The door was suddenly flung open, startling Bosch. He almost turned the handle on the cane to pull out the blade but he held back. The counterman entered, carrying everything the driver had left with. He threw the clothes into Bosch’s lap and dropped the backpack off his shoulder to the floor with a thud.
“You get dress,” he said. “No gun, no phone.”
“What are you talking about?” Bosch said. “I paid for those. They’re mine. You can’t just take them.”
Bosch stood up, letting his clothes drop to the floor. He held the cane halfway down the barrel like he was ready to start cracking heads with it, unashamed of being naked.
“Get dress,” the counterman repeated. “No gun, no phone.”
“Fuck this,” Bosch said. “Give me my gun and give me my phone and I’m out of here.”
The counterman smirked.
“The boss come back, talk to you,” he said.
“Yeah, he better,” Bosch said. “I want to talk to him. This is bullshit.”
The Russian went back through the doorway and closed the door behind him. Bosch got dressed but took a fresh but still dirty T-shirt out of the backpack to put on as his first layer. He found the wallet in the backpack, chain still attached, and checked through it. He was able to determine that the seams in the partition where the GPS tracker was located had not been tampered with. He found his driver’s license and Medicare card missing, however.
Before he finished dressing, the door opened again, and this time both Russians entered. Bosch was on the chair lacing up one of his work boots. The counterman went to the far wall and leaned back in the corner with his arms folded as the driver stood front and center.
“We have work for you,” the driver said.
“You mean a job?” Bosch asked. “What can I tell you — I don’t work.”
The driver took a step toward him and Bosch braced himself this time. But the driver only held out a folded slip of paper. Bosch hesitated and then took it. He opened it to find it was a prescription slip. Dr. Efram Herrera’s name was printed at the top along with his required state and federal drug license numbers. Handwritten on the slip was a sixty-count prescription for oxycodone in eighty-milligram form. For a pill shill or a user it was the Holy Grail. For Bosch it was pay dirt. Not only did he have the makings of a case against the operators of the clinic, he had clearly gotten inside the wire.
“What’s this?” he asked. “You put me through all of this, punch me in the gut, and then just give me the scrip?”
The driver snatched the prescription back out of Bosch’s hand.
“You don’t want it, fine, we give it somebody else,” he said.
“Look, I want it, okay?” Bosch said. “I just want to know what the fuck is going on here.”
“We have business,” the driver said. “You want pills, you work. We share.”
“Share what?”
“Share pills. One for you, two for me, like that.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good deal for me. I think I’ll just—”
“Unlimited supply. We handle scrips, you pick up pills. Easy. We pay you one dollar for each. So, pills and money, do you say yes?”
“One dollar? I know a place I can get twenty.”
“We offer quantity. We have protection. We have beds.”
“Beds where?”
“You join, you see.”
Bosch looked at the man still leaning on the back wall. The message was clear. Join up or get beat down. Bosch put a look of resignation on his face.
“How long I gotta work?” he asked.
The driver shrugged.
“Nobody quits,” he said. “Money and pills too good.”
“Yeah, but what if I want to?”
“You want to quit, you quit. That’s it.”
Bosch nodded.
“Okay,” he said.
The driver walked out of the room. The counterman came over and handed Bosch his ID and Medicare card.
“You go now,” he said.
“Go where?” Bosch asked.
“The van. Out front.”
“Okay.”
The counterman pointed toward the door. Bosch grabbed his backpack and cane from the floor and moved toward the door. He walked normally. He had the brace down below his knee.
Bosch went back through the clinic and out the front door, with the counterman behind him. The van was parked in front and the shills were climbing in through the side door. Bosch could see the driver behind the wheel, turned and staring at him through the door. He and Bosch both knew that this would be the moment he would bolt if he was going to. He looked around and then off across San Fernando Road toward the tower at Whiteman. He knew he was being watched from there and the ghost team was also stashed somewhere nearby. One quick fist pump into the air was the signal. If Bosch did that, they would come charging in to get him. And it would be the end of the whole operation.
He looked back at the driver. The last shill was climbing in and then it was Bosch’s turn. He shook his head like a man with no choice and climbed into the van. He pushed in on the bench seat behind the driver and sat next to a woman with a shaved head. He put his backpack in the space between the driver’s seat and the front passenger seat, which was empty.
The counterman slid the door shut with a bang and slapped the roof twice. The van pulled away from the curb. Everyone was silent, even the driver. Bosch leaned forward to get the best angle on the driver’s face.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To the next location,” the driver said.
“Where?”
“Don’t speak. Just do what you are told, old man.”
“Where’s my phone? I have a daughter I need to call.”
“No. Not anymore.”
The woman with the shaved head pushed her elbow into Bosch’s ribs. He turned to look at her. She just shook her head. Her dark eyes told him that there would be consequences for all of them if he continued to speak.
Bosch leaned back in the seat and stopped talking. He first made a quick look around the van. He counted eleven other people in the seats behind the driver. Many of them he recognized from the surveillance on Tuesday. Men and women: older, haggard, defeated. He lowered his chin to now mind his own business. He saw the hands of the woman next to him clasped tightly together on her lap. In the webbing between her left thumb and forefinger he saw a small tattoo of three stars by what looked like an amateur hand. The ink was dark, the points of the stars sharp, the tattoo not old like his own.
The van took the same route Bosch and Lourdes had watched it take earlier in the week. It drove through the gate into Whiteman and to the hangar where the jump plane waited. The van unloaded and the group started to board the plane through the jump door. Bosch held back, letting the woman climb past him to get out of the van.
“Whoa, wait a minute,” he yelled at the driver. “What the fuck is this?”
“This is the plane,” the driver said. “You get on.”
“Where the hell are we going? I didn’t sign up for this. Give me my scrip. I’m out of here.”
“No, you get on. Now.”
He reached down under his seat, and Bosch saw his arm muscles flex as he grasped something. He turned to look back at Bosch without revealing what it was. The message, though, was clear.
“Okay, okay,” Bosch said. “I’m getting on.”
He was the last one to board the plane. There were benches running lengthwise down both sides of the interior, with seat belts hanging loose. People were buckling in. Bosch saw an open space next to the woman with the stars and took it, this time on her left side.