Michael Connelly - The Last Coyote

“Not everybody. But I can sleep at night and I’ve been on the job twenty years. Think you’ll be able to? What have you got in, five, six years? I’ll give you ten, Jerry. That’s all for you. Ten and out. But you’ll look like one of these guys who puts in thirty.”

His prediction was met with a stony silence from Toliver. Bosch didn’t know why he even cared. Toliver was part of the team trying to put him in the dirt. But something about the young cop’s fresh face gave him the benefit of the doubt.

They made the last curve on Woodrow Wilson and Bosch could see his house. He could also see a white car with a yellow plate parked in front of it and a man wearing a yellow construction helmet standing in front holding a toolbox. It was the city building inspector. Gowdy.

“Shit,” Bosch said. “This one of IAD’s tricks, too?”

“I don’t-if it is, I don’t know anything about it.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Without a further word Toliver stopped in front of the house and Bosch got out with his returned property. Gowdy recognized him and immediately came over as Toliver pulled away from the curb.

“Listen, you’re not living in this place, are ya?” Gowdy asked. “It’s been red-tagged. We gotta call said somebody bootlegged the electric.”

“I gotta call, too. See anybody? I was just going to check it out.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Mr. Bosch. I can see you’ve made some repairs. You gotta know something, you can’t repair this place, you can’t even go in. You gotta demolition order and it’s overdue. I’m gonna put in a work order and have a city contractor do it. You’ll get the bill. No use waitin’ any longer. Now, you might as well get out of here because I’m going to pull the electric and padlock it.”

He bent down to put the toolbox on the ground and proceeded to open it up and retrieve a set of stainless steel hinges and hasp locks he would apply to the doors.

“Look, I’ve got a lawyer,” Bosch said. “He’s trying to work it out with you people.”

“There’s nothing to work out. I’m sorry. Now if you go in there again, you’re subject to arrest. If I find these locks have been tampered with, you’re also subject to arrest. I’ll call North Hollywood Division. I’m not fooling with you anymore.”

For the first time it occurred to Bosch that it might be a show, that the man might want money. He probably didn’t even know Bosch was a cop. Most cops couldn’t afford to live up here and wouldn’t want to if they could. The only reason Bosch could afford it was he had bought the property with a chunk of money he had made years earlier on a TV movie deal based on a case he had solved.

“Look, Gowdy,” he said, “just spell it out, okay? I’m slow about these things. Tell me what you want and you’ve got it. I want to save the house. That’s all I care about.”

Gowdy looked at him for a long moment and Bosch realized he had been wrong. He could see the indignation in Gowdy’s eyes.

“You keep talking like that and you could go to jail, son. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to forget what you just said. I-”

“Look, I’m sorry…” Bosch looked back at the house. “It’s just like, I don’t know, the house is the only thing I’ve got.”

“You’ve got more than that. You just haven’t thought about it. Now, I’m going to cut you a break here. I’ll give you five minutes to go inside and get what you need. After that, I’m putting the locks on it. I’m sorry. But that’s the way it is. If that house goes down the hill on the next one, maybe you’ll thank me.”

Bosch nodded.

“Go on. Five minutes.”

Bosch went inside and grabbed a suitcase from the top shelf of the hallway closet. First he put his second gun in it, then he dumped in as much of the clothing from the bedroom closet as he could. He walked the overstuffed suitcase out to the carport, then came back inside for another load. He opened the drawers of his bureau and dumped them on the bed, then wrapped everything in the bedclothes and carried that out as well.

He went past the five-minute mark but Gowdy didn’t come in after him. Bosch could hear him working with a hammer on the front door.

After ten minutes he had a large stack of belongings gathered in the carport. Included there was the box in which he kept his keepsakes and photos, a fireproof box containing his financial and personal records, a stack of unopened mail and unpaid bills, the stereo and two boxes containing his collection of jazz and blues LPs and CDs. Looking at the pile of belongings, he felt forlorn. It was a lot to fit into a Mustang, but he knew it wasn’t much to show for almost forty-five years on the planet.

“That it?”

Bosch turned around. It was Gowdy. He was holding a hammer in one hand and a steel latch in the other. Bosch saw a keyed lock was hooked through one of the belt loops on his pants.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “Do it.”

He stepped back and let the inspector go to work. The hammering had just begun when his phone rang. He had forgotten about Keisha Russell.

He had the phone in his jacket pocket instead of his briefcase now. He took it out and flipped it open.

“Yeah, it’s Bosch.”

“Detective, it’s Dr. Hinojos.”

“Oh…Hi.”

“Something wrong?”

“No, uh, yeah, I was expecting somebody else. I’ve got to keep this line open for a few minutes. I’ve got a call coming in. Can I call you back?”

Bosch looked at his watch. It was five minutes until six.

“Yes,” Hinojos said. “I’ll be at the office until six-thirty. I want to talk to you about something, and to see how you fared on the sixth floor after I left.”

“I’m fine, but I’ll call you back.”

As soon as he flipped the phone closed, it rang again in his hand.

“Bosch.”

“Bosch, I’m up against it and don’t have time for bullshit.” It was Russell. She also didn’t have time to identify herself. “The story is that the investigation into the killing of Harvey Pounds has turned inward and detectives spent several hours with you today. They searched your home and they believe you are the prime suspect.”

“Prime suspect? We don’t even use those words, Keisha. Now I know you’re talking to one of those squints in IAD. They wouldn’t know how to run a homicide investigation if the doer came up and bit them on their shiny ass.”

“Don’t try to deflect what we’re talking about here. It’s really simple. Do you or don’t you have a comment on the story for tomorrow’s paper? If you want to say something, I have just enough time to get it in the first run.”

“On the record, I have no comment.”

“And off?”

“Off the record, not for attribution or any use at all, I can tell you that you’re full of shit, Keisha. Your story is wrong. Flat-out wrong. If you run it as you have just summarized it for me, you will have to write another one tomorrow correcting it. It will say I am not a suspect at all. Then, after that, you’ll have to find another beat to cover.”

“And why is that?” she asked haughtily.

“Because this is a smear orchestrated by Internal Affairs. It’s a plant. And when it is read tomorrow by everybody else in the department they’ll know it is and they’ll know you fell for it. They won’t trust you. They’ll think you’re just a front for people like Brockman. No one that it is important for you to have a source relationship with will want to have that relationship with you. Including me. You’ll be left covering the police commission and rewriting the press releases out of media relations. And then, of course, whenever Brockman wants to cream somebody else, he’ll pick up the phone and call.”

There was silence on the line. Bosch looked up at the sky and saw it turning pink with the start of sunset. He looked at his watch. It was one minute until her deadline.