A Darkness More Than Night

let’s see… that would have been a couple days ago.”
    Winston visibly stiffened. McCaleb looked over at her.
    “Relax, would you, Jaye? I ran into McEvoy at the Storey trial. I went up there to talk to Bosch. McEvoy’s covering it for New Times and he said hello – I hadn’t talked to him in five years. And I did not tell him what I was doing or what I was working on. In fact, at the time I saw him Bosch wasn’t even a suspect.”
    “Well, did he see you with Bosch?”
    “I’m sure he did. Everybody did. There’s as much media up there as there was for O. J. Did he specifically mention me to your captain?”
    “If he did, Hitchens didn’t tell me.”
    “All right, then, if it wasn’t you and it wasn’t me, where else did the leak come from?”
    “That’s what we are asking you,” Twilley said. “Before we come into this case we want to know the lay of the land and who’s talking to who.”
    McCaleb didn’t reply. He was getting claustrophobic. Between the conversation and Twilley being in his face, and the people standing around in the small restaurant waiting for tables, he was beginning to feel like he couldn’t breathe.
    “What about this bar you went to last night?” Friedman asked.
    McCaleb leaned back and looked over at him.
    “What about it?”
    “Jaye told us what you told her. You specifically asked about Bosch and Gunn there, right?”
    “Yeah, right. And what? You think the bartender then jumped on the phone and called the New Times and asked for Jack McEvoy? All because I showed her a picture of Bosch? Give me a fucking break.”
    “Hey, it’s a media-conscious town. People are plugged in. People sell stories, info, data all the time.”
    McCaleb shook his head, refusing to buy into the possibility that the bartender in the vest had enough intelligence to put together what he was doing and to then make a call to a reporter.
    Suddenly, he realized who did have the intelligence and information to do it. Buddy Lockridge. And if it had been him, it might as well have been McCaleb who leaked the story. He felt sweat start to warm his scalp as he thought about Lockridge hiding down on the lower deck while he had made his case against Bosch to Winston.
    “Did you have anything to drink while you were in the bar? I hear you take a mess of pills every day. Mixing that with alcohol… you know, loose lips sink ships.”
    Twilley had asked the question but McCaleb looked sharply at Winston. He was stung with a sense of betrayal by the whole scene and at how quickly things had shifted. But before he could say anything he saw the apology in her eyes and he knew she wished things had been handled differently. He finally looked back at Twilley.
    “You think maybe I mixed a few too many drinks and pills, Twilley? That it? You think I started shooting my mouth off in the bar?”
    “I don’t think that. I’m just asking, okay? No reason to get defensive here. I’m just trying to figure out how this reporter knows what he thinks he knows.”
    “Well, figure it out without me.”
    McCaleb pushed back his chair to get up.
    “Try the lechon asada,” he said. “It’s the best in the city.”
    As he began to get up, Twilley reached across the table and grabbed his forearm.
    “Come on, Terry, let’s talk about this,” Twilley said.
    “Terry, please,” Winston said.
    McCaleb pulled his arm loose from Twilley’s grip and stood up. He looked over at Winston.
    “Good luck with these guys, Jaye. You’ll probably need it.”
    Then he looked down at Friedman and then Twilley.
    “And fuck you guys very much.”
    He made his way through the crowd of people waiting and out the front door. Nobody followed him.

    ***

    He sat in the Cherokee parked on Sunset and watched the restaurant while letting the anger slowly leach out of his body. On one level McCaleb knew the moves Winston and her captain were making were the right moves. But on another he didn’t like being moved out of his own case. A case was like a car. You could be driving it or riding in the front or back. Or you could be left on the side of the road as the car went by. McCaleb had just gone from having his hands on the wheel to thumbing it from the side of the road. And it hurt.
    He began to think about Buddy Lockridge and how he would handle him. If he determined that it had been Buddy who had talked to McEvoy after eavesdropping on McCaleb’s briefing of Winston on the boat, then he would cleanly sever all ties to him.