked back to his car, trying to gather himself and recover from the near disaster. As with the badly handled interview with Daniel Kotchof, he knew he was showing signs of rust. He had forgotten to mute his phone before creeping the house. It was a mistake that could have blown everything and maybe put him into a confrontation with an investigative target. Three years ago, before he had left the job, it would never have happened. He started thinking about what Irving had said about his being a retread that would come apart at the seams, that would blow out.
Inside the car he checked the caller ID list on his phone and saw that the call had come from Kiz Rider. He called her back.
“Harry, I checked my call list and saw you had called me a little while ago. I had my phones off. What’s up?”
“Nothing much. I was checking in to see how it was going.”
“Well, it’s going. I’ve got it all structured and most of the writing done. I’ll finish tomorrow morning, then I’ll start it through the channels.”
“Good.”
“Yeah, I’m about to call it a night. What about you? Did you find Robert Verloren?”
“Not yet. But I’ve got an address for you. I followed Mackey after he left work. He’s got a little house by the freeway in Woodland Hills. There might be a phone line in there that you’ll want to add to the tap.”
“Good. Give me the address. That should be easy enough to check. But I’m not sure I want you following the suspect alone. That’s not smart, Harry.”
“We had to find his address.”
He wasn’t going to tell her about the near miss. He gave her the address and waited a moment while she wrote it down.
“I’ve got some other stuff, too,” he said. “I made some calls.”
“You’ve been busy for just a day back on the job. What’ve you got?”
He recounted the phone calls he made and received after she had left the office. Rider asked no questions and then was silent after he finished.
“That brings you up to date,” Bosch said. “What do you think, Kiz?”
“I think there might be a picture coming together, Harry.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Plus, the year, nineteen eighty-eight. I think you were onto something about that. Maybe these assholes were trying to prove a point in ’eighty-eight. The problem is, it all went under the door at PDU. Who knows where all of that stuff ended up. Irving probably dumped it in the evidence incinerator at the ESB.”
“Not all of it. When the new chief came in he wanted a full assessment of everything. He wanted to know where the bodies were buried. Anyway, I wasn’t involved in that but I knew about it and I heard that a lot of the PDU files were kept after the unit was disbanded. A lot of it Irving put in Special Archives.”
“Special Archives? What the hell is that?”
“It just means limited access. You need command approval. It’s all in the basement at Parker Center. It’s mostly in-house investigations. Political stuff. Dangerous stuff. This Chatsworth business doesn’t really seem to qualify, unless it was connected to something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like somebody in the department or somebody in the city.”
The latter meant someone powerful in city politics.
“Can you get in there and see if any files on this still exist? What about your pal on six? Maybe he’d -”
“I can try.”
“Then try.”
“First thing. What about you? I thought you were going out to find Robert Verloren tonight, and now I hear you were following our suspect.”
“I went down there. I didn’t find him.”
He proceeded to update her on his earlier swing through the Toy District, leaving out his encounter with the would-be robbers. That incident and the phone fiasco behind Mackey’s house were not things he cared to share with her.
“I’ll go back out there tomorrow morning,” he said in conclusion.
“Okay, Harry. Sounds like a plan. I should have the warrant together by the time you get in. And I’ll check on the PDU files.”
Bosch hesitated but then decided not to hold back any warnings or concerns with his partner. He looked out the windshield at the dark street. He could hear the hiss from the nearby freeway.
“Kiz, be careful.”
“How do you mean, Harry?”
“You know what it means when a case has high jingo?”
“Yeah, it means it’s got command staff’s fingers in the pie.”
“That’s right.”
“And so?”
“So be careful. This thing has Irving all over it. It’s not that obvious but it’s there.”
“You think his little visit with you at the coffee counter wasn’t coincidence?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences. Not like that.”
There was silence for a bit before Rider answered.
“Okay, Harry, I’ll watch myself. No holding back, though, right? We take it where it goes and let the chips fall. Everybody counts or nobody counts, remember?”
“Right. I remember. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good night, Harry.”
She hung up and Bosch sat in the car for a long time before turning the key.
19
BOSCH STARTED THE ENGINE, pulled a slow U-turn on Mariano and drove by the driveway that led to Mackey’s house. It appeared to be all quiet down there. He saw no lights behind the windows.
He cut over to the freeway and took it east across the Valley and then down into the Cahuenga Pass. On the way he used his cell phone to call central dispatch and run the plate off the Ford pickup that Mackey had parked next to. It came back registered to a William Burkhart, who was thirty-seven years old and had a criminal record dating back to the late 1980s but nothing else in fifteen years. The dispatcher gave Bosch the California penal code numbers for his arrests because that’s how they were listed on the computer.
Bosch immediately recognized aggravated assault and receiving stolen property charges. But there was one charge in 1988 with a code that he didn’t recognize.