it later.
“Anything new?” he asked Edgar.
“Nothing on the survivor, yet,” Edgar answered. “I’m leaving in five minutes to go up to Sepulveda. The girls do a lot of rush-hour work up there, maybe I’ll see her, pick her up.”
Having gotten the updates from everyone else, Bosch told the detectives in the room about the information he had gotten from Mora and what Locke thought of it. At the end, Rollenberger whistled at the information as if it were a beautiful woman.
“Man, the chief should know this pronto. He might want to double up on the surveillance.”
“Mora’s a cop,” Bosch said. “The more bodies you put on the watch, the better chance he has of making them. If he knows we’re watching him, you can forget the whole thing.”
Rollenberger thought about this and nodded, but said, “Well, we still have to let the man know what’s developing. Tell you what, nobody go anywhere for a few minutes. I’ll see if I can get with him a little early and we’ll see where we go from there.”
He stood up with some papers in his hand and knocked on the door leading to Irving’s office. He then opened it and disappeared through.
“Dipshit,” Sheehan said after the door was closed. “Goin’ in for a little mouth-to-ass resuscitation.”
Everybody laughed.
“Hey, you two,” Bosch said to Sheehan and Opelt. “Mora mentioned your little meeting at the taco stand.”
“Shit!” Opelt exclaimed.
“I think he bought the kosher burrito line,” Bosch said and started laughing. “Until he tasted one! He couldn’t get why you guys’d come all the way over from Parker for one of those shitty things. He threw half of his out. So if he sees you again out there, he’ll put it together. Watch your ass.”
“We will,” Sheehan said. “That was Opelt’s idea, that kosher burrito shit. He-”
“What? What’d you want me to say? The guy we’re watching suddenly walks up to the car and says, ‘What’s happening, boys?’ I had to think of-”
The door opened and Rollenberger came back in. He went to his place but didn’t sit down. Instead, he put both hands on the table and sternly leaned forward as if he had just been given orders from God.
“I’ve brought the chief up to date. He’s very pleased with everything we’ve come up with in just twenty-four hours. He is concerned about losing Mora, especially with the shrink saying we are at the end of the cycle, but he doesn’t want to change the surveillance. Adding another team doubles the chance Mora will see something. I think he’s right. It’s a very good idea to maintain status quo. We-”
Edgar tried to hold back a laugh but couldn’t. It sounded more like a sneeze.
“Detective Edgar, something funny?”
“No, I think I’m getting a cold or something. Go on, please.”
“Well, that’s it. Proceed as planned. I will inform the other surveillance teams of what Bosch has come up with. We have Rector and Heikes taking the midnight shift, then the presidents tomorrow morning at eight.”
The presidents were a pair of RHD partners named Johnson and Nixon. They didn’t like being called the presidents, especially Nixon.
“Sheehan, Opelt, you are back on tomorrow at four. You’ve got Saturday night, so be bright. Bosch, Edgar, still freelancing. See what you can come up with. Keep your pagers on and the rovers handy. We might need to pull everybody together on short notice.”
“OT approved?” Edgar asked.
“All weekend. But if you’re on the clock, I want to see the work. Only humps on this job, no freeloading. All right, that’s it.”
Rollenberger sat down then and pulled his chair close to the table. Bosch figured it was to cover up an erection, he seemed to get off so much on being the taskmaster here. All of them but Hans Off pushed into the hallway then and headed to the elevator.
“Who’s drinking tonight?” Sheehan asked.
“More like, who isn’t,” Opelt answered.
Bosch got to his house by seven, after having only one beer at the Code Seven and finding that the alcohol was a turn-off after the overindulgence of the night before. He called Sylvia and told her there was no verdict yet. He said he was going to shower and change clothes and he would be up to see her by eight.
His hair was still damp when she opened her door. She grabbed him as soon as he stepped in and they held each other and kissed in the entry of her house for a long time. It was only when she stepped back that he saw she was wearing a black dress with a neckline that cut deeply between her breasts and a hemline about four inches over her knees.
“How’d it go today, the closing arguments and all?”
“Fine. What are you all dressed up for?”
“Because I am taking you out to dinner. I made reservations.”
She leaned into him and kissed him on the mouth.
“Harry, last night was the best night we’ve ever had together. It was the best night I can remember with anyone. And not because of the sex. Actually, you and I have done better.”
“Always room for improvement. How ’bout a little practice before dinner?”
She smiled and told him there was no time.
They drove down through the Valley and into Malibu Canyon to the Saddle Peak Lodge. It was an old hunting lodge and the menu featured a vegetarian’s nightmare. It was all meat, from venison to buffalo. They each had a steak and Sylvia ordered a bottle of Merlot. Bosch sipped his slowly. He thought the meal and the evening were wonderful. They talked little about the case or anything else. They did a lot of looking at each other.
When they returned to her house, Sylvia turned down the air-conditioner thermostat and built a fire in the living room fireplace. He just watched her; he had never been good at building fires that lasted. Even with the AC on sixty it got very warm. They made love on a blanket she spread out in front of the fireplace. They were perfectly relaxed and moved smoothly together.
Afterward, he watched the fire reflect on the light sheen of sweat on her chest. He kissed her there and put his head down to listen to her heart. The rhythm was strong and it beat counterpoint to his own. He closed his eyes and started thinking of ways to guard against ever losing this woman.
The fire was nothing but a few glowing embers when he woke up in the darkness. There was a shrill sound and he was very cold.
“Your beeper,” Sylvia said.
He crawled to the pile of clothes near the couch, traced the sound and cut it off.
“God, what time is it?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s scary. I remember when-”
She stopped herself. Bosch knew it was a story about her husband that she was about to tell. She must have decided not to let his memory intrude here. But it was too late. Bosch found himself wondering if Sylvia and her husband had ever turned down the thermostat on a summer night and made love in front of the fireplace on that same blanket.
“Aren’t you going to call?”
“Huh? Oh. Yeah. I’m, uh, just trying to wake up.”
He pulled his pants on and went into the kitchen. He slid the door closed so the light would not bother her. After flicking the switch he looked at the clock on the wall. It was a plate and where the numbers should be were different vegetables. It was half past the carrot, meaning one-thirty. He realized he and Sylvia had
