Echo Park

were several messages from reporters, including Keisha Russell. Bosch knew he owed her a call but would wait until he got home. There was also a message from Irene Gesto, and Bosch guessed that she and her husband wanted to know if there was any update on the investigation. He had called them the night before to tell them that their daughter had been found and the ID confirmed. He put that slip in his pocket. Home duty or not, he would make the call back to them. With the autopsy completed the body would be released and at the very least they could finally, after thirteen years, claim their daughter and take her home. He could not tell them that their daughter’s killer had been brought to justice, but at least he could help them get her home.
    There was also a message from Jerry Edgar, and Bosch remembered that his old partner had called his cell right before the shooting had gone down in Echo Park. Whoever had taken the message had written
Says it’s important
on the slip and underlined it. Bosch checked the time on the slip and noted that this call had come in before the shooting as well. Edgar had not been calling to congratulate him on taking out a bad guy. He assumed that Edgar had heard that Harry had met his cousin and that he wanted to chew the fat about it. At the moment Bosch didn’t feel up for that.
    Bosch wasn’t interested in any of the other messages, so he stacked them and put them in a desk drawer. Nothing else to do, he then started straightening the papers and files on his desk. He thought about whether he should call Forensics and see about getting his phone and car back from the Echo Park crime scene.
    “I just got the word.”
    Bosch looked up. Pratt was standing in the doorway of his office. He was in shirtsleeves, his tie loose at his neck.
    “What word?”
    “From OIS . You haven’t cleared home duty, Harry. I gotta send you home.”
    Bosch looked back down at his desk.
    “So what’s new? I’m leaving.”
    Pratt paused as he tried to interpret Bosch’s tone of voice.
    “Everything okay, Harry?” he asked tentatively.
    “Nope, everything’s not okay. The fix is in and when the fix is in, then everything’s not okay. Not by a long shot.”
    “What are you talking about? They’re going to cover up Olivas and O’Shea?”
    Bosch looked up at him.
    “I don’t think I should talk to you about it, Top. It could put you in a spot. You wouldn’t want the blowback.”
    “They’re that serious about it, huh?”
    Bosch hesitated but then answered.
    “Yeah, they’re serious. They’re willing to jam me up if I don’t play the game.”
    He stopped there. He didn’t want to be having this conversation with his supervisor. In Pratt’s position loyalties went both up and down the ladder. It didn’t matter if he was only a few weeks from retirement. Pratt had to play the game until the buzzer sounded.
    “My cell is back there, part of the crime scene,” he said, reaching for the phone. “I just came in to make a phone call and then I’m out of here.”
    “I was wondering about your phone,” Pratt said. “Some of the guys have been trying to call you and they said you weren’t answering.”
    “Forensics wouldn’t let me take it from the scene. The phone or my car. What did they want?”
    “I think they wanted to take you out for a drink at Nat’s. They might still be heading over there.”
    Nat’s was a dive off Hollywood Boulevard. It wasn’t a cop bar but a fair number of off-duty cops passed through there on any given night. Enough for the management to keep The Clash’s hard-edged version of “I Fought the Law” on the jukebox for going on twenty years now. Bosch knew that if he showed up at Nat’s the punk anthem would be in heavy if not inappropriate rotation in salute to the recently dispatched Robert Foxworth, aka Raynard Waits.
I fought the law but the law won
. . . Bosch could almost hear them all singing the chorus.
    “You going?” he asked Pratt.
    “Maybe later. I’ve got something to do first.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “I don’t think I feel like it,” he said. “I’m going to pass.”
    “Suit yourself. They’ll understand.”
    Pratt didn’t move from the doorway so Bosch picked up his phone. He called Jerry Edgar’s number just so he could follow through on the lie he had told about having to make a call. But Pratt remained in the doorway, his arm leaning against the jamb as he surveyed the empty squad room. He was really trying to get Bosch