The Last Coyote (7 page)

Chapter Eight

O
N THE WAY
home he worked his way up to Sunset and took that all the way into the city. Traffic was sparse. He had stayed out later than he had planned. He smoked and listened to the all-news channel on the radio. There was a report about Grant High finally reopening in the Valley. It was where Sylvia had taught. Before going to Venice.

Bosch was tired and guessed that he probably wouldn’t pass a breath test if stopped. He dropped his speed to below the limit as Sunset cut through Beverly Hills. He knew the cops in BH wouldn’t cut him a break and that would be all he’d need on top of the involuntary stress leave.

He turned left at Laurel Canyon and took the winding road up the hill. At Mulholland he was about to turn right on red when he checked the traffic from the left and froze. He saw a coyote step out of the brush of the arroyo to the left of the roadway and take a tentative look around the intersection. There were no other cars. Only Bosch saw this.

The animal was thin and ragged, worn by the struggle to sustain itself in the urban hills. The mist rising from the arroyo caught the reflection of the street lights and cast the coyote in almost a dim blue light. And it seemed to study Bosch’s car for a moment, its eyes catching the reflection of the stoplight and glowing. For just a moment Bosch believed that the coyote might be looking directly at him. Then the animal turned and moved back into the blue mist.

A car came up behind him and honked. Bosch had the green light. He waved and made the turn onto Mulholland. But then he pulled to the side. He put the car in park and got out.

It was a cool evening and he felt a chill as he walked across the intersection to the spot where he had seen the blue coyote. He wasn’t sure what he was doing but he wasn’t afraid. He just wanted to see the animal again. He stopped at the edge of the dropoff and looked down into the darkness below. The blue mist was all around him now. A car passed behind him and when the noise receded he listened and looked intently. But there was nothing.

The coyote was gone. He walked back to his car and drove on Mulholland to Woodrow Wilson Drive to home.

Later, as he lay in his bed after more drinks and with the light still on, he smoked the last cigarette of the night and stared up at the ceiling. He’d left the light on but his thoughts were of the dark, sacred night. And the blue coyote. And the woman with the getaway face. Soon all of those thoughts disappeared with him into the dark.

Chapter Nine

B
OSCH GOT LITTLE
sleep and was up before the sun. The last cigarette of the night before had nearly been his last for all time. He had fallen asleep with it between his fingers, only to be jolted awake by the searing pain of the burn. He dressed the wounds on two fingers and tried to return to sleep, but it wouldn’t take him. His fingers throbbed and all he could think of was how many times he had investigated the deaths of hapless drunks who had fallen asleep and self-immolated. All he could think of was what Carmen Hinojos would have to say about such a stunt. How was that for a symptom of self-destruction?

Finally, as dawn’s light began to leak into the room he gave up on sleep and got up. While coffee brewed in the kitchen he went into the bathroom and rebandaged the burns on his fingers. As he taped the fresh gauze on, he glanced at himself in the mirror and saw the deep lines under his eyes.

“Shit,” he said to himself. “What’s going on?”

He had black coffee on the back deck while watching the silent city come awake. There was a crisp chill in the air and the earthy smell of eucalyptus was rising from the tall trees down in the pass. The marine fog layer had filled the pass and the hills were just mysterious silhouettes in the mist. He watched the morning begin for nearly an hour, fascinated by the show he had from his deck.

It wasn’t until he went back inside for a second cup that he noticed the red light flashing on his phone machine. He had two messages that had probably been left the day before and that he hadn’t noticed after coming in last night. He pressed the play button.

“Bosch, this is Lieutenant Pounds calling on Tuesday at three thirty-five. I have to inform you that while you are on leave and until your, uh, status with the department is decided, you will be required to return your vehicle to the Hollywood Division garage. I have here that it is a four-year-old Chevrolet Caprice, tag number one-adam-adam-three-four-zero-two. Please make arrangements immediately to have the car turned in and checked out. This order is per
Standard Practices Manual
citation three dash thirteen. Violation could result in suspension and/or dismissal. Again, this is an order from Lieutenant Pounds, now three thirty-six on Tuesday. If there is any part of this message that you do not understand, feel free to contact me at the office.”

