Michael Connelly

“Connelly always writes in a spare, honed style that is all muscle and no spare flesh.  “Void Moon” is a prime cut, keeping up its hot pace right to the end.”
—  Publishing News, UK

“Connelly really does his homework…and the pacing of this thriller is as good as you’ll find in the genre.  “Void Moon” offers readers a full house of entertainment.  Bet on it.”
— Booklist

“Even though Harry Bosch is nowhere to be found, Connelly has written his best book to date.  In astrology, a void moon is considered bad luck, but Connelly’s “Void Moon” is better than a four-leaf clover.  Highly Recommended.”
— The Library Journal

“”Void Moon”…is that rarity—a riveting, breathless thriller that not only sucks you in completely, it leaves you with the satisfying feeling that you haven’t been wasting your time on brain candy.”
— The Los Angeles Times

The California Department of Corrections, Parole and Community Services Division offices in Van Nuys were crowded into a one-story building of gray, pre-cast concrete that stood in the shadow of the Municipal Court building. The nondescript design features of its exterior seemed in step with its purpose; the quiet reintegration of convicts into society.

The interior of the building took its cue from the crowd control philosophy employed at popular amusement parks — though those who waited here usually weren’t always as anxious to reach the end of their wait. A maze of roped-off cattle rows folded the long lines of ex-cons back and forth in the waiting rooms and hallways. There were lines of cons waiting to check in, lines waiting for urine tests, lines waiting to see parole agents or parole officers, lines in all quadrants of the building.

To Cassie Black the parole office was more depressing than prison had been. When she was at High Desert Correctional, she was in stasis, like those sci-fi movies where the journey back to earth is so long that the travelers are put into a hibernation-type sleep. That was how Cassie saw it. She was breathing but not living, waiting and surviving on hope that the end of her time would come sooner rather than later. That hope for the future and the warmth of her constant dream of freedom got her past all the depression. But the parole office was that future. It was the harsh reality of getting out. And it was squalid and crowded and inhuman. It smelled of desperation and lost hope, of no future. Most of those surrounding her wouldn’t make it. One by one they would go back. It was a fact of the life they had chosen. Few went straight, few made it out alive. And for Cassie, who promised herself she would be one of the few, the monthly immersion into this world always left her profoundly depressed.

By ten o’clock on Tuesday morning she had already been through the check in line and was nearing the front of the pee line. In her hand she held the plastic cup she would have to squat over and fill while an office trainee, dubbed the “wizard” because of the nature of her monitoring duty, watched to make sure it was her own urine going into the container.

While she waited Cassie didn’t look at anybody and didn’t talk to anybody. When the line moved and she was jostled she just moved with the flow. She thought about her time in High Desert, about how she could just shut herself down when she needed to and go on auto-pilot, ride that space ship back to earth. It was the only way to get through that place. And this one, too.

Cassie squeezed into the cubicle that her parole agent, Thelma Kibble, called an office. She was breathing easy now. She was near the end. Kibble was the last stop on the journey.

“There she is . . .,” Kibble said. “Howzit going there, Cassie Black?”

“Fine, Thelma. How about you?”

Kibble was an obese black woman whose age Cassie had never tried to guess. There was always a pleasant expression on her wide face and Cassie truly liked her despite the circumstances of their relationship. Kibble wasn’t easy but she was fair.  Cassie knew she was lucky when her transfer from Nevada had been assigned to Kibble.

“Can’t complain,” Kibble said. “Can’t complain at all.”

Cassie sat in the chair next to the desk which was stacked on all sides with case files, some of them two inches thick. On the left side of the desk was a vertical file labeled RTC which always drew Cassie’s attention. She knew RTC meant “return to custody” and the files located there belonged to the losers, the ones going back. It seemed the vertical file was always full and seeing it was always as much a deterrent to Cassie as anything else about the parole process.
Kibble had Cassie’s file open in front of her and was filling in the monthly report. This was their ritual; a brief face to face visit and Kibble would go down the checklist of questions.

“What’s up with the hair?” Kibble asked without looking up from the paperwork.

“Just felt like a change. I wanted it short.”

“Change? What are you so bored you gotta make changes all’a sudden?”

“No, I just . . .”

She finished by hiking her shoulders, hoping the moment would pass. She should have realized that using the word “change” would raise a flag with a parole agent.

Kibble turned her wrist slightly and checked her watch. It was time to go on.

“Your pee going to be a problem?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Anything you want to talk about?”

“No, not really.”

“How’s the job going?”

“It’s a job. It’s going the way jobs go, I guess.”

Kibble raised her eyebrows and Cassie wished she had just stuck to a one word answer. Now she had raised another flag.

“You drive them fancy damn cars all the time,” Kibble said. “Most people that come in here are washin’ cars like that. And they ain’t complaining.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing. Yes, I drive fancy cars. But I don’t own them. I sell them. There’s a difference.”

Kibble looked up from the file and studied Cassie for a moment. All around them the cacophony of voices from the rows of cubicles filled the air.

“A’right, what’s troubling you, girl? I don’t have time for bullshit. I got my hard cases and my soft cases and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna have to move you to HC. I don’t have time for that.”

