The Concrete Blonde

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 theTimes 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 theTimes 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 rest-rooms. 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 theHollywood 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 news stand 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