“Rachel, did you-”
“Yes, I heard. I just wish you had found it, Harry. I just wish this could be over.”
“Me, too. Did anything come through on the name?”
“What name?”
“Gonzalves. You called it in, right?”
“Oh, right, yeah. No, nothing. And I mean nothing, not even a driver’s license. I think it must be an alias.”
“I’ve got a Mexican driver’s license here. I think the guy’s an illegal.”
She gave that some thought before responding.
“Well, it’s believed that Nassar and El-Fayed came in across the Mexican border. Maybe that’s the connection. Maybe this guy was working with them.”
“I don’t know, Rachel. I’ve got work clothes here. Work boots. I think this guy-”
“Harry, I’ve gotta go. My team is here.”
“All right. I’m heading back up.”
Bosch pocketed his phone, then gathered the clothing and boots and put them all back in the canister. He put the wallet, keys and cell phone on top of the clothing and took the canister with him. On the long walk back down the hallway to the stairs he pulled out his phone again and called the city’s communications center. He asked the dispatcher to dig out the details on the paramedic call that had brought Gonzalves to Queen of Angels and was put on hold.
He got all the way up the steps and back to the ER before the dispatcher came back on the line.
“The call you asked about came in at ten-oh-five from a phone registered to Easy Print at nine-thirty Cahuenga Boulevard. Man down in the parking lot. Fire department paramedics responded from station fifty-four. Response time six minutes, nineteen seconds. Anything else?”
“What’s the nearest cross at that location?”
After a moment the dispatcher told him the cross street was Lankershim Boulevard. Bosch thanked her and disconnected.
The address where Gonzalves collapsed was not far from the Mulholland overlook. Bosch realized that almost every location associated with the case so far-from the murder site to the victim’s house to Ramin Samir’s house and now to the spot where Gonzalves collapsed-could fit on one page of a Thomas Brothers map book. Murder cases in L.A. usually dragged him all over the map book. But this one wasn’t roaming. It was staying close.
Bosch looked around the ER. He noticed that all the people who had been crowding the waiting room before were now gone. There had been an evacuation and agents in protective gear were moving about the area with radiation monitors. He spotted Rachel Walling by the nursing station and walked over to her. He held out the canister.
“Here’s the guy’s stuff.”
She took the canister and put it down on the floor, then called over to one of the men in protection gear. She told him to take charge of the canister. She then looked back at Bosch.
“There’s a cell phone in there,” he told her. “They might be able to get something out of that.”
“I’ll tell them.”
“How’s the victim doing?”
“Victim?”
“Whether he’s involved in this or not he is still a victim.”
“If you say so. He’s still out of it. I don’t know if we’ll ever get the chance to talk to him.”
“Then I’m leaving.”
“What? Where? I’m going with you.”
“I thought you had to run the CP.”
“I passed it off. If there’s no cesium here I’m not staying. I’ll stick with you. Let me just tell some people I’m leaving to follow a lead.”
Bosch hesitated. But deep down he knew he wanted her with him.
“I’ll be out front in the car.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know if Digoberto Gonzalves is a terrorist or just a victim, but I do know one thing. He drives a Toyota. And I think I know where we’ll find it.”
SEVENTEEN
HARRY BOSCH KNEW that the physics of traffic would not work for him in the Cahuenga Pass. The Hollywood Freeway always moved slowly in both directions through the bottleneck created by the cut in the mountain chain. He decided to stay on surface streets and take Highland Avenue past the Hollywood Bowl and up into the pass. He filled Rachel Walling in along the way.
“The call for paramedics came from a print shop on Cahuenga near Lankershim. Gonzalves must have been in the area when he collapsed. The initial call said a man was down in the parking lot. I’m hoping that the Toyota he was driving is right there. I’m betting that if we find it, we find the cesium. The mystery is why he had it.”
“And why he was foolish enough to put it in his pocket unprotected,” Walling added.
“You’re basing that on him knowing what he had. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe this isn’t what we think it is.”
“There’s got to be a connection, Bosch, between Gonzalves and Nassar and El-Fayed. He probably brought them across the border.”
He almost smiled. He knew she had used his last name as a term of endearment. He remembered how she used to do that.
“And don’t forget about Ramin Samir?” he said.
Walling shook her head.
“I’m still thinking he was a red herring,” she said. “A misdirection.”
“A good one,” Bosch responded. “It took the mighty Captain Done Badly out of the picture.”
She laughed.
“Is that what they call him?”
Bosch nodded.
“Not to his face, of course.”
“And what do they call you? Something tough and hard-headed, I’m sure.”
He glanced over at her and shrugged. He thought about telling her that his Vietnam nickname was Hari Kari but that would require further explanation and there wasn’t the time right now and this wasn’t the place.
He took the ramp up to Cahuenga from Highland. It ran parallel to the freeway and as soon as he checked he saw that he had been right. The traffic over on the freeway was frozen in both directions.
“You know, I still had your number in my cell’s directory,” he said. “I guess I never wanted to delete it.”
“I was wondering about that when you left me that mean message today about the cigarette ash.”
“I don’t suppose you kept mine, Rachel.”
She paused a long moment before answering.
“I think you’re still on my phone, too, Harry.”
This time he had to smile, even though he was back to being Harry with her. There’s hope after all, he thought.
They were approaching Lankershim Boulevard. To the right it dropped down into a tunnel that went beneath the freeway. To the left it ended at a strip shopping center that included the Easy Print franchise from which the call to paramedics had originated. Bosch’s eyes searched the vehicles in the small parking lot, looking for a Toyota.
He glided into the left-turn lane and waited to pull into the lot. He swiveled in his seat and checked the parking along both sides of Cahuenga. A quick glance showed no Toyotas but he knew that there were many different car models and pickup trucks in the brand. If they didn’t find the car in the print shop lot, then they would have to work the curbside parking looking for it.
“Do you have a plate or any description?” Walling asked. “How about a color?”
