In the kitchen, there was another empty bottle in the trash can. There were also dirty dishes piled on the counters and sink. He opened the refrigerator and saw only a jar of mustard and an egg carton. Porter’s place was very much like its owner. It showed a marginal life, if it could be called that at all.
Back in the living room Bosch picked a framed photograph up off a table next to a yellow couch. It was a woman. Not too attractive, except to Porter maybe. An ex-wife he couldn’t get over. Maybe. Harry put the photo back down and the phone rang.
He traced the noise to the bedroom. The phone was on the floor next to the bed. He picked up on the seventh ring, waited a moment and in a voice designed to appear jerked from sleep said, “Huh?”
“Porter?”
“Yeah.”
The line went dead. It hadn’t worked. But had Bosch recognized the voice? Pounds? No, not Pounds. Only one word spoken. But, still, the accent was there. Spanish, he thought. He filed it away in his mind and got up off the bed. Another plane crossed above and the trailer shuddered. He went back into the living room where he made a half-hearted search of a one-drawer desk, though he knew that no matter what he found it wouldn’t solve the immediate problem: where was Porter?
Bosch turned all the lights off and relocked the front door as he left. He decided to start in North Hollywood and work his way south toward downtown. In every police division there was a handful of bars that carried a heavy clientele of cops. Then after two, when they closed, there were the all-night bottle clubs. Mostly they were dark pits where men came to drink hard and quietly, as if their lives depended on it. They were havens from the street, places to go to forget and forgive yourself. It was at one of these Bosch believed he would find Porter.
He began with a place on Kittridge called the Parrot. But the bartender, a one-time cop himself, said he hadn’t seen Porter since Christmas Eve. Next, he went to the 502 on Lankershim and then Saint’s on Cahuenga. They knew Porter in these places but he hadn’t been at either tonight.
It went like that until two. By then, Bosch had worked his way down into Hollywood. He was sitting in his car in front of the Bullet, trying to think of nearby bottle-club locations, when his pager went off. He checked the number and didn’t recognize it. He went back into the Bullet to use the pay phone. The lights in the bar came on after he dialed. Last call was over.
“Bosch?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Rickard. Bad time?”
“Nah. I’m at the Bullet.”
“Hell, man, then you’re close by.”
“For what? You got Dance?”
“Nah, not quite. I’m at a rave behind Cahuenga and south of the boulevard. Couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d do some hunting. No Dance but I got my eye on one of his old salesmen. One of the ones that was on the shake cards in the file. Name’s Kerwin Tyge.”
Bosch thought a moment. He remembered the name. He was one of the juvies the BANG team had stopped and checked out, tried to scare off the street. His name was on one of the file cards in the ice file Moore had left behind.
“What’s a rave?”
“An underground. They got a warehouse off this alley. A fly-by-night party. Digital music. They’ll run all night, ’til about six. Next week it will be somewhere else.”
“How’d you find it?”
“They’re easy to find. The record stores on Melrose put out the phone numbers. You call the number, get on the list. Twenty bucks to get in. Get stoned and dance ’til dawn.”
“He selling black ice?”
“Nah, he’s selling sherms out front.”
A sherm was a cigarette dipped in liquid PCP. Went for twenty bucks a dip and would leave its smoker dusted all night. Tyge apparently was no longer working for Dance.
“I figure we can make a righteous bust,” Rickard said. “After that, we might squeeze Dance out of his ass. I think Dance has blown, but the kid might know where. It’s up to you. I don’t know how important Dance is to you.”
“Where do you want me?” Bosch asked.
“Come west on the Boulevard and just when you pass Cahuenga come south at the very next alley. The one that comes down behind the porno shops. It’s dark but you’ll see the blue neon arrow. That’s the place. I’m about a half block north in a red piece-of-shit Camaro. Nevada plates. I’ll be waiting. Hafta figure out a scam or something to grab him with the shit.”
“You know where the dip is?”
“Yeah. He’s got it in a beer bottle in the gutter. Keeps going in and out. Brings his clients outside. I’ll think of something by the time you get here.”
Bosch hung up and went back out to the car. It took him fifteen minutes to get there because of all the cruisers on the Boulevard. In the alley he parked illegally behind the red Camaro. He could see Rickard sitting low in the driver’s seat.
“Top of the morning to ya,” the narc said when Bosch slipped into the Camaro’s passenger seat.
“Same. Our boy still around?”
“Oh, yeah. Seems like he’s having a good night, too. He’s selling shermans like they’re the last thing on earth. Too bad we gotta spoil his fun.”
Bosch looked down the dark alley. In the intervals of blue light cast by a blinking neon arrow he could see a grouping of people in dark clothes in front of a door in the brick siding of the warehouse. Occasionally, the door would open and someone would go in or come out. He could hear the music when the door was open. Loud, techno-rock, a driving bass that seemed to shake the street. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the people outside were drinking and smoking, cooling off after dancing. A few of them held blown-up balloons. They would lean on the hoods of the cars near the door, suck from the balloon and pass it on as if it were a joint.
“The balloons are full of nitrous oxide,” Rickard said.
“Laughing gas?”
“Right. They sell it at these raves for five bucks a balloon. They can make a couple of grand off one tank stolen from a hospital or dentist.”
A girl fell off a car hood and her balloon of gas shot away into the dark. Others helped her up. Bosch could hear their shrieks of laughter.
“That legal?”
“It’s a flopper. It’s legal to process-a lot of legit uses for it. But it’s a misdee to consume recreationally. We don’t even bother with it, though. Somebody wants to suck on it and fall down and split their head open, have at it, I say. Why should-there he is now.”
The slight figure of a teenager walked through the warehouse door and over to the cars parked along the alley.
“Watch him go down,” Rickard said.
The figure disappeared behind a car, dropping down.
“See, he’s making a dip. Now he’ll wait a few minutes ’til it dries a little and his customer comes out. Then he’ll make the deal.”
“Want to go get him?”
“No. We take him with just the one sherm, that’s nothing. That’s personal possession. They won’t even keep him overnight in the drunk tank. We need him with his dip if we wanna squeeze him good.”
“So what do we do?”
“You just get back in your car. I want you to go back around on Cahuenga and come up the alley the other way. I think you can get in closer. Park it and then try to work your way up to be my backup. I’ll come down from this end. I got some old clothes in the trunk. Undercover shit. I got a plan.”
Bosch then went back to the Caprice, turned it around and drove out of the alley. He drove around the block and came up from the south side. He found a spot in front of a Dumpster and stopped. When he saw the hunched-over figure of Rickard moving down the alley, Harry got out and started moving. They were closing in on the warehouse door from both sides. But while Bosch remained in the shadows, Rickard-now wearing a grease-stained sweatshirt and carrying a bag of laundry-was walking down the center of the alley, singing. Because of the noise from the warehouse Bosch wasn’t sure but he thought it was Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman,” delivered in a drunken slur.