Michael Connelly

PART ONE: BLUE RELIGION

Chapter One

Within the practice and protocol of the Los Angeles Police Department a two-six call is the one that draws the most immediate response while striking the most fear behind the bulletproof vest. For it is a call that often has a career riding on it. The designation is derived from the combination of the Code 2 radio call out, meaning respond as soon as possible, and the sixth floor of Parker Center from which the Chief of Police commands the department. A two-six is a forthwith from the chief’s office and any officer who knows and enjoys his position in the department will not delay.

Detective Harry Bosch spent over 25 years with the department in his first tour and never once received a forthwith from the chief of police. In fact, other than receiving his badge at the academy in 1972, he never shook hands or spoke personally with a chief again. He had outlasted several of them—and, of course, seen them at police functions and funerals—but simply never met them along the way. On the morning of his return to duty after a three-year retirement he received his first two-six while knotting his tie in the bathroom mirror. It was an adjutant to the chief calling Bosch’s private cell phone. Bosch didn’t bother asking how they had come up with the number in the chief’s office. It was simply understood that the chief’s office had the power to reach out in such a way. Bosch just said he would be there within the hour, to which the adjutant replied that he would be expected sooner. Harry finished knotting his tie in his car while driving as fast as traffic allowed on the 101 Freeway toward downtown.

It took Bosch exactly 24 minutes from the moment he closed the phone on the adjutant until he walked through the double doors of the chief’s suite on the sixth floor at Parker Center. He thought it had to have been some kind of record, not withstanding the fact that he had illegally parked on Los Angeles Street in front of the police headquarters. If they knew his private cell number, then surely they knew what a feat it had been to make it from the Hollywood Hills to the chief’s office in under a half hour.

But the adjutant, a Lieutenant named Hohman, stared him down with disinterested eyes and pointed to a plastic sealed couch that already had two other people waiting on it.

“You’re late,” he said. “Take a seat.”

Bosch decided not to protest, not to make matters possibly worse. He stepped over to the couch and sat between the two men in uniforms who had staked out the armrests. They sat bolt upright and did not small talk. He figured they had been two-sixed as well.

Ten minutes went by. The men on either side of him were called in ahead of Bosch, each dispensed with by the chief in five minutes flat. While the second man was in with the chief, Bosch thought he heard loud voices from the inner sanctum and when the officer came out his face was ashen. He had somehow fucked up in the eyes of the chief and the word—which had even filtered to Bosch in retirement—was that this new man did not suffer fuck ups lightly. Bosch had read a story in the Times about a command staffer who was demoted for failing to inform the chief that the son of a city councilman usually allied against the department had been picked up on a deuce. The chief only found out about it when the councilman called to complain about harassment, as if the department had forced his son to drink six vodka martinis at Bar Marmount and drive home via the trunk of a tree on Mulholland.

Finally Hohman put down the phone and pointed his finger at Bosch. He was up. He was quickly shuttled into a corner office with a view of the Union Station and the surrounding train yards. It was a decent view but not a great one. It didn’t matter because the place was coming down soon. The department would move into temporary offices while a new and modern police headquarters was rebuilt on the same spot. The current headquarters was known as the Glass House by the rank and file, supposedly because there were no secrets kept inside. Bosch wondered what the next place would become known as.

The chief of police was behind a large desk signing papers. Without looking up from this work he told Bosch to have a seat in front of the desk. Within 30 seconds the chief signed his last document and looked up at Bosch. He smiled.
“I wanted to meet you and welcome you back to the department.”

His voice was marked by an eastern accent.  De-paht-ment. This was fine with Bosch. In L.A. everybody was from somewhere else. Or so it seemed. It was both the strength and the weakness of the city.

“It is good to be back,” Bosch said.

“You understand that you are here at my pleasure.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Obviously, I checked you out extensively before approving your return. I had concerns about your . . . shall we say style, but ultimately your talent won the day. You can also thank your partner, Kizmin Rider, for her lobbying effort. She’s a good officer and I trust her. She trusts you.”

