Michael Connelly

“Someone’s coming.”

Terry McCaleb looked at his wife and then followed her eyes down to the winding road below. He could see the golf cart making its way up the steep and winding road to the house. The driver was obscured by the roof of the cart.

They were sitting on the back deck of the house he and Graciela had rented up on La Mesa Avenue. The view ranged from the narrow winding road below the house to the whole of Avalon and its harbor, and then out across the Santa Monica Bay to the haze of smog that marked overland. The view had been the reason they had chosen this house to make their new home on the island. But at the moment his wife had spoken his gaze had been on the baby in his arms, not the view. He could look no farther than his daughter’s wide blue and trusting eyes.

McCaleb saw the rental number on the side of the golf cart passing below. It wasn’t a local coming. It was somebody who had probably come from overland on the Catalina Express. Still, he wondered about how Graciela knew that the visitor was coming to their house and not any of the others on La Mesa.

He didn’t ask about this — she’d had premonitions before. He just waited and soon after the golf cart disappeared from sight, there was a knock at the front door. Graciela went to answer it and soon came back to the deck with a woman McCaleb had not seen in three years.

Sheriff’s Detective Jaye Winston smiled when she saw the child in his arms. It was genuine, but at the same time it was the distracted smile of someone who wasn’t there to admire a new baby. McCaleb knew the thick green binder she carried in one hand and the video cassette in the other meant Winston was there on business. Death business.

“Terry, howya been?” she asked.

“Couldn’t be better. You remember Graciela?”

“Of course. And who is this?”

“This is CiCi.”

McCaleb never used the baby’s formal name around others. He only liked to call her Cielo when he was alone with her.

“CiCi,” Winston said, and hesitated as if waiting for an explanation of the name. When none came, she said, “How old?”

“Almost four months. She’s big.”

“Wow, yeah, I can see … And the boy … where’s he?”

“Raymond,” Graciela said. “He’s with some friends today. Terry had a charter and so he went with friends to the park to play softball.”

The conversation was halting and strange. Winston either wasn’t really interested or was unused to such banal talk.

“Would you like something to drink?” McCaleb offered as he passed the baby to Graciela.

“No, I’m fine. I had a Coke on the boat.”

As if on cue, or perhaps indignant about being passed from one set of hands to another, the baby started to fuss and Graciela said she would take her inside. She left them then, standing on the porch. McCaleb pointed to the round table and chairs where they ate most nights while the baby slept.

“Let’s sit down.”

He pointed Winston to the chair that would give her the best view of the harbor. She put the green binder, which McCaleb recognized as a murder book, on the table and the video on top of it.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Yeah, she’s amazing. I could watch her all —”

He stopped and smiled when he realized she was talking about the view, not his child. Winston smiled, too.

“She’s beautiful, too, Terry. She really is. You look good, too, so tan and all.”

“I’ve been going out on the boat.”

“And your health is good?”

“Can’t complain about anything other than all the pills they make me take. But I’m three years in now and no problems. I think I’m in the clear, Jaye. I just have to keep taking the damn pills and it should stay that way.”

He smiled and he did appear to be the picture of health. As the sun had turned his skin dark it had worked to the opposite effect on his hair. Close cropped and neat, it was almost blonde now. Working on the boat had also defined the muscles of his arms and shoulders. The only giveaway was hidden under his shirt, the ten-inch scar left by transplantation surgery.

“That’s great,” Winston said. “It looks like you have a wonderful setup here. New family, new home … away from everything.”

She was silent a moment, turning her head as if to take in all of the view and the island and McCaleb’s life at once. McCaleb always thought Jaye Winston was attractive in a tomboyish way. She had loose sandy blonde hair that she kept at shoulder length. She had never worn makeup back when he worked with her. But she had sharp, knowing eyes and an easy and somewhat sad smile, as if she saw the humor and tragedy in everything at once. She wore black jeans and a white t-shirt beneath a black blazer. She looked cool and tough and McCaleb knew from experience that she was. She had a habit of hooking her hair behind her ear frequently as she spoke. He found that endearing for some unknown reason. He had always thought that if he had not connected with Graciela he might have tried to know Jaye Winston better. He also sensed that Winston intuitively knew that.

“Makes me feel guilty about why I came,” she said. “Sort of.”

McCaleb nodded at the binder and the tape.

“You came on business. You could have just called, Jaye. Saved some time probably.”

