“What about Porter? What’s he say about all of this?”

Bosch had been doing his best to keep Porter clear. He didn’t know why. Porter had fallen and had lied, but somewhere inside Bosch still felt something. Maybe it was that last question.Harry, you going to take care of me on this?

“I haven’t found Porter,” Bosch lied. “No answer on his phone. But I don’t think he’d had much time to put all of this together.”

Pounds shook his head disdainfully.

“Of course not. He probably was on a drunk.”

Bosch didn’t say anything. It was in Pounds’s court now.

“Listen, Harry, you’re not… you’re being straight with me here, right? I can’t afford to have you running around like a loose cannon. I’ve got it all, right?”

Bosch knew that what he meant was he wanted to know how badly he could be fucked if this went to shit.

Bosch said, “You know what I know. There are two cases, probably three, including Moore, out there to be cleared. You want ’em cleared in six, eight weeks, then I’ll write up the paper and you can ship it to Parker Center. If you want to get them cleared by the first like you said, then let me have the four days.”

Pounds was staring off somewhere above Bosch’s head and using the ruler to scratch himself behind the ear. He was making a decision.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Take the weekend and see what you can do. We’ll see where things stand Monday. We might have to call in RHD then. Meantime, I want to hear from you tomorrow and Sunday. I want to know your movements, what’s happening, what progress has been made.”

“You got it,” Bosch said. He stood up and turned to leave. He noticed that above the door was a small crucifix. He wondered if that had been what Pounds had been staring at. Most said he was a political born-again. There were a lot in the department. They all joined a church up in the Valley because one of the assistant chiefs was a lay preacher there. Bosch guessed they all went there Sunday mornings and gathered around him, told him what a great guy he was.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then,” Pounds said from behind.

“Right. Tomorrow.”

A short while after that, Pounds locked his office and went home. Bosch hung around the office alone, drinking coffee and smoking and waiting for the six o’clock news. There was a small black-and-white television on top of the file cabinet behind the autos table. He turned it on and played with the rabbit ears until he got a reasonably clear picture. A couple of the uniforms walked down from the watch office to watch.

Cal Moore had finally made the top of the news. Channel 2 led with a report on the press conference at Parker Center in which Assistant Chief Irvin Irving revealed new developments. The tape showed Irving at a cluster of microphones. Teresa stood behind him. Irving credited her with finding new evidence during the autopsy that pointed to homicide. Irving said a full-scale homicide investigation was underway. The report ended with a photograph of Moore and a voiceover from the reporter.

“Investigators now have the task, and they say the personal obligation, to dig deep into the life of Sergeant Calexico Moore to determine what it was that led him to the beat-up motel room where someone executed him. Sources tell me the investigators do not have much to start with, but they do start with a debt of thanks to the acting chief medical examiner, who discovered a murder that had been written off… as a cop’s lonely suicide.”

The camera zoomed in closer on Moore’s face here and the reporter ended it, “And so, the mystery begins…”

Bosch turned the TV off after the report. The uniforms went back down the hall and he went back to his spot at the homicide table and sat down. The picture they had shown of Moore had been taken a few years back, Harry guessed. His face was younger, the eyes clearer. There was no portent of a hidden life.

Thinking about it brought to mind the other photographs, the ones Sylvia Moore had said her husband had collected over his life and looked at from time to time. What else had he saved from the past? Bosch didn’t have one photo of his mother. He hadn’t known his father until the old man was on his deathbed. What baggage did Cal Moore carry with him?

It was time for him to head for the Code Seven. But before heading out to the car, Harry walked down the hall to the watch office. He picked up the clipboard that hung on the wall next to the wanted flyers and carried the station’s duty roster clipped to it. He doubted that it would have been updated in the last week and he was correct. He found Moore’s name and address in Los Feliz on the page listing sergeants. He copied the address into his notebook and then headed out.

17

Bosch dragged deeply on a cigarette and then dropped the butt into the gutter. He hesitated before pulling the billy club that was the door handle of the Code Seven. He stared across First Street to the grass square that flanked City Hall and was called Freedom Park. Beneath the sodium lights he saw the bodies of homeless men and women sprawled asleep in the grass around the war memorial. They looked like casualties on a battlefield, the unburied dead.

He went inside, walked through the front restaurant and then parted the black curtains that hid the entrance to the bar like a judge’s robes. The place was crowded with lawyers and cops and blue with cigarette smoke. They had all come to wait out the rush hour and either gotten too comfortable or too drunk. Harry went down to the end of the bar where the stools were empty and ordered a beer and a shot. It was seven on the dot according to the Miller clock over the bar. He scanned the room in the mirror behind the bar but saw nobody he could assume was the DEA agent Corvo. He lit another cigarette and decided he would give it until eight.

The moment he decided that he looked back in the mirror and saw a short, dark man with a full black beard split the curtain and hesitate as his eyes focused in the dim bar. He wore blue jeans and a pullover shirt. Bosch saw the pager on his belt and the bulge the gun made under his shirt. The man looked around until their eyes met in the mirror and Harry nodded once. Corvo came over and took the stool next to him.

“So you made me,” Corvo said.

“And you made me. I guess we both need to go back to the academy. You want a beer?”

“Look, Bosch, before you start getting friendly on me, I gotta tell you I don’t know about this. I don’t know what this is about. I haven’t decided whether to talk to you.”

Harry took his cigarette from the ashtray and looked at Corvo in the mirror.

“I haven’t decided if Certs is a breath mint or a candy.”

Corvo slid back off his stool.

“Have a good one.”

“C’mon Corvo, have a beer, why don’t you? Relax, man.”

“I checked you out before I came over. The line on you is that you’re just another head case. You’re on the fast track to nowhere. RHD to Hollywood, the next stop probably riding shotgun in a Wells Fargo truck.”

“No, the next stop is Mexicali. And I can go down there blind, maybe walk in on whatever you got going with Zorrillo, or you can help me and yourself by telling me what’s what.”

“What’s what is that you aren’t going to do anything down there. I leave here I pick up the phone and your trip is over.”

“I leave here and I’m gone, on my way. Too late to stop. Have a seat. If I’ve been an asshole, I’m sorry. It’s the way I am sometimes. But I need you guys and you guys need me.”

Corvo still didn’t sit down.

“Bosch, what are you gonna do? Go down to the ranch, put the pope over your shoulder and carry him back up here? That it?”

“Something like that.”

“Shit.”

“Actually, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m just going to play it as it comes. Maybe I never see the pope, maybe I do. You want to risk it?”