The machine reported the message had actually been left at 4 P.M. Tuesday, probably right before Pounds had gone home for the day. Fuck him, Bosch thought. The car’s a piece of shit anyway. He can have it.

The second message was from Edgar.

“Harry, you there? It’s Edgar…Okay, listen, let’s forget about today, okay? I mean it. Let’s just say I was a prick and you were a prick and we’re both pricks and forget it. Whether it turns out you are my partner or you were my partner, I owe you a lot, man. And if I ever act like I forgot that, hit me alongside the head like you did today. Now, to the bad news. I checked everything on this Johnny Fox. I got exactly nothing, man. That’s from the NCIC, DOJ, DPP, Corrections, National Warrants, everything. I ran the works on him. Looks like this guy is clean, if he’s alive. You say he doesn’t even have a DL so that makes me think maybe you got a phony name there or maybe this guy ain’t among the living. So, that’s that. I don’t know what you’re up to but if you want anything else, give a call…Oh, and hang in there, buddy. I’m ten-seven after this so you can reach me at home if—”

The message cut off. Edgar had run out of time. Bosch rewound the tape and poured his coffee. Back on the deck he mulled over the whereabouts of Johnny Fox. When he had gotten nothing on the DMV trace, Bosch had assumed Fox might be in prison, where driver’s licenses weren’t issued or needed. But Edgar had not found him there nor had he found his name on any national computer that tracks criminals. Now Bosch guessed that Johnny Fox had either gone straight or, as Edgar had suggested, was dead. If Bosch was betting, he’d take the latter. Men like Johnny Fox didn’t go straight.

Bosch’s alternative was to go down to the Los Angeles County Hall of Records and look for a death certificate but without a date of death it would be a needle in the haystack search. It might take him days. Before he’d do that, he decided, he’d try an easier way, the
L.A. Times
.

He went back inside to the phone and dialed a reporter named Keisha Russell. She was new on the cop beat and still struggling to find her way. She had made a subtle attempt to recruit Bosch as a source a few months earlier. The way reporters usually did that was to write an inordinate number of stories on a crime that did not merit such intense attention. But the process put them in constant contact with the detectives on the case and that allowed them the chance to ingratiate themselves and hopefully procure the investigators as future sources.

Russell had written five stories in a week about one of Bosch’s cases. It was a domestic violence case in which a husband had disregarded a temporary restraining order and gone to his separated wife’s new apartment on Franklin. He carried her to the fifty-floor balcony and threw her off. He went over next. Russell had talked to Bosch repeatedly during the stretch of stories. The resultant dispatches were thorough and complete. It was good work and she began to earn Bosch’s respect. Still, he knew that she hoped that the stories and her attention would be the building blocks of a long reporter/investigator relationship. Since then not a week had gone by that she didn’t call Bosch once or twice to bullshit, pass along departmental gossip she had picked up from other sources, and ask the one question all reporters live and die by: “Anything going on?”

She answered on the first ring and Bosch was a little surprised she was in so early. He was planning on leaving a message on her voice mail.

“Keisha, it’s Bosch.”

“Hey, Bosch, how you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. I guess you heard about me.”

“Not everything, but I heard you went on temporary leave. But nobody would tell me why. You want to talk about it?”

“No, not really. I mean, not now. I have a favor to ask. If it works out, I’ll give you the story. That’s the deal I’ve made in the past with other reporters.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Just walk over to the morgue.”

She groaned.

“I mean the newspaper morgue, right there at the
Times
.”

“Oh, that’s better. What do you need?”

“I’ve got a name. It’s old. I know the guy was a dirtbag in the fifties and at least the early sixties. But I’ve lost track of him after that. Thing is, my hunch is that he’s dead.”

“You want an obit?”

“Well, I don’t know if this is the type of guy the
Times
would write an obituary on. He was strictly small time, near as I can tell. I was thinking that there might be a story, you know, if his death was sort of untimely.”

“You mean like if he got his shit blown away.”

“You got it.”

“Okay, I’ll take a look.”

She seemed eager, Bosch sensed. He knew that she thought that by doing this favor she would be cementing their relationship in place and it would only pay dividends in the future. He said nothing that would dissuade her of this.

“What’s the name?”

“His name is John Fox. He went by Johnny. Last I have a trace on him is 1961. He was a pimp, general piece of trash.”