“No, you didn’t send out any change of address or phone cards. Like maybe you didn’t want people to know where you ended up.”

She hooked her hair behind her left ear and smiled again.

“Not really,” he said. “I just didn’t think people would want to know where I was. So how did you find me?”

“Asked around over at the marina on the mainland.”

“Overland. They call it overland here.”

“Overland then. They told me in the harbor master’s office that you still kept a slip there but you moved the boat over here. I came over and took a water taxi around the harbor until I found it. Your friend was there. He told me how to get up here.”

“Buddy.”

McCaleb looked down into the harbor and picked out The Following Sea. It was about a half-mile or so away. He could see Buddy Lockridge bent over in the stern. After a few moments he could tell that Buddy was washing off the reels with the hose from the freshwater tank.

“So what’s this about, Jaye?” McCaleb said without looking at Winston. “Must be important for you to go through all of that on your day off. I assume you’re off on Sundays.”

“Most of them.”

She pushed the tape aside and opened the binder. Now McCaleb looked over. Although it was upside down to him, he could tell the top page was a standard homicide occurrence report, usually the first page in every murder book he had ever read. It was the starting point. His eyes went to the address box.  Even upside down he could make out that it was a West Hollywood case.

“I’ve got a case here I was hoping you’d take a look at. In your spare time, I mean. I think it might be your sort of thing. I was hoping you’d give me a read, maybe point me someplace I haven’t been yet.”

He had known as soon as he had seen the binder in her hands that this was what she was going to ask him. But now that it had been asked he felt a confusing rush of sensations. He felt a thrill at the possibility of having a part of his old life again. He also felt guilt over the idea of bringing death into a home so full of new life and happiness. He glanced toward the open slider to see if Graciela was looking out at them. She wasn’t.

“My sort of thing?” he said. “If it’s a serial you shouldn’t waste time. Go to the bureau, call Maggie Griffin. She’ll —“

“I did all of that, Terry. I still need you.”

“How old is this thing?”

“Two weeks.”

Her eyes looked up from the binder to his.

“New Year’s Day?”

She nodded.

“First murder of the year,” she said. “For L.A. County, at least. Some people think the true millennium didn’t start until this year.”

“You think this is a millennium nut?”

“Whoever did this was a nut of some order. I think. That’s why I’m here.”

“What did the bureau say? Did you take this to Maggie?”

“You haven’t kept up, Terry. Maggie was sent back to Quantico. Things slowed down in the last few years out here and Behavioral Sciences pulled her back. No outpost in L.A. anymore. So, yes, I talked to her. But over the phone at Quantico. She ran it through the computer and got zilched. As far as a profile goes or anything else, I’m on a waiting list. Do you know that across the country there were thirty-four millennium inspired murders on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day? So they have their hands full at the moment and the bigger departments like us, we’re at the end of the line because the bureau figures the smaller departments with less experience and expertise and manpower need their help more.”

She waited a moment while letting McCaleb consider all of this. He understood the Bureau’s philosophy. It was a form of triage.

“I don’t mind waiting a month or so until Maggie or somebody else over there can work something up for me, but my gut on this one tells me time is a consideration, Terry. If it is a serial, a month may be too long to wait. That’s why I thought of coming to you. I am banging my head on the wall on this one and you might be our last best hope of coming up with something to move on now. I still remember the Cemetery Man and the Code Killer. I know what you can do with a murder book and some crime scene tape.”

The last few lines were gratuitous and her only false move so far, McCaleb thought. Otherwise he believed she was sincere in the expression of her belief that the killer she was looking for might strike again.

“It’s been a long time for me, Jaye,” McCaleb began. “Other than that thing with Graciela’s sister, I haven’t been involved in —“

“Come on, Terry, don’t bullshit me, okay? You can sit here with a baby in your lap every day of the week and it still won’t erase what you were and what you did. I know you. We haven’t seen each other or talked in a long time but I know you. And I know that not a day goes by that you don’t think about cases. Not a day.”

She paused and stared at him.

“When they took out your heart, they didn’t take out what makes you tick, know what I mean?”

McCaleb looked away from her and back down at his boat. Buddy was now sitting in the main fighting chair, his feet up on the transom. McCaleb assumed he had a beer in his hand but it was too far to see that.

“If you’re so good at reading people, what do you need me for?”

