Echo Park

simply vanished or just been conveniently compartmentalized. Edgar was not a true detective. He kept his heart out of it.
    “I doubt it,” Bosch said. “And I don’t really care. We should have been onto this guy in ’ninety-three but we missed it and he’s been out there cutting up women ever since.”
    “What are you talking about, cutting up? Is this the Echo Park Bagman you’re talking about? What’s his name, Waits?
He
was our guy?”
    Bosch nodded and held the cold glass against his left temple.
    “That’s right. He’s going to confess tomorrow. Eventually it will get out because Rick O’Shea is going to run with it. There will be no way to hide it because some smart reporter is going to ask whether Waits ever came up way back when in the Gesto case.”
    “So we say no, because that’s the truth. Waits’s name never came up. It was an alias and we don’t need to tell them about that. You have to make O’Shea see that, Harry.”
    His voice had an urgent tone to it. Bosch now regretted making the call. He wanted Edgar to share the burden of guilt with him, not figure out a way to avoid blame.
    “Whatever, Jerry.”
    “Harry, that’s easy for you to say. You’re downtown on your second ride. I’m up for one of the D-two slots in RHD and this thing will fuck up any chance I have if it gets out.”
    Bosch now wanted to get off the line.
    “Like I said, whatever. I’ll do what I can, Jerry. But you know, sometimes when you fuck up you have to take the consequences.”
    “Not this time, partner. Not now.”
    It angered Bosch that Edgar had pulled the old “partner act,” calling on Bosch to protect him out of loyalty and the unwritten rule that the bond of partnership lasts forever and is stronger than even a marriage.
    “I said I’d do what I can,” he told Edgar. “I have to go now,
partner.
”
    He got up off the floor and hung the phone on the wall.
    Before returning to the back deck he educated the ice in his glass once more with vodka. Outside, he went to the rail and leaned his elbows down on it. The traffic noise from the freeway far down the hill was a steady hiss that he was used to. He looked up at the sky and saw that the sunset was a dirty pink. He saw a red-tailed hawk floating on an upper current. It reminded him of the one he had seen way back on the day they had found Marie Gesto’s car.
    His cell phone started to chime and he struggled to pull it out of his jacket pocket. Finally, he got it out and opened it before he lost the call. He hadn’t had time to look at the caller ID on the screen. It was Kiz Rider.
    “Harry, did you hear?”
    “Yeah, I heard. I just talked to Edgar about it. All he cares about is protecting his career and his chances at RHD .”
    “Harry, what are you talking about?”
    Bosch paused. He was confused.
    “Didn’t that asshole Olivas tell you? I thought by now he would have told the whole world.”
    “Told me what? I was calling to see if you heard whether the interview’s been set for tomorrow.”
    Bosch realized his mistake. He walked to the edge of the deck and dumped his drink over the side.
    “Ten o’clock tomorrow at the DA’s office. They’ll put him in a room there. I’m sorry, Kiz, I guess I forgot to call you.”
    “Are you all right? It sounds like you’ve been drinking.”
    “I’m home, Kiz. I’m entitled.”
    “What did you think I was calling about?”
    Bosch held his breath and composed his thoughts, then spoke.
    “Edgar and I, we should have had Waits or Saxon or whatever his name is back in ’ninety-three. Edgar spoke to him on the phone and he used the name Saxon. But neither of us ran the name on the computer. We screwed up bad, Kiz.”
    Now she was silent as she tracked what he had said. It didn’t take her long to realize the connection the alias would have given them to Waits.
    “I’m sorry, Harry.”
    “Tell it to the nine victims that followed.”
    He was staring down at the brush beneath the deck.
    “You going to be all right?”
    “I’m all right. I just have to figure out how to get past this so I’m ready for tomorrow.”
    “Do you think you should stick with it at this point? Maybe one of the other OU teams should take over for us.”
    Bosch responded immediately. He wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with the fatal mistake of thirteen years ago but he wasn’t going to walk away now.
    “No, Kiz, I’m not leaving the case. I might have missed him in ’ninety-three but I’m not