Echo Park

going to miss him now.”
    “Okay, Harry.”
    She didn’t hang up but she didn’t say anything after that. Bosch could hear a siren from far down in the pass below.
    “Harry, can I make a suggestion?”
    He knew what was coming.
    “Sure.”
    “I think you should put away the booze and start thinking about tomorrow. When we get into that room it’s not going to matter what mistakes were made in the past. It will be all about the moment with this man. We’ll need to be frosty.”
    Bosch smiled. He didn’t think he’d heard that term since he’d been on a patrol in Vietnam.
    “Stay frosty,” he said.
    “That’s right. You want to meet in the squad and walk over from there?”
    “Yeah. I’ll be there early. I want to go by the Hall of Records first.”
    Bosch heard a knock at his front door and started into the house.
    “Me, too, then,” Rider said. “I’ll meet you in the squad. Are you going to be all right tonight?”
    Bosch opened the front door and Rachel Walling was standing there holding the files with both hands.
    “Yes, Kiz,” he said into the phone. “I’ll be fine. Good night.”
    He closed the phone and invited Rachel in.

8

    SINCE RACHEL HAD BEEN in his home before, she didn’t bother looking around. She put the files down on the small table in the dining area and looked at Bosch.
    “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
    “I’m fine. I sort of forgot you were coming by.”
    “I can leave if—”
    “No, I’m glad you’re here. Did you find more time to look at the stuff?”
    “A little bit. I have some notes and some thoughts that might help you tomorrow. And if you want me to be there, I can make arrangements to be there—unofficially.”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “Officially, unofficially doesn’t matter. This is Rick O’Shea’s ticket and if I bring an FBI agent into it, then that will be my ticket out.”
    She smiled and shook her head.
    “Everybody thinks that all the bureau wants are the headlines. It’s not always like that.”
    “I know but I can’t turn this into the test case for O’Shea. Do you want something to drink?”
    He gestured to the table so that she could sit down.
    “What are you having?”
    “I was having vodka. I think I’m going to switch to coffee now.”
    “Can you make a vodka tonic?”
    He nodded.
    “I can make one without tonic,” he said.
    “Tomato juice?”
    “Nope.”
    “Cranberry juice?”
    “Just vodka.”
    “Hard-core Harry. I think I’ll have coffee.”
    He went into the kitchen to get a pot brewing. He heard her pull out a chair at the table and sit down. When he came back he saw that she had spread the files out and had a page of notes in front of her.
    “Did you do anything about the name yet?” she asked.
    “In motion. We’ll start early tomorrow and hopefully we’ll know something before we get into the room with this guy at ten.”
    She nodded and waited for him to sit down across from her.
    “Ready?” she asked.
    “Ready.”
    She leaned forward and looked at her notes, talking at first without looking up from them.
    “Whoever he is, whatever his name is, he’s obviously smart and manipulative,” she said. “Look at his size. Short and slightly built. This means he had a good act. He somehow was able to get these victims to go with him. That’s the key thing. It is unlikely he used physical force—at least not at the start. He is too small for that. Instead, he employed charm and cunning and he was practiced and polished at it. Even if a girl is just off the bus on Hollywood Boulevard she is going to be wary and have some measure of street smarts. He was smarter.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “The trickster,” he said.
    She nodded and referred to a short stack of documents.
    “I did a little Internet work on that,” she said. “In the Reynard epic he is often depicted as a member of the clergy and he is able to woo his audience closer to him that way so that he can grab them. The clergy at the time—we’re talking about the twelfth century—was the ultimate authority. Today it would be different. The ultimate authority would be the government, notably represented by the police.”
    “You’re saying he might have posed as a cop?”
    “Just a thought, but it’s possible. He had to have had something that worked.”
    “What about a weapon? Or money? He could have just flashed the green. These women . . . these girls would have gone for money.”
    “I think it was more than a weapon and more than