“White, black, yellow or brown?”

“General piece of white trash, you could say.”

“You have a birth date? It will help narrow it down if there’s more than one Johnny Fox in the clips.”

He gave it to her.

“Okay, where you going to be?”

Bosch gave her his portable phone number. He knew that would set the hook. The number would go right onto the source list she kept in her computer like gold earrings in a jewelry box. Having the number where he could be reached at almost any time was worth the search in the morgue.

“Okay, listen, I’ve got a meeting with my editor—that’s the only reason I’m in this early. But after, I’ll go take a look. I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”

“If there is something.”

“Right.”

After Bosch hung up he ate some Frosted Flakes from a box he took out of the refrigerator and turned on the news radio. He had discontinued the newspaper after the earthquake in case Gowdy, the building inspector, happened by early and saw it out front, a clue that someone was inhabiting the uninhabitable. There was nothing much in the top of the news summary that interested him. No homicides in Hollywood, at least. He wasn’t missing out on anything.

There was one story after the traffic report that caught his attention. An octopus on display at a city aquarium in San Pedro had apparently killed itself by pulling a water circulation tube out of its tank fitting with one of its tentacles. The tank emptied and the octopus died. Environmental groups were calling it suicide, a desperate protest by the octopus against its captivity. Only in L.A., Bosch thought as he turned the radio off. A place so desperate even the marine life was killing itself.

He took a long shower, closing his eyes and holding his head directly under the spray. As he was shaving in front of the mirror after, he couldn’t help but study the circles under his eyes again. They seemed even more pronounced than earlier and fit nicely with the eyes cracked with red from his drinking the night before.

He put the razor down on the edge of the sink and leaned closer to the mirror. His skin was as pale as a recycled paper plate. As he appraised himself, the thought he had was that he had once been considered a handsome man. Not anymore. He looked beaten. It seemed that age was gripping him, beating him down. He thought that he resembled some of the old men he’d seen after they were found dead in their beds. The ones in the rooming houses. The ones living in refrigerator boxes. He reminded himself more of the dead than the living.

He opened the medicine cabinet so the reflection would go away. He looked among the various items on the glass shelves and chose a squeeze bottle of Murine. He put in a heavy dose of the eye drops, wiped the excess spill off his face with a towel and left the bathroom without closing the cabinet and having to look at himself again.

He put on his best clean suit, a gray two-piece, and a white button-down shirt. He added his maroon tie with gladiator helmets on it. It was his favorite tie. And his oldest. One edge of it was fraying but he wore it two or three times a week. He’d bought it ten years earlier when he was first assigned to homicide. He pegged it in place on his shirt with a gold tie tack that formed the number 187—the California penal code for homicide. As he did this, he felt a measure of control come back to him. He began to feel good and whole again, and to feel angry. He was ready to go out into the world, whether or not it was ready for him.

Chapter Ten

B
OSCH PULLED THE
knot of his tie tight against his throat before pulling open the back door of the station. He took the hallway to the rear of the detective bureau and then the aisle between the tables toward the front, where Pounds sat in his office behind the glass windows that separated him from the detectives he commanded. Heads at the burglary table bobbed up as he was noticed, then at the robbery and homicide tables. Bosch did not acknowledge anyone, though he almost lost a step when he saw someone sitting in his seat at the homicide table. Burns. Edgar was there at his own spot, but his back was to Bosch’s path and he didn’t see Harry coming through the room.

But Pounds did. Through the glass wall he saw Bosch’s approach to his office and he stood up behind his desk.

The first thing Bosch noticed as he got closer was that the glass panel that he had broken just a week before in the office had already been replaced. He thought it was strange that this could happen so quickly in a department where more vital repairs—such as replacing the bullet-riddled windshield of a patrol car—normally took a month of red tape and paper pushing. But those were the priorities of this department.

“Henry!” Pounds barked. “Come in here.”

An old man who sat at the front counter and took calls on the public line and gave general directions jumped up and doddered into the glass office. He was a civilian volunteer, one of several who worked in the station, mainly retirees that most cops referred to collectively as members of the Nod Squad.

Bosch followed the old man in and put his briefcase down on the floor.

“Bosch!” Pounds yelped. “There’s a witness here.”

