“You should close the back,” he said instead. “Unless you want to dump everything out on the way.”

He smiled. A little tow truck humor.

“I’ll grab my shirt out of there and close it,” Bosch said. “All right if I ride with you?”

“Unless you want to call a cab and ride in style.”

“I’d rather ride with somebody who speaks English.”

Mackey laughed loudly while Bosch went to the back of his car. Bosch then stood off to the side while Mackey went through the procedures for hooking the vehicle to the truck. It took him no more than ten minutes before he was standing at the side of his truck, holding down a lever that raised the front end of the SUV into the air. After it was high enough for Mackey, he checked all the chains and harnesses and said he was ready to go. When Bosch got into the tow truck he had his shirt over his arm and the folded newspaper in his hand. It was folded so the photo of Rebecca Verloren was noticeable.

“Does this thing have air-conditioning?” Bosch said as he pulled the door closed. “I was sweating my ass off out there.”

“You and me both. You should’ve stayed in the vehicle with your own AC blowing while you waited. This piece of shit doesn’t have air in the summer or heat in the winter. Kind of like my ex-wife.”

More tow truck humor, Bosch guessed. Mackey handed him a clipboard with an information page and a pen attached.

“Fill that out,” he said. “Then we’re set.”

“Okay.”

Bosch started to fill the form in with the false name and address he had come up with earlier. Mackey pulled a microphone off the dashboard and spoke into it.

“Hey, Kenny?”

A few moments later there was a response.

“Go ahead.”

“Tell Spider not to leave yet,” Mackey said. “I’m bringing in a tire that needs a valve.”

“He’s not going to like that. He’s already washed up.”

“Just tell him. Out.”

Mackey returned the microphone to its dash holder.

“Think he’ll stay?” Bosch asked.

“You better hope so. Or you’re going to be waiting till tomorrow for your tire to get done.”

“I can’t do that. I have to get back on the road.”

“Yeah? Where to?”

“ Barstow.”

Mackey started the tow truck and turned his body to the left so he could look out the side window and make sure it was okay to pull off the shoulder onto the road. He could not see Bosch from this position. Bosch quickly hiked the left sleeve on his T-shirt up so that more than half of the skull tattoo was visible.

The tow truck pulled into the street and they started off. Bosch glanced out his window and saw the cars belonging to both Rider and the other surveillance team in the parking lot of the golf course. Bosch put his elbow on the sill of the open window and his hand on the top frame. Out of Mackey’s view, he was able to give the thumbs-up sign to the watchers.

“What’s out in Barstow?” Mackey asked.

“Home, that’s all. I want to get home tonight.”

“What have you been doing down here?”

“This and that.”

“What about South-Central? What were you doing down there with those people last week?”

Bosch understood the reference to those people as meaning the predominant minority population of South L.A. He turned and looked pointedly at Mackey, as if telling him he was asking too many questions.

“This and that,” he said evenly.

“That’s cool,” Mackey responded, taking his hands off the wheel in a backing off gesture.

“Tell you what, though, it doesn’t matter what I was doing, you can just fucking keep this city, man.”

Mackey smiled.

“I know what you mean,” he said.

Bosch thought they were close to sharing more than small talk. He believed Mackey had gotten a glimpse of the tattoos and was trying to draw from Bosch a signal as to what kind of person he was. He thought the moment was right for another subtle move toward the newspaper article.

Bosch put the newspaper down on the seat between them, making sure the photo of Rebecca Verloren was still noticeable. He then started putting his shirt back on. He leaned forward and extended his arms to do it. He didn’t look at Mackey but knew the skull on his left arm would be very noticeable as he did this. He put his right arm into the shirt first and then brought the shirt behind his back and put his left arm into its sleeve. He leaned back and started buttoning the shirt.

“Just a little too third world around here for me,” Bosch said.

“I’m with you on that.”

“Yeah? Is this where you’re from?”

“My whole life.”

“Well, pal, you ought to take your family-if you have a family-and the flag with you and leave. Just fucking leave this place.”

Mackey laughed and nodded.

“I got a friend says the same thing. All the time.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not an original idea.”

“Got that right.”

Then the radio interrupted the momentum of the conversation.

“Hey, Ro?”

Mackey grabbed the mike.

“Yeah, Ken?”

“I’m gonna run over to KFC while Spider’s waiting on you. You want something?”

“Nah, I’ll go out later. Out.”

He hung the mike up. They drove in silence for a few moments while Bosch tried to think of a way to naturally get the conversation going again and in the right direction. Mackey had driven down to Burbank Boulevard and gone right. They were coming up on Tampa. He would turn right again and then it would be a straight shot to the station. In less than ten minutes the ride would be over.

But it was Mackey who got it going again.

“So where’d you do your time?” he suddenly asked.

Bosch waited a moment so that his excitement wouldn’t show.

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“I saw your markings, man. It’s no big deal. But they’re either homemade or prison-made. That’s obvious.”

Bosch nodded.

“Obispo. I spent a nickel up there.”

“Yeah? For what?”

Bosch turned and looked at him again.

“This and that.”

Mackey nodded, apparently not put off by his passenger’s reluctance to open up.

“That’s cool, man. I have a friend that was there for a while. Late nineties. He said it wasn’t so bad. It’s kind of a white-collar place. Not as many niggers there as other places, at least.”

Bosch was silent for a long moment. He knew Mackey’s use of the racial slur was like a password. If Bosch responded in the proper way, then he would be accepted. It was code work.

“Yeah,” Bosch said, nodding his head. “That made the conditions a little more livable. I probably missed your friend, though. I got out in early ’ninety-eight.”

“Frank Simmons. That’s his name. He was only there for like eighteen months or something. He was from Fresno.”

“Frank Simmons from Fresno,” Bosch said as if trying to recall the name. “I don’t think I knew him.”

“He’s good people.”

Bosch nodded.

“There was one guy who came in like a few weeks before I walked out of that place,” he said. “I heard he was from Fresno. But, man, I was on short time and I wasn’t into meeting new people, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, that’s cool. I was just wondering, you know.”

“Did your guy have dark hair and his face had a lot a scars like from zits and stuff?”

Mackey started smiling and nodding.

“That’s him! That’s Frank. We used to call him Crater Face from Crater Lake.”

“And I’m sure he was happy about that.”

The tow truck turned onto Tampa and headed north. Bosch knew he might have more time with Mackey in the service station while the tire was being fixed but he couldn’t count on it. There could be another tow call or myriad other distractions. He had to finish the play and plant the seed now, while he was alone with the target. He picked up the newspaper and held it in his lap, glancing down as if he was reading the headlines. He had to figure out a way to naturally steer the conversation directly toward the Verloren article.