“It’s just a name, Nunez. No harm no foul.”
Still nothing from the agent.
“Well, I’ll tell you what. You’ve got my name and number. And I think you know what agent I am talking about. So go to her and let her decide. Give her my name and number. I don’t care what you think about me, Nunez. You owe it to your fellow agent to give it to her. Just like Edgar. He was obligated. So are you.”
That was it. That was my pitch. I waited in the silence, this time deciding not to speak again until Nunez did.
“Look, Bosch, I would tell her you were calling for her. I would have told her before I even talked to Edgar. But obligations only go so far. The agent you were asking about? She’s not around anymore.”
“What do you mean not around? Where is she?”
Nunez said nothing. I sat up straight, my elbow hitting the wheel, drawing a blast from the horn. Something was in my memory, something about a female agent in the news. I couldn’t quite get to it.
“Nunez, is she dead?”
“Bosch, I don’t like this. This talking on the phone with somebody I’ve never met. Why don’t you come in and maybe we can talk about this.”
“Maybe?”
“Don’t worry, we’ll talk. When can you come in?”
The dashboard clock said it was five after three. I looked at the front door of the retirement home.
“Four o’clock.”
“We’ll be here.”
I closed the phone and sat there unmoving for a long moment, working at the memory. It was there, just out of reach.
I reopened the phone. I didn’t have my phone book with me, and numbers I once knew by heart had washed away in the past eight months like they had been written in sand on the beach. I called information and got the number for the Times newsroom. I then was connected to Keisha Russell. She remembered me like I had never left the department. We’d had a good relationship. I fed a number of exclusives to her over the years and she returned the favor by helping me with clip searches and keeping stories in the paper when she could. The Angella Benton case had been one of the times she couldn’t.
“Harry Bosch,” she said. “How are you?”
I noticed that her Jamaican accent was now almost completely gone. I missed it. I wondered if that was intentional or just the product of living ten years in the so-called melting pot.
“I’m fine. You still on the beat?”
“Of course. Some things never change.”
She had once told me that the cop beat was an entry-level position in journalism but that she never wanted to leave it. She thought moving up to cover city hall or elections or almost anything else would be terminally boring compared with writing stories about life and death and crime and consequences. She was good and thorough and accurate. So much so she had been invited to my retirement party. It was a rarity for an outsider of any ilk, especially a journalist, to earn such an invitation.
“Unlike you, Harry Bosch. You, I thought, would always be there in Hollywood Division. Almost a year later now and I still can’t believe it. You know, I called your number out of habit on a story a few months ago and a strange voice answered and I just had to hang up.”
“Who was it?”
“Perkins. They moved him over from autos.”
I hadn’t kept up. I didn’t know who had taken my slot. Perkins was good but not good enough. But I didn’t tell Russell that.
“So what’s up with you, mon?”
Every now and then she would turn on the accent and the patter. It was her way of making a transition, getting to the point.
“Sounds like you’re busy.”
“A bit.”
“Then I won’t bother you.”
“No, no, no. No bother. What can I do for you, Harry? You’re not working a case are you? Have you gone private?”
“Nothing like that. I was just curious about something that’s all. It can wait. I’ll check you later, Keisha.”
“Harry, wait!”
“You sure?”
“I am not too busy for an old friend, you know? What are you curious about?”
“I was just wondering, remember a while back there was an FBI agent, a woman, who disappeared? I think it was in the Valley. She was last seen driving home from -”
“Martha Gessler.”
The name brought it all back. Now I remembered.
“Yeah, that’s it. Whatever happened with her, do you know?”
“As far as I know she’s still missing in action, presumed dead probably.”
“There hasn’t been anything about her lately? I mean, any stories?”
“Nope, because I would’ve written them and I haven’t written about her in, oh, two years at least.”
“Two years. Is that when it happened?”
“No, more like three. I think I did a one-year-later story. An update. That was the last time I wrote about her. But thanks for the reminder. It may be time for another look.”
“Hey, if you do that, hold off a few days, would you?”
“So you are working on something, Harry.”
“Sort of. I don’t know if it’s related to Martha Gessler or not. But give me till next week, okay?”
“No problem if you come clean and talk to me then.”
“Okay, give me a call. Meantime, could you pull the clips on her? I’d like to read what you wrote back then.”
I knew they still called it pulling clips even though it was all on computer now and actual newspaper clippings were a thing of the past.
“Sure, I can do that. You have a fax or an e-mail?”
I had neither.
“Maybe you can just mail them to me. Regular mail, I mean.”
I heard her laugh.
“Harry, you won’t make it as a modern private detective like that. I bet all you have is a trench coat.”
“I’ve got a cell phone.”
“Well, that’s a start then.”
I smiled and gave her my address. She said the clips would go out in the afternoon mail. She asked for my cell number so she could call me the following week and I gave her that, too.
Then I thanked her and closed the phone. I sat there for a moment considering things. I had taken an interest in the Martha Gessler case at the time. I didn’t know her but my former wife had. They had worked together in the bureau’s bank robbery unit many years before. Her disappearance had held in the news for several days, then the reports were more sporadic and then they just dropped off completely. I had forgotten about her until now.
I felt a burning in my chest and I knew it wasn’t the midday martini backing up. I felt like I was closing in on something. Like when a child can’t see something in the dark but is sure it is there just the same.
9
I got the instrument case out of the back of the Benz and carried it up the sidewalk to the double doors of the retirement home. I nodded to the woman behind the counter and walked by. She didn’t stop me. She knew me by now. I went down the hallway to the right and opened the door to the music room. There was a piano and an