He pointed to old Henry, then out through the glass.

“Witnesses out there as well.”

Bosch could see that Pounds still had deep purple remnants of broken capillaries under each eye. The swelling was gone, though. Bosch walked up to the desk and reached into the pocket of his coat.

“Witnesses to what?”

“To whatever you’re doing here.”

Bosch turned to look at Henry.

“Henry, you can leave now. I’m just going to talk to the lieutenant.”

“Henry, you stay,” Pounds commanded. “I want you to hear this.”

“How do you know he’ll remember it, Pounds? He can’t even transfer a call to the right table.”

Bosch looked back at Henry again and fixed him with a stare that left no doubt who was in charge in the glass room.

“Close the door on your way out.”

Henry made a timid glance back at Pounds but then quickly headed out the door, closing it as instructed. Bosch turned back to Pounds.

The lieutenant slowly, like a cat sneaking past a dog, lowered himself into his seat, perhaps thinking or knowing from experience that there might be more safety in not being at a face-to-face level with Bosch. Harry looked down and saw that there was a book open on the desk. He reached down and turned the cover to see what it was.

“Studying for the captain’s exam, Lieutenant?”

Pounds shrank back from Bosch’s reach. Bosch saw it was not the captain’s exam manual but a book on creating and honing motivational skills in employees. It had been written by a professional basketball coach. Bosch had to laugh and shake his head.

“Pounds, you know, you’re really something. I mean, at least you’re entertaining. I gotta give you that.”

Pounds grabbed the book back and shoved it in a drawer.

“What do you want, Bosch? You know you’re not supposed to be in here. You’re on leave.”

“But you called me in, remember?”

“I did not.”

“The car. You said you wanted the car.”

“I said turn it in at the garage. I didn’t say come in here. Now get out!”

Bosch could see the rosy spread of anger on the other man’s face. Bosch remained cool and took that as a sign of a declining level of stress. He brought his hand out of his pocket with the car keys in them. He dropped them on the desk in front of Pounds.

“It’s parked out by the drunk tank door. You want it back, you can have it. But you take it through the checkout at the garage. That’s not a cop’s job. That’s a job for a bureaucrat.”

Bosch turned to leave and picked up his briefcase. He then opened the door to the office with such force that it swung around and banged against one of the glass panels of the office. The whole office shook but nothing broke. He walked around the counter, saying, “Sorry about that, Henry,” without looking at the old man, and then headed down the front hall.

A few minutes later he was standing on the curb on Wilcox, in front of the station, waiting for the cab he had called with his portable. A gray Caprice, almost a duplicate of the car he had just turned in, pulled up in front of him and he bent down to look in. It was Edgar. He was smiling. The window glided down.

“You need a ride, tough guy?”

Bosch got in.

“There’s a Hertz on La Brea near the Boulevard.”

“Yeah, I know it.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Edgar laughed and shook his head.

“What?”

“Nothing…Burns, man. I think he was about to shit his pants when you were in there with Pounds. He thought you were gonna come outta there and throw his ass outta your chair at the table. He was pitiful.”

“Shit. I should’ve. I didn’t think of it.”

Silence came back again. They were on Sunset coming up to La Brea.

“Harry, you just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“I guess not.”

“What happened to your hand?”

Bosch held it up and studied the bandage.

“Ah, I hit it last week when I was working on the deck. Hurt like a son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, you better be careful or Pounds is going to be on you like a son of a bitch.”

“He already is.”

“Man, he’s nothing but a bean counter, a punk. Why can’t you just leave it alone? You know you’re just—”

“You know, you’re beginning to sound like the shrink they’re sending me to. Maybe I should just sit with you for an hour today, what you say?”

“Maybe she’s talking some sense to you.”

“Maybe I should’ve taken the cab.”

“I think you should figure out who your friends are and listen to them for once.”

“Here it is.”

Edgar slowed in front of the rental car agency. Bosch got out before the car was even stopped.

“Harry, wait a minute.”

Bosch looked back in at him.

“What’s going on with this Fox thing? Who is the guy?”

“I can’t tell you now, Jerry. It’s just better this way.”

“You sure?”

Bosch heard the phone in his briefcase start to ring. He looked down at it and then back at Edgar.

“Thanks for the ride.”

He closed the car door.