“I have already thanked her but I will do it again.”

“I know it has been less than three years since you retired but let me assure you, Detective Bosch, that the department you have rejoined is not the department you left.”

“I understand that.”

“I hope so. You know about the consent decree?”

Just after Bosch had left the department the previous chief had been forced to agree to a series of reforms in order to head off a federal takeover of the LAPD following an FBI investigation into wholesale corruption, violence, and civil rights violations within the ranks. The current chief had to carry out the agreement or he would end up taking orders from the FBI. From the chief down to the lowliest boot, nobody wanted that.

“Yes,” Bosch said. “I’ve read about it.”

“Good. I’m glad you have kept yourself informed. And I am happy to report that despite what you may read in the Times, we are making great strides and we want to keep that momentum. We are also trying to update the department in terms of technology. We are pushing forward in community policing. We are doing a lot of good things, Detective Bosch, much of which can be undone in the eyes of the community if we resort to old ways. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

“I think so.”

“Your return here is not guaranteed. You are on probation for a year. So consider yourself a rookie again. A boot—the oldest living boot at that. I approved your return—I can also wash you out without so much as a reason anytime in the course of the year. Don’t give me a reason.”

Bosch didn’t answer. He didn’t think he was supposed to.

“On Friday we graduate a new class of cadets at the academy. I would like you to be there.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to be there. I want you to see the dedication in our young people’s faces. I want to re-acquaint you with the traditions of this department. I think it could help you, help you rededicate yourself.”

“If you want me to be there I will be there.”

“Good. I will see you there. You will sit under the VIP tent as my guest.”

He made a note about the invite on a pad of paper next to the blotter. He then put the pen down and raised his hand to point a finger at Bosch. His eyes took on a fierceness.

“Listen to me, Bosch. Don’t ever break the law to enforce the law. At all times you do your job constitutionally and compassionately. I will accept it no other way. This city will accept it no other way. Are we okay on that?”

“We are okay.”

“Then we are good to go.”

Bosch took his cue and stood up. The chief surprised him by also standing and extending his hand. Bosch thought he wanted to shake hands and extended his own. The chief put something in his hand and Bosch looked down to see the gold detective’s shield. He had his old number back. It had not been given away. He almost smiled.

“Wear it well,” the police chief said. “And proudly.”

“I will.”

Now they shook hands but as they did so the chief didn’t smile.

“The chorus of forgotten voices,” he said.

“Excuse me, Chief?”

“That’s what I think about when I think of the cases down there in Open Unsolved. It’s a house of horrors. Our greatest shame. All those cases. All those voices. Every one of them is like a stone thrown into a lake. The ripples move out through time and people. Families, friends, neighbors. How can we call ourselves a city when there are so many ripples, when so many voices have been forgotten by this department?”

Bosch let go of his hand and didn’t say anything. There was no answer for the chief’s question.

“I changed the name of the unit when I came into the department. Those aren’t cold cases, Detective. They never go cold. Not for some people.”

“I understand that.”

“Then go down there and clear cases. That’s what your art is. That’s why we need you and why you are here. That’s why I am taking a chance with you. Show them we do not forget. Show them that in Los Angeles cases don’t go cold.”
“I will.”

Bosch left him there, still standing and maybe a little haunted by the voices. Like himself. Bosch thought that maybe for the first time he had actually connected on some level with the man at the top. In the military it is said that you go into battle and fight and are willing to die for the men who sent you. Bosch never felt that when he was moving through the darkness of the tunnels in Vietnam. He had felt alone and that he was fighting for himself, fighting to stay alive. That had carried with him into the department and he had at times adopted the view that he was fighting in spite of the men at the top. Now maybe things would be different.

In the hallway he punched the elevator button harder than he needed to. He had too much excitement and energy and he understood this. The chorus of forgotten voices. The chief seemed to know the song they were singing. And Bosch certainly did, too. Most of his life had been spent listening to that song.

