A Darkness More Than Night

card up.
    “Okay. I gotta go. See you around, I guess.”
    “Yeah.”
    Bosch walked over and pushed the button for an elevator. He looked at the card again while he waited and thought about Ed Thomas. He then put the card into the pocket of his suit jacket.
    Before the elevator came he looked down the hallway and saw McEvoy was still in the hallway, now talking to Rudy Tafero, the defense’s investigator. Tafero was a big man and he was leaning forward, close to McEvoy, as if it was some sort of conspiratorial rendezvous. McEvoy was writing in a notebook.
    The elevator opened and Bosch stepped on. He watched them until the doors closed.

    ***

    Bosch took Laurel Canyon Boulevard over the hill and dropped down into Hollywood ahead of the evening traffic. At Sunset he took a right and pulled to the curb a few blocks into West Hollywood. He fed the meter and went into the small, drab white office building across Sunset from a strip bar. The two-story courtyard building catered to small production companies. They were small offices with small overheads. The companies lived from movie to movie. In between there was no need for opulent offices and space.
    Bosch checked his watch and saw that he was right on time. It was quarter to five and the audition was set for five. He took the stairs up to the second floor and went through a door with a sign that said NUFF SAID PRODUCTIONS. It was a three-room suite, one of the biggest in the building. Bosch had been there before and knew the layout: a waiting room with a secretary’s desk, the office of Bosch’s friend, Albert “Nuff” Said, and then a conference room. A woman behind the secretary’s desk looked up at Bosch as he stepped in.
    “I’m here to see Mr. Said. My name’s Harry Bosch.”
    She nodded and picked up the phone and punched a number. Bosch could hear it beep in the other room and recognized Said’s voice answering.
    “It’s Harry Bosch,” the secretary said.
    Bosch heard Said order her to send him in. He headed that way before she was off the phone.
    “Go on in,” she said to his back.
    Bosch stepped into an office that was furnished simply with a desk, two chairs, a black leather couch and a television/video console. The walls were crowded with framed one-sheet posters advertising Said’s movies and other mementos, such as the back panels of the producers’ chairs with the names of the movies printed on them. Bosch had known Said at least fifteen years, ever since the older man had hired him as a technical adviser on a movie thinly based on one of Bosch’s cases. They had kept in touch sporadically over the ensuing decade, Said usually calling Bosch when he had a technical question about a police procedure he was using in a movie. Most of Said’s productions were never seen on the silver screen. They were television and cable movies.
    Albert Said stood up behind the desk and Bosch extended his hand.
    “Hey, Nuff, howzit going?”
    “Going fine, my friend.”
    He pointed to the television.
    “I watched your fine performance on Court TV today. Bravo.”
    He politely clapped his hands. Bosch waved the demonstration off and looked at his watch again.
    “Thanks. So are we all set here?”
    “I believe so. Marjorie will have her wait for me in the conference room. You can take it from there.”
    “I appreciate this, Nuff. Let me know what I can do to square it.”
    “You can be in my next movie. You have a real presence, my friend. I watched the whole thing today. I taped it if you would like to see for yourself.”
    “No, I don’t think so. I don’t think we’ll have the time anyway. What have you got going these days?”
    “Oh, you know, waiting for the light to turn green. I have a project I think is about to go with overseas financing. It is about this cop who gets sent to prison and the trauma of being stripped of his badge and his respect and everything gives him amnesia. And so there he is in prison and he can’t remember which guys he put there and which ones he didn’t. He’s in a constant fight to survive. The one convict who befriends him turns out to be a serial killer he sent there in the first place. It’s a thriller, Harry. What do you think? Steven Segal is reading the script.”
    Said’s bushy black eyebrows were arched into sharp points on his forehead. He was clearly excited by the premise of the movie.
    “I don’t know, Nuff,” Bosch said. “I think it’s been done before.”
    “Everything’s been done