The Concrete Blonde (30 page)

“Hey, I could use you for closing arguments tomorrow.”

Irving's face cringed, the muscular jaws flexing as if he had just taken a mouthful of cold sauerkraut.

“Don't get me started on that, either. I mean, what is this city doing? The city attorney's office is nothing but a school. A law school for trial lawyers. And the taxpayers pay the tuition. We get these greenhorn, uh, uh, preppies, who don't know the first thing about trial law. They learn from the mistakes they make in court when it counts—for us. And when they finally get good and know what the hell they're doing, they quit and then they're the lawyers suing us!”

Bosch had never seen Irving so animated. It was as if he had taken off the starched public persona he always wore like a uniform. Harry was entranced.

“Sorry about that,” Irving said. “I get carried away. Anyway, good luck with this jury but don't let it worry you.”

Bosch said nothing.

“You know, Bosch, it only takes a half-hour meeting with Lieutenant Rollenberger in the room for me to want to take a good look at myself and this department and where it's headed. He's not the LAPD I joined or you joined. He's a good manager, yes, and so am I, at least I think so. But we can't forget we're cops …”

Bosch didn't know what to say, or if he should say anything. It seemed that Irving was almost rambling now. As if there was something he wanted to say, but was looking for anything else to say instead.

“Hans Rollenberger. What a name, huh? I can guess, the detectives in his crew must call him ‘Hans Off,’ am I right?”

“Sometimes.”

“Yes, well, I guess that's expected. He—uh, you know, Harry, I've got thirty-eight years in the department.”

Bosch just nodded. This was getting weird. Irving had never even called him by his first name before.

“And, uh, I worked Hollywood patrol for a lot of years right out of the academy… . That question Money Chandler asked me about your mother. That really came out of the blue and I'm sorry about that, Harry, sorry for your loss.”

“It was a long time ago.” Bosch waited a beat. Irving was looking down at his hands, which were clasped on the table. “If that's it, I think I'll—”

“Yes, that's basically it, but, you know, what I wanted to tell you is that I was there that day.”

“What day?”

“That day that your mother—I was the RO.”

“The reporting officer?”

“Yes, I was the one that found her. I was walking a foot beat on the Boulevard and I ducked into that alley off of Gower. I usually hit it once a day and, uh, I found her… . When Chandler showed me those reports I recognized the case right away. She didn't know my badge number—it was there on the report—or she would've known I was the one who found her. Chandler would've had some kind of a field day with that, I guess …”

This was hard for Bosch to sit through. Now he was glad Irving wasn't looking at him. He knew, or thought he knew, what it was that Irving wasn't saying. If he had worked the Boulevard foot beat, then he had known Bosch's mother before she was dead.

Irving glanced up at him and then looked away, toward the corner of the room. His eyes fell on the ficus plant.

“Somebody put a cigarette butt in my pot,” he said. “That yours, Harry?”

20

Bosch was lighting a cigarette as he used his shoulder to push through one of the glass doors at the entrance to Parker Center. Irving had jolted him with his small-world story. Bosch had always figured he'd run into somebody in the department who knew her or knew the case. Never did Irving fit into that scenario.

As he walked through the south lot to the Caprice he noticed Jerry Edgar standing at the corner of Los Angeles and First waiting for the cross light. Bosch looked at his watch and saw it was 5:10, quitting time. He thought Edgar was probably walking up to the Code Seven or the Red Wind for a draft before fighting the freeway. He thought that wasn't a bad idea. Sheehan and Opelt were probably already sitting on stools at one of the bars.

By the time Bosch got to the corner, Edgar had a block-and-a-half lead on him and was walking up First toward the Seven. Bosch picked up the pace. For the first time in a long time, he felt the actual mental craving for alcohol. For just a while he wanted to forget Church and Mora and Chandler and his own secrets and what Irving had told him in the conference room.

But then Edgar walked right on by the billy club that served as the door handle at the Seven without even giving it a glance. He crossed Spring and walked alongside the
Times
building toward Broadway. Then it's the Red Wind, Bosch thought.