“I may be good but you’re the best I ever knew. Hell, even if they weren’t backed up till Easter in Quantico, I’d take you over any of those profilers. I mean that. You were —“

“Okay, Jaye, we don’t need a sales pitch, okay? My ego is doing okay without all the —“

“Then what do you need?”

He looked back at her.

“Just some time. I need to think about this.”

“l’m here because my gut says I don’t have much time.”

McCaleb got up and walked to the railing. His gaze was out to the sea. A Catalina Express ferry was coming in. He knew it would be almost empty. The winter months brought few visitors.

“The boat’s coming in,” he said. “It’s the winter schedule, Jaye. You better catch it going back or you’ll be here all night.”

“I’II have dispatch send a chopper for me if I have to. Terry, all I need from you is one day at the most. One night, even. Tonight. You sit down, read the book, look at the tape and then call me in the morning, tell me what you see. Maybe it’s nothing or at least nothing that’s new. But maybe you’ll see something we’ve missed or you’ll get an idea we haven’t come up with yet. That’s all I’m asking. I don’t think it’s a lot.”

McCaleb looked away from the incoming boat and turned so his back leaned against the rail.

“It doesn’t seem like a lot to you because you’re in the life. I’m not. I’m out of it, Jaye. Even going back into it for a day is going to change things. I moved out here to start over and to forget all the stuff I was good at. To get good at being something else. At being a father and a husband, for starters.”

Winston got up and walked to the railing. She stood next to him but looked out at the view while he remained facing his home. She spoke in a low voice. If Graciela was listening from somewhere inside, she could not hear this.

“Remember with Graciela’s sister what you told me? You told me you got a second shot at life and that there had to be a reason for it. Now you’ve built this life with her sister and her son and now even your own child. That’s wonderful, Terry, I really think so. But that can’t be the reason you were looking for. You might think it is but it’s not. Deep down you know it. You were good at catching these people. Next to that, what is catching fish?”

McCaleb nodded slightly and was uncomfortable with himself for doing it so readily.

“Leave the stuff,” he said. “I’II call you when I can.”

On the way to the door Winston looked about for Graciela but didn’t see her.

“She’s probably in with the baby,” McCaleb said.

“Well, tell her I said goodbye.“

“I will.”

There was an awkward silence the rest of the way to the door. Finally, as McCaleb opened it, Winston spoke.

“So what’s it like, Terry? Being a father.”

“It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times.”

His stock answer. He then thought a moment and then added something he had thought about but never said, not even to Graciela.

“It’s like having a gun to your head all the time.”

Winston looked confused and maybe even a little concerned.

“How so?”

“Because I know if anything ever happens to her, anything, then my life is over.”

She nodded.

“I think I can understand that.”

She went through the door.  She looked rather silly as she left.  A seasoned homicide detective riding away in a golf cart.

Named one of The Best Books Of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times

“…hard-edged, smartly executed crime drama, pitting two of his most popular protagonists against each other. …cleverly conceived, superbly plotted and morally complex.”
— Publishers Weekly *starred review

“Connelly pits his latest series hero, FBI agent Terry McCaleb (Blood Work, 1998), against his veteran series cop, LAPD detective Harry Bosch (Angels Flight, 1999, etc.), in this extraordinary excursion into good, evil, and the labyrinth of human motives. …Bosch fan or McCaleb fan, you can’t lose with this chilling tour-de-force.”
— Kirkus Reviews

“..this is Connelly at his best. Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal

“In a set of nine blockbuster novels, whose integrity and imagination have redefined the parameters of crime fiction, Michael Connelly has created a range of memorable cops and robbers, any one who could sustain a series….This book is ingenious, original and—with every beat of its procedural heart—authentic.”
— Literary Review (UK)

“…Connelly allows Bosch and McCaleb to regard each other critically in ways that sharpen the reader’s perception of them…”
— The New Yorker

“An intricate plot, rich characterization and deft dialogue play out our medieval moralities in modern dress…”
— USA Today

“…this great thriller will keep you busy…Connelly is the best of a very large group…of thriller writers…”
— Denver Rocky Mountain News

“No one is better at exploring the conflict between good and evil…he tells their story skillfully…”
— San Diego Union Tribune

“A DARKNESS MORE THAN NIGHT is an intelligent, compassionate, unfailingly entertaining thriller.”
— BarnesandNoble.com Editorial Review

Interview on June 14, 1999

Question: What is the basic premise of Void Moon?
Michael Connelly: The book is about a woman named Cassie Black who has been out of prison and on the straight and narrow in Los Angeles for ten months when something happens in her life that makes her turn back to crime. The book is essentially about that crime—a sophisticated burglary of an occupied casino hotel room in Las Vegas—and the consequences that follow Cassie back to Los Angeles.