“Connelly comes as close as anyone to being today’s Dostoyevsky of crime literature, and this is one of his finest works to date, a likely candidate not only for book award nominations but for major bestsellerdom.”
— Publishers Weekly *Starred Review

“what can you do to refresh the screen when your hero, like Connelly’s Harry Bosch, looks at the world through “seen-it-all-twice eyes”? You can take a chance, and that’s exactly what Connelly does here, transforming his world-weary hero into a rookie cop and forcing him (and us) to live one day at a time without the comfort of our own cynicism. …Connelly sets up a great premise here—the cop determined to reinvent himself in the face of a thoroughly recalcitrant world—and he makes the most of it.”
— Booklist * Starred Review

“compelling style makes even the most mundane details fascinating. Fans and newcomers alike will love seeing Bosch back in uniform, stirring up trouble. For all crime fiction collections.”
— Library Journal * Starred Review

“Connelly is one of the most consistently excellent authors in current-day crime fiction: his characters, particularly the world-weary Bosch, are complex and appealing; his stories fast-paced, edgy and believable.”
— BookPage

“Connelly artfully reclaims the procedural genre. The technical drill in this narrative is as detailed as it gets, and when Bosch applies himself to his first case…he is, in effect, taking the reader on an inside tour of the machinery running the new and streamlined L.A.P.D. … …Bosch can’t bring back the victims, but in his new job he can honor his resolve ”to carry on the mission” and make good on his promise ”always to speak for the dead.””
— Marilyn Stasio, New York Times

“Connelly has risen well above the genre pulp, by telling stories that matter, filling them with rich characters and bringing the locales alive for the reader. All this is accomplished with a skill that lifts the prose from the page and turns it into something palpable.”
— Robin Vidimos, The Denver Post

“The return of Harry Bosch is good for his beloved City of the Angels and great for readers.”
— Gary Wisby, Chicago Sun-Times

“The Closers” is a powerful book… The forensics are fascinating, but it’s the blood splatter from the LAPD’s darkest years that really stain the page.”
— Sherryl Connelly, New York Daily News

“The Closers is as hard-boiled a novel as they come, but the story also explodes in a quiet way. Connelly doesn’t use gratuitous violence to drive a story — he relies on first-class storytelling.”
— Oline H. Cogdill, Sun-Sentinel

“Mr. Connelly’s previous Bosch novel, “The Narrows,” was a career high point. “The Closers,” an engrossing and exciting tale, does nothing to lower the standards of the series. Throughout, Mr. Connelly takes as his subject not just Harry Bosch and his circle of friends (and enemies) but Los Angeles itself: “A city as great as any other. And just as mean.””
— Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

“It’s terrific, rich not just in suspense (at which Connelly has no superiors) but in the warp and woof of police work, of police bureaucracy, of Los Angeles itself. Every character is convincing…”
— Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

“Fans of Connelly will recognize the deliberate progression of Police Procedural 101, in which he excels; also the thick acronym soup of cop-speak. They will welcome back Bosch on full alert and with tricks aplenty, most of them legal.”
— Eugen Weber, Los Angeles Times

“With crackling dialogue and masterful plot work, Connelly weaves a tale of corruption and betrayal that reaches deep into the abyss called Los Angeles.”
— Geoff Jennings, Rainy Day Books, Fairway, KS (A BookSense Pick For May 2005)

“…in a Michael Connelly novel, things are never as simple as they seem. …excellent, twisty police procedural…”
— Amazon.co.uk Editorial Review

“Connelly’s in top form once again with this tight-as-a-noose tale of retired homicide detective Harry Bosch, who returns to the LAPD to investigate a 20-year-old unsolved murder.”
— LIFE Magazine

“THE CLOSERS finds both Bosch and Connelly on the top of their game.”
— CrimeSpree Magazine

Best Books of 2005, Top 10 Editors’ Picks: Mystery & Thrillers
— Amazon.com Washington Post “Critics Choices” For 2005, Top 5 Books

The Narrows audiobook is read by narrator Len Cariou. It is available in CD and in downloadable formats.

