He checked the clock as he was pulling out onto Wilcox and saw it was ten-thirty. He knew it was late but he decided to make one last call before going home. As he drove through Laurel Canyon to the Valley, he kept thinking about the man in the walk-in closet and how he had turned his face away, wishing not to be seen. Working homicide for so many years, Bosch could not be surprised anymore by the horrors people inflicted on each other. But the horrors people saved for themselves were a different story.
He took Ventura Boulevard west to Sherman Oaks. It was a busy Saturday night. On the other side of the hill the city could be a tinderbox of tensions but on the main drag in the Valley the bars and coffee shops seemed full. Bosch saw the red-coated valets running to get cars in front of Pinot Bistro and the other upscale restaurants that lined the boulevard. He saw teenagers cruising with the top down. Everyone was oblivious to the seething hatred and anger that churned in other parts of the city – beneath the surface like an undiscovered fault line waiting to open up and swallow all above.
At Kester he turned north and then made a quick turn into a neighborhood of tract houses sandwiched between the boulevard and the Ventura Freeway. The houses were small and with no distinct style. The hiss of the freeway was always present. They were cops’ houses except they cost between four and five hundred thousand dollars and few cops could afford them. Bosch’s old partner Frankie Sheehan had bought early and bought well. He was sitting on a quarter of a million dollars in equity. His retirement plan, if he made it to retirement.
Bosch pulled to the curb in front of Sheehan’s house and left the car running. He got out his phone, looked up Sheehan’s number in his phone book, and made the call. Sheehan picked up after two rings, his voice alert. He’d been awake.
“Frankie, it’s Harry.”
“My man.”
“I’m out front. Why don’t you come out and we’ll take a drive.”
“Where to?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Silence.
“Frankie?”
“Okay, give me a couple minutes.”
Bosch put the phone away and reached into his coat pocket for a smoke that wasn’t there.
“Damn,” he said.
While he waited he thought about the time he and Sheehan were looking for a drug dealer suspected of having wiped out a rival’s operation by going into a rock house with an Uzi and killing everyone in it – six people, customers and dealers alike.
They’d repeatedly pounded on the door of the suspect’s apartment but no one answered. They were thinking about their options when Sheehan heard a tiny voice from inside the apartment saying, “Come in, come in.” They knocked on the door once again and called out that it was the police. They waited and listened. Again the voice called out, “Come in, come in.”
Bosch tried the knob and it turned. The door was unlocked. Assuming combat stance they entered the apartment only to find it empty – except for a large green parrot in a cage in the living room. And lying right there in full view on a kitchen table was an Uzi submachine gun broken down and ready for cleaning. Bosch walked over to the door and knocked on it once again. The parrot called out, “Come in, come in.”
A few minutes later, when the suspect returned from the hardware store with the gun oil he needed to finish his work on the Uzi, he was arrested. Ballistics matched the gun to the killings and he was convicted after a judge refused to throw out the fruits of the search. Though the defendant claimed the entry of the apartment was without permission and unlawful, the judge ruled that Bosch and Sheehan were acting in good faith when they acted on the invitation from the parrot. The case was still winding its way through the nation’s appellate courts, while the killer remained in jail.
The Jeep’s front passenger door opened and Sheehan got into the car.
“When did you get this ride?” he asked.
“When they made me start driving a slickback.”
“Oh, yeah, forgot about that.”
“Yeah, you RHD bigshots don’t have to worry about that shit.”
“So, what’s up? You got your ass out in the wind on this case, don’t you?”
“Yeah, it’s out there. How’re Margaret and the girls doing?”
“They’re all fine. What are we doing? Riding, talking, what?”
“I don’t know. Is that Irish place still over on Van Nuys?”
“No, that one’s gone. Tell you what, go on up to Oxnard and go right. There’s a little sports bar down there.”
Bosch pulled away from the curb and started following the directions.
“I was just thinking about the Polly-wants-an-Uzi case,” he said.
Sheehan laughed.
“That one still cracks me up. I can’t believe it’s shot the rapids this far. I hear the douche bag’s down to one last shot – El Supremo Court.”
“It’ll make it. It woulda got shot down by now if it wasn’t going to fly – no pun intended.”
“Well, what’s it been, eight years? We got our money’s worth, even if they do kick him loose.”
“Yeah, six murders, eight years. Sounds fair.”
“Six douche bags.”
“You still like saying douche bag, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I’m partial to it. So you didn’t come over the hill to talk about parrots and douche bags and old times, did you?”
“No, Frankie. I need to ask you about the Kincaid thing.”
“Why me?”
“Why do you think? You were lead detective.”
“Everything I know is in the files. You should be able to get them. You’re lead on Elias.”
“I got ’em. But the files don’t always have everything in them.”
Sheehan pointed to a red neon sign and Bosch pulled over. There was a parking place at the curb right outside the bar’s door.
“This place is always pretty dead,” Sheehan said. “Even Saturday nights. I don’t know how the guy makes it by. Must be taking numbers or selling weed on the side.”
“Frankie,” Bosch said, “between you and me, I gotta know about the fingerprints. I don’t want to be chasing my tail out there. I mean, I got no reason to doubt you. But I want to know if you heard anything, you know what I mean?”
Sheehan got out of the Cherokee without a word and walked to the door. Bosch watched him go in and then got out himself. Inside, the place was just about empty. Sheehan was sitting at the bar. The bartender was drawing a beer off the tap. Bosch took the stool next to his former partner and said, “Make it two.”
Bosch took out a twenty and put it on the bar. Sheehan still hadn’t looked at him since he had asked the question.
The bartender put down the frosted mugs on napkins that advertised a Superbowl party almost three months before. He took Bosch’s twenty and went down to the cash register. In unison Bosch and Sheehan took long pulls on their drinks.
“Ever since O.J.,” Sheehan said.
“What’s that?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Ever since the Juice, nothing is solid anymore. No evidence, no cop, nothing. You can take anything you want into a courtroom and there still will be somebody who can tear it to shreds, drop it on the floor and piss on it. Everybody questions everything. Even cops. Even partners.”
Bosch took more of his beer before saying anything.
“I’m sorry, Frankie. I got no reason to doubt you or the prints. It’s just that weeding through this Elias stuff, it looks like he was going into court next week with the idea of proving who killed the girl. And he wasn’t talking about Harris. Somebody – ”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. But I’m trying to look at it from his side of things. If he had somebody other than Harris, then how the hell did these prints end up on – ”
“Elias was a fucking mutt. And as soon as they get him in the ground I’m gonna go out there one night and do my granddaddy’s Irish jig on his grave. Then I’m gonna piss on it and never think about Elias again. All I can say is that it’s too fucking bad Harris wasn’t with him on that train. Goddamned murderer. That would have been hitting the quinella, the both of them being put down together.”