She slapped one of the stacks of thick files to make her point.

“You won’t want that, neither,” she said.

Cassie knew HC meant High Control. She was on minimum supervision now. A move to HC would mean increased visits to the parole office, daily phone checks and more home visits from Kibble. Parole would simply become an extension of her cell and she knew she couldn’t handle that. She quickly held her hands up in a calming gesture.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Nothing’s wrong, okay? I’m just having . . . I’m just going through one of those times, you know?”

“No, I don’t know. What times you talkin’ about? Tell me.”

“I can’t. I don’t know the words. I feel like . . . it’s like every day is like the one before. There’s no future because it’s all the same.”

“Look, what did I tell you when you first came in here? I told you it would get like this. Repetition breeds routine. Routine’s boring but it keeps you from thinking and it keeps you out of trouble. You want to stay out of trouble, don’t you, girl?”

“Yes, Thelma. But it’s like I got out of lockdown but sometimes I feel like I’m still in lockdown. It’s not . . .”

“Not what?”

“I don’t know. It’s not fair.”

There was a sudden outburst from one of the other cubicles as a convict started protesting loudly.  Kibble stood up to look over the partitions of the cubicle. Cassie didn’t move. She didn’t care. She knew what it was, somebody being taken down and put in a holding cell pending revocation of parole. There was always one or two takedowns every time she came in. Nobody ever went back peaceably. Cassie long ago stopped watching the scenes. She couldn’t worry about anyone else in this place but herself.

After a few moments Kibble sat back down and turned her attention back to Cassie, who was hoping that the interruption would make the parole agent forget what they had been talking about.

There was no such luck.

“You see that?” Kibble asked.

“I heard it. That was enough.”

“I hope so. Because any little mess up and that could be you. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Perfectly, Thelma. I know what happens.”

“Good, because this isn’t about being fair, to use your word. Fair’s got nothing to do with it. You’re down by law, honey, and you’re under thumb. You’re scaring me, girl, and you should be scaring yourself. You’re only ten months into a two-year tail. This is not good when I hear you getting antsy after just ten months.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Shit, there’s people in this room with four and five and six year tails. Some even longer.”

Cassie nodded.

“I know, I know. I’m lucky. It’s just that I can’t stop myself from thinking about things, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.”

Kibble folded her massive arms across her chest and leaned back in her chair. Cassie wondered if the chair could take the weight but it held strong. Kibble looked at her sternly. Cassie knew she had made a mistake trying to open up to her. She was in effect inviting Kibble into her life more than she was already into it. But she decided that since she had already strayed across the line, she might as well go all the way now.

“Thelma, can I just ask you something?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“Do you know . . . are there any like international treaties or agreements for parole transfers?”

Kibble closed her eyes.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Like if I wanted to live in London or Paris or something?”

Kibble opened her eyes, shook her head and looked astonished. She shifted forward and the chair came down heavily.

“Do I look like a travel agent to you? You are a convict, girl. You understand that? You don’t just decide you don’t like it here and say ‘Oh, I think I’ll try Paris now.’ Are you listening to yourself talking crazy here? We aren’t running no Club Med here.”

“Okay, I was just —”

“You got the one transfer from Nevada, which you were lucky to get, thanks to your friend at the dealership. But that’s it. You are stuck here, girl. For at least the next fourteen months and maybe even further, the way you’re acting now.”

“All right. I just thought I’d —”

“End of story.”

“Okay. End of story.”

Kibble leaned over the desk to write something in Cassie’s file.

“I don’t know about you,” she said as she wrote. “You know what I oughta do is I oughta thirty-fifty-six you for a couple days, see if that clears your mind of these silly ass ideas. But —”

“You don’t have to do that, Thelma. I —”

“— we’re full up right now.”

Cassie knew a 3056 was a parole hold — an order putting a parolee in custody pending a hearing to revoke parole. The PA could then drop the revoke charge at the time of the hearing and the parolee would be set free. Meantime, the revisit to lockdown for a few days would serve as a warning to straighten up. It was the harshest threat Kibble had at her disposal and just the mention of it properly scared Cassie.

“I mean it, Thelma, I’m fine. I’m okay. I was just venting some steam, okay? Please don’t do that to me.”

She hoped she had put the proper sound of pleading into her voice.

Kibble shook her head.

“All I know is that you were on my A list, girl. Now I don’t know. I think I’m gonna at least have to come around and check up on you one of these days. See what’s what with you. I’m telling you, Cassie Black, you better watch yourself with me. I am not fat old Thelma who can’t get off her chair. I am not someone to fuck with. You think so, you check with these folks.”

She raked the end of her pen along the edges of the RTC files to her left. It made a loud ripping sound.

“They’ll tell you I am not someone to be fucked with or fucked over.”

Cassie could only nod. She studied the huge woman across from her for a long moment. She needed some way to defuse this, to get the smile back on Kibble’s face or at the very least the deep furrow out of her brow.

“You come around, Thelma, and I have a feeling I’ll see you before you see me.”