Listen to an excerpt:

 

 

Get a special look inside Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novel, The Narrows. In this 11 minute video clip,  Michael shares with you locations in Los Angeles, reads you excerpts from The Narrows, and gives you his personal insight into the writing of his book.

“There’s a gravitas to the mystery/thrillers of Michael Connelly, a bedrock commitment to the value of human life and the need for law enforcement pros to defend that value, that sets his work apart and above that of many of his contemporaries. That gravitas is in full force in Connelly’s newest, and as nearly always in the work of this talented writer, it supports a dynamite plot, fully flowered characters and a meticulous attention to the details of investigative procedure. …The suspense is steady throughout but, until a breathtaking climactic chase, arises more from Bosch and Walling’s patient and inspired following of clues and dealing with bureaucratic obstacles than from slash-and-dash: an unusually intelligent approach to generating thrills. Connelly is a master and this novel is yet another of his masterpieces.”
— Publishers Weekly * Starred, Boxed Review

“The Narrows,” Michael Connelly’s best crime novel since “City of Bones,” unfolds within his increasingly seductive world. … “The Narrows” is so enveloping that it may send readers back to the early lives of these characters. ”
— New York Times

“…Mr. Connelly’s terrific 14th novel…a suspenseful book marked by flashes of insight and moments of pathos, as well as by dry wit and graceful prose.”
— Wall Street Journal

“The Narrows is an intelligent, tautly written thriller, and should only serve to heighten Connelly’s already exalted stature as one of today’s leading crime writers.”
— Peter Robinson, The Globe and Mail

“This is scarifying in a big way — a Thomas Harris kind of scary, which is high praise indeed.”
— Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

“Michael Connelly gives life to a fictional matchup that is the stuff of his readers’ dreams.”
— Denver Post

“Not only is “The Narrows” one of Connelly’s most energized novels to date, it ranks as one of his best: lean, measured and paced like the first work of an artist ascending to the next level.”
— The News-Press

“Intricately plotted, The Narrows excels in creating an interlocked structure that perfectly melds two of Connelly’s works. The taut suspense is matched only by the surprises that Connelly pulls out, beginning with the jaw-dropping first three chapters.”
— Sun-Sentinel

“The Narrows is Connelly at his best, producing the creepy, cunning killer he is famed for and, at the same time, weaving into the story line plausible human drama, such as Bosch’s poignant attempts to bond with his newly discovered daughter.”
— Orlando Sentinel

“…it will reaffirm the belief of Bosch’s ever-increasing fan base that the complex hero stands at the epicenter of the well-thought-out, disturbingly moody universe the author has created.”
— Los Angeles Times

“This is a high point among Connelly novels as he reconfirms his status as one of the best and most reliable of mystery writers… This is an excellent mystery in classic and modern senses”
— San Jose Mercury News

“The Narrows is clean, precise, neatly executed and thrilling. It reads like an out-of-control locomotive you keep refusing to set aside, even though the hour’s way past late and your eyes have been burning for the last 40 minutes. …Hold on tight and stay up late. The Narrows is crime fiction at its gutsy best.”
— The Clarion-Ledger

“…no one emulates Chandler better than Michael Connelly…Just as Connelly neatly draws his cast together, he cleverly connects the dots between Los Angeles, Las Vegas and The Poet’s hideout.”
— USA Today

“The Narrows represents Connelly at his very best. If there is a better writer out there writing crime fiction, I’d like to know who it is.”
— Deadly Pleasures

“Connelly’s latest shamus-versus-serial-killer thriller mixes the cool noir vibe of Raymond Chandler with the freaky head games of Thomas Harris. …the crooked-haloed Bosch remains one of the most complex crime fighters around.”
— People

“It may well be Connelly’s best work to date.”
— BookReporter.com

“…The Narrows is a dream novel for Connelly fans.”
— ThisWeekNews.com

“Michael Connelly is one of the best writers around today. When we start to read one of his books we know we will not be disappointed. This book falls well within that category. This book is a real thriller and loaded with suspense. However, these attributes “thrilling and suspense” would not mean anything without the creativity and talent of Michael Connelly putting it all together. This book is highly recommended. This is Harry Bosch at the top of his game!”
— BestsellersWorld.com

