Michael Connelly - The Last Coyote

He thought about Vegas as he hung up. Claude Eno might be dead but his wife was still cashing his checks. She might be worth the fifty-dollar layover.

“Ready?”

It was Jasmine calling from the living room. Bosch stepped out of the kitchen and she was waiting for him in cut-off jeans and a tank top beneath a white shirt she left open and tied above her waist. She already had on sunglasses.

She took him to a place where they poured honey on top of the biscuits and served the eggs with grits and butter. Bosch hadn’t had grits since basic training at Benning. The meal was delicious. Neither of them spoke much. The paintings and the conversation they had before falling asleep the night before were not mentioned. It seemed that what they had said was better left for the dark shadows of night, and maybe her paintings, too.

When they were done with their coffee, she insisted on picking up the check. He got the tip. They spent the afternoon cruising in her Volkswagen with the top down. She took him all over the place, from Ybor City to St. Petersburg Beach, burning up a tank of gas and two packs of cigarettes. By late in the afternoon they were at a place called Indian Rocks Beach to look at the sunset over the Gulf.

“I’ve been a lot of places,” Jasmine told him. “I like the light here the best.”

“Ever been out to California?”

“No, not yet.”

“Sometimes the sunset looks like lava pouring down on the city.”

“That must be beautiful.”

“It makes you forgive a lot, forget a lot…That’s the thing about Los Angeles. It’s got a lot of broken pieces to it. But the ones that still work, really do work.”

“I think I know what you mean.”

“I’m curious about something.”

“Here we go again. What?”

“If you don’t show your paintings to anybody, how do you make a living?”

It was from out of left field but he had been thinking about it all day.

“I have money from my father. Even before he died. It’s not a lot but I don’t need a lot. It’s enough. If I don’t feel the need to sell my work when it is finished, then as I am doing it, it won’t be compromised. It will be pure.”

It sounded to Bosch like a convenient way of explaining away the fear of exposing oneself. But he let it go. She didn’t.

“Are you always a cop? Always asking questions?”

“No. Only when I care about someone.”

She kissed him quickly and walked back to the car.

After stopping by her place to change, they had dinner in a Tampa steak house where the wine list was actually a book so thick it came on its own pedestal. The restaurant itself seemed to be the work of a slightly delusional Italian decorator, a dark blend of gilded rococo, garish red velvet and classical statues and paintings. It was the kind of place he would expect her to suggest. She mentioned that this meateater’s palace was actually owned by a vegetarian.

“Sounds like somebody from California.”

She smiled and was quiet for a while after that. Bosch’s mind wandered to the case. He had spent the entire day without giving it a thought. Now a pang of guilt thrummed in his mind. It was almost as if he felt he was shunting his mother aside to pursue the selfish pleasure of Jasmine’s company. Jasmine seemed to read him and to know he was privately debating something.

“Can you stay another day, Harry?”

He smiled but shook his head.

“I can’t. I gotta go. But I’ll be back. As soon as I can.”

Bosch paid for dinner with a credit card he guessed was reaching its limit and they headed back to her apartment. Knowing their time together was drawing to a close, they went right to the bed and made love.

The feel of her body, its taste and its scent seemed perfect to Bosch. He didn’t want the moment to end. He’d had immediate attractions to women before in his life and had even acted on them. But never one that felt so fully engaging and complete. He guessed that it was because of all he did not know about her. That was the hook. She was a mystery. Physically, he could not get any closer than he was to her during these moments, yet there was so much of her hidden, unexplored. They made love in gentle rhythm and held each other in a deep, long kiss at the end.

Later, he lay on his side, next to her, his arm across the flatness of her belly. One of her hands traced circles in his hair. The true confessions began.

“Harry, you know, I haven’t been with a lot of men in my life.”

He didn’t respond because he didn’t know what the proper response could be. He was well past caring about a woman’s sexual history for anything other than health reasons.

“What about you?” she asked.

He couldn’t resist.

“I haven’t been with a lot of men, either. In fact, none, as far as I know.”

She punched him on the shoulder.

“You know what I mean.”

“The answer is no. I haven’t been with a lot of women in my life. Not enough, at least.”

“I don’t know, the men that I’ve been with, most of them, it’s like they wanted something from me I didn’t have. I don’t know what it was but I just didn’t have it to give. Then I either left too soon or stayed too long.”

He propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her.

“Sometimes I think that I know strangers better than I know anybody else, even myself. I learn so much about people in my job. Sometimes I think I don’t even have a life. I only have their life…I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I think you do. I understand. Maybe everybody’s like this.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

They were quiet for a while after that. Bosch leaned down and kissed her breasts, holding a nipple between his lips for a long moment. She brought her hands up and held his head to her chest. He could smell the jasmine.

“Harry, have you ever had to use your gun?”

He pulled his head up. The question seemed out of place. But through the darkness he could see her eyes on him, watching and waiting for an answer.

“Yes.”

“You killed someone.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

She said nothing else.

“What is it, Jazz?”

“Nothing. I was just wondering how that would be. How you would go on.”

“Well, all I can tell you is that it hurts. Even when there was no choice and they had to go down, it hurts. You just have to go on.”

She was silent. Whatever she had needed to hear from him he hoped she had gotten. Bosch was confused. He didn’t know why she had asked such questions and wondered if she was testing him in some way. He lay back on his pillow and waited for sleep but confusion kept it away from him. After a while she turned on the bed and put her arm over him.

“I think you are a good man,” she whispered close to his ear.

“Am I?” he whispered back.

“And you will come back, won’t you?”

“Yes. I’ll come back.”

BOSCH WENT TO every rental counter in McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas but none had a car left. He silently chastised himself for not making a reservation and walked outside the terminal into the dry crisp air to catch a cab. The driver was a woman and when Bosch gave the address, on Lone Mountain Drive, he could clearly see her disappointment in the rearview mirror. The destination wasn’t a hotel, so she wouldn’t be picking up a return fare.

“Don’t worry,” Bosch said, understanding her problem. “If you wait for me, you can take me back to the airport.”

“How long you gonna be? I mean, Lone Mountain, that’s way out there in the sand pits.”

“I might be five minutes, I might be less. Maybe a half hour. I’d say no longer than a half hour.”