Kibble looked sharply at her. But Cassie saw the tension slowly change in her face. It had been a gamble but Kibble took the comment in good humor. She even started to chuckle and it made her huge shoulders and then the desk shake.

“We’ll see about that,” Kibble said. “You’d be surprised by me.”

Cassie felt a weight lifting off of her as she came out of the parole offices. Not simply because the monthly ordeal was over. But because she had caught a glimmer of understanding about herself while inside. In her struggle for an explanation of her feelings to Kibble she had arrived at an essential conclusion. She was marking time and she could do it their way or her own way. Her decision was clear now and in that clarity were feelings of both relief and fear. Inside she began to feel the slight trickle of melt water from the frozen lake that for so long had been her heart.

She walked between the municipal and county courthouses and through the plaza fronting the LAPD’s Van Nuys station. There was a bank of payphones near the stairs leading up to the police station’s second floor entrance. She picked one up, dropped in a quarter and a dime and punched in a number she had committed to memory more than a year earlier while in High Desert. It had come on a note smuggled to her in a tampon.

After three rings the phone was answered by a man.

“Yes?”

It had been more than six years since Cassie had heard the voice but it rang true and recognizable to her. It made her catch her breath.

“Yes?”

“Uh, yes, is this . . . is this D.H. Reilly?”

“No, you have the wrong number.”

“Dog House Reilly? I was calling —”

She looked down and read off  the number of  the phone she was standing at.

“What kind of crazy name is that? No Dog House here and you’ve got the wrong number.”

He hung up. Cassie did, too. She then turned around and walked back into the plaza and took a seat on a bench about fifty feet from the payphones. She shared the bench with a disheveled man who was reading a newspaper so yellowed that it had to have been months old.

Cassie waited almost forty minutes. When the phone finally started to ring, she was in the midst of a one-sided conversation with the disheveled man about the quality of the food service in the Van Nuys jail. She got up and trotted to the phones, the man yelling a final complaint at her.

“Sausage like fucking Brillo pads! We were playing hockey in there!”

She grabbed the phone after the sixth ring.

“Leo?”

A pause.

“Don’t use my name. How you doing, sweetheart?”

“I’m okay. How are —”

“You know, you been out now like a year, am I right?”

“Uh, actually —”

“And all that time and not even a hello from you. I thought I’d hear from you before now. You’re lucky I even remembered that Dog House Reilly schtick.”

“Ten months. I’ve been out ten months.”

“And how’s it been?”

“Okay, I guess. Good, actually.”

“Not if you’re calling me.”

“I know.”

There was a long silence then. Cassie could hear traffic noise coming from his end. She guessed he had left the house and found a payphone somewhere on Ventura Boulevard, probably near the deli he liked to eat at.

“So, you called me first,” Leo prompted.

“Right, yeah. I was thinking . . . “

She paused and thought about everything again. She nodded her head.

“Yeah, I need to get some work, Leo.”

“Don’t use my name.”

“Sorry.”

But she smiled. Same old Leo.

“You know me, a classic paranoid.”

“I was just thinking that.”

“All right, so you’re looking for something. Give me some parameters? What are we talking about here?”

“Cash. One job.”

“One job?” He seemed surprised and maybe even disappointed. “How big?”

“Big enough to disappear on. To get a good start, at least.”

“Must not be going too good then.”

“It’s just that things are happening. I can’t  . . .”

She shook her head and didn’t finish.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I feel good, actually. Now that I know.”

“I know what you mean. I remember the time when I decided for good. When I said fuck it, this is what I do. And at the time, hell, I was only boosting air bags out of Chryslers. I’ve come a long way. We both have.”

Cassie turned and glanced back at the man on the bench. He was continuing his conversation. He hadn’t really needed Cassie to be there.

“You know, don’t you, that with these parameters, you’re probably talking Vegas. I mean, I could send you down to Hollywood Park or one of the Indian rooms but you’re not going to see a lot of cash. You’re talking fifteen, twenty a pop down there. But if you give me some time to set something in Vegas I could push the take.”

Cassie thought a moment. She had believed that when the bus to High Desert pulled out of Las Vegas six years before that she would never see the place again. But she knew that what Leo was saying was accurate. Vegas was where the big money was.

“Vegas is fine,” she said abruptly. “Just don’t take too long.”

“Who’s that talking behind you?”

“Just some old guy. Too much pruno while in lock up.”

“Where are you?”

“I just left the PO.”

Leo laughed.

“Nothing like having to pee in a cup to make you see life’s possibilities. Tell you what, I’ll keep an eye out for something. I got a heads up about something coming up in the next week or so. You’d be perfect. I’ll let you know if it pans out. Where can I reach you?”

She gave him the number of the dealership where she worked. The general number and not her direct line or her cell phone number. She didn’t want those numbers written down and in his possession in case he took a bust.

“One other thing,” she said. “Can you still get passports?”

“I can. Take me two, three weeks cause I send out for them but I can get you one. It will be fucking grade A, too. A passport will run you a grand, a whole book twenty-five hundred. Comes with DL, Visa and Amex. Delta miles on the Amex.”

“Good. I’ll want a whole book for me and then a second passport.”

