devoid of love, invigorated and driven solely, it seemed, by lust and maybe a memory. When he was done she pulled him toward her, into her, in rhythmic thrusts until she, too, reached her moment and subsided. Then, with the clarity of thought that always comes after, they became embarrassed about their nakedness, about how they had coupled with the ferocity of animals and now looked at each other as human beings.
“I forgot to ask,” she said. “You’re not married now, are you?”
She giggled. He reached to the floor to where his jacket had been thrown and pulled out the cigarettes.
“No,” he said. “I’m alone.”
“I should’ve known. Harry Bosch, the loner. I should’ve known.”
She was smiling at him in the darkness. He saw it when the match flared. He lit the cigarette and then offered it to her. She shook her head no.
“How many women have there been since me? Tell me.”
“I don’t know, just a few. There was one, we were together about a year. That was the most serious one.”
“What happened to her?”
“She went to Italy.”
“For good?”
“Who knows?”
“Well, if you don’t know, then she isn’t coming back. At least to you.”
“Yeah, I know. That one’s been over a while.”
He was silent for a moment and then she asked him who else there had been.
“There was a painter I met in Florida on a case. That didn’t last long. After that, there’s you again.”
“What happened to the painter?”
Bosch shook his head as if to dismiss the inquiry. He didn’t really enjoy reviewing his ill-fated romantic record.
“Distance, I guess,” he said. “It just didn’t work. I couldn’t leave L.A., she couldn’t leave where she was.”
She moved closer to him and kissed him on the chin. He knew he needed a shave.
“What about you, Eleanor? Are you alone?”
“Yes… The last man to make love to me was a cop. He was gentle but very strong. I don’t mean in a physical way. In a life way. It was a long time ago. At the time we both needed healing. We gave it to each other…”
They looked at each other in the darkness for a long moment and then she came closer. Just before their mouths met she whispered, “A lot of time gone past.”
He thought about those words as she kissed him and then pushed him back on the pillows. She straddled him and started a gentle rocking motion with her hips. Her hair hung down around his face until he was in a perfect darkness. He ran his hands along her warm skin from her hips to her shoulders and then underneath to touch her breasts. He could feel her wetness on him but it was too soon for him.
“What’s the matter, Harry?” she whispered. “You want to rest a while?”
“I don’t know.”
He kept thinking of those words. A lot of time gone past. Maybe too much time. She kept rocking.
“I don’t know what I want,” he said. “What do you want, Eleanor?”
“All I want is the moment. We’ve fucked everything else up, it’s all we’ve got left.”
After a while he was ready and they made love again. She was very silent, her movements steady and gentle. She stayed on top of him, her face above him, breathing in short rhythmic clips. Near the end, when he was just trying to hang on, waiting for her, he felt a teardrop hit his cheek. He reached up and smeared the tears on her face with his thumbs.
“It’s all right, Eleanor, it’s all right.”
She put one of her hands on his face, feeling it in the dark as if she were a blind woman. In a short while they met at the moment when nothing in the world can intrude. Not words or even memories. It was just them together. They had the moment.
He slept on and off in her bed until nearly dawn. She slept soundly with her head on his shoulder but when he was lucky enough to doze off, it never lasted long. For the most part he lay there staring into the gray darkness, smelling their sweat and sex, wondering what road he was on now.
At six he extricated himself from her unconscious embrace and got dressed. When he was ready he kissed her awake and told her he must go.
“I go back to L.A. today but I want to come back to you as soon as I can.”
She nodded sleepily.
“Okay, Bosch, I’ll be waiting.”
It was finally cool outside. He lit his first smoke of the day as he walked to his car. When he pulled onto Sands to head up to the Strip, he saw the sun was throwing a golden light on the mountains west of town.
The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town.
When he got to his room, he noticed the message light was blinking. He called the operator and was told that someone named Captain Felton had called at one and then again at two and then someone named Layla at four. There were no messages or numbers left by either of the callers. Bosch put the phone down and frowned. He figured it was too early to call Felton. But it was the call from Layla that most interested him. If it had been the real Layla who had called, then how did she know where to reach him?
He decided that it had probably been through Rhonda. The night before when he had called from Tony Aliso’s office in Hollywood, he had asked Rhonda for directions from the Mirage. She could have passed that on to Layla. He wondered why she had called. Maybe she hadn’t heard about Tony until Rhonda had told her.
Still, he decided to put Layla on a back burner for the moment. With the financial probe Kizmin Rider had opened up in L.A., the focus of the case seemed to be shifting. It was important for them to talk to Layla but his priority was to get back to L.A. He picked the phone back up and called Southwest and booked a 10:30 flight to L.A. He figured that would give him time to check in with Felton, then check out the dealership where Rider said Tony Aliso had leased his cars and still make it back to the Hollywood Division by lunchtime.
Bosch stripped off his clothes and took a long hot shower, washing the sweat of the night away. When he was done he wrapped a towel around himself and used another to wipe the fog off the mirror so he could shave. He noticed that his lower lip had swollen on one side to the size of a marble and his mustache did little to hide it. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. He wondered as he got the bottle of Visine drops out of his shaving bag if Eleanor had found a single thing about him attractive.
When he stepped back into the room to get dressed, he was greeted by a man he had never seen before sitting in the chair by the window. He was holding a newspaper, which he put down when he noticed Bosch step into the room clad only in the towel.
“It’s Bosch, right?”
Bosch looked to the bureau and saw his gun was still sitting there. It was closer to the man in the chair but Bosch thought he might be able to get to it first.
“Easy now,” the man said. “We’re in this together. I’m a cop. With Metro. Felton sent me.”
“What the fuck you doing in my room?”
“I came up, got no answer. I could hear the shower. I had a friend from downstairs slip me in. I didn’t want to wait around in the hall. Go ahead, get dressed. Then I’ll tell you what we got.”
“Let me see some ID.”
The man got up and approached Bosch, pulling a wallet from his inside coat pocket and putting a bored look on his face. He opened the wallet, flashing the badge and ID card.
“Iverson. From Metro. Captain Felton sent me.”
“What’s so important that Felton had to send somebody to break into my room?”
