Eleanor noticed her nakedness and walked over to a lounge chair to get her robe. After it was on she went into the bathroom and closed the door. Bosch heard water running. The other end of the line was picked up halfway through the first ring. Jerry Edgar didn’t answer with a hello, just “Harry, where you at?”
“I’m not home. What is it?”
“This kid you were looking for, the one on the nine one one call, you found him, right?”
“Yeah, but we’re looking for him again.”
“Who’s ‘we’-you and the feebee woman?”
Eleanor came out of the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the bed next to him.
“Jerry, what are you calling me for?” Bosch asked. He was beginning to get a sinking feeling in his chest.
“What’s the kid’s name?”
Bosch was in a daze. It had been months since he had fallen so deeply asleep, only to be rousted out of it. He couldn’t remember Sharkey’s real name and he didn’t want to ask Eleanor because Edgar might hear and then know they were together. Harry looked at Eleanor and when she began to speak, he touched his finger to her lips and shook his head.
“Is it Edward Niese?” Edgar spoke into the silence. “That the kid’s name?”
The sinking feeling was gone. Bosch felt an invisible fist pressing up under his ribs and into the folds of his guts and heart.
“Right,” he said. “That’s the name.”
“You gave him one of your business cards?”
“Right.”
“Harry, you aren’t looking for him anymore.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Come on out and see for yourself. I’m over at the bowl. Sharkey’s in the pedestrian tunnel under Cahuenga. Park on the east side. You’ll see the cars.”
The Hollywood Bowl’s east parking lot was supposed to be empty at 4:30A.M. But as Bosch and Wish drove up Highland to the mouth of the Cahuenga Pass they saw that the north end of the lot was crowded with the usual grouping of official cars and vans that signal the violent, or at least unexpected, end of a life. There was yellow plastic crime scene tape strung in a square, boxing the entrance to the stairwell that went down to the pedestrian underpass. Bosch flashed his badge and gave his name to a uniform cop who was keeping the officers-on-the-scene list on a clipboard. He and Wish ducked under the tape and were met by the loud sound of an engine echoing from the mouth of the tunnel. Bosch knew by the sound that it was a generator making the juice for the crime scene lights. At the top step, before they began their descent, he turned to Eleanor and said, “You want to wait here? We don’t both have to go.”
“I’m a cop, for godsake,” she said. “I’ve seen bodies before. You going to get protective of me now, Bosch? Tell you what. Want me to go down and you stay up here?”
Startled by her abrupt change in mood, Bosch didn’t answer. He looked at her a moment longer, confused. He started down a few steps in front of her but stopped when he saw Edgar’s large body come out of the tunnel and start up the steps. Edgar saw Bosch, and then Bosch saw his eyes go over his shoulder and take Eleanor Wish in.
“Hey, Harry,” he said. “This your new partner? You must be getting along real fine already.”
Bosch just stared at him. Eleanor was still three steps behind and probably hadn’t heard the remark.
“Sorry, Harry,” Edgar said just loud enough to be heard over the roar from the tunnel. “Out of line. Been a bad night. You should see who I got for a new partner, the useless fuck Ninety-eight Pounds stuck me with.”
“I thought you were going to get-”
“Nope. Get this: Pounds put me with Porter from autos. The guy’s a burned-out lush.”
“I know. How’d you even get him out of bed for this?”
“He wasn’t in bed. I had to track him down at the Parrot up in North Hollywood. It’s one of them private bottle clubs. Porter gives me the number when we’re first introduced as partners and tells me that’s where he’ll be most nights. Tells me he works a security detail there. But I called the off-duty assignments office at Parker Center to check it out and they got no record. I know the only thing he does there is booze. He must’ve been practically passed out when I called. The bartender said the pager on his belt went off but he didn’t even hear it. Harry, I think the guy could blow a point two right now if we put a Breathalyzer on him.”
Bosch nodded and frowned the required three seconds and then put Jerry Edgar’s troubles aside. He felt Eleanor step down beside him and he introduced her to Edgar. They shook hands and smiled and Bosch said, “So, what have we got?”
“Well, we got these on the body,” Edgar said, and he held up a clear plastic bag. There was a short stack of Polaroids in it. More nude shots of Sharkey. He hadn’t wasted any time resupplying. Edgar turned the bag and there was Bosch’s business card.
“It looks like the kid was a hustler down in Boytown,” Edgar said, “but if you already pulled him in once you already know that. Anyway, I saw the card and figured he might be the kid from the nine one one call. If you want to come down and take a look, be my guest. We already processed the scene, so touch whatever you want. You can’t hear yourself think in there, though. Sombody went through and knocked out every light in the tunnel. Haven’t figured out whether that was the perp or the lights were knocked out before.
“Anyway, we had to set up our own. And our cables weren’t long enough to put the generator up here. It’s in there screaming like a five-horsepower baby.”
He turned to head back into the tunnel but Bosch reached out and touched his shoulder.
“Jed, how’d you get the call on this?”
“Anonymous. It wasn’t a nine one one line, so there’s no tape or trace. Came in right to the Hollywood desk. Caller was a male, that’s all the dipshit, one of those fat Explorer kids who took it, could tell us.”
Edgar turned back into the subway. Bosch and Wish followed. It was a long hallway that curved to the right. The floor was dirty concrete, its walls were white stucco with a heavy overlay of graffiti. Nothing like a dose of urban reality as you are leaving the symphony at the bowl, Bosch thought. The tunnel was dark except for the bright splash of light that bathed the crime scene about halfway in. There Bosch could see a human form sprawled on its back. Sharkey. He could see men standing and working in the light. Bosch walked with the fingers of his right hand trailing along the stuccoed wall. It steadied him. There was an old, damp smell in the tunnel that was mixed with the new odor of gasoline and exhaust from the generator. Bosch felt beads of sweat start to form on his scalp and under his shirt. His breathing was fast and shallow. They passed the generator thirty feet in and in another thirty feet or so Sharkey was lying on the tunnel floor under the brutal light of the strobes.
The boy’s head was propped against the tunnel wall at an unnatural angle. He seemed smaller and younger than Bosch remembered him. His eyes were half open and had the familiar glaze of the unseeing on them. He wore a black T-shirt that said Guns N Roses on it, and it was matted with his blood. The pockets of his faded jeans were pulled out and empty. At his side stood a can of spray paint in a plastic evidence bag. On the wall above his head a painted inscription read RIP Sharkey. The paint had been applied with an inexperienced hand and too much had been used. Black paint had run down the wall in thin lines, some of them into Sharkey’s hair.