“What do you mean, two? I’m telling you the first one will be perfect. You won’t need another with —”

“They’re not both for me. I need the second for somebody else. Do you want me to send pictures to the house or do you have a drop?”

Leo told her to send the photos to a mail drop. He gave her the address in Burbank, which she wrote directly onto an envelope already containing the photos. He then asked her who the second passport was for and what names she wanted used in the manufacture of the false documents. She had anticipated the questions and had already picked the names. She also had taken money from her savings account and offered to send the cash with the photos but Leo told her he could front it for the time being. He said it was an act of good faith seeing that they were going back into business together.

“So,” he said, returning to the main business at hand. “You going to be ready for this? Been a long time. People get rusty. If I put you out there, I’ll be on the line, you know.”

“I know. You don’t have to worry. I’ll be ready.”

“Okay then. I’ll be talking to you.”

“Thanks. I’ll be seeing you.”

“Oh, and sweetheart?”

“What?”

“I’m glad you’re back. It’ll be like old times again.”

“No, Leo. Not without Max. It will never be the same again.”

This time Leo didn’t protest her use of his name. They both hung up and Cassie walked away from the phones. The man on the bench called after her but she couldn’t make out what it was he had said.

Angels Flight Lost Chapter: 1965

Published here for the first time is a chapter from Angels Flight that never made it into the final published book. It is a glimpse into Harry Bosch’s past.

Michael was asked where this chapter fit into the book. Here’s his answer:

“I stopped writing the book about halfway through and wrote “1965” without knowing if there would be a place for it. The book, while at foremost being a detective novel, is also a bit of a meditation or rumination on racial tensions in Los Angeles. As I was writing it I came to realize that Harry makes some observations about racism and race relations and that it would be good to know where he comes from and how he would come to make such conclusions. So I decided to stop the writing of the book and just write a story in which Harry encountered significant racism for the first time.

I have always been fascinated with how families pass on tradition and custom — both good and bad. If you grew up in a house where only Coke was served as a soda, then there is a good chance you will be a Coke drinker as opposed to a Pepsi drinker as an adult. If you grew up in a house where your parents used the word ‘nigger’ then it is likely you will use it and maybe pass it on to your own kids. I wanted to write a story where Harry experienced this but was able to escape its hold on him. I also wanted to put a little twist in his gut and create a situation where he had to second guess his own actions in terms of whether they were subtly racist — just as he would later on in the Angels Flight case. Therefore, writing “1965” was very helpful to me in writing Angels Flight even though I knew the memory from Harry’s past would most likely not make it into the book.”

1965

On the way to Harry’s new home with his new parents, his foster father looked back over the front seat of the Corvair at him and said, “We saved you from the niggers, boy, don’t forget it.”

It had been true that the McLaren Youth Hall had a majority of black custodies but there had never been any problems between the blacks and whites while Harry had been there. The dormitory in which he lived had a power structure and cliques that could be dangerous to the unwary or uninvited, but these were fully integrated as membership was based on size and menace and rep — things other than race.

His fosters — whose name just happened to be Ed and Eileen Foster — were hardline Catholics and they enrolled him in Saint Ambrose’s for tenth grade. Harry was a poor student but still liked to go to school to get away from the Fosters. He liked to watch the girls — McLaren had housed boys only and close observation of the opposite sex was new and fascinating to him.

One morning Harry came in for breakfast from the room in the garage that had been fixed up with a bed and a bureau for him to use and Ed told him he wouldn’t be going to school that day.

“The natives went nuts last night,” he explained. “Better you stay home safe today.”

He pointed to the television on the counter in the kitchen next to the stove where Eileen was making scrambled eggs for them. Harry saw black and white film of the burning of a store, then an edit cut to a rippling, moving mass of angry black people in a street somewhere.

“That’s here?” he asked, not comprehending that such a thing could happen in his city. “That’s L.A.?”

“Watts. You’re staying home till things cool over. You can do some weeding in the back if you want something to do.”

Harry just stared at the television. They lived nowhere near Watts but he thought about two of the boys he knew from McLaren. Spencer and Figgs. They had come from Watts and he wondered if they were in front of the television in the dorm rec room watching their neighborhood burn.

“Typical,” Ed said. “They burn their own places down. What good does that do’em? The news says the National Guard is comin’ down. They’re gonna be moppin’ the streets with black blood.”

Harry looked at Ed, not sure what it was he meant, and then back at the television.

“You change out of that uniform before you go working in the back,” Eileen instructed him.

A month after the riot there was a Sadie Hawkins dance in the school’s gymnasium. It was where the girls asked the boys to go and Harry wasn’t expecting anything. He had made no friends and only small talked with one of the girls in his class. He mostly just watched — the cliques having been established during the freshman year when he had still been in McLaren. Plus he had to work after school and never had the time to hang out on the wall by the school’s parking lot with the other kids. The one girl he knew to talk to was a fellow outsider named Estrella Arceneaux and he only knew her because they were class left-outs who shared the same lunch table everyday. There was a boy with a polio leg who also sat at the table but he always read Hardy Boys books during lunch and didn’t speak.

