Musso & Frank Grill

Excerpt From Trunk Music (Photo by Wendy Werris)

     Bosch got to Musso and Frank's Restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard at exactly twelve-thirty and parked in the back.  The restaurant was a Hollywood landmark, having been on the Boulevard since 1924. In its heyday it had been a popular destination for Hollywood's elite. Fitzgerald and Faulkner held forth. Chaplin and Fairbanks once raced each other down Hollywood Boulevard on horseback, the loser having to pick up the dinner tab. The restaurant now subsisted mostly on its past glory and faded charm.  Its red leather padded booths still filled every day for lunch and some of the waiters looked and moved as if they had been there long enough to have served Chaplin.  The menu hadn't changed in all the years Bosch had been eating there — this in a town where the hookers out on the Boulevard lasted longer than most restaurants.