“Did you see the story in the paper?” he asked.
“Yes, it makes me feel so sad to see that.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it makes it all real to me. I had pushed it away.”
“I’m sorry but it is going to help us. I promise. I’m glad you did it. Thank you.”
“Whatever will help I want to do.”
“Thank you, Muriel. Listen, I wanted to tell you that I located your husband. I spoke to him yesterday morning.”
There was a long silence before she spoke.
“Really? Where is he?”
“Down on Fifth Street. He runs a soup kitchen for the homeless. He serves breakfast to them. It’s called the Metro Shelter. I thought you might want to know.”
Again a silence. Bosch guessed she wanted to ask him questions and he was willing to wait.
“You mean he works there?”
“Yes. He’s sober now. He said it’s been three years. I guess he first went there for a meal and he’s sort of worked his way up. He runs the kitchen now. And it’s good food. I ate there yesterday.”
“I see.”
“Um, I have a number that he gave me. It’s not a direct line. He doesn’t have a phone in his room. But it’s in the kitchen and he’s there in the mornings. He said it slows down after about nine.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want the number, Muriel?”
This question was followed by the longest silence of all. Bosch finally answered the question himself.
“I’ll tell you what, Muriel. I’ve got the number, and if you ever want it you can just call me. Is that okay?”
“That would be fine, Detective. Thank you.”
“No problem. I’m going to go now. We’re hoping something breaks on the case today.”
“Please call me.”
“It will be the first call I make.”
After hanging up, Bosch realized that talking about breakfast had made him hungry. It was now almost noon and he hadn’t eaten anything since the steak at Musso’s the night before. He decided that he would go into the bedroom and rest for a while and then have a late lunch before reporting for the surveillance. He would go over to Dupar’s in Studio City. It was on the way out to Northridge. Pancakes were the perfect surveillance food. He would order a full stack of buttered pancakes and they would sit in his stomach like clay and keep him full all night if necessary.
In the bedroom he lay on his back and shut his eyes. He tried to think of the case but his mind wandered to the drunken time he got the tattoo put on his arm in a dirty studio in Saigon. As he drifted off to sleep he remembered the man with the needle and his smile and his body odor. He remembered the man had said, “Are you sure? Remember, you’ll be marked forever with this.”
Bosch had smiled back and said, “I already am.”
Then in his dream the man’s smiling face turned into Vicki Landreth’s face. She had red lipstick smeared across her mouth. She held up a buzzing tattoo needle.
She said, “Are you ready, Michael?”
He said, “I’m not Michael.”
She said, “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter who you are. Everybody’s dodging the needle. But nobody gets away.”
28
KIZ RIDER WAS already at the meeting spot when Bosch got there. He got out of his car and brought the murder book and the other files to her car, a nondescript white Taurus.
“You have any room in your trunk?” he asked before getting in.
“It’s empty. Why?”
“Pop it. I forgot to leave my spare tire at home.”
He went back to his car, a Mercedes-Benz SUV, and took the spare tire out of the back and transferred it to Rider’s trunk. Using a screwdriver from the tool kit he removed the license plates from his car and put them in the trunk as well. He then got in with her and they drove up Tampa to the plaza shopping center across from the service station where Mackey worked. The day team, Marcia and Jackson, were waiting in their car in the lot.
The space next to them was open and Rider pulled in. Everybody put down their windows so they could talk and transfer the two rovers without having to get out of their cars. Bosch took the radios but knew he and Rider wouldn’t use them.
“Well?” Bosch asked.
“Well, nothing,” Jackson said. “Seems like we’re pumping a dry hole here, Harry.”
“Nothing at all?” Rider asked.
“There has been absolutely no indication at all that he’s seen the paper or that anybody he knows has seen it. We checked with the sound room twenty minutes ago and this guy hasn’t even gotten a phone call, let alone one about this. He hasn’t even had a tow call since he came on.”
Bosch nodded. He wasn’t concerned yet. Sometimes things needed a little push and that was what he was ready to do.
“I hope you’ve got a good plan, Harry,” Marcia called over. He was in the driver’s side of their car and Bosch was furthest away on the passenger side of Rider’s car.
“You want to stick around?” Bosch replied. “No use waiting on it if there hasn’t been any action. I’m ready to go.”
Jackson nodded.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “You going to need backup?”
“I doubt it. I’m just going to plant a seed. But you never know. It couldn’t hurt.”
“All right. We’ll watch anyway. Just in case, what’s your flare going to be?”
Bosch hadn’t thought about how he would send up a flare if things went wrong and he had to call in backup.
“I guess I’ll hit the horn,” he said. “Or you’ll hear the shots.”
He smiled and everybody nodded and then Rider backed out of the space and they headed back down Tampa to his car.
“You sure about this?” Rider asked as she pulled in next to the Mercedes.
“I’m sure.”
He had noticed on the way over that she had brought an accordion file with her. It was on the armrest between the seats.
“What’s this?”
“Since you woke me up early I decided to go to work. I traced down the other five members of the Chatsworth Eights.”
“Great work. Any of them still local?”
“Two of them are still around. But it looks like they have grown out of their so-called youthful indiscretions. No records. They’ve got pretty decent jobs.”
“What about the others?”
“The only one that still seems like he’s a believer in the cause is a guy named Frank Simmons. Moved down here from Oregon when he was in high school. A couple years later he joins the Eights. He now lives in Fresno. But he did a two-year bit in Obispo for selling machine guns.”
“I might be able to use that. When was he there?”
“Hold on a second.”
She opened her file and dug through it until she came up with a slim manila folder with the name Frank Simmons on it. She opened it and showed Bosch a prison mug shot of Simmons.
“Six years ago,” she said. “He got out six years ago.”
Bosch studied the photo, committing the details of Simmons’s look to memory. He had dark short hair and dark eyes. His skin was very pale and his face was tracked with acne scars. He tried to cover these with a goatee that would also make him look tougher.
“Where was the case, here?” he asked.
“No, actually, it was from Fresno. He apparently moved up there after the troubles down here.”
“Who was he selling the machine guns to?”
“I called the FBI office up there, talked to the agent. He didn’t want to cooperate with me until he checked me out. I’m still waiting for the callback.”
“Great.”
“I got the feeling that Mr. Simmons is still of active interest to the bureau up there and the agent wasn’t into sharing.”
Bosch nodded.
“Where was Simmons living at the time of the Verloren thing?”
“Can’t tell. He was one of the younger ones, so he was probably living with his parents. AutoTrack doesn’t trace him back further than ’ninety. By then he was in Fresno.”