from DMV, a witness’s unlisted number, she’s going to call you. She’s got you, man.”
“I know. I’ll have to deal with it.”
“All for what? What was the price, that first night?”
“I wanted one goddamn mortgage payment… Can’t sell the fuckin’ house, can’t make the mortgage, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“What about me? Aren’t you worried about what I’m going to do?”
“Yes. Yes, I am.”
Bosch looked back at the quartet. They were staying with a Strayhorn set and were on to “Blood Count.” There was a journeyman quality to the sax man’s work. He stayed on point and his phrasing was clean.
“What are you going to do?” Edgar asked.
Bosch didn’t have to think, he already knew. He didn’t take his eyes from the sax man as he spoke.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“It’s what you are going to do. I can’t work with you anymore, man. I know we got this thing with Irving but that’s it, that’s the end. After this is over you go to Pounds and tell him you want to transfer out of Hollywood.”
“But there aren’t openings in homicide anywhere else. I looked at the board, you know how rarely they come.”
“I didn’t say anything about homicide. I just said you’re going to ask for a transfer. You ask for the first thing open, understand? I don’t care if you end up on autos in the Seventy-seventh, you take the first thing you can get.”
Now he looked at Edgar, whose mouth was slightly open, and said, “That’s the price you pay.”
“But homicide is what I do, you know that. It’s where it’s at.”
“And you’re not where it’s at anymore. This isn’t negotiable. Unless you want to take your chances with IAD. But either you go to Pounds or I go to them. I can’t work with you anymore. That’s it.”
He looked back at the band. Edgar was silent and after a few moments Bosch told him to leave.
“You go first. I can’t walk with you back to Parker.”
Edgar stood up and hovered near the table for a few moments before saying, “Someday, you’re going to need all the friends you can get. That’s the day you’ll remember doing this to me.”
Without looking at him, Bosch said, “I know.”
After Edgar had gone Bosch got the barmaid’s attention and ordered another round. The quartet played “Rain Check” with some improvisational riffs that Bosch liked. The whiskey was beginning to warm his gut and he sat back and smoked and listened, trying not to think about anything to do with cops and killers.
But soon he felt a presence nearby and turned to see Bremmer standing there with his bottle of beer in hand.
“I take it by the look on Edgar’s face when he left that he won’t be coming back. Can I join you?”
“No, he won’t be back and you can do whatever you want, but I’m off duty, off the record and off the road.”
“In other words, you ain’t saying shit.”
“You got it.”
The reporter sat down and lit a cigarette. His small but sharp green eyes squinted through the smoke.
“It’s okay, ’cause I’m not working either.”
“Bremmer, you’re always working. Even now, I say the wrong word and you aren’t going to forget about it.”
“I suppose. But you forget the times we worked together. The stories that helped you, Harry. I write one story that doesn’t go the way you want and all of that is forgotten. Now I’m just ‘that damn reporter’ who-”
“I haven’t forgotten shit. You’re sitting here, right? I remember what you did for me and I’ll remember what you did against me. It all evens out in the end.”
They sat in silence for a while and listened to the music. The set ended just as the barmaid was putting Bosch’s third double Jack Black on the table.
“I’m not saying I would ever reveal it,” Bremmer said, “but how come my source on the note story was so important?”
“It’s not that important anymore. At the time I just wanted to know who was trying to nail me.”
“You said that before. That someone was setting you up. You really think that?”
“It doesn’t matter. What kind of story did you write for tomorrow?”
The reporter straightened up and and his eyes brightened.
“You’ll see it. Pretty much a straight court story. Your testimony about someone else continuing the killings. It’s going out front. It’s a big story. That why I’m here. I always come in for a pop after I hit the front page.”
“Party time, huh? What about my mother? Did you put that stuff in?”
“Harry, if that’s what you are worried about, forget it. I didn’t even mention that in the story. To be honest, it’s of course vitally interesting to you, but as far as a newspaper story goes, I thought it was too much inside baseball. I left it out.”
“Inside baseball?”
“Too arcane, like the stats those sports guys on TV throw around. You know, like how many fastballs Lefty So and So threw during the third inning of the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. I thought the stuff with your mother-Chandler’s attempt to use it as your motivation for dropping this guy-was going too far inside.”
Bosch just nodded. He was glad that part of his life would not be in the hands of a million newspaper buyers tomorrow, but he acted nonchalant about it.
“But,” Bremmer said, “I gotta tell you, if we get a verdict back on this that goes against you and the jurors start saying they thought you did it to avenge your mother’s death, then that is usable and I won’t have a choice.”
Bosch nodded again. It seemed fair enough. He looked at his watch and saw it was nearly ten. He knew he should call Sylvia and he knew he should get out of there before the next set started and he became entranced by the music again.
He finished his drink and said, “I’m gonna hit it.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Bremmer said. “I’ll walk out with you.”
Outside, the chilled night air cut through Bosch’s whiskey daze. He said good-bye to Bremmer and put his hands in his pockets as he started down the sidewalk.
“Harry, you walking all the way back to Parker Center? Hop in. My car is right here.”
Bosch watched Bremmer unlock the passenger door to his Le Sabre, which was parked right at the curb in front of the Wind. Bosch got in without a word of thanks and leaned over and unlocked the other side. When he was drunk he went through a stage where he said almost nothing, just vegetated in his own juices and listened.
Bremmer started the conversation during the four blocks to Parker Center.
“That Money Chandler is something else, isn’t she? She really knows how to play a jury.”
“You think she’s got it, don’t you?”