“Connelly’s writing had me almost hypnotized, so compelling was the narrative. Never did I want to put the book down…”
— ILoveAMystery.com

“Harry Bosch is at his best in this thriller as he balances fatherhood, love and a debt to a deceased friend while trying to outwit a brilliant killing machine. …Michael Connelly provides a strong Bosch book that fans will relish.”
— AllReaders.com

“The Narrows is Connelly at his most compelling, frightening, and downright shocking, as his most beloved hero squares off against his most infamous villain.”
 — Mystery Guild

“Michael Connelly only gets better.”
— BookLoons.com

“Connelly builds the suspense with precision and leaves you on the edge of your seat. I love Harry Bosch’s character. He’s come to feel like an old friend.”
— RoundTableReviews.com

Chapter One

There is no end of things in the heart.

Somebody once told me that. She said it came from a poem she believed in. She understood it to mean that if you took something to heart, really brought it inside those red velvet folds, then it would always be there for you. No matter what happened, it would be there waiting. She said this could mean a person, a place, a dream. A mission. Anything sacred. She told me that it is all connected in those secret folds. Always. It is all part of the same and will always be there, carrying the same beat as your heart.

I am fifty-two-years old and I believe it. At night when I try to sleep but can’t, that is when I know it. It is when all the pathways seem to connect and I see the people I have loved and hated and helped and hurt. I see the hands that reach for me. I hear the beat and see and understand what I must do. I know my mission and I know there is no turning away or turning back. And it is in those moments that I know there is no end of things in the heart.

* * *

The last thing I expected was for Alexander Taylor to answer his own door. It belied everything I knew about Hollywood. I figured that a man with a billion dollar box office record answered the door for nobody. Instead, he would have a uniformed man posted fulltime at his front door. And that this doorman would only allow me entrance after carefully checking my identification and appointment. He would then hand me off to a butler or the first floor maid who would walk me the rest of the way in, shoes falling as silent as snow as we went.

But there was none of that at the mansion on Bel-Air Crest Road. The driveway gate had been left open. And after I parked in the front turnaround circle and knocked on the door it was the box office champion himself who opened it and beckoned me into a home with dimensions seemingly copied directly from the international terminal at LAX.
Taylor was a large man. Over six feet and 250 pounds. He carried it well, though, with a full head of curly brown hair and contrasting blue eyes. The hair on his chin added the high-brow look of an artist to this image, though art had very little to do with the field in which he toiled.

He was wearing a soft blue running suit that probably cost more than everything I was wearing. A white towel was wrapped tightly around his neck and stuffed into the collar. His cheeks were pink, his breathing heavy and labored. I had caught him in the middle of something and he seemed a little put out by it.

I had come to the door in my best suit, the ash gray single-breasted I had paid twelve-hundred dollars for three years before. I hadn’t worn it in over nine months and that morning I had to dust off the shoulders after taking it out of the closet. I was clean-shaven and I had purpose, the first I had felt since the suit had been put on that hanger so many months before.

“Come in,” Taylor said. “Everybody’s off today and I was just working out. Lucky the gym’s just down the hall or I probably wouldn’t have even heard you. It’s a big place.”

“Yes, that was lucky.”

He moved back into the house. He didn’t shake my hand and I remembered that from the time I first met him four years before. He led the way, leaving it to me to close the front door.

“Do you mind if I finish up on the bike while we talk?”

“No, that’s fine.”

We walked down a marble hallway, Taylor staying three steps ahead of me as if I were entourage. He was probably most comfortable that way and that was all right with me. It gave me time to look around.

The bank of windows on the left gave a view of the opulent grounds—a soccer field-size rectangle of rolling green that led to what I assumed was a guesthouse and or a pool house or both. There was a golf cart parked outside of the distant structure and I could see tracks back and forth across the manicured green leading to the main house. I had seen a lot in L.A., from the poorest ghettos to mountaintop mansions. But it was the first time inside the city limits I had ever seen a homestead so large that a golf cart was necessary to get from one side to the other.

