A Darkness More Than Night

eyebrow.
    “What can I get you?”
    “Some information.”
    McCaleb slid a driver’s-license picture of Edward Gunn across the counter. It was a three-by-five blowup that had been in the files Winston gave him. The bartender looked at it for a moment and then back up at McCaleb.
    “What about him? He’s dead.”
    “How do you know that?”
    She shrugged her shoulders.
    “I don’t know. Word just got around, I guess. You a cop?”
    McCaleb nodded, lowered his voice so the music would cover it and said, “Something like that.”
    The bartender leaned further over the bartop so she could hear him. This position opened the top of her vest, exposing most of her small but round breasts. There was a tattoo of a heart wrapped in barbed wire on the left side. It looked like a bruise on a pear, not very appetizing. McCaleb looked away.
    “Edward Gunn,” he said. “He was a regular, right?”
    “He came in a lot.”
    McCaleb nodded. Her acknowledgment confirmed Bosch’s tip.
    “You work New Year’s Eve?”
    She nodded.
    “You know if he came in that night?”
    She shook her head.
    “I can’t remember. A lot of people were in here New Year’s Eve. We had a party. I don’t know if he was here or not. It wouldn’t surprise me, though. People came and went.”
    McCaleb nodded toward the other bartender. A Latino who also wore a black vest with no shirt beneath.
    “What about him? Think he’d remember?”
    “No, ’cause he only started last week. I’m breaking him in.”
    A thin smile played on her face. McCaleb ignored it. “Twisting the Night Away” began playing. The Rod Stewart version.
    “How well did you know Gunn?”
    She let out a short burst of laughter.
    “Honey, this is the kind of place where people don’t exactly like to let on who they are or what they are. How well did I know him? I knew him, okay? Like I said, he came in. But I didn’t even know his name until he was dead and people started talking about him. Somebody said Eddie Gunn got himself killed and I said, ‘Who the fuck is Eddie Gunn?’ They had to describe him. The whiskey rocks who always had the paint in his hair. Then I knew who Eddie Gunn was.”
    McCaleb nodded. He reached inside his coat pocket and brought out a folded piece of newspaper. He slid it across the bartop. She leaned down to look, showing another view of her breasts. McCaleb thought it was intentional.
    “This is that cop, the one from the trial, right?”
    McCaleb didn’t answer the question. The newspaper had been folded to a photo of Harry Bosch that had run that morning in the Los Angeles Times as an advance on the testimony expected to begin in the Storey trial. It was a candid shot of Bosch standing outside the courtroom door. He probably didn’t even know it had been taken.
    “You seen him in here?”
    “Yeah, he comes in. Why are you asking about him?”
    McCaleb felt a charge go up the back of his neck.
    “When does he come in?”
    “I don’t know, from time to time. I wouldn’t call him a regular. But he’d come in. And he wouldn’t stay long. A one-timer – one drink and out. He’s…”
    She pointed a finger up and cocked her head to the side as she rifled through her interior files. She then slashed her finger down as if making a notch.
    “Got it. Bottled beer. Asks for Anchor Steam every time because he always forgets we don’t carry it – too expensive, we’d never sell it. He then settles for the old thirty-three.”
    McCaleb was about to ask what that was when she answered his unspoken question.
    “Rolling Rock.”
    He nodded.
    “Was he in here New Year’s Eve?”
    She shook her head.
    “Same answer. I don’t remember. Too many people, too many drinks, too many days since then.”
    McCaleb nodded and pulled the newspaper back across the bar and put it in his pocket.
    “He in some kind of trouble, that cop?”
    McCaleb shook his head. One of the women at the end of the bar tapped the corner of her empty glass on the bartop and called to the bartender.
    “Hey, Miranda, you got payin’ customers over here.”
    The bartender looked around for her partner. He was gone, apparently in the back room or the bathroom.
    “Gotta go to work,” she said.
    McCaleb watched her go to the end of the bar and make two fresh vodka rocks for the hookers. During a lull in the music, he overheard one of them tell her to stop talking to the cop so he would leave. As Miranda headed back toward McCaleb’s position one of the hookers