Echo Park

comes up in the course of a day. Right? Just like yesterday?”
    She hesitated before answering, trying to get a read on where this was going.
    “Yes, we’re known to be able to get hold of people when we have to. Except cantankerous police detectives. Sometimes they can be a problem.”
    Bosch smiled.
    “There you go,” he said.
    “Which brings us to the reason you are calling.”
    “Right. I want the number that will get me directly to Irvin Irving.”
    This time the pause was longer.
    “Harry, I can’t give you that number. It was entrusted to me and if he knows I gave—”
    “Come on. Entrusted to you and every other reporter covering the campaign and you know it. He wouldn’t know who gave it to me unless I told him, and I’m not going to tell him. You know you can trust me when I say that.”
    “Still, I just don’t feel comfortable giving it out without his permission. If you want me to call him and ask if I can—”
    “He won’t want to talk to me, Keisha. That’s the point. If he wanted to talk to me I could leave a message at campaign headquarters—which is where, by the way?”
    “On Broxton in Westwood. I still don’t feel comfortable just giving you the number.”
    Bosch quickly grabbed the
Daily News,
which was folded to the page with the political fallout story. He read the byline.
    “Okay, well maybe Sarah Weinman or Duane Swierczynski will feel comfortable giving it to me. They might want to have an IOU from somebody who’s in the middle of this thing.”
    “All right, Bosch, all right, you don’t have to go to them, okay? I can’t believe you.”
    “I want to talk to Irving.”
    “All right, but you don’t say where you got the number.”
    “Obviously.”
    She gave him the number and he committed it to memory. He promised to call her back when there was something relating to the Beachwood Canyon incident that he could give her.
    “Look, it doesn’t have to be political,” she urged. “Anything to do with the case, okay? I can still write a cop story if I’m the one who gets the story.”
    “Got it, Keisha. Thanks.”
    He closed his phone and left money for the bill and tip on the counter. As he stepped out of the restaurant he reopened the phone and punched in the number the reporter had just given him. Irving answered after six rings without identifying himself.
    “Irvin Irving?”
    “Yes, who is this?”
    “I just wanted to thank you for confirming everything I always thought about you. You are nothing but a political opportunist and hack. That’s what you were in the department and that’s what you are out of it.”
    “Is this Bosch? Is this Harry Bosch? Who gave you this number?”
    “One of your own people. I guess somebody in your own camp doesn’t like the message you’re putting out.”
    “Don’t worry about it, Bosch. Don’t worry about a thing. When I get in, you can start counting the days until you—”
    Message delivered, Bosch closed his phone. It felt good to have said what he said, and to not worry that Irving was a superior officer who could say and do whatever he wanted without retribution from those he slighted.
    Happy with his response to the newspaper stories, Bosch got in his car and drove to the hospital.

20

    ON THE WAY DOWN the hallway in ICU Bosch passed a woman who had just left Kiz Rider’s room. He recognized her as Rider’s former lover. They had met briefly a few years earlier when Bosch happened to see Rider at the Playboy Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl.
    He nodded to the woman as she passed but she didn’t stop to talk. He knocked once on Rider’s door and went in. His partner looked much better than she had the day before but still not even close to a hundred percent. She was conscious and alert when Bosch entered her room and her eyes tracked him to the side of her bed. There was no longer a tube in her mouth but the right side of her face drooped and Bosch immediately feared that she had suffered a stroke during the night.
    “Don’t worry,” she said in slow, slurred words. “They’ve made my neck numb and it’s working on half of my face, too.”
    He squeezed her hand.
    “Okay,” he said. “Other than that how do you feel?”
    “Not so good. It hurts, Harry. It really hurts.”
    He nodded.
    “Yeah.”
    “I have surgery on my hand in the afternoon. That’s going to hurt, too.”
    “But then you’ll be on the road to recovery. Rehab and all of that good stuff.”
    “I hope so.”
    She