Bosch could do not to burst into laughter.
“Come on, Jerry, I want to get a look at the guy. Can’t you hit a few more? It looks like he’s gotta be done soon.”
Edgar looked out at the range. The tractor was now near the fifty-yard markers. Assuming he had started back at the sound wall, he would be finished soon. There weren’t enough new balls out there-just Edgar’s and the two business guys’-to warrant going back over the entire range.
Edgar silently relented. He took out one of his woods and went back to the green square of fake grass. He hit a beautiful shot that almost carried to the sound wall.
“Tiger Woods, kiss my ass,” he said.
The next shot he put into the real grass ten feet from the tee.
“Shit.”
“When you play for real, do you hit off that fake grass?”
“No, Harry, you don’t. This is practice.”
“Oh, so in practice you don’t re-create the actual playing situation.”
“Something like that.”
The tractor pulled off the range and up to a shed behind the concession stand where Edgar had paid for his bucket of balls. The cage door opened and a man in his early sixties got out. He started pulling wire-mesh baskets full of balls out of the harvester and carrying them into the shed. Bosch told Edgar to keep hitting balls so that they wouldn’t be obvious. Bosch nonchalantly walked toward the concession stand and bought another half bucket of balls. This put him no more than twenty feet from the man who had been driving the tractor.
It was Samuel Delacroix. Bosch recognized him from a driver’s license photo Edgar had pulled and shown him. The man who once played a blond, blue-eyed Aryan soldier and had put a spell on an eighteen-year-old girl was now about as distinguished as a ham sandwich. He was still blond but it obviously came from a bottle and he was bald to the crown of his head. He had day-old whiskers that shone white in the sun. His nose was swollen by time and alcohol and pinched by a pair of ill-fitting glasses. He carried a beer paunch that would’ve been a ticket to a discharge in anybody’s army.
“Two-fifty.”
Bosch looked at the woman behind the cash register.
“For the balls.”
“Right.”
He paid her and picked up the bucket by the handle. He took a last glance at Delacroix, who suddenly looked over at Bosch at the same time. Their eyes locked for a moment and Bosch casually looked away. He headed back toward Edgar. That was when his cell phone started to chirp.
He quickly handed the bucket to Edgar and pulled the phone out of his back pocket. It was Mankiewicz, the day-shift watch sergeant.
“Hey, Bosch, what are you doing?”
“Just hitting some balls.”
“Figures. You guys fuck off while we do all the work.”
“You found my guy?”
“We think so.”
“Where?”
“He’s working at the Washateria. You know, picking up some tips, loose change.”
The Washateria was a car wash on La Brea. It employed day laborers to vacuum and wipe down cars. They worked mostly for tips and what they could steal out of the cars without getting caught.
“Who spotted him?”
“Couple guys from vice. They’re eighty percent sure. They want to know if you want them to make the move or do you want to be on scene.”
“Tell them to sit tight and that we’re on the way. And you know what, Mank? We think this guy’s a rabbit. You got a unit we can use as an extra backup in case he runs?”
“Um…”
There was silence and Bosch guessed that Mankiewicz was checking his deployment chart.
“Well, you’re in luck. I got a couple three-elevens starting early. They should be out of roll call in fifteen. That work for you?”
“Perfect. Tell them to meet us in the parking lot of the Checkers at La Brea and Sunset. Have the vice guys meet us there, too.”
Bosch signaled to Edgar that they were going to roll.
“Uh, one thing,” Mankiewicz said.
“What’s that?”
“On the backup, one of them’s Brasher. Is that going to be a problem?”
Bosch was silent a moment. He wanted to tell Mankiewicz to put somebody else on it but knew it was not his place to. If he tried to influence deployment or anything else based on his relationship with Brasher, then he could leave himself open to criticism and the possibility of an IAD investigation.
“No, no problem.”
“Look, I wouldn’t do it but she’s green. She’s made a few mistakes and needs this kind of experience.”
“I said no problem.”
Chapter 31
THEY planned the takedown of Johnny Stokes on the hood of Edgar’s car. The vice guys, Eyman and Leiby, drew the layout of the Washateria on a legal pad and circled the spot where they had spotted Stokes working under the waxing canopy. The car wash was surrounded on three sides by concrete walls and other structures. The area fronting La Brea was almost fifty yards, with a five-foot retention wall running the border except for entry and exit lanes at each corner of the property. If Stokes decided to run, he could go to the retention wall and climb it, but it was more likely that he would go for one of the open lanes.
The plan was simple. Eyman and Leiby would cover the car wash entrance, and Brasher and her partner, Edgewood, would cover the exit. Bosch and Edgar would drive Edgar’s car in as customers and make the move on Stokes. They switched their radios to a tactical unit and worked out a code; red meant Stokes had rabbitted, and green meant he had been taken peaceably.
“Remember something,” Bosch said. “Almost every wiper, rubber, soaper and vacuum guy on that lot is probably running from something-even if it’s just la migra. So even if we take Stokes without a problem, the others may rumble. Cops showing up at a car wash is like yelling fire in a theater. Everybody scatters till they see who’s the one who’s it.”
Everybody nodded and Bosch looked pointedly at Brasher, the rookie. In keeping with the plan agreed to the night before, they made no showing of knowing each other as anything other than fellow cops. But now he wanted to make sure she understood just how fluid a takedown like this could become.
“You got that, boot?” he said.
She smiled.
“Yeah, I got it.”
“All right, then let’s concentrate. Let’s go.”
He thought he saw the smile stay on Brasher’s face as she and Edgewood walked to their patrol car.
He and Edgar walked to Edgar’s Lexus. Bosch stopped when he got to it and realized that it looked like it had just been washed and waxed.
“Shit.”
“What can I say, Harry? I take care of my car.”
Bosch looked around. Behind the fast-food restaurant was an open Dumpster in a concrete alcove that had recently been washed down. There was a puddle of black water pooling on the pavement.
“Drive through that puddle a couple times,” he said. “Get it on your car.”