Along the wall on the right were framed one-sheets from the many films Alexander Taylor had produced. I had seen a few of them when they made it to television and seen commercials for the rest. For the most part they were the kind of action films that neatly fit into the confines of a thirty-second commercial, no pressing need afterward to actually see the movie. None would ever be considered art by any meaning of the word. But in Hollywood they were far more important than art. They were profitable. And that was the bottom line of all bottom lines.

Taylor made a sweeping right and I followed him into the gym. The room brought new meaning to the idea of personal fitness to me. All manner of weight machines were lined against the walls. And at center was what appeared to be a full-size boxing ring. Taylor smoothly mounted a stationary bike, pushed a few buttons on the digital display in front of him and started pedaling.

Mounted side by side and high on the opposite wall were three, large flat screen televisions tuned to competing 24-hour news channels and the Bloomberg business report. The sound on the Bloomberg screen was up. Taylor lifted a remote control and muted it. Again, it was a courtesy I wasn’t expecting. When I had spoken to his secretary to make the appointment, she had made it sound like I would be lucky to get a few questions in while the great man worked his cell phone.

“No partner?” Taylor asked. “I thought you guys worked in pairs.”

“I like to work alone.”

I left it at that for the moment. I stood silently as Taylor got up to a rhythm on the cycle. He was in his late forties but he looked much younger. Maybe just surrounding himself with the equipment and machinery of health and youthfulness did the trick, whether you used them or not. Then again maybe it was the face peels and Botox injections.

“I can give you three miles,” he said, as he pulled the towel from around his neck and draped it over the handlebars.
“About twenty minutes.”

“That’ll be fine.”

I started pulling a notebook out of an inside coat pocket. It was a spiral notebook and the wire coil caught on the jacket’s lining. I felt like a jackass trying to get it loose and finally just jerked it free. I heard the lining tear but smiled away the embarrassment. Taylor cut me a break by looking away and up at one of the silent television screens.
I think it’s the little things I miss most about my former life. For more than twenty years I carried a small bound notebook in my coat pocket. Spiral notebooks weren’t allowed—a smart defense attorney could claim pages of exculpatory notes had been torn out. The bound notebooks took care of that problem and were easier on the jacket lining at the same time.

“I was glad to hear from you,” Taylor said. “It has always bothered me about Angie. To this day. She was a good kid, you know? And all this time, I thought you guys had just given up on it, that she didn’t matter.”

I nodded. I had been careful with my words when I had spoken to the secretary on the phone. While I had not lied to her I had been guilty of leading her and letting her assume things. It was a necessity. If I had told her I was an ex-cop working freelance on an old case then I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the box office champ for the interview.

“Uh, before we start, I think there might have been a misunderstanding. I don’t know what your secretary told you, but I’m not a cop. Not anymore.”

Taylor coasted for a moment on the pedals but then quickly worked back into his rhythm. His face was red and he was sweating freely. He reached to a cup holder on the side of the digital control board and took out a pair of half-glasses and a slim card that had his production company’s logo at the top—a square with a maze-like design of curls inside it—and several handwritten notations below it. He put on the glasses and squinted anyway as he read the card.

“That’s not what I have here,” he said. “I’ve got LAPD Detective Harry Bosch at ten. Audrey wrote this. She’s been with me for eighteen years—since I was making straight to video dreck in the Valley. She is very good at what she does. And usually very accurate.”

“Well, that was me for a long time. But not for about a year. I retired. I might not have been very clear about that on the phone. I wouldn’t blame Audrey if I were you.”

“I won’t.”

He glanced down at me, tilting his head forward to see over the glasses.

“So then what can I do for you, detective—or I guess I should say, mister—Bosch? I’ve got two and a half miles and then we’re finished here.”

There was a bench press machine to Taylor’s right. I moved over and sat down. I took the pen out of my shirt pocket—no snags this time—and got ready to write.