Q: Where did you get this idea about a hot prowler?
MC: “Hot Prowler” is the term police use for a burglar who specializes in going into occupied dwellings. I first started thinking about a story like this when an LAPD officer told me about a hot prowler who was working the Sunset Strip, going into hotel rooms while people slept and stealing their cash, jewelry and lap tops. It made me think about the possibilities and the skill, though misplaced, it takes to undertake this sort of crime. I was looking for a new challenge and decided on this story, the challenge being to make a burglar—a criminal—sympathetic to the reader. In this story I want/need the reader to hope Cassie gets away. That’s a challenge, especially to someone who has written eight previous books from the cops’ point of view.

Q: Why did you decide to go with a woman as your protagonist?
MC: Again, it was the challenge. When I am not writing about Harry Bosch I feel I should make the most of my time off by pushing myself as a writer in ways I have not done before. This time the challenge was to write a female protagonist. Of course, I have had major characters in previous books that are female, but I have never put the whole burden of carrying a book on a female character. Though a good portion of this book is seen through the point of view of the man chasing Cassie Black, there is no doubt that she is the protagonist and the reader must like her in order to like the book.

Q: Was it hard for you to write from a criminal’s perspective this time?  How about a woman’s?
MC: I found it fun. I tried to imbue my criminal character with the same character details as my cops. That is, I made her good at what she does and I gave her a code, a set of beliefs that she lives by and adheres to.  Obviously, this code is different than Harry Bosch’s code, but in her sticking to it and ultimately doing “the right thing” I think it makes her a positive and interesting character. I also threw many obstacles in her path, and in her overcoming them I think I was able to build a character that should hook the reader. As far as writing from the female point of view, again I brought the same elements I bring to writing any of my other characters. I just worried about making her a highly detailed and realistic human. I did not write this book thinking, ‘What would a woman do here, what would she do there?’ and so on. I more or less thought in terms of ‘What would a person do here?’ and I went from there. I guess I’ll find out if it worked when the book comes out.

Q: Eleanor Wish, in your Harry Bosch series, has also done time in prison.  Is Cassie Black like her in any way?
MC: I haven’t really thought about that. I would assume they are moving on the same plane in some respects. But Eleanor ended up in prison because of a flaw in her character. There is something missing for her and it resulted in her downward spiral. Cassie Black is different. I don’t want to give away too much of the new book but you could probably boil down what happened to her to the idea that she essentially went to prison because of love.

Q: Who is the main male character?
MC: The main male character is a private eye named Jack Karch who is hired under the table by a Las Vegas casino manager to investigate the hotel room burglary and find the culprits. Karch is a psychopath in his relentless drive and commitment to take all means necessary to find the woman who burglarized the hotel room, destroy her, and take back what she stole.

Q: Did you spend a lot of time in Las Vegas researching this book?
MC: I went to Las Vegas several times for short trips. I don’t think I have ever been in Las Vegas longer than 48 hours at a time and that is probably the best way to take that city. It is a lot like L.A. in that the desperate dreams of some of the people who go there are almost palpable. It fascinates me as a place of excess and lost inhibitions. That’s why I think it’s best to take it in short doses.

Q: What do you enjoy more, writing about the police or about criminals?
MC: I just like writing about characters. As long as there is something noble about them at their core and that motivates their actions, I don’t really care if they are cops or criminals. They are opposite sides of the same coin so there are often similarities anyway.

Q: You have written the screenplay for Void Moon already.  What is happening with that?
MC: It has been fed into the Hollywood movie machinery and I have no idea if it will ever be spit out as a movie or not. I think this story may lend itself to Hollywood more so than my previous books. It is basically a caper story and a chase story. Hollywood usually can make these fairly well. We’ll see what happens with this one.

Q: Will Harry Bosch be back in the next book after Void Moon?
MC: I’ve already started my next book and Harry Bosch will be in it, but it will be different in that it will not be a typical Bosch book. Terry McCaleb, the character from Blood Work, is in this book and he may be more center stage than Bosch. It is hard to know for sure right now because I just started it. I’m not working off an outline. I am just writing it and seeing what happens.

“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.