That left Harry and Estrella. She, too, was in a clique of one — not because she was new to the school or had difficulties making social adjustments like Harry. She was an outsider because she was the only black student in the class. On the Thursday before the Saturday night dance she asked Harry if he would go with her and he said he would.

Harry asked Ed Foster to drop him off at Estrella’s house on Saturday night. As he drove and followed the directions Harry had gotten over the telephone from Estrella, Ed Foster’s face slowly tightened into a scowl. Finally, he slowed to a stop as if he believed that if he were to drive any further he would cross some line in himself.

“Son, you know we’re goin’ into niggertown here, don’t you?”

Harry did not know how to reply. He never used the word his foster father used so often and to answer the question yes would be to acknowledge it. Even then he knew this would translate into a disrespect for the girl who had asked him to the dance.

“This girl is either colored or might as well be if she’s livin’ over this ways,” Ed said when Harry didn’t answer.

“She’s a negro,” Harry said, using the proper idiom of the day. “Not colored.”

It felt good inside to challenge the old man. And Harry suddenly knew that he had set the whole thing up this way so that he could do it.

Ed Foster’s right hand came off the steering wheel too quickly for Harry to react. It hit him on the mouth, cutting his lips against his teeth. He held his hand to his mouth but blood dripped on the crisp white shirt he had bought at Buffums with money earned from bagging groceries at the store where his foster father ran the produce department.

“You’re dancing days are over,” Ed said as he put the car into a U-turn. “You like negroes so much then that little shot there ought to give you a set of fat nigger lips, all right.”

At the first stop Harry opened the car and got out. He just left the door open for Ed to worry about closing. He walked back in the direction of Estrella Arceneaux’s house. He got there a half hour later with his new shirt ruined and his lips swollen. Estrella’s father answered the door and at first thought some of the local boys had roughed him up. They weren’t in Watts but close enough and things had been tense everywhere since the riot just the same. Harry said that wasn’t it and apologized to Estrella for messing up the dance. He knew they couldn’t go with him looking the way he did.

Mr. Arceneaux took Harry into a bathroom and cleaned the blood off his face and had him rinse his mouth with warm water. He never asked further questions about what had happened because he probably knew. He brought Harry ice wrapped in a wash cloth for his mouth and told him to take his shirt off. He then went and got him one of his own to wear. It was big on Harry but the gesture wasn’t lost.

“Your daughter is pretty,” Harry said. He couldn’t think of how to explain what he felt or was thinking. “She’s also very smart. Sometimes at lunch she helps me finish my homework.”

Mr. Arceneaux just smiled and nodded.

He drove them to the dance. On the way, Mr. Arceneaux turned on the radio. Harry and Estrella sat in the back and listened to the strange music her father had tuned on the radio. No music Harry had ever heard hit him like this, the way the sound moved inside him. In his blood. He remembered his mother playing records with black men on covers but at the time he was too young to pay attention. Now he did. Estrella’s father looked at him in the rearview and smiled. He had a gold tooth.

“You like the Bird, huh?”

Harry didn’t know why he would call his daughter a bird and why she didn’t protest. But because the man was smiling at him Harry just nodded. He wouldn’t realize what Mr. Arceneaux really meant until a couple years later.

At the gymnasium they danced a few times but mostly watched other kids and tried not to act like they knew they were being watched. But Harry drew a strange feeling of power and freedom from being with Estrella. From knowing they were being watched while they slow danced to Sam Cooke singing about being up on a roof. The two class left outs had everybody’s eyes on them and it emboldened Bosch. He told Estrella the whole story. About what his foster father had said and done. He told her that he knew he would be sent back to McLaren now and that it was what he wanted.

Estrella’s face turned serious and then angry. She put a look on Harry that cut him open. He saw hurt and anger and most of all disappointment all at once.

“What?”

“You used me, Harry.”

“What?”

“You used me to get back to that place. Don’t you see what that is? How ignorant it is? I’m a person, not a —”

“Ignorant? No, I just —

“The people like your foster father aren’t the worse problem. We see them coming a mile away. My father says it’s the ignorant ones — the ones who are subtle — those are the ones that do most the damage.”

She left him there, speechless, and walked from the gym. Her father was in his car waiting in the parking lot. The school was so far from their home that it hadn’t been worth it for him to drive home and then come all the way back.

Harry followed Estrella out. He could hear the same kind of music coming from her father’s car as he approached. Estrella was in the front seat, on the other side of the car from Harry and looking out the side window away from him. Her father looked at Harry as he came up.

“Son, you get fresh with my daughter?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, I have to give you taxi money cause she doesn’t want to ride with you no more.”

Harry looked past his shoulder at Estrella. She glanced back at him, gave him the look once more, and then turned back to the window.

“That’s okay,” he said. “I can walk it. It’s not far.”

“You sure. It’s my responsibility to see you home now.”

“I’m sure. I want to walk.”

After they drove away Harry remembered he was wearing Mr. Arceneaux’s shirt and wondered how he would get it back to him.

