Michael Connelly - The Closers

“Jerry Townsend? No, not the name. I just recognized his face.”

“He has a manslaughter conviction in ’ninety-six. Served five years. Sounds like it was a domestic abuse case, but that’s all they could pull off the computer. I bet if we pulled the file your name would be on it. That’s how you recognized him.”

“You think he could be connected to this thing we’re working?”

“I doubt it. What’s probably going on is that whoever owns that station doesn’t mind hiring ex-cons. They come cheap, you know? And if he’s scamming on repairs, then who’s going to complain?”

“Well, let’s get back and see what happens.”

She put the car into gear and pulled out on Tampa to head back up to the intersection where the service station was.

“How did it go with him?” Rider asked.

“Pretty good. I did all but read the story to him. He didn’t show anything, no recognition, but the seed is definitely planted.”

“Did he see the tattoos?”

“Yeah, they worked good. He started asking questions right after he saw them. Your file on Simmons paid off, too. He came up in the conversation. And for what it’s worth, he had a scar on the webbing by his right thumb. From the bite.”

“Harry, man, you covered everything. I guess all we do now is sit back and see what happens.”

“Did the other guys take off?”

“As soon as we get back on post they’re leaving.”

When they got to the intersection of Tampa and Roscoe they saw Mackey’s tow truck waiting to pull onto Roscoe to head west.

“He’s on the move,” Bosch said. “Why didn’t anybody tell us?”

Just as he said it Rider’s cell phone buzzed. She handed it to Bosch so she could concentrate on driving. She cut into the left turn lane so she would be able to follow Mackey onto Roscoe. Bosch opened her phone. It was Tim Marcia. He explained that Mackey went on the move without a call coming into the station for a tow. Jackson had checked with the sound room. There had been no call on the lines they were listening to.

“All right,” Bosch said. “He said something when I was in the truck about going to grab dinner. Maybe this is it.”

“Maybe.”

“Okay, Tim, we got him now. Thanks for sticking around. Tell Rick the same.”

“Good luck, Harry.”

They followed the tow truck to a plaza shopping center and watched Mackey go into a Subway fast food restaurant. He did not take the newspaper Bosch had left in the truck with him, but after getting his food he sat down at one of the inside tables and started to eat.

“You going to get hungry, Harry?” Rider asked. “Now might be the time.”

“I did Dupar’s on the way in so I’ll be fine. Unless we see a Cupid’s around. I’d go for that.”

“No way. That’s one thing I got over after you left. I don’t eat that fast food crap anymore.”

“What do you mean? We ate good. Didn’t we go to Musso’s every Thursday?”

“If you call chicken pot pie a healthy meal, yeah, we ate good. Besides, I’m talking about stakeouts. Did you hear about Rice and Beans in Hollywood?”

Rice and Beans was the designation given to a pair of robbery detectives in Hollywood Division named Choi and Ortega. They were there when Bosch worked in the division.

“No, what happened?”

“They were on a surveillance gig on these guys that were taking down street prostitutes, and Ortega was sittin’ in the car eating a hotdog. He suddenly started choking on it and he couldn’t clear himself. He’s turning purple and pointing to his throat and Choi’s like, what the fuck? So finally Beans jumps out of the car and Choi finally gets what’s going on. He comes running around to give him the Heimlich. He popped the hotdog onto the hood of the car. And they blew the surveillance.”

Bosch laughed as he pictured it. He knew it was a story Rice and Beans would never live down in the division. Not with people like Edgar there to tell and retell it to anyone who transferred in.

“Well, see, they don’t have a Cupid’s down in Hollywood,” he said. “If he’d been eating a nice soft dog from Cupid’s there wouldn’t have been a problem like that.”

“I don’t care, Harry. No hotdogs on stakeout. No crap. That’s my new rule. I don’t want people talking about me like that the rest of my -”

Bosch’s phone chirped. It was Robinson, who was working the late shift in the sound room with Nord.

“They just had a tow call come into the station. They then turned around and called Mackey. He must not be at the station.”

Bosch explained the situation and apologized for not keeping the sound room in the loop.

“Where’s the tow?” he asked.

“It’s an accident on Reseda at Parthenia. I guess the car’s DOA. He’s got to tow it into a dealership.”

“Okay, we’re with him.”

A few minutes later Mackey came out of the fast food restaurant carrying a large soda cup with a straw sticking out. They followed him to Reseda Boulevard and Parthenia Street, where a Toyota with the front end caved in had been pushed off the road. Another tow truck was just jacking up the other car, a large SUV that had its back end realigned by the accident. Mackey spoke briefly with the other tow truck driver-a professional courtesy-and went to work on the Toyota. An LAPD patrol car was sitting in the parking lot of the corner plaza and the officer inside was writing up a report. Bosch saw no drivers. He thought this meant that they might have all been transported to an emergency room because of injuries.

Mackey towed the Toyota to a dealership all the way over on Van Nuys Boulevard. While he was there, letting the wreck down in the service drive, Bosch got another call. Robinson told him that Mackey had been summoned again. This time to the Northridge Fashion Center, where an employee of the Borders bookstore needed a battery jump.

“This guy isn’t going to have time to read the paper if he stays busy like this,” Rider said after Bosch reported on the phone call.

“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “I’m wondering if he can even read.”

“You mean the dyslexia?”

“Yeah, but not just that. I haven’t seen him do any reading or writing. He told me to fill in the forms for the tow. Then he either didn’t want to or couldn’t fill out a receipt at the end. And then there was this note on the desk for him.”

“What note?”

“He picked it up and stared at it for a long time but I wasn’t really sure he knew what it said.”

“Could you read it? What did it say?”

“It was a note from the dayshift people. Visa had called to confirm his employment on an application he had made, I guess.”

Rider wrinkled her brow.

“What?” Bosch asked.

“Just seems weird, him applying for a credit card. That would make him findable, which I thought he was trying to avoid.”

“Maybe he’s starting to feel safe.”

Mackey went from the Toyota dealership straight to the shopping mall, where he jump-started a woman’s car. He then turned his truck toward the home base. It was almost ten o’clock by the time he pulled back into the station. Bosch’s sagging hopes were buoyed when he looked through the binoculars from the plaza across the street and saw Mackey walking from the truck to the office.

“We might still be in play,” he said to Rider. “He’s carrying the paper with him.”

It was hard to keep track of Mackey inside the station. The front office was glass on two sides and that was not a problem. But the garage doors were now closed and oftentimes it seemed that Mackey would disappear into these areas, where Bosch could not see him.

“You want me to be the eyes for a while?” Rider asked.

Bosch lowered the binoculars and looked at her. He could barely read her face in the darkness of the car.