Echo Park

Stuart Lane. Bosch used it to turn around in and headed back up to Gloaming.
    “Do you know where he could be going?” Rachel asked.
    “No idea. Another girlfriend’s place, for all I know.”
    Gloaming was another curving mountain road. But that’s where the similarity to Woodrow Wilson Drive ended. The homes here ran a minimum seven figures, easy, and all had nicely manicured lawns and hedges with not so much as a leaf out of place. Bosch drove it slowly, looking for the silver Jeep Commander.
    “There,” Rachel said.
    She pointed out her window at a Jeep parked in the turnaround of a mansion with a French provincial design. Bosch drove by and parked two houses away. They got out and walked back.
    “West Coast Choppers?”
    She hadn’t been able to see the front of his shirt while he was driving.
    “It helped me blend in on a case once.”
    “Nice.”
    “My daughter saw me in this one time. I told her it was from my dentist.”
    The gate to the driveway was open. The cast-iron mailbox had no name on it. Bosch opened it and looked inside. They were in luck. There was mail, a small stack held together with a rubber band. He pulled it out and angled the top envelope toward a nearby streetlight in order to read it.
    “‘Maurice’—it’s Maury Swann’s place,” he said.
    “Nice,” Rachel said. “I guess I should’ve been a defense attorney.”
    “You’d’ve been good working with criminals.”
    “Fuck you, Bosch.”
    The banter ended with a loud voice coming from behind a tall hedge that ran along the far side of the turnaround and on the left side of the house.
    “I said get in there!”
    There was a splash and Bosch and Walling headed toward the sound.

35

    BOSCH SEARCHED THE HEDGE with his eyes, looking for an opening. There didn’t appear to be one from the front. When they got close he wordlessly signaled Rachel to follow the hedge to the right while he went left. He noticed that she was carrying her weapon down at her side.
    The hedge was at least ten feet high and so thick that Bosch could see no light from the pool or house through it. But as he moved along it he heard the sound of splashing and voices, one of which he recognized as belonging to Abel Pratt. The voices were close.
    “Please, I can’t swim. I can’t touch the bottom!”
    “Then what d’you have a swimming pool for? Keep paddling.”
    “Please! I’m not going to—why would I tell a soul about —”
    “You’re a lawyer, and lawyers like to play the angles.”
    “Please.”
    “I’m telling you, if I get even a hint that you’re playing an angle on me, then next time it won’t be a pool. It will be the fucking Pacific Ocean. You understand that?”
    Bosch came to an alcove where the pool’s filter pump and heater were located on a concrete pad. There was also a small opening in the hedge for a pool maintenance man to squeeze through. He slipped into the opening and stepped onto the tile surrounding a large oval pool. He was twenty feet behind Pratt, who was standing at the edge, looking down at a man in the water. Pratt held a long blue pole with a curved extension. It was for pulling people in trouble to the side but Pratt was holding it just out of reach of the man. He grabbed at it desperately but each time Pratt jerked it away.
    It was hard to identify the man in the water as Maury Swann. The pool was dark with the lights off. Swann’s glasses were gone and his hair looked like it had slipped off his scalp to the back of his head like a mud slide. On his gleaming bald dome was a strip of tape for holding his hairpiece in place.
    The sound of the pool filter gave Bosch cover. He was able to walk unnoticed to within six feet of Pratt before speaking.
    “What’s happening, Top?”
    Pratt quickly lowered the pole so that Swann could grab the hook.
    “Hang on, Maury!” Pratt yelled. “You’re all right.”
    Swann grabbed on and Pratt started pulling him toward the side of the pool.
    “I gotcha, Maury,” Pratt said. “Don’t worry.”
    “You don’t have to bother with the lifeguard act,” Bosch said. “I heard it all.”
    Pratt paused and looked down at Swann in the water. He was three feet from the side.
    “In that case,” Pratt said.
    He let go of the pole and whipped his right hand behind his back to the belt line.
    “Don’t!”
    It was Walling. She had found her own way through the hedge. She was on the other side of the pool, pointing her weapon at Pratt.
    Pratt froze and seemed to