“How’d you know when I was leaving the office tonight?”

Bosch looked puzzled.

“What do you mean?”

“I figure it was the lights. You were out there on Broadway, and when I killed the lights, you sent your guy into the garage.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Sure you do. The photo of the guy with the gun coming out of the building. It was a phony. You set it up – choreographed it – and used it to smoke out your leak, then you tried to scam me with it.”

Bosch shook his head and looked out of the booth as if he were looking for someone to help him interpret what I was saying. It was a bad act.

“You set up the phony picture and then you showed it to me because you knew it would come back around through my investigator to your leak. You’d know that whoever asked you about the photo was the leak.”

“I can’t discuss any aspect of the investigation with you.”

“And then you used it to try to play me. To see if I was hiding something and to scare it out of me.”

“I told you, I can’t-”

“Well, you don’t have to, Bosch. I know it’s what you did. You know what your mistakes were? First of all, not coming back like you said you would to show the photo to Vincent’s secretary. If the guy in the picture was legit, you would’ve shown it to her because she knows the clients better than me. Your second mistake was the gun in the waistband of your hit man. Vincent was shot with a twenty-five – too small for a waistband. I missed that when you showed me the photo, but I’ve got it now.”

Bosch looked toward the bar in the middle of the restaurant. The overhead TV was showing sports highlights. I leaned across the table closer to him.

“So who’s the guy in the photo? Your partner with a stick-on mustache? Some clown from vice? Don’t you have better things to do than to be running a game on me?”

Bosch leaned back and continued to look around the place, his eyes moving everywhere but to me. He was contemplating something and I gave him all the time he needed. Finally, he looked at me.

“Okay, you got me. It was a scam. I guess that makes you one smart lawyer, Haller. Just like the old man. I wonder why you’re wasting it defending scumbags. Shouldn’t you be out there suing doctors or defending big tobacco or something noble like that?”

I smiled.

“Is that how you like to play it? You get caught being underhanded, so you respond by accusing the other guy of being underhanded?”

Bosch laughed, his face colored red as he turned away from me. It was a gesture that struck me as familiar, and his mention of my father brought him to mind. I had a vague memory of my father laughing uneasily and looking away as he leaned back at the dinner table. My mother had accused him of something I was too young to understand.

Bosch put both arms on the table and leaned toward me.

“You’ve heard of the first forty-eight, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The first forty-eight. The chances of clearing a homicide diminish by almost half each day if you don’t solve it in the first forty-eight hours.”

He looked at his watch before continuing.

“I’m coming up on seventy-two hours and I’ve got nothing,” he said. “Not a suspect, not a viable lead, nothing. And I was hoping that tonight I might be able to scare something out of you. Something that would point me in the right direction.”

I sat there, staring at him, digesting what he had said. Finally, I found my voice.

“You actually thought I knew who killed Jerry and wasn’t telling?”

“It was a possibility I had to consider.”

“Fuck you, Bosch.”

Just then the waiter came with our steaks and spaghetti. As the plates were put down, Bosch looked at me with a knowing smile on his face. The waiter asked what else he could get for us and I waved him away without breaking eye contact.

“You’re an arrogant son of a bitch,” I said. “You can just sit there with a smile on your face after accusing me of hiding evidence or knowledge in a murder. A murder of a guy I knew.”

Bosch looked down at his steak, picked up his knife and fork and cut into it. I noticed he was left-handed. He put a chunk of meat into his mouth and stared at me while he ate it. He rested his fists on either side of his plate, fork and knife in his grips, as if guarding the food from poachers. A lot of my clients who had spent time in prison ate the same way.

“Why don’t you take it easy there, Counselor,” he said. “You have to understand something. I’m not used to being on the same side of the line as the defense lawyer, okay? It has been my experience that defense attorneys have tried to portray me as stupid, corrupt, bigoted, you name it. So with that in mind, yes, I tried to run a game on you in hopes that it would help me solve a murder. I apologize all to hell and back. If you want, I will have them wrap up my steak and I’ll take it to go.”

I shook my head. Bosch had a talent for trying to make me feel guilty for his transgressions.

“Maybe now you should be the one who takes it easy,” I said. “All I’m saying is that from the start, I have acted openly and honestly with you. I have stretched the ethical bounds of my profession. And I have told you what I could tell you, when I could tell you. I didn’t deserve to have the shit scared out of me tonight. And you’re damn lucky I didn’t put a bullet in your man’s chest when he was at the office door. He made a beautiful target.”

“You weren’t supposed to have a gun. I checked.”

Bosch started eating again, keeping his head down as he worked on the steak. He took several bites and then moved to the side plate of spaghetti. He wasn’t a twirler. He chopped at the pasta with his fork before putting a bite into his mouth. He spoke after he swallowed his food.

“So now that we have that out of the way, will you help me?”

I blew out my breath in a laugh.

“Are you kidding? Have you heard a single thing I’ve said here?”

“Yeah, I heard it all. And no, I’m not kidding. When all is said and done, I still have a dead lawyer – your colleague – on my hands and I could still use your help.”

I started cutting my first piece of steak. I decided he could wait for me to eat, like I had waited for him.

Dan Tana’s was considered by many to serve the best steak in the city. Count me as one of the many. I was not disappointed. I took my time, savoring the first bite, then put my fork down.

“What kind of help?”

“We draw out the killer.”

“Great. How dangerous will it be?”

“Depends on a lot of things. But I’m not going to lie to you. It could get dangerous. I need you to shake some things up, make whoever’s out there think there’s a loose end, that you might be dangerous to them. Then we see what happens.”

“But you’ll be there. I’ll be covered.”

“Every step of the way.”

“How do we shake things up?”

“I was thinking a newspaper story. I assume you’ve been getting calls from the reporters. We pick one and give them the story, an exclusive, and we plant something in there that gets the killer thinking.”

I thought about this and remembered what Lorna had warned about playing fair with the media.

“There’s a guy at the Times,” I said. “I kind of made a deal with him to get him off my back. I told him that when I was ready to talk, I would talk to him.”

“That’s a perfect setup. We’ll use him.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So, are you in?”

I picked up my fork and knife and remained silent while I cut into the steak again. Blood ran onto the plate. I thought about my daughter getting to the point of asking me the same questions her mother asked and that I could never answer. It’s like you’re always working for the bad guys. It wasn’t as simple as that but knowing this didn’t take away the sting or the look I remembered seeing in her eyes.