Bosch thanked the officer and disconnected. Five minutes later he was in his Jeep, following the winding road down to the 101. He took the freeway north, back into the Valley, and over to Van Nuys. He made a call along the way to Cisco, attempting to make arrangements for Elizabeth Clayton, if he could find her.
The jail from which Clayton and Brody had been released was located on the top floor of the LAPD’s Valley Bureau Headquarters, which anchored a mini — civic center, where local courthouses, a library, and satellite city hall and federal buildings were located at the edges of a public plaza.
Bosch parked on Van Nuys Boulevard at the western end of the plaza and started walking toward the Valley Bureau at the far end of the concrete-and-tree-lined concourse. It was a Sunday evening and the plaza was largely deserted except for the homeless strays who inhabited every parcel of public property in the city. Bosch could not remember the last time he had been in the plaza but thought it had been at least a couple of years. The bushes and shade trees around the contours of the buildings had all been cut back. Many had been replaced with palm trees that offered no cover. He knew this was a disguised effort to keep to a minimum the homeless population who were living in the plaza.
He checked every corner he passed and every homeless face that looked at him. He did not see Clayton or Brody. The library — usually a bastion for those with nowhere to go — was closed. Bosch covered one side of the plaza, until he got to the Valley Bureau building and then turned back and went down the other side. His search turned up nothing and he returned to his car.
Sitting behind the wheel, he thought about things and then called the number Jerry Edgar had given him when Bosch and Lourdes had visited his office. Edgar answered and it sounded like he had been asleep.
“Jerry, it’s Harry. You up?”
“Just taking a nap. I bet you took a long one.”
“Yeah, sort of, but I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“The woman you and Hovan arrested at the pharmacy yesterday with the others?”
“Yeah, with the shaved head.”
“Exactly. I wanted to talk to her. Bella said she got booked into Van Nuys. I just went there and they kicked her loose a couple hours ago.”
“Like I told you, Harry, this is not a high-priority crime. I don’t know what it will take. Maybe if a million people die from this, people will wake up and pay attention.”
“Right, I know. I got a question. Where would she go? She’s put out on the street in Van Nuys, needs a hit pretty bad by now, and she’s on foot.”
“Shit, man, I have no idea where she—”
“Did you book her?”
“Yeah, I did. Me and Hovan booked them all.”
“Did you go through her stuff? What did she have?”
“She had a fake ID, Harry. There was nothing there.”
“Right, right, I forgot. Shit.”
There was a pause before Edgar finally spoke.
“What do you need her for? She’s a lifer, man, I could tell.”
“It’s not like that. One of the guys you busted her with, Brody — he was kicked too.”
“He’s the guy you wanted out of the picture.”
“Yeah, because he had it in for me and for her. Now today I find out he got released a couple hours ahead of her from the same jail. If she runs into him on the street, he’s gonna either hurt her because of me or find a way to use her to get his next hit. Either way, I can’t let that happen.”
Bosch knew that it was not unusual in the drug underworld for a male user to connect with a female in an alliance where one could provide protection while the other procured drugs through sexual barter. Sometimes the alliance wasn’t voluntary on the woman’s part.
“Fuck, Harry, I don’t know,” Edgar said. “Where are you?”
“The Van Nuys jail,” Bosch said. “I looked around, she’s not here.”
There was a longer pause this time before Edgar broke the silence.
“Harry, what’s going on? I mean, it’s been a while, but I remember Eleanor.”
Bosch’s ex-wife and the mother of his daughter. Now deceased. Bosch had forgotten that he and Edgar were partners when he met her and later when he married her. Edgar had picked up on the resemblance in Elizabeth Clayton.
“Look, it’s not that,” Bosch said. “She did me a solid when I was under. I owe her and now she’s out here somewhere on the street. And that guy Brody is too.”
Edgar said nothing, his silence making it clear he was not convinced.
“I gotta go,” Bosch said. “If you think of something, call me back, partner.”
Bosch disconnected.
32
Bosch started driving north on Van Nuys Boulevard, looking at every pedestrian and in every recess behind the facade of every store and business. He knew it was a needle-in-a-haystack proposition but he had no other ideas. He considered calling the Van Nuys Division watch office to ask the lieutenant to put a flag out to all patrol units, but he knew that on a Sunday evening the number of cars on the street would be low and the request from the SFPD would not be treated with any kind of enthusiasm. It could also blow back on him with Chief Valdez asking the same sort of questions Edgar had asked.
So he continued the solo search, turning around at Roscoe and making his way south. He was twenty minutes into it when he got a call back from Edgar.
“Harry, you still up there looking for her?”
“Yeah, you got something?”
“Look, man, I’m sorry about my assumptions from before, okay? I’m sure you have good reason to—”
“Jerry, you have something for me, or are you just calling to shoot the breeze? Because I don’t—”
“I have something, okay? I have something.”
“Then give it to me.”
Bosch pulled to the curb to listen and possibly take notes.
“We have something at the office we call the hot one hundred,” Edgar said. “These are doctors who are on our radar as likely being involved with cappers and shady scrip writing. Doctors we’re building cases on.”
“Was Efram Herrera on there?”
“Not yet, because I hadn’t taken up that complaint, remember?”
“Right.”
“Anyway, I just called one of my colleagues and asked about Van Nuys. She told me there’s a hot one hundred guy up there who runs a clinic on Sherman Way. It’s supposedly seven days a week and some of the intel on him is that if you’re a woman and need a scrip, he is more than likely going to offer a discount for special favors, if you know what I mean. This doctor’s in his seventies, but—”
“What’s the name of the clinic?”
“Sherman Health and Med, at Sherman Way and Kester. The doctor’s name is Ali Rohat. People call him Chemical Ali because he comes through with the meds — the chems — and he’s one-stop shopping. Known to prescribe and fill. If your girl is plugged into the scene up there at all, she’d know about him.”
“She’s not my girl, but I appreciate it, Jerry.”
“I was joking, man. Jesus. Still Hard-Ass Harry, after all these years.”
“That’s right. This guy Chemical Ali, how come he wasn’t shut down with all that you’re saying?”
“Like I told you before, Harry, these things are tough. Medical bureaucracy, Sacramento bureaucracy... We’ll shut him down eventually.”
“Okay, thanks for your help. Anything else comes to mind, hit me back.”
Bosch disconnected and pulled away from the curb. He made a U-turn and took Van Nuys back up to Sherman Way, where he turned west. He drove through the intersection at Kester without seeing the clinic. He continued a few blocks and then turned around.