'What are you talking about?' he countered. 'You owe me big time for saving your ass.'
'Well, we'll see about that. I'm still going to check this out tomorrow. If it falls the way you said, I'm going to Irving to complain about Brockman. I'll bum him.'
'You just did.'
Realizing she had just confirmed Brockman as the source, she laughed uneasily.
'What did your editor say?'
'He thinks I'm an idiot. But I told him there's other news in the world.'
'Good line.'
'Yeah, I'm going to keep that one in my computer. So what's going on? And what's happening with those clips I got you?'
'The clips are still percolating. I can't really talk about anything yet.'
'Figures. I don't know why I keep helping you, Bosch, but here goes. Remember you asked about Monte Kim, the guy who wrote that first clip I gave you?'
'Yeah. Monte Kim.'
'I asked about him around here and one of the old rewrite guys told me he's still alive. Turns out that after he left the Times he worked for the DA's office for a while. I don't know what he's doing now but I got his number and his address. He's in the Valley.'
'Can you give it to me?'
'I guess so, since it was in the phonebook.'
'Damn, I never thought of that.'
'You might be a good detective, Bosch, but you wouldn't make much of a reporter.'
She gave him the number and address, said she'd be in touch and hung up. Bosch put the phone down on the seat and thought about this latest piece of information as he drove into Hollywood. Monte Kim had worked for the district attorney. Bosch had a pretty good idea which one that would be.
The man behind the front desk at the Mark Twain didn't seem to recognize Bosch, though Harry was reasonably sure he was the same man he had dealt with before while renting rooms for witnesses. The counterman was tall and thin and had the hunched-over shoulders of someone carrying a heavy burden. He looked like he'd been behind the desk since Eisenhower.
'You remember me? From down the street?'
'Yeah, I remember. I didn't say anything 'cause I didn't know if this was an undercover job or not.'
'No. No undercover. I wanted to know if you have one of the big rooms in the back open. One with a phone.'
'You want one?'
'That's why I'm asking.'
'Who you going to put in there this time? I don't want no gangbangers again. Last time, they -'
'No, no gangbangers. Only me. I want the room.'
'You want the room?'
'That's right. And I won't paint on the walls. How much?'
The desk man seemed nonplussed by the fact that Bosch wanted to stay there himself. He finally recovered and told Bosch he had his choice: thirty dollars a day, two hundred a week or five hundred a month. All in advance. Bosch paid for a week with his credit card and waited anxiously
while the man checked to make sure the charge would clear.
'Now, how much for the parking space in the loading zone out front?'
'You can't rent that.'
'I want to park out front, make it harder for one of your other tenants to rip my car off.'
Bosch took out his money and slid fifty dollars across the counter.
'If parking enforcement comes by, tell them it's cool.'
'Yeah.'
'You the manager?'
'And owner. Twenty-seven years.'
'Sorry.'
Bosch went out to get his things. It took him three trips to bring everything up to room 214. The room was in the back and its two windows looked across an alley to the back of a one-story building that housed two bars and an adult film and novelties store. But Bosch had known all along it would be no garden spot. It wasn't the kind of place where he would find a terry cloth robe in the closet and mints on the pillow at night. It was just a couple of notches up from the places where you slid your money to the clerk through a slot in the bulletproof glass.
One room had a bureau and a bed, which had only two cigarette bums in the bedspread, and a television mounted in a steel frame that was bolted to the wall. There was no cable, no remote and no courtesy TV Guide. The other room had a worn green couch, a small table for two and a kitchenette that had a half refrigerator, a bolted-down microwave and a two-coil electric range. The bathroom was off the hallway that connected the two rooms and came complete with white tile that had yellowed like old men's teeth.
Despite the drab circumstances and his hopes that his
stay would be temporary, Bosch tried his best to transform the hotel room into a home. He hung some clothes in the closet, put his toothbrush and shaving kit in the bathroom and set the answering machine up on the phone, though nobody knew his number. He decided that in the morning he'd call the telephone company and have a forwarding tape put on his old line.
Next he set up the stereo on the bureau. For the time being he just placed the speakers on the floor on either side of the bureau. He then rummaged through his box of CDs and came across a Tom Waits recording called 'Blue Valentine.' He hadn't listened to it in years so he put it on.
He sat down on the bed near the phone and listened and thought for a few minutes about calling Jazz in Florida. But he wasn't sure what he could say or ask. He decided it might be better to just let it go for now. He lit a cigarette and went to the window. There was nothing happening in the alley. Across the tops of the buildings he could see the ornate tower of the nearby Hollywood Athletic Club. It was a beautiful building. One of the last in Hollywood.
He closed the musty curtains, turned around and studied his new home. After a while he yanked the spread off the bed along with the other covers and then remade it with his own sheets and blanket. He knew it was a small gesture of continuity but it made him feel less lonely. It also made him feel a little bit as though he knew what he was doing with his life at that point and it made him forget for a few more moments about Harvey Pounds.
Bosch sat on the newly made bed and leaned back on the pillows propped against the headboard. He lit another cigarette. He studied the wounds on his two fingers and saw that the scabs had been replaced with hard pink skin. They were healing nicely. He hoped the rest of him would, too. But he doubted it. He knew he was responsible. And he knew he had to pay. Somehow.
He absentmindedly pulled the phone off the bed table and placed it on his chest. It was an old one with a rotary dial. Bosch lifted the receiver and looked at the dial. Who was he going to call? What was he going to say? He replaced the receiver and sat up. He decided he had to get out.
Monte Kim lived on Willis Avenue in Sherman Oaks in the midst of a ghost town of apartment buildings red-tagged after the quake. Kim's apartment building was a gray-and-white Cape Cod affair that sat between two empties. At least they were supposed to be empty. As Bosch pulled up he saw lights go out in one of the buildings. Squatters, he guessed. Like Bosch had been, always on alert for the building inspector.
Kim's building looked as though it had been either completely spared by the quake or already completely repaired. Bosch doubted it was the latter. He believed the building was more a testament to the serendipitous violence of nature, and maybe a builder who didn't cut corners. The Cape Cod had stood up while the buildings around it cracked and slid.
It was a common, rectangular building with apartment entrances running down each side of it. But to get to one of the doors, you had to be buzzed through a six-foot-tall electronic gate. The cops called them 'feel good' gates because they made the dwellers inside feel safer, but they were worthless. All they did was put up a barrier for legitimate visitors to the building. Others could simply climb over, and they did, all over the city. Feel good gates were everywhere.
He said only that it was the police when Kim's voice sounded on the intercom and he was buzzed in. He
