“Where am I going to go?”
“You could go to a hotel but I think my place would be better, safer. You remember where it is?”
“Yes. Up off Mulholland?”
“Yeah. Woodrow Wilson Drive. I’ll give you the key. Take a cab from the airport and I’ll be there by tomorrow night.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and Bosch came around and sat next to her. He put his arms around her shoulders.
“I don’t know if I could live in L.A. again.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
He leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.
“Don’t kiss me. I need to take a shower.”
He kissed her again and then pulled her back onto the bed. They made love differently this time. They were more tender, slower. They found each other’s rhythm.
Afterward, Bosch took the first shower and then while Eleanor bathed he used oil and a rag from his gun kit to clean the Glock that had been thrown into the pool. He worked the action and trigger several times to make sure the weapon was working properly. Then he filled the clip with fresh ammunition. He went to the closet and took a plastic laundry bag off the shelf, put the gun inside it and shoved it beneath a stack of clothes in Eleanor’s suitcase.
After her shower Eleanor dressed in a yellow cotton summer dress and twined her hair into a French braid. Bosch liked watching her do it with such skill. When she was ready, he closed the suitcase and they left the room. The head valet came up to Bosch as he was putting the suitcase into the trunk.
“Next time, thirty minutes is thirty minutes. Not an hour.”
“Sorry ’bout that.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it. I could’ve lost my job, man.”
Bosch ignored him and got in the car. On the way to the airport he tried to compose his thoughts into articulate sentences that he could recite to her but it wasn’t working. His emotions were too much of a jumble.
“Eleanor,” he finally said. “Everything that’s happened, it’s my fault. And I want to try to make it up to you.”
She reached over and put her hand on his thigh. He put his hand on top of hers. She didn’t say anything.
At the airport, Bosch parked in front of the Southwest terminal and got her suitcase out of the trunk. He locked his own gun and badge in the trunk so he could go through the airport’s metal detector without a problem.
There was one last flight to L.A., leaving in twenty minutes. Bosch bought her a ticket and checked her bag. The gun would cause no problem as long as the bag was checked. He then escorted her to the terminal, where there was already a line of people making their way down the jetway.
Bosch took the key to his house off his keychain, gave it to her and told her the exact address.
“It’s not the same as you might remember it,” he said. “The old place got wrecked in the earthquake. It’s been rebuilt and it’s not all the way done. But it will be all right. The sheets, uh, I probably should’ve washed them a few days ago but didn’t have time. There’s fresh ones in the hallway closet.”
She smiled.
“Don’t worry, I’ll figure everything out.”
“Uh, listen, like I said before, I don’t think that you’ve got anything to worry about anymore but just in case, you’ve got the Glock in your suitcase. That’s why I checked it.”
“You cleaned it while I was in the shower, didn’t you? I thought I smelled the oil when I came out.”
He nodded.
“Thanks, but I don’t think I’ll need it anyway.”
“Probably not.”
She looked over at the line. The last people were boarding. She had to go.
“You’re being very good to me, Harry. Thank you.”
He frowned.
“Not good enough. Not enough to make up for everything.”
She went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek.
“Good-bye, Harry.”
“Good-bye, Eleanor.”
He watched her hand in her ticket and go through the door to the jetway. She didn’t look back and there was a whisper in the back of his mind telling him he might never see her again. But he shut it off and walked back through the nearly deserted airport. Most of the slot machines stood mute and ignored. Bosch felt a deep sense of loneliness engulf him.
The only hitch in Thursday morning’s court proceedings occurred before they started, when Weiss came out of lockup after conferring with his client and quickly went into the hall to find Bosch and Edgar conferring with Lipson, the local prosecutor who would handle the extradition hearing. Gregson had not made the trip from the L.A. County DA’s office. Weiss and Lipson had given him their assurances that Luke Goshen was going to waive any objection to being brought back to California.
“Detective Bosch?” Weiss said. “I was just in with my client and he asked me to get him some information before the hearing. He said he wanted an answer before he gave any waiver. I don’t know what it’s about, but I hope you haven’t been in contact with my client.”
Bosch put a concerned yet puzzled look on his face.
“What’s he want to know?”
“He just wanted to know how last night worked out, whatever that means. I’d like to know what is going on here.”
“Just tell him everything is fine.”
“What is fine, Detective?”
“If your client wants to tell you, he can tell you. Just deliver the message.”
Weiss stalked away, heading back toward the lockup door.
Bosch looked at his watch. It was five till nine and he figured the judge wouldn’t come out to the bench at the crack of nine. None of them ever did. He reached into his pocket for his cigarettes.
“I’m going outside to have a smoke,” he told Edgar.
Bosch took the elevator down and went out to the front of the courthouse to have his cigarette. It was warm out and he thought the day would probably be another scorcher. With Las Vegas in September it was pretty much guaranteed. He was glad he’d be leaving soon. But he knew the ride through the desert during the heat of the day would be rough.
He didn’t notice Mickey Torrino until the lawyer was a few feet away from him. He, too, was smoking a cigarette before going in to handle the day’s business of mob-related legal work. Bosch nodded his greeting as did Torrino.
“I guess you heard by now. No deal.”
Torrino looked around to see if they were being watched.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Detective.”
“Yeah, I know. You guys never know anything.”
“I do know one thing and that’s that you are making a mistake on this one. In case you care about things like that.”
“I don’t think so. At least not in the big picture. We might not have the real shooter but we have the guy who set it up. And we’re going to get the guy who ordered it. Who knows, maybe we’ll get the whole crew. Who you going to work for then, Counselor? That is, if we don’t get you, too.”
Torrino smirked and shook his head as if he were dealing with a foolish child.
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with here. It’s not going to play. You’ll be lucky if you get to keep Goshen. At best you’ve got only him. That’s all.”
“You know, Lucky keeps making noises about being set up. He, of course, thinks it’s us putting him in the frame and I know that’s bullshit. But I keep thinking, ‘What if there is a frame?’ I mean, I have to admit that him keeping
