Angels Flight

halfway through his first. He was content to let Sheehan talk and tell the story at his own pace without interrupting him with questions.
    “On the last day some of the guys lost it a little bit. Did things.”
    Bosch closed his eyes. He had been wrong about Sheehan.
    “Me, too, Harry.”
    He said it matter of factly, as if it felt good to finally say it out loud. He drank more of his beer, turned on his stool and looked about the bar as if seeing it for the first time. There was a TV mounted in a corner. It was tuned to ESPN.
    “We’re off the record here, right, Harry?”
    “Sure.”
    Sheehan turned back and leaned toward Bosch in a conspiratorial sort of way.
    “What Harris says happened… happened. But that doesn’t excuse what he did. He rapes and strangles that little girl; we stick a pencil in his ear. Big fucking deal. He gets off and I’m the new Mark Fuhrman – a racist cop who planted evidence. I just wish somebody could tell me how the fuck I could’ve planted those prints?”
    He was getting loud. Luckily, only the bartender was noticing.
    “I know,” Bosch said. “I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have asked.”
    Sheehan went on as if he hadn’t heard Bosch.
    “I guess I always carried around a set of throw-down prints that belonged to a douche bag I wanted to send away. I then put them on the book – don’t ask me how – and voilà, we got our douche bag. Only why would I pick Harris to pin it on? I never knew the mutt or had anything to do with him. And there’s nobody on this planet that can prove I did because it’s not there to be proved.”
    “You’re right.”
    Sheehan shook his head and looked down into his beer.
    “I quit caring about shit when that jury came in and said not guilty. When they said I was guilty… when they believed that man instead of us.”
    Bosch remained silent. He knew that Sheehan had to say his piece.
    “We’re losing the battle, man. I see that now. It’s all a game. The fucking lawyers, what they can do to you. To the evidence. I give up, Harry. I really do. I already decided. It’s twenty-five and out for me. I got eight more months and I’m counting the fuckers down. I’m gonna punch out, move on up to Blue Heaven and leave this toilet for all the douche bags.”
    “I think that’s a good idea, Frankie,” Bosch said quietly.
    He couldn’t think of what else he could say. He was hurt and stunned by his friend’s lapse into a complete state of hate and cynicism. He understood it but was simply surprised by the complete toll it had taken. He was also disappointed in himself and privately embarrassed at how wholeheartedly he had defended Sheehan to Carla Entrenkin.
    “I remember on that last day,” Sheehan said. “I was in there with him. In the room. And I got so fucking angry I just wanted to take my gun out and blow his shit away. But I knew I couldn’t. Because he knew where she was. He had the girl!”
    Bosch just nodded.
    “We had tried everything and got nothing. He broke us before we could break him. It got down to where I was just begging him to tell us. It was embarrassing, Harry.”
    “And what did he do?”
    “He just stared at me as if I wasn’t there. He said nothing. He did nothing. And then… then the anger just came over me like… like I don’t know what. Like it was a bone caught in my throat. Like it never had before. There was a trash can in the corner of the room. I went over and pulled the bag out and just pulled it right down over his fucking head. And I grabbed it around his neck and I held it and I held it and…”
    Sheehan started crying and trying to finish.
    “… and they… they had to pull me off of him.”
    He put his elbows on the bar and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. For a long time he didn’t move. Bosch saw a drop fall from his chin and into his beer. He reached over and put his hand on his old partner’s shoulder.
    “It’s okay, Frankie.”
    Without moving his hands away from his face, Sheehan spoke.
    “You see, Harry, I became the very thing that I spent all these years hunting. I wanted to kill him right there and then. I would have if my guys hadn’t come in. I’m never going to be able to forget that.”
    “It’s okay, man.”
    Sheehan drank some beer and seemed to recover somewhat.
    “After I did what I did, that opened the door. The other guys, they did that thing with the pencil – popped his fucking ear drum. We all became monsters. Like Vietnam, going