“I don’t know if you remember me but we have spoken, Mr. Taylor. Four years ago when the body of Angella Benton was found in the vestibule of her apartment building, the case was assigned to me. You and I spoke in your office over at Eidolon. On the Archway lot. One of my partners, Kiz Rider, was with me.”

“I remember. The black woman—she had known Angie, she said. From the gym, I think it was. I remember that at the time you two instilled a lot of confidence in me. But then you disappeared. I never heard from—”

“We were taken off the case. We were from Hollywood Division. After the robbery and shooting a few days later the case was taken away. Robbery-Homicide Division took it.”

A low chime sounded from the stationary cycle and I thought maybe it meant Taylor had covered his first mile.

“I remember those guys,” Taylor said in a derisive voice. “Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber. They inspired nothing in me. I remember one was more interested in securing a position as technical advisor to my films then he was in the real case at hand. Whatever happened to them?”

“One’s dead and one’s retired.”

Dorsey and Cross. I had known them both. Taylor’s description aside, both had been capable investigators. You didn’t get to RHD by coasting. What I didn’t tell Taylor was that Jack Dorsey and Lawton Cross became known in detective services as the partners who had the ultimate bad luck. While working an investigation they drew several months after the Angella Benton case they stopped into a bar in Hollywood to grab lunch and a booster shot. They were sitting in a booth with their ham sandwiches and Bushmills when the place was hit by an armed robber. It was believed that Dorsey, who was sitting facing the door, made a move from the booth but was too slow. The gunman cut him down before he got the safety off his gun and he was dead before he hit the floor. A round fired at Cross creased his skull and a second hit him in the neck and lodged in his spine. The bartender was executed last at point blank range.

“And then what happened to the case?” Taylor asked rhetorically, not an ounce of sympathy in his voice for the fallen cops. “Not a damn thing happened. I guarantee it’s been gathering dust like that cheap suit you pulled out of the closet before coming to see me.”

I took the insult because I had to. I just nodded as if I agreed with him. I couldn’t tell if his anger was for the never avenged murder of Angella Benton or for what happened after, the robbery and the next murder and the shutting down of his film.

“It was worked by those guys full-time for six months,” I said. “After that there were other cases. The cases keep coming, Mr. Taylor. It’s not like in your movies. I wish it was.”

“Yes, there are always other cases,” Taylor said. “That’s always the easy out, isn’t it? Blame it on the workload. Meantime, the kid is still dead, the money’s still gone and that’s too bad. Next case. Step right up.”

I waited to make sure he was finished. He wasn’t.

“But now it’s four years later and you show up. What’s your story, Bosch? You con her family into hiring you? Is that it?”

“No. All of her family was in Ohio. I haven’t contacted them.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s unsolved, Mr. Taylor. And I still care about it. I don’t think it is being worked with any kind of . . . dedication.”

“And that’s it?”

I nodded. Then Taylor nodded to himself.

“Fifty grand,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll pay you fifty grand—if you solve the thing. There’s no movie if you don’t solve it.”

“Mr. Taylor, you somehow have the wrong impression. I don’t want your money and this is no movie. All I want right now is your help.”

“Listen to me. I know a good story when I hear it. Detective haunted by the one that got away. It’s a universal theme, tried and true. Fifty up front, we can talk about the back end.”

I gathered the notebook and pen from the bench and stood up. This wasn’t going anywhere, or at least not in the direction I wanted.

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Taylor. If I can’t find my way out I’ll send up a flare.”

As I took my first step toward the door a second chime came from the exercise bike. Taylor spoke to my back.

“Home stretch, Bosch. Come back and ask me your questions. And I’ll keep my fifty grand if you don’t want it.”

I turned back to him but kept standing. I opened the notebook again.

“Let’s start with the money,” I said. “Who from your company knew about it? I’m talking about who knew the specifics; when it was coming in for the shoot and how it was going to be delivered? Anything and anybody you can remember. I’m starting this from scratch.”