He got home an hour later and found Ed Foster waiting in the living room. Harry’s clothes and few other belongings, including a rolled poster of a Hieronymus Bosch painting that his mother had given him, were waiting for him in two cardboard banana boxes.

“Come on, boy,” Ed said. “We’re going back tonight.”

Harry never got a chance to say goodbye to Eileen Foster. And he never saw Estrella Arceneaux again.

The word sounded alien in his mouth, as if spoken by someone else. There was an urgency in his own voice that Bosch didn’t recognize. The simple hello he had whispered into the telephone was full of hope, almost desperation. But the voice that came back to him was not the one he needed to hear.

“Detective Bosch?”

For a moment Bosch felt foolish. He wondered if the caller had recognized the faltering of his voice.

“This is Lieutenant Michael Tulin. Is this Bosch?”

The name meant nothing to Bosch and his momentary concern about how he sounded was ripped away as an awful dread stole quickly into his mind.

“This is Bosch. What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Hold please for Deputy Chief Irving.”

“What is —”

The caller clicked off and there was only silence. Bosch remembered who Tulin was now — Irving’s adjutant. Bosch stood still and waited. He looked around the kitchen, only the dim oven light on. With one hand he held the phone hard against his ear, the other he instinctively brought up to his stomach, where fear and dread were twisting together. He looked at the glowing numbers on the stove clock. It was almost two, five minutes past the last time he had looked at it. This isn’t right, he thought as he waited. They don’t do this by phone. They come to your door. They tell you this face to face.

Finally, Irving picked up on the other end of the line.

“Detective Bosch?”

“Where is she? What happened?”

Another moment of excruciating silence went by as Bosch waited. His eyes were closed now.

“Excuse me?”

“Just tell me, what happened to her? I mean . . . is she alive?”

“Detective, I’m not sure what it is you are talking about. I’m calling because I need to muster your team as soon as possible. I need you for a special assignment.”

Bosch opened his eyes. He looked through the kitchen window into the dark canyon below his house. His eyes followed the slope of the hill down toward the freeway and then up again to the slash of Hollywood lights he could see through the cut of the Cahuenga Pass. He wondered if each light was someone awake and waiting for something or someone that wasn’t going to come. Bosch saw his own reflection in the window. He looked weary. He could make out the deep circles etched beneath his eyes, even in the dark glass.

“I have an assignment, Detective,” Irving repeated impatiently. “Are you able to work or are you —”

“I can work. I just was mixed up there for a moment.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I woke you. But you should be used to it.”

“Yes. It’s no problem.”

Bosch didn’t tell him that he hadn’t been awakened by the call. That he had been roaming around in his dark house waiting.

“Then get it going, Detective. We’ll have coffee down here at the scene.”

“What scene?”

“We’ll talk about it when you get here. I don’t want to delay this any further. Call your team. Have them come to Grand Street between Third and Fourth. The top of Angels Flight. Do you know where I’m talking about?”

“Bunker Hill? I don’t —”

“It will be explained when you get here. Seek me out when you are here. If I am at the bottom come down to me before you speak with anyone.”

“What about Lieutenant Billets? She should —”

“She will be informed about what is happening. We’re wasting time. This is not a request. It is a command. Get your people together and get down here. Am I making myself clear to you?”

“You’re clear.”

“Then I will be expecting you.”

Irving hung up without waiting for a reply. Bosch stood with the phone still at his ear for a few moments, wondering what was going on. Angels Flight was the short inclined railroad that carried people up Bunker Hill in downtown — far outside the boundaries of the Hollywood Division homicide table. If Irving had a body down there at Angels Flight the investigation would at least initially fall under the jurisdiction of Central Division. If central detectives couldn’t handle it because of caseload or personnel problems, or if the case was deemed too important or media sensitive for them, then it would be bumped to the bulls, the Robbery-Homicide Division. The fact that a deputy chief of police was involved in the case before dawn on a Saturday skewed things toward the latter possibility. The fact that he was calling Bosch and his team in instead of the RHD bulls was the puzzle. Whatever it was that Irving had working at Angels Flight didn’t make sense.

Bosch glanced once more down into the dark canyon, pulled the phone away from his ear and clicked it off. He wished he had a cigarette but he had made it this far through the night without one. He wouldn’t break now.

He turned his back and leaned on the counter.  He looked down at the phone in his hand, turned it back on and hit the speed dial button that would connect him with Kizmin Rider’s apartment. He would call Jerry Edgar after he talked to her. Bosch felt a sense of relief come over him that he was reluctant to acknowledge. He might not yet know what awaited him at Angels Flight, but it would certainly take his thoughts away from Eleanor Wish.

Rider’s alert voice answered after two rings.

“Kiz, it’s Harry,” he said. “We’ve got work.”

