Michael Connelly - The Last Coyote

“You there, Keisha?”

“Bosch, you’re scaring me.”

“You should be scared. You got about a minute to make a big decision.”

“Let me ask you this. Did you attack Pounds two weeks ago and throw him through a window?”

“On or off the record?”

“It doesn’t matter. I just need an answer. Quick!”

“Off the record, that’s more or less accurate.”

“Well, that would seem to make you a suspect in his death. I don’t see-”

“Keisha, I’ve been out of the state for three days. I got back today. Brockman brought me in and talked to me for less than an hour. My story checked and I was kicked free. I’m not a suspect. I’m talking to you from the front of my house. You hear that hammering? That’s my house. I’ve got a carpenter here. Are prime suspects allowed to go home at night?”

“How can I confirm all of this?”

“Today? You can’t. You’ve got to pick. Brockman or me. Tomorrow, you can call Assistant Chief Irving and he’ll confirm-if he is willing to talk to you.”

“Shit! Bosch, I can’t believe this. If I go to my editor at deadline and tell him a story that they had budgeted for the front page since the three o’clock meeting is not a story…I might be looking for a new beat and a new paper to cover it for.”

“There’s other news in the world, Keisha. They can find something for the front page. This will pay off for you in the long run, anyway. I’ll spread the word about you.”

There was a brief silence while she made her decision.

“I can’t talk. I have to get in there and grab him. Good-bye, Bosch. I hope I’m still working here the next time we talk.”

She was gone before he could say good-bye.

He walked up the street to the Mustang and drove it down to the house. Gowdy had finished with the latches and both doors now had locks on them. The inspector was out at his car using the front hood as a desk. He was writing on a clipboard and Bosch guessed he was moving slowly so as to make sure Bosch left the property. Bosch started loading his pile of belongings into the Mustang. He didn’t know where he was going to take himself.

He put the thought of his homelessness aside and began thinking about Keisha Russell. He wondered if she would be able to stop the story so late in the game. It had probably taken on a life of its own. Like a monster in the newspaper’s computer. And she, its Dr. Frankenstein, would likely have little power over stopping it.

When he had everything in the Mustang, he waved a salute to Gowdy, got in and drove down the hill. Down at Cahuenga he didn’t know which way to turn because he still didn’t know where he should go. To the right was Hollywood. To the left was the Valley. Then he remembered the Mark Twain. In Hollywood, only a few blocks from the station on Wilcox, the Mark Twain was an old residence hotel with efficiencies that were generally clean and neat-a lot more so than the surrounding neighborhood. Bosch knew this because he had stashed witnesses there on occasion. He also knew that there were a couple of units that were two-room efficiencies with private baths. He decided he would go for one of them and turned right. The phone rang almost as soon as he had made the decision. It was Keisha Russell.

“You owe me big time, Bosch. I killed it.”

He felt relief and annoyance at the same time. It was typical thinking for a reporter.

“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 burn 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 burns 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.