angel-Billets wasn’t sure who-at Parker Center practically guaranteed her stay in Hollywood would be short. It was a bit of final seasoning before she headed downtown to the Glass House.
“What about the OPG?” Bosch asked.
“Held up on that,” Rider said. “Thought we’d be here a while before we moved the car.”
Bosch nodded. It was what he expected her to say. The official police garage was usually last on the call-out list. He was just stalling, trying to make a decision while asking questions he already knew the answers to.
Finally he made his decision on what to do.
“Okay, go ahead and call,” he said. “Tell them to come now. And tell them to bring a flatbed. Okay? Even if they’ve got a hook in the neighborhood, make ’em turn around. Tell ’em it’s gotta be a flat. There’s a phone in my briefcase.”
“Got it,” Rider said.
“Why the flatbed, Harry?” Edgar asked.
Bosch didn’t answer.
“We’re moving the whole show,” Rider said.
“What?” Edgar asked.
Rider went to the briefcase without answering. Bosch held back a smile. She knew what he was doing, and he began to see some of the promise Billets had talked about. He got out a cigarette and lit it. He put the burnt match into the cellophane around the pack and replaced it in the pocket of his coat.
He noticed as he smoked that the sound at the edge of the clearing, where he could look directly down into the Bowl, was much better. After a few moments he was even able to identify the piece being played.
“Sheherazade,” he said.
“What’s that, Harry?” Edgar asked.
“The music. It’s called Sheherazade. Ever heard it?”
“I’m not sure I’m hearing it now. All the echoes, man.”
Bosch snapped his fingers. Out of the blue a thought had pushed through. In his mind he saw the studio’s arched gate, the replica of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
“That address on Melrose,” Bosch said. “That’s near Paramount. One of those feeder-fish studios right nearby. I think it’s Archway.”
“Yeah? I think you’re right.”
Rider walked up then.
“We got a flat on the way,” she said. “ETA is fifteen. I checked on SID and ME. Also on the way. SID has somebody just wrapped up a home invasion in Nichols Canyon, so they should be right over.”
“Good,” Bosch said. “Either of you go over the story with the swinging stick, yet?”
“Not since the preliminary,” Edgar said. “Not our type. Thought we’d leave him for the three.”
The unspoken meaning of this was that Edgar had sensed the racist animosity Powers radiated toward himself and Rider.
“Okay, I’ll take him,” Bosch said. “I want you two to finish the charting, then do another sweep of the immediate area. Take different areas this time.”
He realized he had just told them things he didn’t need to tell them.
“Sorry. You know what to do. All I’m saying is let’s take this one by the numbers. I’ve got a feeling it’s going eight by ten on us.”
“What about OCID?” Edgar asked.
“I told you, not yet.”
“Eight by ten?” Rider said, a confused expression on her face.
“Eight by ten case,” Edgar told her. “Celebrity case. Studio case. If that’s a hotshot from the industry in that trunk, somebody from Archway, we’re going to get some media on this. More than some. A dead guy in the trunk of his Rolls is news. A dead industry guy in the trunk of his Rolls is bigger news.”
“Archway?”
Bosch left them there as Edgar filled her in on the facts of life when it came to murder, the media and the movie business in Hollywood.
Bosch licked his fingers to put the cigarette out and then put it with the used match in the cellophane wrapper. He slowly began walking the quarter mile back to Mulholland, once again searching the gravel road in a back-and- forth manner. But there was so much debris on the gravel and in the nearby brush that it was impossible to know if anything-a cigarette butt, a beer bottle, a used condom-was related to the Rolls or not. The one thing he looked closest for was blood. If there was blood on the road that could be linked to the victim, it could indicate that he was killed elsewhere and left in the clearing. No blood probably meant the killing had taken place right there.
He realized as he made the fruitless search that he was feeling relaxed, maybe even happy. He was back on the beat and following his mission once again. Mindful that the man in the trunk had to have perished for him to feel this way, Bosch quickly wrote that guilt off. The man would have ended up in the trunk whether Bosch had ever made it back to the homicide table or not.
When Bosch got to Mulholland he saw the fire trucks. There were two of them and a battalion of firefighters standing around them, seemingly waiting for something. He lit another cigarette and looked at Powers.
“You’ve got a problem,” the uniform cop said.
“What?”
Before Powers answered, one of the firefighters stepped up. He wore the white helmet of a battalion chief.
“You in charge?” he asked.
“That’s me.”
“Chief Jon Friedman,” he said. “We’ve got a problem.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“The show down in the Bowl is supposed to end in ninety minutes. After that we’ve got the fireworks. Problem is this fellow says you got yourself a dead body up there and a crime scene. That’s the problem. If we can’t get up there to set up a safety position for the fireworks, there isn’t going to be any fireworks. We can’t allow it. If we’re not in position, we could see the whole down slope of these hills go up with one errant missile. Know what I mean?”
Bosch noticed Powers smirking at his dilemma. Bosch ignored him and returned his attention to Friedman.
“Chief, how long do you need to set up?”
“Ten minutes max. We just got to be there before the first one goes up.”
“Ninety minutes?”
“About eighty-five now. There’s gonna be a lot of angry people down there if they don’t get their fireworks.”
Bosch realized he wasn’t as much making decisions as having them made for him.
“Chief, hold here. We’ll be out in an hour and fifteen. Don’t cancel the show.”
“You sure about that?”
“Count on it.”
“Detective?”
“What, Chief?”
“You’re breaking the law with that cigarette.”
He nodded toward the graffiti-covered sign.
“Sorry, Chief.”
Bosch walked out to the road to stamp out the smoke while Friedman headed back to his people to radio in that the show would go on. Bosch realized the danger and caught up to him.
“Chief, you can say the show will go on, but don’t put anything out on the air about the body. We don’t need the media out here, helicopters swooping over.”
“I gotcha.”
Bosch thanked him and turned his attention to Powers.
“You can’t clear a scene in an hour and fifteen,” Powers said. “The ME isn’t even here.”
“Let me worry about that, Powers. You write something up yet?”
“Not yet. Been dealing with these guys. Would’ve helped if one of you folks had a two-way with you up
