Bosch came up unnoticed on the passenger-side door. The window was down and just before he flung the door open he thought he could hear snoring coming from the car.

Clarke’s mouth was open and his eyes still shut when Bosch leaned in through the open door and grabbed both men by their silk ties. Bosch put his right foot on the doorsill for leverage and pulled both men toward him. Though there were two of them, the advantage belonged to Bosch. Clarke was disoriented and Lewis had little more idea what was happening. Pulling them by their ties meant that any struggle or resistance tightened the ties around their necks, cutting off their air. They came out almost willingly, tumbling like dogs on leashes and landing next to a palm tree planted three feet from the sidewalk. Their faces were red and sputtering. Their hands went to their necks, clawing at the knots of their ties as they fought to get air back into their pipes. Bosch’s hands went to their belts and yanked away the handcuffs. As the two IAD detectives were gulping air through their reopened throats Bosch managed to cuff Lewis’s left hand to Clarke’s right. Then, on the other side of the tree, he got Lewis’s right into the other set of cuffs. But Clarke realized what Bosch was doing and tried to stand up and pull away. Bosch grabbed his tie again and gave it a sharp yank down. Clarke’s head came forward and his face rammed the palm tree. He was momentarily stunned and Bosch slapped the last cuff on his wrist. Both IAD cops were wallowing on the ground then, locked to each other with the palm tree in the middle of the circle of their arms. Bosch unholstered their weapons, then stepped back to catch his own breath. He threw their guns onto the front seat of their car.

“You’re dead,” Clarke finally managed to croak through his swollen throat.

They worked their way up into standing positions, the palm tree between them. They looked like two grown men caught playing ring-around-the-rosy.

“Assaulting a fellow officer, two counts,” Lewis said. “Conduct unbecoming. We can get you for a half-dozen other things now, Bosch.” He coughed violently, spittle hitting Clarke’s suit coat. “Unhook us and maybe we can forget this.”

“No way. We aren’t forgetting a fucking thing,” Clarke said to his partner. “He’s going down like a flaming asshole.”

Bosch took the listening device out of his pocket and held it out on his palm for them to see. “Who’s going down?” he asked.

Lewis looked at the bug, recognizing what it was, and said, “We don’t know anything about that.”

“Course not,” Bosch said. He took the recorder out of his other pocket and held that out, too. “Sound-sensitive Nagras, that’s what you guys use on all your jobs, legal or not, isn’t it? Found it in my phone. Same time I notice that you two dummies have been following me all over the city. Don’t suppose you guys also dropped the bug on me so you could listen as well as watch?”

Neither Lewis nor Clarke answered and Bosch didn’t expect them to. He noticed a small drop of blood poised at the edge of one of Clarke’s nostrils. A car driving on Woodrow Wilson slowed and Bosch pulled his badge and held it up. The car kept going. The two IAD detectives did not call for help, which made Bosch begin to feel he was safe. This would be his play. The department had taken such bad publicity for illegally bugging officers, civil rights leaders, even movie stars in the past, that these two were not going to make an issue of this. Saving their own hides came before skinning Bosch.

“You got a warrant saying you can drop a bug on me?”

“Listen to me, Bosch,” Lewis said. “I told you, we-”

“I didn’t think so. Have to have evidence of a crime to get a warrant. Least that’s what I always heard. But Internal Affairs doesn’t usually bother with details like that. You know what your assault case looks like, Clarke? While you two are taking me to the Board of Rights and getting me fired for dragging you out of the car and getting grass stains on your shiny asses, I’m going to be taking you two, your boss Irving, IAD, the police chief and the whole fucking city to federal court on a Fourth Amendment case. Illegal search and seizure. I’ll throw in the mayor, too. How’s that?”

Clarke spit on the grass at Bosch’s feet. A drop of blood from his nose fell onto his white shirt. He said, “You can’t prove that came from us, ’cause it didn’t.”

“Bosch, what do you want?” Lewis blurted out, his rage turning his face a darker red than it had been when his tie had been tightened like a noose around his neck. Bosch started walking in a slow circle around them, so they had to constantly turn their heads or bend around the palm trunk to watch him.

“What do I want? Well, as much as I despise you two, I don’t really want to have to drag your asses into court. Dragging them across the sidewalk was enough. What I want-”

“Bosch, you ought to get your fuckin’ head examined,” Clarke burst out.

“Shut up, Clarke,” Lewis said.

“You shut up,” Clarke said back.

“Matter of fact, I have had it examined,” Bosch said. “And I still would rather have mine than yours. You’d need a proctologist to check yours out.”

He said this as he circled close behind Clarke. Then he moved out a few steps and continued to make the rounds. “I’ll tell you what, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones on this. All you have to do is answer a few questions and we’re square on this little mix-up. I’ll cut you loose. After all, we’re all part of the Family, right?”

“What questions, Bosch?” Lewis said. “What are you talking about?”

“When’d you start the tail?”

“Tuesday morning, we picked you up when you left the FBI,” Lewis said.

“Don’t tell him shit, man,” Clarke said to his partner.

“He already knows.”

Clarke looked at Lewis and shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“When’d you drop the bug in my phone?”

“Didn’t,” Lewis said.

“Bullshit. But never mind. You saw me interview the kid down in Boytown.” It was a statement, not a question. Bosch wanted them to think he knew most of it and just needed the gaps filled in.

“Yeah,” Lewis said. “That was our first day on it. So you made us. So fucking what?”

Harry saw Lewis pull his hand toward his coat pocket. He quickly moved in and got his hand in first. He pulled out a key ring that included a cuff key. He threw the keys into the car. Behind Lewis, he said, “Who’d you tell about it?”

“Tell?” Lewis said. “About the kid? Nobody. We didn’t tell anybody, Bosch.”

“You write up a daily surveillance log, don’t you? You take pictures, don’t you? I bet there’s a camera in the backseat of that car. Unless you forgot and left it in the trunk.”

“Course we do.”

Bosch lit a cigarette and started walking again. “Where did it all go?”

It was a few moments before Lewis answered. Bosch saw him make eye contact with Clarke. “We turned in the first log and the film yesterday. Put it in the deputy chief’s box. Like always. Don’t even know if he looked at it yet. That’s the only paper we’ve done so far. So, Bosch, take these cuffs off. This is embarrassing. People seein’ us and all. We can still talk after.”

Bosch walked up between them and blew smoke into the center of the huddle and told them the cuffs stayed on until the conversation was over. He then leaned close to Clarke’s face and said, “Who else was copied?”

“With the surveillance report? Nobody was copied, Bosch,” Lewis said. “That would violate department procedure.”

Bosch laughed at that, shook his head. He knew they would not admit any illegality or violation of department policy. He started to walk away, back to his house.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Bosch,” Lewis called out. “We copied the report to your lieutenant. All right? Come on back.”

Bosch did and Lewis continued. “He wanted to be kept apprised. We had to do it. The DC, Irving, okayed it. We did what we were told.”