Michael Connelly - The Last Coyote

“Harry, you there? It’s Edgar…Okay, listen, let’s forget about today, okay? I mean it. Let’s just say I was a prick and you were a prick and we’re both pricks and forget it. Whether it turns out you are my partner or you were my partner, I owe you a lot, man. And if I ever act like I forgot that, hit me alongside the head like you did today. Now, to the bad news. I checked everything on this Johnny Fox. I got exactly nothing, man. That’s from the NCIC, DOJ, DPP, Corrections, National Warrants, everything. I ran the works on him. Looks like this guy is clean, if he’s alive. You say he doesn’t even have a DL so that makes me think maybe you got a phony name there or maybe this guy ain’t among the living. So, that’s that. I don’t know what you’re up to but if you want anything else, give a call…Oh, and hang in there, buddy. I’m ten-seven after this so you can reach me at home if-”

The message cut off. Edgar had run out of time. Bosch rewound the tape and poured his coffee. Back on the deck he mulled over the whereabouts of Johnny Fox. When he had gotten nothing on the DMV trace, Bosch had assumed Fox might be in prison, where driver’s licenses weren’t issued or needed. But Edgar had not found him there nor had he found his name on any national computer that tracks criminals. Now Bosch guessed that Johnny Fox had either gone straight or, as Edgar had suggested, was dead. If Bosch was betting, he’d take the latter. Men like Johnny Fox didn’t go straight.

Bosch’s alternative was to go down to the Los Angeles County Hall of Records and look for a death certificate but without a date of death it would be a needle in the haystack search. It might take him days. Before he’d do that, he decided, he’d try an easier way, the L.A. Times.

He went back inside to the phone and dialed a reporter named Keisha Russell. She was new on the cop beat and still struggling to find her way. She had made a subtle attempt to recruit Bosch as a source a few months earlier. The way reporters usually did that was to write an inordinate number of stories on a crime that did not merit such intense attention. But the process put them in constant contact with the detectives on the case and that allowed them the chance to ingratiate themselves and hopefully procure the investigators as future sources.

Russell had written five stories in a week about one of Bosch’s cases. It was a domestic violence case in which a husband had disregarded a temporary restraining order and gone to his separated wife’s new apartment on Franklin. He carried her to the fifty-floor balcony and threw her off. He went over next. Russell had talked to Bosch repeatedly during the stretch of stories. The resultant dispatches were thorough and complete. It was good work and she began to earn Bosch’s respect. Still, he knew that she hoped that the stories and her attention would be the building blocks of a long reporter/investigator relationship. Since then not a week had gone by that she didn’t call Bosch once or twice to bullshit, pass along departmental gossip she had picked up from other sources, and ask the one question all reporters live and die by: “Anything going on?”

She answered on the first ring and Bosch was a little surprised she was in so early. He was planning on leaving a message on her voice mail.

“Keisha, it’s Bosch.”

“Hey, Bosch, how you doing?”

“Okay, I guess. I guess you heard about me.”

“Not everything, but I heard you went on temporary leave. But nobody would tell me why. You want to talk about it?”

“No, not really. I mean, not now. I have a favor to ask. If it works out, I’ll give you the story. That’s the deal I’ve made in the past with other reporters.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Just walk over to the morgue.”

She groaned.

“I mean the newspaper morgue, right there at the Times.”

“Oh, that’s better. What do you need?”

“I’ve got a name. It’s old. I know the guy was a dirtbag in the fifties and at least the early sixties. But I’ve lost track of him after that. Thing is, my hunch is that he’s dead.”

“You want an obit?”

“Well, I don’t know if this is the type of guy the Times would write an obituary on. He was strictly small time, near as I can tell. I was thinking that there might be a story, you know, if his death was sort of untimely.”

“You mean like if he got his shit blown away.”

“You got it.”

“Okay, I’ll take a look.”

She seemed eager, Bosch sensed. He knew that she thought that by doing this favor she would be cementing their relationship in place and it would only pay dividends in the future. He said nothing that would dissuade her of this.

“What’s the name?”

“His name is John Fox. He went by Johnny. Last I have a trace on him is 1961. He was a pimp, general piece of trash.”

“White, black, yellow or brown?”

“General piece of white trash, you could say.”

“You have a birth date? It will help narrow it down if there’s more than one Johnny Fox in the clips.”

He gave it to her.

“Okay, where you going to be?”

Bosch gave her his portable phone number. He knew that would set the hook. The number would go right onto the source list she kept in her computer like gold earrings in a jewelry box. Having the number where he could be reached at almost any time was worth the search in the morgue.

“Okay, listen, I’ve got a meeting with my editor-that’s the only reason I’m in this early. But after, I’ll go take a look. I’ll call you as soon as I have something.”

“If there is something.”

“Right.”

After Bosch hung up he ate some Frosted Flakes from a box he took out of the refrigerator and turned on the news radio. He had discontinued the newspaper after the earthquake in case Gowdy, the building inspector, happened by early and saw it out front, a clue that someone was inhabiting the uninhabitable. There was nothing much in the top of the news summary that interested him. No homicides in Hollywood, at least. He wasn’t missing out on anything.

There was one story after the traffic report that caught his attention. An octopus on display at a city aquarium in San Pedro had apparently killed itself by pulling a water circulation tube out of its tank fitting with one of its tentacles. The tank emptied and the octopus died. Environmental groups were calling it suicide, a desperate protest by the octopus against its captivity. Only in L.A., Bosch thought as he turned the radio off. A place so desperate even the marine life was killing itself.

He took a long shower, closing his eyes and holding his head directly under the spray. As he was shaving in front of the mirror after, he couldn’t help but study the circles under his eyes again. They seemed even more pronounced than earlier and fit nicely with the eyes cracked with red from his drinking the night before.

He put the razor down on the edge of the sink and leaned closer to the mirror. His skin was as pale as a recycled paper plate. As he appraised himself, the thought he had was that he had once been considered a handsome man. Not anymore. He looked beaten. It seemed that age was gripping him, beating him down. He thought that he resembled some of the old men he’d seen after they were found dead in their beds. The ones in the rooming houses. The ones living in refrigerator boxes. He reminded himself more of the dead than the living.

He opened the medicine cabinet so the reflection would go away. He looked among the various items on the glass shelves and chose a squeeze bottle of Murine. He put in a heavy dose of the eye drops, wiped the excess spill off his face with a towel and left the bathroom without closing the cabinet and having to look at himself again.