The Wind was okay as far as a watering hole went. They had Weinhard's by the bottle instead of on draft, so the place lost points there. Another minus was that the yuppies from the
Times
newsroom favored the place and it often was more crowded with reporters than cops. The big plus, however, was that on Thursdays and Fridays they had a quartet come in and play sets from six to ten. They were mostly retired club men who weren't too tight, but it was as good a way as any to miss the rush hour.

He watched Edgar cross Broadway and stay on First instead of taking a left to go down to the Wind. Bosch slowed his pace a bit so Edgar could renew his block-and-a-half lead. He lit another cigarette and felt uneasy about the prospect of following the other detective but did it anyway. There was a bad feeling beginning to nag at him.

Edgar turned left on Hill and ducked into the first door on the east side, across from the new subway entrance. The door he went through was to the Hung Jury, a bar that was off the lobby of the Fuentes Legal Center, an eight-story office building solely occupied by attorney offices. Mostly, the tenants were defense and litigation attorneys who had chosen the nondescript if not ugly building because of its main selling point; it was only a half block from the county courts building, a block from the criminal courts building and a block and a half from the federal building.

Bosch knew all of this because Belk had told him all about it on the day the two of them had come to the Fuentes Legal Center to find Honey Chandler's office. Bosch had been subpoenaed to give a deposition in the Norman Church case.

The uneasy feeling turned into a hollow in his gut as he passed the door to the Hung Jury and went into the main lobby of the Fuentes Center. He knew the layout of the bar, having dropped in for a beer and a shot after the deposition with Chandler, and he knew there was an entrance off the building's lobby. He pushed through the lobby entrance door now and stepped into an alcove where there were two pay phones and the doors to the restrooms. He moved up to the corner and carefully looked into the bar area.

A juke box Bosch couldn't see was playing Sinatra's “Summer Wind,” a barmaid with a puffy wig and bills wrapped through her fingers—tens, fives, ones—was delivering a batch of martinis to a four top of lawyers sitting near the front entrance and the bartender was leaning over the dimly lit bar smoking a cigarette and reading the
Hollywood Reporter
. Probably an actor or a screenwriter when he wasn't tending bar, Bosch thought. Maybe a talent scout. Who in this town wasn't?

When the bartender leaned forward to stub out his smoke in an ashtray, Bosch saw Edgar sitting at the far end of the bar with a draft beer in front of him. A match flared in the darkness next to him and Bosch watched Honey Chandler light a smoke and then drop her match into an ashtray next to what looked like a Bloody Mary.

Bosch moved back into the alcove, out of sight.

He waited next to an old plywood shack that was built on the sidewalk at Hill and First and served as a news and magazine stand. It had been closed and boarded for the night. As it grew dark and the streetlights came on, Bosch spent his time fending off panhandlers and passing prostitutes looking for one last businessman's special before heading from downtown into Hollywood for the evening—and the rougher—trade.

By the time he saw Edgar come out of the Hung Jury, Bosch had a nice little pile of cigarette butts on the sidewalk at his feet. He flicked the one he had going into the street and stepped back alongside the newsstand so Edgar wouldn't notice him. Bosch saw no sign of Chandler and assumed that she had left the bar through the other door and gone down to the garage and her car. Edgar probably had wisely declined a ride over to the Parker Center lot.

As Edgar passed the stand Bosch stepped out behind him.

“Jerry, whereyat?”

Edgar jumped as if an ice cube had been pressed against his neck, and whipped around.

“Harry? What're you—hey, you wanna grab a drink? That's what I was looking to do.”

Bosch let him stand there and squirm for a few seconds before saying, “You already had your drink.”

“What do you mean?”

Bosch took a step toward him. Edgar looked genuinely scared.

“You know what I mean. A beer for you, right? Bloody Mary for the lady.”

“Listen, Harry, look, I—”

“Don't call me that. Don't ever call me Harry again. Understand? You want to talk to me, call me Bosch. That's what the people who aren't my friends call me, the people I don't trust. Just call me that.”

“Can I explain? Har—uh, I'd like the chance to explain.”

“What's to explain? You fucked me over. Nothing to explain about that. What'd you tell her tonight? You just run down everything we just talked about in Irving's office? I don't think she needs it, pal. The damage is already done.”

“No. She left a long time ago. I was in there most of the time alone thinking about how to get out of this. I didn't tell her shit about today's meeting. Harry, I didn't—”

Bosch took one more step and in a quick motion brought his hand up, palm out, and hit Edgar in the chest, knocking him backward.

