He leaned in close, his breath sour in Bosch’s face.
“Take off clothes, old man. Now.”
Bosch raised his hands up until his knuckles were against the wall.
“Okay, okay. No problem.”
The driver stepped back. Bosch started by pulling off his jacket.
“And then I see the doctor, right?” he asked.
The driver ignored the question.
“Put clothes on the floor,” he said.
“No problem,” Bosch said. “And then the doctor, right?”
“The doctor will come.”
Bosch sat on the chair to unstrap the brace and remove it. Then his work boots and dirty socks. He started peeling off the three layers of shirts. The DEA code name given to his UC personality and the whole operation was Dirty Denim and it fit. His DEA handler had at first objected to the knee brace and cane but eventually gave in to Bosch’s wish to put a little bit of his own spin on the character. The handler of course wasn’t aware of the weapon hidden in the cane.
Soon Bosch had peeled away the layers and was down to his boxer shorts and one dirty and sweat-stained T-shirt. He dropped his jeans on the pile of clothes after disconnecting the chain and keeping the wallet in his hand.
“No,” the driver said. “Everything.”
“When I see the doctor,” Bosch said.
He stood his ground. The driver stepped closer. Bosch was expecting more words but instead the man’s right fist shot out, and Bosch took a hard punch into his lower stomach. He immediately doubled over and brought his arms in for protection, expecting more. His wallet fell to the floor, its chain rattling on the dirty linoleum. Instead, the driver grabbed Bosch by the hair and leaned down to speak directly into his right ear.
“No, clothes off now. Or we kill you.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. Clothes off.”
Bosch tried to straighten up but needed to put a hand on the wall to steady himself. He pulled off the T-shirt and threw it onto the pile, then dropped the boxers and kicked them to the pile as well. He spread his arms, displaying himself.
“Okay?” he said.
The driver was looking at the tattoo on Bosch’s upper arm. It was barely recognizable after nearly fifty years — a tunnel rat holding a pistol, a Latin slogan above it, “Cu Chi” below it.
“What is Cu Chi?” he asked.
“A place,” Bosch said. “Vietnam.”
“You were in the war?”
“That’s right.”
Bosch felt bile rising in his throat from the punch.
“They shot you, the communists?” the driver asked.
He pointed to the scar from a gunshot wound on Bosch’s shoulder. Bosch decided to stick to the script that he had been given for the character.
“No,” he said. “The police did that. Back here.”
“Sit,” the driver said.
He pointed to the chair. Keeping one hand on the wall for balance, Bosch made his way over and sat down, the plastic cold against his skin.
The driver crouched down, grabbed the backpack and slung it over one shoulder. He then started gathering the pile of Bosch’s clothes. He left the cane on the floor.
“You wait,” he said.
“What are you doing?” Bosch said. “Don’t take my—”
He didn’t finish. The driver was heading for the door.
“You wait,” he said again.
He opened the door and was gone. Bosch sat naked on the chair. He leaned forward and gathered his arms in close. Not for modesty or warmth. The position eased the pain in his gut. He wondered if the punch from the driver had torn muscle tissue or damaged internal organs. It had been a long time since he had taken a punch unguarded like that. He chastised himself for not having been ready for it.
He knew, however, that except for the punch, things had gone exactly as planned. Bosch guessed that the driver and the other Russian were probably going through the clothes he had been wearing and the contents of the wallet and backpack.
In addition to the very valid-looking driver’s license, the wallet had various pieces of identification with a variety of names on them, all exemplars of things a drifter addict might carry in order to help him scam the next hit and next prescription. There was also a worn photo of a woman long out of Dominic Reilly’s life as well as cards and notes about other clinics scattered across Southern California.
The backpack had been completely designed to be searched and to help convince those who looked through its contents of Dominic Reilly’s legitimacy as a drifter addict. They would find the paraphernalia of opiate addiction — over-the-counter laxatives and stool softeners — as well as a gun wrapped in a T-shirt and secreted at the bottom of one of the compartments. They would also find a burner cell complete with fake text files and call log.
It was all put together by careful design. Reilly carried the things a drifter would have. The gun was an old revolver missing one of its grips. It was loaded but the firing pin had been filed down so that it could not function as a firearm. It was anticipated that it would be confiscated as Bosch hopefully worked his way into the Santos operation, but the DEA did not want to be responsible for giving a functioning weapon to the enemy. There was no telling how that could come back at the agency later. The reputation of the ATF was still recovering from an undercover program that ended up putting weapons in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
Most important, the backpack contained a plastic pill vial with the name Dominic Reilly on the prescription label. It would have a West Valley pharmacy listed as the provider and the prescribing doctor as Kenneth Vincent of Woodland Hills. These would come back as legitimate if checked out. There would be only two pills in the vial, Reilly’s last two eighty-milligram doses of generic oxycodone. They would help make clear why he had come to the clinic in Pacoima.
The backpack also contained a pill crusher made out of an old fountain pen, which could serve double-duty as a sniffer — place the pill inside, turn the barrel to grind it to dust, remove the top, and snort. Powdered oxycodone produced the best high, and crushing pills defeated the manufacturer’s time-release additives.
It was all there in the backpack, the complete persona. The only thing Bosch had to worry about at the moment was the wallet and chain. The wallet contained a GPS transmitter secreted within one of its leather bifolds. The attached security chain was both an antenna and a rescue switch. If it was pulled loose from the wallet, it would add an emergency code to the GPS pulse and bring the DEA’s ghost team crashing in.
Bosch hoped that wouldn’t happen. He didn’t want the ghost team to descend on the clinic and end his mission before it had actually even started.
Bosch sat patiently on the plastic chair, naked and waiting to find out.
23
By Bosch’s estimate, more than an hour went by without anyone coming into the room. Several times he heard voices or movement from the hallway but no one opened the door. He reached to the floor and grabbed the cane, holding it across his thighs with the curved handle near his left hand.
The minutes went by like hours but still Bosch’s mind raced. His attention was focused on his daughter and on his decision not to call her to say he would be out of contact for a while. He didn’t want her to worry or ask him questions. He realized in choosing not to call and tell her, he had robbed himself of what might be a last conversation with the most important person in his world. Realizing his mistake, he vowed to himself that it wouldn’t matter. That he would do everything possible to return to his life and make his first call one to her.