Lost Light

what I understand, this club he bought, it was a nice one. One of those Hollywood-type places.”
    I thought of the portrait I had looked at in the legal library while waiting to see Janis Langwiser.
    “Your lawyer is James Foreman?”
    “Not my lawyer. The bank’s lawyer. Outside counsel. They decided not to keep it in-house because of the possible conflict.”
    I nodded.
    “Do you know the name of the club he bought?”
    “No, I don’t.”
    I sat there looking past Scaggs at the smog through the window behind him. I was seeing but not seeing. I had gone inside where I was feeling the first stirrings of instinct and excitement, of the state of grace that comes with my religion.
    “Mr. Bosch?” Scaggs said. “Don’t disappear on me. I’ve got an officers’ meeting in five minutes.”
    I came out of it and looked at him.
    “Sorry, sir. I’m done here. For now. But before your meeting can you call Jocelyn Jones and tell her I’m coming out to see her? I need to know where the branch is, too.”
    “That will be no problem.”

34
    On the way to the West Hollywood branch of BankLA to see Jocelyn Jones I had some time to kill so I drove west on Hollywood Boulevard. I had not been down there much since my retirement and I wanted to see the old beat. According to the newspaper it was changing and I wanted to see this for myself.
    The asphalt on the boulevard still glittered in the sunlight but the storefronts and office buildings near Vine still slumbered beneath the patina of a half century of smog. No difference there. But once past Cahuenga and onto Highland I saw where the new Hollywood was springing to life. New hotels-and I’m not talking about the type with hourly rates-and theaters, people centers with popular up-style restaurant franchises anchoring them. The streets and sidewalks were crowded, the brass stars imbedded in the sidewalks were polished. It was safer and cleaner but less genuine. Still, the word that popped into my head was hope. There was a sense of hope and vigor. There was a definite vibe coming off the street and I guess I liked it. The idea, I knew, was that the vibe would spread from this core area and move down the boulevard like an earthquake wave, leaving renovation and reinvention in its wake. A few years ago I would have been first to say the plan had no chance. But maybe I was wrong.
    Still feeling lucky from Vegas I decided to let the vibe ride and dropped down Fairfax to Third and pulled into the farmer’s market to grab something to eat.
    The market was another remake job I had stayed away from. There was a new parking garage and open-air people center built next to the old clapboard market with its comforting combination of good, cheap food and kitsch. I think I liked it better when you could just pull into a parking space next to the newsstand but I had to admit they had done it right. It was the old and new sitting side by side and getting along. I walked through the new section, past the department stores and the biggest bookstore I had ever seen and into the old. Bob’s Donuts was still there and every other place that I remembered. It was crowded. People were happy. It was too late in the day for a doughnut so I picked up a BLT and change for a dollar at the Kokomo Café and ate the sandwich in one of the old-time phone booths that they had left in place next to the Dupar’s. I called Roy Lindell first and caught him eating at his desk.
    “What do you have?”
    “Tuna on rye with pickles.”
    “That’s sick.”
    “Yeah, what do you have?”
    “BLT. Double-smoked bacon from Kokomo’s.”
    “Well, that beats me all to hell. What do you want, Bosch? Last time I saw you, you wanted nothing to do with me. In fact, I thought you went to Vegas.”
    “I did go but I’m back. And things are smoothing out now. You could say I’ve come to an understanding with your pals on the ninth floor. You want back in on this thing or you want to pout about it?”
    “You got something?”
    “Maybe. Not much more than a feeling at the moment.”
    “What do you want from me?”
    I shoved my sandwich wrapper off the murder book and opened it to get the information I needed.
    “See what you can come up with on a guy named Linus Simonson. Thirty-one-year-old white male. He owns a club in town.”
    “What’s it called?”
    “I don’t know yet.”
    “That’s great. You want me to pick up your dry cleaning while I’m at it?”
    “Just run the name. You’ll get a hit or