Michael Connelly - A Darkness More Than Night

“Right. She asked you questions about me?”

“A few. Nothing big. I hope you don’t mind. I told her she made a good choice. I said if I wasn’t, you know, the way I was, I’d be interested too.”

“Thanks, Kiz,” Bosch said but his mind was flying.

“Well, look, I’m gonna go. I’ll see you. Knock ’em dead tomorrow, okay?”

“I’ll try.”

She hung up and Bosch slowly put the phone back in its cradle. The tightening in his gut got more intense. He started thinking about McCaleb’s visit and what he had asked and what Harry had said. Now Winston was asking questions about him.

He did not believe it was a coincidence. It was clear to Bosch that they had a bead on him. They were looking at him for the Edward Gunn killing. And he knew he had probably given McCaleb the right amount of psychological insight to believe he was on the right course.

Bosch drained the bottle of beer that was on the nightstand. The last swallow was room temperature and sour. He knew there were no more bottles in the refrigerator. He got up to get a cigarette instead.

Nat’s was a railroad car-sized bar that was like a lot of Hollywood haunts – favored during daylight hours by hard-core drinkers, during early evening hours by casual hookers and their clientele, and late at night by the black leather and tattoo crowd. It was the kind of place where a person would stand out as a target if he tried to pay for drinks with a gold credit card.

McCaleb had stopped at Musso’s for dinner – his body clock demanding nourishment before a complete shutdown occurred – and didn’t get to Nat’s until after ten. While eating his chicken pot pie he had wondered whether going to the bar to ask questions about Gunn was even worth the time. The tip had come from the suspect. Would the suspect knowingly point the investigator in the right direction? It seemed not, but McCaleb factored in Bosch’s drinking and his being unaware of McCaleb’s true mission during the visit to the house on the hill. The tip might very well be valid and he decided no part of the investigation should be overlooked.

As he walked in it took him a few seconds to adjust to the dim, reddish lighting. When the room became clear he saw it was half empty. It was the time between the early evening crowd and the late-night group. Two women – one black, one white – sitting at one end of the bar that ran along the left side of the room sized him up and McCaleb could see cop register in their eyes at the same moment hookers registered in his. It secretly pleased him that he still had the look. He walked by them and further into the lounge. The booths lining the right side of the room were mostly full. No one in these bothered to give him a glance.

He stepped up to the bar between two empty stools and signaled one of the bartenders.

An old Bob Seger song, “Night Moves,” was blaring from a jukebox in the back. The bartender leaned over the bar so she could get McCaleb’s order. She was wearing a buttoned black vest with no shirt underneath. She had long straight black hair and a thin gold hoop pierced her left eyebrow.

“What can I get you?”

“Some information.”

McCaleb slid a driver’s-license picture of Edward Gunn across the counter. It was a three-by-five blowup that had been in the files Winston gave him. The bartender looked at it for a moment and then back up at McCaleb.

“What about him? He’s dead.”

“How do you know that?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t know. Word just got around, I guess. You a cop?”

McCaleb nodded, lowered his voice so the music would cover it and said, “Something like that.”

The bartender leaned further over the bartop so she could hear him. This position opened the top of her vest, exposing most of her small but round breasts. There was a tattoo of a heart wrapped in barbed wire on the left side. It looked like a bruise on a pear, not very appetizing. McCaleb looked away.

“Edward Gunn,” he said. “He was a regular, right?”

“He came in a lot.”

McCaleb nodded. Her acknowledgment confirmed Bosch’s tip.

“You work New Year’s Eve?”

She nodded.

“You know if he came in that night?”

She shook her head.

“I can’t remember. A lot of people were in here New Year’s Eve. We had a party. I don’t know if he was here or not. It wouldn’t surprise me, though. People came and went.”

McCaleb nodded toward the other bartender. A Latino who also wore a black vest with no shirt beneath.

“What about him? Think he’d remember?”

“No, ’cause he only started last week. I’m breaking him in.”

A thin smile played on her face. McCaleb ignored it. “Twisting the Night Away” began playing. The Rod Stewart version.

“How well did you know Gunn?”

She let out a short burst of laughter.

“Honey, this is the kind of place where people don’t exactly like to let on who they are or what they are. How well did I know him? I knew him, okay? Like I said, he came in. But I didn’t even know his name until he was dead and people started talking about him. Somebody said Eddie Gunn got himself killed and I said, ‘Who the fuck is Eddie Gunn?’ They had to describe him. The whiskey rocks who always had the paint in his hair. Then I knew who Eddie Gunn was.”

McCaleb nodded. He reached inside his coat pocket and brought out a folded piece of newspaper. He slid it across the bartop. She leaned down to look, showing another view of her breasts. McCaleb thought it was intentional.

“This is that cop, the one from the trial, right?”

McCaleb didn’t answer the question. The newspaper had been folded to a photo of Harry Bosch that had run that morning in the Los Angeles Times as an advance on the testimony expected to begin in the Storey trial. It was a candid shot of Bosch standing outside the courtroom door. He probably didn’t even know it had been taken.

“You seen him in here?”

“Yeah, he comes in. Why are you asking about him?”

McCaleb felt a charge go up the back of his neck.

“When does he come in?”

“I don’t know, from time to time. I wouldn’t call him a regular. But he’d come in. And he wouldn’t stay long. A one-timer – one drink and out. He’s…”

She pointed a finger up and cocked her head to the side as she rifled through her interior files. She then slashed her finger down as if making a notch.

“Got it. Bottled beer. Asks for Anchor Steam every time because he always forgets we don’t carry it – too expensive, we’d never sell it. He then settles for the old thirty-three.”

McCaleb was about to ask what that was when she answered his unspoken question.

“Rolling Rock.”

He nodded.

“Was he in here New Year’s Eve?”

She shook her head.

“Same answer. I don’t remember. Too many people, too many drinks, too many days since then.”

McCaleb nodded and pulled the newspaper back across the bar and put it in his pocket.

“He in some kind of trouble, that cop?”

McCaleb shook his head. One of the women at the end of the bar tapped the corner of her empty glass on the bartop and called to the bartender.

“Hey, Miranda, you got payin’ customers over here.”

The bartender looked around for her partner. He was gone, apparently in the back room or the bathroom.

“Gotta go to work,” she said.

McCaleb watched her go to the end of the bar and make two fresh vodka rocks for the hookers. During a lull in the music, he overheard one of them tell her to stop talking to the cop so he would leave. As Miranda headed back toward McCaleb’s position one of the hookers called after her.

“And stop giving him the freebie or he’ll never leave.”