“It’s too late for that,” he said. “You did the right thing. Now you have to live with it. That’s the funny thing about the courts. You decide to be brave and stick your neck out and they don’t let you back down from it.”
Chapter 21
Art Pepper was on the stereo and Bosch was on the telephone with Janis Langwiser when there was a knock on his screen door. He stepped into the hallway from the kitchen and saw a figure looking in through the mesh. Annoyed by the intrusion of a solicitor, he walked to the door and was about to simply close it without a word when he recognized the visitor as Terry McCaleb. Still on the phone and listening to Langwiser fume about possible witness tampering, he flicked on the outside light, opened the screen door and signaled McCaleb in.
McCaleb made a signal that he would be quiet until Bosch was off the call. Bosch watched him walk through the living room and step out onto the rear deck to look down at the lights of the Cahuenga Pass. He tried to concentrate on what Langwiser was saying but he was curious as to why McCaleb would drive all the way up into the hills to see him.
“Harry, are you listening?”
“Yeah. What was that last part?”
“I said do you think Shootin’ Houghton will delay the trial if we open up an investigation.”
Bosch didn’t have to think long to answer that.
“No way. The show must go on.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figure. I’m going to call Roger and see what he wants to do. Anyway, it’s the least of our worries. As soon as you mention Alicia Lopez on the stand there’s going to be a brutal fight.”
“I thought we already won that. Houghton ruled -”
“It doesn’t mean Fowkkes won’t try a new attack. We’re not clear yet.”
There was a pause. There had not been much confidence in her voice.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, Harry.”
“All right, Janis, I’ll see you.”
Bosch clicked the phone off and put it back in its cradle in the kitchen. When he stepped back out McCaleb was standing in the living room, looking at the shelves over the stereo, at a framed photograph of Bosch’s wife in particular.
“Terry, what’s up?”
“Hey, Harry, sorry to drop in unannounced like this. I didn’t have your home number to call first.”
“How’d you find the place? You want a beer or something?”
Bosch pointed to his chest.
“Can you have a beer?”
“I can now. Just got clearance, in fact. I can drink again. With moderation. A beer sounds good.”
Bosch went into the kitchen. McCaleb continued talking from the living room.
“I’ve been here before. You don’t remember?”
Bosch came out with two open bottles of Anchor Steam. He handed one to McCaleb.
“You need a glass? When were you here?”
McCaleb took the bottle.
“Cielo Azul.”
He took a long pull from the bottle, answering Bosch’s question about the glass.
Cielo Azul, Bosch thought and then he remembered. They had gotten drunk on the back porch once, both of them dulling the edges of a case that was too terrible to think deeply about with a sober mind. He remembered being embarrassed about it the next day, about how he had lost control and kept rhetorically asking in an alcohol-slowed voice, “Where is God’s hand, where is God’s hand?”
“Oh, yeah,” Bosch said. “One of my finer existential moments.”
“Yeah. Except the place is different now. The old one slide down the hill in the quake?”
“Just about. Red-tagged, the whole bit. Started over from the ground up.”
“Yeah, I didn’t recognize it. I drove up here looking for the old place. But then I saw the Shamu and figured there couldn’t be another cop in the neighborhood.”
Bosch thought about the black-and-white parked in the carport. He hadn’t bothered to take it to the station to exchange for his personal car. It would save him time in the morning by allowing him to drive straight to court. The car was a slickback – a black-and-white without the emergency lights on top. Detectives from the divisions used them as part of a program designed to make it look as if there were more cops on the street than there really were.
McCaleb reached over and clicked Bosch’s bottle with his own.
“To Cielo Azul,” he said.
“Yeah,” Bosch said.
He drank from the bottle. It was ice cold and good. His first beer since the start of the trial. He decided he would keep it to one, even if McCaleb pressed on.
“This your ex?” McCaleb asked, pointing to the photo on the shelves.
“My wife. Not my ex, yet – at least as far as I know. But I guess it’s heading that way.”
Bosch stared at the photo of Eleanor Wish. It was the only picture of her he had.
“That’s too bad, man.”
“Yeah. So what’s up, Terry? I’ve got some stuff I have to go over for -”
“I know, the trial. I’m sorry to intrude, man. I know that’s gotta be all-consuming. I just had a couple things on the Gunn case I wanted to clear up. But also I wanted to tell you something. I mean, show you, too.”
He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, opened it and took out a photo. He handed it to Bosch. The photo had taken on the contour line of the wallet. It showed a dark-haired baby in the arms of a dark-haired woman.
“That’s my daughter, Harry. And my wife.”
Bosch nodded and studied the photo. Both mother and child had dark hair and skin and were quite beautiful. He knew they were probably even more so to McCaleb.
“Beautiful,” he said. “The baby looks brand-new. So tiny.”
“She’s about four months now. That picture’s a month old, though. Anyway, I forgot to tell you yesterday at lunch. We named her Cielo Azul.”
Bosch’s eyes came up from the photo to McCaleb’s. They held for a moment and then he nodded.
“Nice.”
“Yeah, I told Graciela I wanted to do it and I told her why. She thought it was a good idea.”
Bosch handed the photo back.
“I hope someday the kid does, too.”
“Me, too. We call her CiCi most of the time. Anyway, remember that night up here, how you kept asking that question about the hand of God and how you couldn’t find it in anything anymore? That happened to me, too. I lost it. This kind of job… it’s hard not to. Then…”
He held up the photo.
“Here it is right here. I found it again. The hand of God. I see it in her eyes.”
Bosch looked at him for a long moment and then nodded.
“Good for you, Terry.”
“I mean, I’m not trying to come off like… I mean I’m not trying to convert you or anything. I’m just saying I found that thing that was missing. And I don’t know if you’re still looking for it… I just wanted to say, you know, that it is out there. Don’t give up.”
Bosch glanced away from McCaleb and out the glass doors to the darkness.
“For some people I’m sure it is.”
He drained his bottle and went into the kitchen to break his promise to himself to have only one. He called back to McCaleb to see if he was ready for a second but his visitor passed. As he bent into the open refrigerator he paused and closed his eyes as the cool air caressed his face. He thought about what McCaleb had just told him.
“You don’t think you are one of them?”
Bosch jerked up at the sound of McCaleb’s voice. He was standing in the kitchen’s doorway.
“What?”
“You said it was out there for some people. You don’t think you are one of them?”
Bosch took a beer out of the refrigerator and slid it into the bottle opener mounted on the wall. He snapped the bottle open and drank deeply from it before answering.
“What is this, Terry, twenty questions? You thinking of becoming a priest or something?”
McCaleb smiled and shook his head.
“Sorry, Harry. A new father, you know? I guess I want to tell the world, that’s all.”
“That’s nice. You want to talk about Gunn now?”