Lost Light

young, just a year or two past thirty. And he didn’t really walk down the hallway. He strode. He was a young go-getter, still out to prove something to himself and others. I wasn’t sure which-old or new agent-I would have preferred.
    He opened a door on the left and stepped back to allow me in. When I saw that the door opened outward and that there was a peephole I knew I was going into an interrogation room. And I knew then that this was not going to be a polite little meet-and-greet. More likely, I was about to get my ass kicked-federal style.

11
    As I made the turn into the doorway I saw a square table positioned in the middle of the interrogation room. Sitting at the table, his back to me, was a man wearing a black shirt and jeans. He had close-cropped blond hair. As I entered I looked over his heavily muscled shoulder and saw he was reading an open investigative file. He closed it and looked up as I moved around the table to the other chair, opposite him.
    It was Roy Lindell. He smiled at my reaction.
    “Harry Bosch,” he said. “Long time no see there, podjo.”
    I paused for a moment but then pulled the chair out and sat down. Meantime, Nunez closed the door, leaving me alone with Lindell.
    Roy Lindell was about forty now. The heavy muscles I remembered were still in place, pressing his shirt to its boundaries. He still had the Las Vegas tan and the bleached teeth to go with it. I had first met him on a case that took me to Vegas and right into the middle of an undercover FBI operation. Forced to work together, we had managed to put aside jurisdictional and agency animosities to a certain extent and we closed the case, the bureau taking all the credit of course. That had been six or seven years earlier. I ran into him on a case in L.A. once after that, but we never stayed in touch. Not because the bureau had thieved the credit on that first case. Because cops and feds just don’t mix.
    “Almost didn’t recognize you without the ponytail, Roy.”
    He stuck his big hand across the table and I slowly reached out and shook it. He had the confident demeanor that big men often have. And he had the rascal’s smile that often comes with it. The ponytail line had been a crack. When I first met him-and before I knew his status as an undercover agent-I took the liberty of cutting the tail off the back of his head with a penknife.
    “How you been? You told Nunez you’re retired, huh? I hadn’t heard about that.”
    I nodded but otherwise didn’t respond. This was his play. I wanted to let him make all the first moves.
    “So what’s it like being retired from the force?”
    “I’m not complaining.”
    “We ran a check. You’re a licensed private eye now, huh?”
    Big day in Sacramento.
    “Yeah, I got a license. For the hell of it.”
    I almost gave him the same story I gave Keisha Russell about it being part of the letting-go process but decided not to bother.
    “Must be nice to have a little business, make your own hours, work for whoever you want to work for.”
    That was enough for me as far as preliminaries went.
    “Tell you what, let’s not talk about me, Roy. Let’s get to the point. What am I doing here?”
    Lindell nodded as if to say fair enough.
    “Well, what happened is that you called up and asked about an agent who used to work here, and doing that sort of raised a bunch of flags for us.”
    “Martha Gessler.”
    “That’s right. Marty Gessler. So you knew who you were calling about when you told Nunez you didn’t know who you were calling about?”
    I shook my head.
    “No. I put it together off his reaction. I remembered a female agent who went missing without a trace. Took me a while, then I remembered her name. What’s the latest with her? Gone but not forgotten, I suppose.”
    Lindell leaned forward and brought his massive arms together over the closed file. His wrists were as thick as the legs of the table. I remembered the struggle I had putting cuffs on them. Back in Vegas when he was under and I still didn’t know it.
    “Harry, I consider us to be like old friends. We haven’t talked in a while but we’ve sort of been through a battle or two together so I don’t want to jerk you around too bad here. But the way this is going to work is that I’m going to ask you the questions. That okay?”
    “To a point.”
    “We’re talking about a missing agent here. A female.”
    “And you’re not fucking around.”
    Paraphrasing the warning from Kiz Rider. Lindell