Michael Connelly

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.”

“Connelly is so good… How beautifully he strews the faulty suppositions, the flawed conclusions, the false bottoms.”
— New York Daily News

“Fans of Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels will feel right at home with this beautifully constructed, powerfully resonating thriller, and newcomers will see right away that all the fuss has been about.”
—  Publishers Weekly

“Thrilling, suspenseful and securely anchored in procedure and purpose.  Not a false note; deeply satisfying stuff.”
— London Literary Review

“Compelling…A spine-tingling manhunt guaranteed to boost the blood pressure.”
— People Magazine

As he drove along Mulholland Drive toward the Cahuenga Pass, Bosch began to hear the music.  It came to him in fragments of string and errant horn sequences, echoing off the brown summer-dried hills and blurred by the white noise of traffic carrying up from the Hollywood Freeway.  Nothing he could identify.  All he knew was that he was heading toward its source.

He slowed when he saw the other cars parked off to the side of a gravel turn-off road.  Two detective sedans and a patrol car.  Bosch pulled his Caprice in behind them and got out.  A single officer in uniform leaned against the fender of the patrol car.  Yellow plastic crime-scene tape — the stuff used by the mile in Los Angeles — was strung from the patrol car’s sideview mirror across the gravel road to the sign posted on the other side.  The sign said, in black-on-white letters that were almost indistinguishable behind the graffiti that covered the sign:

           L.A.F.D. FIRE CONTROL
MOUNTAIN FIRE DISTRICT ROAD
NO PUBLIC ADMITTANCE
NO SMOKING!

 The patrol cop, a large man with sun-reddened skin and blond bristly hair, straightened up as Bosch approached.  The first thing Bosch noted about him other than his size was the baton.  It was holstered in a ring on his belt and the business end of the club was marred, the black acrylic paint scratched away to reveal the aluminum beneath.  Street fighters wore their battle-scarred sticks proudly, as a sign, a not so subtle warning.  This cop was a headbanger.  No doubt about it.  The plate above the cop’s breast pocket said his name was Powers.  He looked down at Bosch through Ray-Bans, though it was well into dusk and a sky of burnt orange clouds was reflected in his mirrored lenses.  It was one of those sundowns that reminded Bosch of the glow the fires of the riots had put in the sky a few years back.

“Harry Bosch,” Powers said with a touch of surprise.  “When did you get back on the table?”

Bosch looked at him a moment before answering.  He didn’t know Powers but that didn’t mean anything.  Bosch’s story was probably known by every cop in Hollywood Division.

“Just did,” Bosch said.

He didn’t make any move to shake hands.  You didn’t do that at crime scenes.

“First case back in the saddle, huh?”

Bosch took out a cigarette and lit it.  It was direct violation of department policy but it wasn’t something he worried about.

“Something like that.”  He changed the subject.  “Who’s down there?”

“Edgar and the new one from Pacific, his soul sister.”

“Rider.”

“Whatever.”

Bosch said nothing further about that.  He knew what was behind the contempt in the uniform cop’s voice.  It didn’t matter that he knew Kizmin Rider had the gift and was a top-notch investigator.  That would mean nothing to Powers, even if Bosch told him it was so. Powers probably saw only one reason why he was still wearing a blue uniform instead of carrying a Detective’s gold badge: that he was a white man in an era of female and minority hiring and promotion.  It was the kind of festering sore better left undisturbed.

Powers apparently registered Bosch’ s non-response as disagreement and went on.

“Anyway, they told me to let Emmy and Sid drive on down when they get here.  I guess they’re done with the search.  So you can drive down instead of walking, I guess.”

It took a second for Bosch to register that Powers was referring to the medical examiner and the Scientific Investigation Division tech.  He’s said the names as if they were a couple invited to a picnic.

Bosch stepped out to the pavement, dropped the half cigarette and made sure he put it out with his shoe.  It wouldn’t be good to start a brush fire on his first job back on the homicide table.

“I’ll walk it,” he said.  “What about Lieutenant Billets?”

“Not here yet.”

Bosch went back to his car and reached in through the open window for his briefcase.  He then walked back to Powers.

“You the one who found it?”

“That was me.”

Powers was proud of himself.

“How’d you open it?”

“Keep a slim jim in the car.  Opened the door, then popped the trunk.”

“Why?”

“The smell.  It was obvious.”

“Wear gloves?”

“Nope.  Didn’t have any.”

“What did you touch?”

Powers had to think about it for a moment.

“Door handle, the trunk pull.  That’d be about it.”

“Did Edgar or Rider take a statement?  You write something up?’

“Nothing yet.”

Bosch nodded.

“Listen, Powers, I know you’re all proud of yourself, but next time don’t open the car, okay?  We all want to be detectives but not all of us are.  That’s how crime scenes get fucked up.  And I think you know that.”

Bosch watched the cop’s face turn a dark shade of crimson and the skin go tight around his jaw.

“Listen, Bosch,” he said.  “What I know is that if I just called this in as a suspicious vehicle that smells like there’s a stiff in the trunk, then you people would’ve said, ‘What the fuck does Powers know?’ and left it there to rot in the sun until there was nothing left of your goddamn crime scene.”

“That might be true but, see, then that would be our fuckup to make.  Instead, we’ve got you fucking us up before we start.”

Powers remained angry but mute.  Bosch waited a beat, ready to continue the debate, before dismissing it.

“Can you lift the tape now, please?”

Powers stepped back to the tape.  He was about thirty-five, Bosch guessed, and had the long-practiced swagger of a street veteran.  In L.A. that swagger came to you quickly, as it had in Vietnam.  Powers held the yellow tape up and Bosch walked under.  As he passed, the cop said, “Don’t get lost.”

“Good one, Powers.  You got me there.”