“I said don't call me that!” he yelled. “You fuck! You—we worked together, man. I taught you … I'm in that courtroom getting fucked in the ass and I find out you're the guy, you're the goddamn leak.”

“I'm sorry. I—”

“What about Bremmer? You the one who told him about the note? Is that where you're going for a drink now? Going to meet Bremmer? Well, don't let me stop you.”

“No, man, I haven't talked to Bremmer. Look, I made a mistake, okay? I'm sorry. She screwed me, too. It was like blackmail. I couldn't—I tried to get out of it but she had me by the shorthairs. You gotta believe me, man.”

Bosch looked at him for a long moment. It was fully dark now but he thought he saw that Edgar's eyes were shiny in the glow of the streetlights. Maybe he was holding back tears. But what were they tears for, Bosch wondered. For the loss of the relationship they had? Or were they tears of fear? Bosch felt the surge of his power over Edgar. And Edgar knew he had it.

In a low and very even voice Bosch said, “I want to know everything. You are going to tell me what you did.”

The quartet at the Wind was on a break. They sat at a table in the back. It was a dark, wood-paneled room like hundreds of others in the city. A red leatherette pad ran along the edge of the cigarette-scarred bar and the barmaids wore black uniforms and white aprons and they all had too much red lipstick on their thin lips. Bosch ordered a double shot of Jack Black straight up and a bottle of Wein-hard's. He also gave the barmaid money for a pack of cigarettes. Edgar, who now wore the face of a man whose life had run out on him, ordered Jack Black, water back.

“It's the damn recession,” Edgar began before Bosch asked a question. “Real estate is in the toilet. I had to drop that gig and we had the mortgage and, you know how it is, man, Brenda had gotten used to a cert—”

“Fuck that. You think I want to hear about how you sell me out because your wife has to drive a Chevy instead of a BMW? Fuck you. You—”

“It's not like that. I—”

“Shut up. I'm talking. You're going to—”

They both shut up while the barmaid put the drinks and cigarettes down. Bosch put a twenty on her tray. He never took his dark, angry eyes off Edgar.

“Now, skip the bullshit and tell me what you did.”

Edgar threw back his shot and washed it down with water before starting.

“Uh, you see, uh, it was late Monday afternoon, this was after we'd been out to the scene at Bing's and I was back at the office. And I got a call at the office and it was Chandler. She knew something was up. I don't know how she knew, but she knew about the note we got and the body being found. She musta gotten tipped by Bremmer or something. She started asking questions, you know, ‘Was it confirmed as the Dollmaker?’ Things like that. I put her off. No comment …”

“And then?”

“Then, well, she offered me something. I'm two back on the mortgage and Brenda doesn't even know.”

“What'd I tell you? I don't want to hear your sad story, Edgar. I'm telling you, I don't have any sympathy for that. You tell it and it will only make me madder.”

“All right, all right. She offered me money. I said I'd think about it. She said if I wanted to deal to meet her at the Hung Jury that night… . You won't let me say why, but I had reasons and so I went. Yeah, I went.”

“Yeah, and you fucked yourself up,” Bosch said, hoping to knock down the defiant tone that had crept into Edgar's voice.

He had finished the last of his Jack Black and signaled the barmaid but she didn't see him. The musicians were taking their places behind their instruments. The front man was a saxophone player and Bosch wished he was here under other circumstances.

“What did you give her?”

“Just what we knew that day. But she already had just about everything already. I told her you said it looked like the Dollmaker. It wasn't a lot, Ha—and most of it was in the paper the next day, anyway. And I wasn't Bremmer's source on that. You have to believe me.”

“You told her I came out there? To the scene?”

“Yeah, I told her. What was the big secret about that?”

Bosch thought about all of this for a few minutes. He watched the band start up with a Billy Strayhorn number called “Lush Life.” Their table was far enough away from the quartet that it wasn't too loud. Harry's eyes scanned the rest of the bar to see if anyone else was into it and he saw Bremmer sitting at the bar nursing a beer. He was with a group of what looked like reporter types. One of the other men even had one of those long, skinny notebooks that reporters always carry sticking out of his back pocket.