“As the conscience of a city…Bosch is a wonderful old-fashioned hero who isn’t afraid to walk through the flames — and suffer the pain for the rest of us.”
— The New York Times

“”Angels Flight” explores the underbelly of the human soul with the usual tight prose and swirling plot twists that Connelly’s legions of fans have come to expect.  Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal

“As usual it is a highly professional, extremely exciting story in which one becomes immersed right from the start. This is Michael Connelly at the very top of his form.”
—  Publishing News, London

“”Angels Flight” is the first must read of 1999.”
— The Chicago Tribune

McCaleb saw her before she saw him. He was coming down the main dock, past the row of millionaires’ boats, when he saw the woman standing in the stern of The Following Sea. It was half past ten on a Saturday morning and the warm whisper of spring had brought a lot of people out to the San Pedro docks. McCaleb was finishing the walk he took every morning — completely around Cabrillo Marina, out along the rock jetty and back. He was huffing by this part of the walk, but he slowed his pace even more as he approached the boat. His first feeling was annoyance — the woman had boarded his boat uninvited. But as he got closer, he put that aside and wondered who she was and what she wanted.

She wasn’t dressed for boating. She had on a loose summer dress that came to mid-thigh. The breeze off the water threatened to lift it and so she kept one hand at her side to keep it down. McCaleb couldn’t see her feet yet but he guessed by the taut lines of the muscles he saw in her brown legs that she wasn’t wearing boat shoes. She had raised heels on.  McCaleb’s immediate read was that she was there to make some kind of impression on someone.

McCaleb was dressed to make no impression at all. He had on an old pair of jeans ripped by wear, not for style, and a T-shirt from the Catalina Gold Cup tournament a few summers before. The clothes were spattered with stains — mostly fish blood, some of his own blood, marine polyurethane and engine oil. They had served him as both fishing and work clothes. His plan was to use the weekend to work on the boat and he was dressed accordingly.

He became more self-conscious about his appearance as he drew closer to the boat and could see the woman better. He pulled the foam pads of his portable off his ears and turned off the CD in the middle of Howlin’ Wolf singing “I Ain’t Superstitious.”

“Can I help you?” he asked before stepping down into his own boat.

His voice seemed to startle her and she turned away from the sliding door that led into the boat’s salon. McCaleb figured she had knocked on the glass and was waiting, expecting him to be inside.

“I’m looking for Terrell McCaleb.”

She was an attractive woman in her early thirties, a good decade or so younger than McCaleb. There was a sense of familiarity about her but he couldn’t quite place it. It was one of those deja vu things. At the same time he felt the stir of recognition, it quickly flitted away and he knew he was mistaken, that he did not know this woman. He remembered faces. And hers was nice enough not to forget.

She had mispronounced the name, saying Mc-Cal-ub instead of Mc-Kay-Leb, and used the formal first name that no one ever used except the reporters. That’s when he began to understand. He knew now what had brought her to the boat. Another lost soul come to the wrong place.

“McCaleb,” he corrected. “Terry McCaleb.”

“Sorry. I, uh, I thought maybe you were inside. I didn’t know if it was okay to walk on the boat and knock.”

“But you did anyway.”

She ignored the reprimand and went on. It was as if what she was doing and what she had to say had been rehearsed.
“I need to talk to you.”

“Well, I’m kind of busy at the moment.”

He pointed to the open bilge hatch she was lucky not to have fallen into and the tools he had left spread out on a drop cloth by the stern transom.

“I’ve been walking around, looking for this boat, for almost an hour,” she said. “It won’t take long. My name is Graciela Rivers and I wanted —”

“Look, Miss Rivers,” he said, holding his hands up and interrupting. “I’m really … You read about me in the newspaper, right?”

She nodded.

“Well, before you start your story, I have to tell you, you’re not the first one to come out here and find me or to get my number and call me. And I’m just going to tell you what I told all of the others. I’m not looking for a job. So if this is about you wanting to hire me or have me help you some way, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it. I’m not looking for that kind of work.”

She didn’t say anything and he felt a pang of sympathy for her, just as he had for the others who had come to him before her.

“Look, I do know a couple of private investigators I can recommend. Good ones that will work hard and won’t rip you off.”

He stepped over to the stern gunwale, picked up the sunglasses he had forgotten to take on his walk and put them on, signaling the end of the conversation. But the gesture and his words went by her.

“The article said you were good. It said you hated it whenever somebody got away.”

He put his hands in his pockets and hiked his shoulders.

“You have to remember something. It was never me alone. I had partners, I had the lab teams, I had the whole bureau behind me. It’s a lot different than one guy running around out there on his own. A lot different. I probably couldn’t help you even if I wanted to.”

She nodded and he thought that he had gotten through to her and that would be the end of this one. He started thinking about the valve job on one of the boat’s engines that he’d planned to complete over the weekend. But he was wrong about her.

“I think you could help me,” she said. “Maybe help yourself, too.”

“I don’t need the money. I do okay.”

“I’m not talking about money.”

He looked at her for a beat before replying.

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” he said, injecting exasperation into his voice. “But I can’t help you. I’ve got no badge anymore and I’m not a private investigator. It would be illegal for me to act as one or to accept money without a state license. If you read the story in the paper, then you know what happened to me. I’m not even supposed to be driving a car.”

He pointed toward the parking lot beyond the row of docks and the gangway.

“You see the one wrapped up like a Christmas present? That’s mine. It’s sitting there until I get my doctor’s approval to drive again. What kind of investigator would that make me? I’d be taking the bus.”

