“Just cool down, Harry.”

Bosch shut her out by raising the binoculars and looking at Mackey. He was still behind the desk and appeared deep in thought. The other night man, the one Bosch assumed was Kenny, was sitting on another chair and his face was angled up for viewing the television. He was laughing at something he was watching.

Mackey was not laughing or watching. His face was cast down. He was looking at something in memory.

The wait until midnight was the longest ninety minutes of surveillance Bosch had ever spent. As they waited for the station to close and Mackey to head to his rendezvous with Burkhart, nothing happened. The phones were silent, Mackey did not move from his spot at the desk and Bosch came up with no plan to either avert the rendezvous or infiltrate it in some way. It was as though they were all frozen until the clock struck twelve.

Finally, the exterior lights of the station went off and the two men closed the business for the night. When Mackey walked out, he was carrying the newspaper he could not read. Bosch knew he was going to show it to Burkhart and most likely discuss the murder.

“And we won’t be there,” Bosch mumbled as he tracked Mackey through the binoculars.

Mackey got into his Camaro and revved the engine loudly after firing it up. He then pulled out onto Tampa and headed south toward his home, the intended meeting place. Rider waited an appropriate amount of time and then pulled out of the plaza lot, cut across the northbound lanes of Tampa and headed south as well. Bosch called Nord in the sound room and told her Mackey had left the station and they should switch their monitoring to the house line.

The lights of Mackey’s car were three blocks ahead. Traffic was sparse and Rider kept a safe distance back. As they passed the lot where Bosch had left his car he checked on the Mercedes just to make sure it was still there.

“Uh oh,” Rider said.

Bosch turned back to the street ahead in time to see Mackey’s car complete a fast U-turn. He was now heading back toward Bosch and Rider.

“Harry, what do I do?” Rider asked.

“Nothing. Don’t do anything obvious.”

“He’s coming right back at us. He must have seen the tail!”

“Sit tight. Maybe he saw my car parked back there.”

The deep-throated engine of the Camaro could be heard long before the car got to them. It sounded menacing and evil, like a monster roaring and coming for them.

31

THE OLD CAMARO went screaming by Bosch and Rider without hesitation. It blew the light at Saticoy and kept going. Bosch watched its lights disappearing to the north.

“What was that?” Rider said. “You think he knows there’s a tail?”

“I don’t -”

Bosch’s cell phone sounded and he quickly answered it. It was Robinson.

“He just got called back by the Triple A answering service. He seemed pretty upset but they have to take it, I guess.”

“What do you mean, he’s got a tow?”

“Yeah. It was Triple A dispatch. I guess if he didn’t take it they would go to another company and that could mean trouble. Like losing the Triple A business.”

“Where’s the tow?”

“It’s a breakdown on the Reagan. On the westbound side near the Tampa Avenue overpass. So it’s close. He said he was on the way.”

“Okay. We got him.”

Bosch closed the phone and told Rider to turn around, that their cover was still intact, that Mackey was simply hurrying back to get the tow truck.

By the time they were back to the intersection of Tampa and Roscoe, the tow truck was pulling out of the darkened station. Mackey wasn’t wasting any time.

Since they knew Mackey’s destination Rider could afford to hang back and not risk being noticed in the tow truck’s rearview mirror. They headed north on Tampa toward the freeway. The Reagan was the 118 Freeway, which ran east-west across the northern stretch of the Valley. It was one of the few freeways that was not crowded with traffic twenty-four hours a day. Named after the late governor and president, it led to Simi Valley, where Reagan’s presidential library was located. Still, it had been jarring to Bosch to hear Robinson call it the Reagan. To Bosch it was always simply the 118.

The westbound entrance to the 118 ramped down from Tampa Avenue to the ten lanes of freeway. Rider slowed and hung back and they watched the tow truck turn left and head down the ramp out of sight. She then pulled up and made the same turn. As they came on the ramp and started down they immediately realized their problem. The disabled car was not on the freeway as Nord had said but actually on the entrance ramp. They were quickly coming up on the tow truck. It was pulled onto the ramp’s shoulder about fifty yards ahead. Its rear spreader lights were on and it was backing toward a small red car that was parked on the shoulder with its emergency lights blinking.

“What do we do, Harry?” Rider said. “If we pull over it’s going to be obvious.”

She was right. They would blow their cover.

“Just go on by,” he replied.

He had to think quickly. He knew that once they were on the freeway they could pull onto the shoulder and wait until Mackey’s tow truck came by with the disabled car on its hook. But that was risky. Mackey might recognize Rider’s car, or even stop to see if they needed assistance. If he saw Bosch then the surveillance would be blown.

“You got a Thomas Guide?”

“Under the seat.”

Rider drove by the disabled car and the tow truck as Bosch reached under the seat for the map book. Once they were clear of the tow truck he put on the overhead light and quickly flipped through the map pages. A Thomas map book was the driving bible of Los Angeles. Bosch had years of experience with them and quickly found the page depicting the section of the city they were in. He made a quick study of their situation and gave Rider directions.

“The next exit is Porter Ranch Drive,” he said. “Less than a mile. We get off and go right and then another right on Rinaldi. It takes us back to Tampa. We either wait up on top of the overpass and watch or we just keep circling.”

“I think we wait up on top,” Rider said. “If we keep going down that ramp in the same car he might notice.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“I don’t like it but I don’t know what choice we have.”

They covered the distance to the Porter Ranch exit quickly.

“Did you check out the tow car?” Bosch asked. “I was looking for the map book.”

“Small foreign job,” Rider responded. “It looked like one person behind the wheel and that was it. The lights from the truck were too bright to see anything else.”

Rider kept her speed up until they pulled into the exit lane for Porter Ranch Drive. As instructed, she took a right and then another right and they were quickly heading back toward Tampa. They got stopped at the light at Corbin but then Rider drove through it after checking to make sure it was clear. Less than three minutes after passing the tow truck they were back on Tampa. Rider pulled to the side of the road in the middle of the overpass. Bosch cracked his door.

“I’ll check it out,” he said.

He stepped out of the car. At this angle he couldn’t see the tow truck but the spreader lights on the top of the cab cast a glow above the entrance ramp.

“Harry, take this,” Rider called.

Bosch ducked back into the car and took the rover Rider was holding out to him.

He walked back along the overpass. The freeway wasn’t crowded, but it was still loud with the cars passing beneath him. When he got to the top of the ramp and looked down, it took him a few moments to adjust his vision because the lights from the back of the tow truck were still slashing through the darkness.

But soon he realized that the blinking lights of the disabled car were not there. He looked closer and saw that the car was no longer on the shoulder. His eyes traveled down the ramp to the freeway and he saw the red taillights of dozens of cars moving westbound into the distance.