“Great. I knew there was somebody who cared. I need to get the addresses where pension checks for two different retired officers are sent each month.”

Her eyebrows mated as she frowned.

“I’m sorry, but those addresses are strictly confidential. Even within the city. I couldn’t give-”

“Mona, let me explain something. I’m a homicide investigator. Like you, I work for the city. I have leads on an old unsolved murder that I am following up on. I need to confer with the original case detectives. We’re talking about a case more than thirty years old. A woman was killed, Mona. I can’t find the two detectives that originally worked the case and the police personnel people sent me over here. I need the pension addresses. Are you going to help me?”

“Detective-is it Borsch?”

“Bosch.”

“Detective Bosch, let me explain something to you. Just because you work for the city does not give you access to confidential files. I work for the city but I don’t go over to Parker Center and say let me see this or let me see that. People have a right to privacy. Now, this is what I can do. And it is all I can do. If you give me the two names, I will send a letter to each person asking them to call you. That way, you get your information, I protect the files. Would that work for you? They’ll go out in the mail today. I promise.”

She smiled but it was the phoniest smile Bosch had seen in days.

“No, that wouldn’t work at all, Mona. You know, I’m really disappointed.”

“I can’t help that.”

“But you can, don’t you see?”

“I have work to do, Detective. If you want me to send the letter, give me the names. If not, that’s your decision.”

He nodded that he understood and brought his briefcase up from the floor to his lap. He saw her jump when he angrily unsnapped the locks. He opened it and took out his phone. He flipped it open and dialed his home number, then waited for the machine to pick up.

Mona looked annoyed.

“What are you doing?”

He held his hand up for silence.

“Yes, can you transfer me to Whitey Springer?” he said to his tape.

He watched her reaction while acting like he wasn’t. He could tell, she knew the name. Springer was the City Hall columnist for the Times. His specialty was writing about the small bureaucratic nightmares, the little guy against the system. Bureaucrats could largely create these nightmares with impunity, thanks to civil service protections, but politicians read Springer’s column and they wielded tremendous power when it came to patronage jobs, transfers and demotions at City Hall. A bureaucrat vilified in print by Springer might be safe in his or her job but there likely would never be advancement, and there was nothing stopping a city council member from calling for an audit on an office or a council observer to sit in the corner. The word to the wise was to stay out of Springer’s column. Everybody knew that, including Mona.

“Yeah, I can hold,” Bosch said into the phone. Then to Mona, he said, “He’s gonna love this one. He’s got a guy trying to solve a murder, the victim’s family waiting for thirty-three years to know who killed her, and some bureaucrat sitting in her office sucking on a quart of fruit punch isn’t giving him the addresses he needs just to talk to the other cops who worked the case. I’m not a newspaper man but I think that’s a column. He’ll love it. What do you think?”

He smiled and watched her face flush almost as red as her fruit punch. He knew it was going to work.

“Okay, hang up the phone,” she said.

“What? Why?”

“HANG UP! Hang up and I’ll get the information.”

Bosch flipped the phone closed.

“Give me the names.”

He gave her the names and she got up angrily and silently to leave the room. She could barely fit around the desk but made the maneuver like a ballerina, the pattern instilled in her body’s memory by repeated practice.

“How long will this take?” he asked.

“As long as it takes,” she answered, regaining some of her bureaucratic bluster at the door.

“No, Mona, you got ten minutes. That’s all. After that, you better not come back ’cause Whitey’s gonna be sitting here waiting for you.”

She stopped and looked at him. He winked.

After she left he got up and went around the side of the desk. He pushed it about two inches closer to the opposite wall, narrowing her path back to her chair.

She was back in seven minutes, carrying a piece of paper. But Bosch could see it was trouble. She had a triumphant look on her face. He thought of that woman who had been tried a while back for cutting off her husband’s penis. Maybe it was the same face she had when she ran out the door with it.

“Well, Detective Borsch, you’ve got a little problem.”

“What is it?”

She started around the desk and immediately rammed her thick thigh into its Formica-topped corner. It looked more embarrassing than painful. She had to flail her arms for balance and the impact of the collision shook the desk and knocked her container over. The red liquid began leaking out of the straw onto the blotter.

“Shit!”

She quickly moved the rest of the way around the desk and righted the container. Before sitting down she looked at the desk, suspicious that it had been moved.

“Are you all right?” Bosch asked. “What is the problem with the addresses?”

She ignored his first question, forgot her embarrassment and looked at Bosch and smiled. She sat down. She spoke as she opened a desk drawer and took out a wad of napkins stolen from the cafeteria.

“Well, the problem is you won’t be talking to former detective Claude Eno anytime soon. At least, I don’t think you will.”

“He’s dead.”

She started wiping up the spill.

“Yes. The checks go to his widow.”

“What about McKittrick?”

“Now McKittrick is a possibility. I have his address here. He’s over in Venice.”

“ Venice? So what’s the problem with that?”

“That’s Venice, Florida.”

She smiled, delighted with herself.

“ Florida,” Bosch repeated.

He had no idea there was a Venice in Florida.

“It’s a state, over on the other side of the country.”

“I know where it is.”

“Oh, and one other thing. The address I have is only a P.O. box. Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, I bet. What about a phone?”

She tossed the wet napkins into a trash can in the corner of the room.

“We have no phone number. Try information.”

“I will. Does it say there when he retired?”

“You didn’t ask me to get that.”

“Then give me what you’ve got.”

Bosch knew he could get more, that they’d have to have a phone number somewhere, but he was handicapped because this was an unauthorized investigation. If he pushed things too far, then he’d only succeed in having his activities discovered and then halted.

She floated the paper across the desk to him. He looked at it. It had two addresses on it, the P.O. box for McKittrick and the street address in Las Vegas for Eno’s widow. Her name was Olive.

Bosch thought of something.

“When do the checks go out?”

“Funny you should ask.”

“Why?”

“Because today’s the last day of the month. They always go out the last day of the month.”

That was a break and he felt like he deserved it, that he had worked for it. He picked up the paper she had given him and slipped it into his briefcase, then he stood up.

“Always a pleasure to do work with the public servants of the city.”

“Likewise. And, uh, Detective? Could you return the chair to the place you found it? As I said, Cassidy will need it.”

“Of course, Mona. Pardon my forgetfulness.”