She ignored his protest and just looked at him with a resolute expression that unnerved him. He didn’t know how he was going to get her off the boat.

“I’ll go get those names for you.”

He walked around her and slid open the salon door. After going in, he pulled the door shut behind him. He needed the separation. He went to the drawers below the chart table and began looking for his phone book. He hadn’t needed it in so long he wasn’t sure where it was. He glanced out through the door and watched her step to the stern and lean her hips against the transom as she waited.

There was reflective film on the glass of the door.  She couldn’t see him watching her. The sense of familiarity came over him again and he tried to place her face. He found her very striking. Dark almond-shaped eyes that seemed both sad and understanding of some secret at the same time. He knew he would easily remember if he had ever met her or even just observed her before. But nothing came. His eyes instinctively went to her hands in search of a ring. There was none. He had been right about her shoes. She wore sandals with two-inch cork heels. Her toenails were painted pink and showed off against her soft brown skin. He wondered if this was how she looked all the time, or if she had dressed to entice him into taking the job.

He found his phone book in the second drawer and quickly looked up the names Jack Lavelle and Tom Kimball. He wrote their names and numbers on an old marine service flier and opened the slider. She was opening her purse as he stepped out. He held up the paper.

”Here are two names. Lavelle is LAPD retired and Kimball was with the bureau. I worked with both and either will do a good job for you. Pick one and call. Make sure you tell him you got his name from me. He’ll take care of you.”

She didn’t take the names from him. Instead she pulled a photo out of her purse and handed it to him. McCaleb took it without thinking. He realized immediately that this was a mistake. In his hand was a photo of a smiling woman watching a small boy blowing out candles on a birthday cake. McCaleb counted seven candles. At first he thought it was a picture of Rivers a few years younger. But then he realized it wasn’t her. The woman in the photo had a rounder face and thinner lips. She wasn’t as beautiful as Graciela Rivers. Though both had deep brown eyes, the eyes of the woman in the photo did not have the same intensity as the eyes of the woman now watching him.

“Your sister?”

“Yes. And her son.”

“Which one?”

“What?”

“Which one is dead?”

The question was his second mistake, compounding the first by drawing him further in. He knew the moment he asked it that he should have just insisted that she take the names of the two private detectives and been done with it.

“My sister Gloria Torres. We called her Glory. That’s her son, Raymond.”

He nodded and handed the photo back but she didn’t take it. He knew she wanted him to ask what had happened but he was finally putting on the brakes.

“Look, this isn’t going to work,” he finally said. “I know what you’re doing. It doesn’t work on me.”

“You mean you have no sympathy?”

He hesitated as the anger boiled up in his throat.

“I have sympathy. You read the newspaper story, you know what happened to me. Sympathy was my problem all along.”

He swallowed it back and tried to clear away any ill feeling. He knew she was consumed by horrible frustrations. McCaleb had known hundreds of people like her. Loved ones taken from them without reason. No arrests, no convictions, no closure. Some of them were left zombies, their lives irrevocably changed. Lost souls. Graciela Rivers was one of them now. She had to be or she wouldn’t have tracked him down. He knew that no matter what she said to him or how angry he got, she didn’t deserve to be hit with his own frustrations as well.

“Look,” he said. “I just can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

He put a hand on her arm to lead her back to the dock step. Her skin was warm. He felt the strong muscle beneath the softness. He offered the photo again but she still refused to take it.

“Look at it again. Please. Just one more time and then I’ll leave you alone. Tell me if you feel anything else?”

He shook his head and made a feeble hand gesture as if to say it made no difference to him.

“I was an FBI agent, not a psychic.”

But he made a show of holding the photo up and looking at it anyway. The woman and the boy seemed happy. It was a celebration. Seven candles. McCaleb remembered that his parents were still together when he turned seven. But not much longer. His eyes were drawn to the boy more than the woman. He wondered how the boy would get along now without his mother.

“I’m sorry, Miss Rivers. I really am. But there is nothing I can do for you. Do you want this back or not?”

“I have a double of it. You know, two for the price of one. I thought you’d want to keep that one.”

For the first time he felt the undertow in the emotional current. There was something else at play but he didn’t know what. He looked closely at Graciela Rivers and had the sense that if he took another step, asked the obvious question, he would be pulled under. He couldn’t help himself.

“Why would I want to keep it if I’m not going to be able to help you?”

She smiled in a sad sort of way.

“Because she’s the woman who saved your life. I thought from time to time you might want to remind yourself of what she looked like, who she was.”

He stared at her for a long moment but he wasn’t really looking at Graciela Rivers. He was looking inward, running what she had just said through memory and knowledge and coming up short of its meaning.

“What are you talking about?”

It was all he could manage to ask. He had the sense that control of the conversation and everything else was tilting away from him and sliding across the deck to her. The undertow had him now. It was carrying him out.

She raised her hand but reached past the photo he was still holding out to her. She placed her palm on his chest and ran it down the front of his shirt, her fingers tracing the thick rope of the scar beneath. He let her do it. He stood there frozen and let her do it.

“Your heart,” she said. “It was my sister’s. She was the one who saved your life.”