Angels Flight

slickback.
    “We’re working a case,” Bosch began. “The Howard Elias case.”
    The manager whistled.
    “A few weeks ago he subpoenaed some of your records. Receipts with license plate numbers on them. You know anything about that?”
    The manager thought about it for a few moments.
    “All I know is that I was the one who had to go through everything and get it copied for his guy.”
    “His guy?” Edgar asked.
    “Yeah, what do you think, a guy like Elias comes get the stuff himself? He sent somebody. I got his card here.”
    He lowered his feet to the floor and opened the desk’s pencil drawer. There was a stack of business cards with a rubber band around it. He took it off and looked through the cards and chose one. He showed it to Bosch.
    “Pelfry?” Edgar asked.
    Bosch nodded.
    “Did his guy say exactly what they were looking for in all that stuff?” he asked.
    “I don’t know. You’d have to ask them. Or, I mean, ask Pelfry.”
    “Did Pelfry come back with the stuff yet?”
    “No. It was copies, anyway. I mean, he came back but not to bring back the receipts.”
    “Then why’d he come back?” Edgar asked.
    “He wanted to see one of Michael Harris’s old time cards. From when he worked here.”
    “Which one?” Edgar asked, a tone of urgency in his voice.
    “I don’t remember, man. I gave him a copy. You go talk to him and maybe he – ”
    “Did he have a subpoena for the time card?” Bosch asked.
    “No, he just asked for it, you know. I said sure and got it for him. But he gave me the date and you didn’t. I don’t remember it. Anyway, look, if you want to ask more about this then maybe you better call our lawyer. I’m not going to get involved in talking about stuff I don’t – ”
    “Never mind that stuff,” Bosch said. “Tell me about Michael Harris.”
    “What’s to tell? I never had a problem with the guy. He was okay, then they came in and said he killed that little girl. And did things to her. It didn’t seem like the guy I knew. But he hadn’t been working here that long. Maybe five months.”
    “Know where he was before that?” Edgar asked.
    “Yeah. Up at Corcoran.”
    Corcoran was a state prison near Bakersfield. Bosch thanked the manager and they left. He took a few sips of his coffee but dumped it in a trash can before getting back to the car.
    While Bosch waited at the passenger door for it to be unlocked, Edgar went around to his side. He stopped before opening the door.
    “Goddammit.”
    “What?”
    “They wrote shit on the door.”
    Bosch came around and looked. Someone had used light blue chalk – the chalk used to write washing instructions on the windshields of clients’ cars – to cross out the words To protect and serve on the driver’s side front fender. Then written in large letters were the words To murder and maim. Bosch nodded his approval.
    “That’s pretty original.”
    “Harry, let’s go kick some ass.”
    “No, Jerry, let it go. You don’t want to start something. It might take three days to end it. Like last time. Like Florence and Normandie.”
    Edgar sullenly unlocked the car and then opened Bosch’s door.
    “We’re right by the station,” Bosch said after he got in. “We can go back and spray it off. Or we can use my car.”
    “I’d like to use one of those assholes’ faces to clean it off.”
    After they had the car cleaned up there was still time for them to drive by the lot where Stacey Kincaid’s body had been found. It was off Western and was on the way downtown, where they would go to meet Pelfry.
    Edgar was silent the whole way there. He had taken the vandalism of the patrol car personally. Bosch didn’t mind the silence, though. He used the time to think about Eleanor. He felt guilty because deep down and despite his love for her, he knew that he was feeling a growing relief that their relationship was coming to a head, one way or the other.
    “This is it,” Edgar said.
    He pulled the car to the curb and they scanned the lot. It was about an acre and bordered on both sides by apartment buildings with banners announcing move-in bonuses and financing. They didn’t look like places where people would want to live unless they had no choice. The whole neighborhood had a rundown and desperate feel.
    Bosch noticed two old black men sitting on crates in the corner of the lot, under a sprawling and shade-giving eucalyptus tree. He opened the file he’d brought with him and studied the map that charted the