The Black Echo

rein on this.”
    “Or you.”
    “Yeah. It looks like there is some of that, too. He wanted to know what we were doing at my place. I told him you were just walking me to my door.”
    Bosch sat down wearily at the other side of the table and dug a finger into a cigarette pack in search of the last one. He put it in his mouth but didn’t light it.
    “Besides being titillated or jealous of what we might have been doing, who does Rourke think tried to take us out?” he asked. “A drunk driver, like my people seem to think?”
    “He did mention the drunk driver theory. He also asked whether I have a jealous ex-boyfriend. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be a great amount of concern that it might have something to do with our case.”
    “I hadn’t thought of the ex-boyfriend angle. What did you tell him?”
    “You’re as conniving as he is,” she said, flashing her brilliant smile. “I told him it wasn’t any of his business.”
    “Good going. Is it mine?”
    “The answer is no.” She let him hang over the cliff a few seconds, then added, “That is, no jealous ex-boyfriends. So, can we leave now and get to where we were”-she looked at her watch-“about four hours ago?”

    ***

    Bosch was awake in Eleanor Wish’s bed long before dawn light crept around the curtain drawn across the sliding glass door. Unable to defeat insomnia, he finally got up and took a shower in the downstairs bathroom. After, he looked through her kitchen cabinets and refrigerator and began to put together a breakfast of coffee, eggs and cinnamon raisin bagels. He couldn’t find any bacon.
    When he heard the shower upstairs go off, he carried a glass of orange juice up and found her in front of the bathroom mirror. She was naked and braiding her hair, which she’d divided into three thick hanks. He was entranced by her and watched as she expertly maneuvered her hair into a French braid. She then accepted the juice and a long kiss from Bosch. She put on her short robe and they went downstairs to eat.
    After, Harry opened the kitchen door and stood just outside it while he smoked a cigarette.
    “You know,” he said, “I’m just happy nothing happened.”
    “You mean last night on the street?”
    “Yeah. To you. I don’t know how I’d’ve handled it. I know we just met and all, but… uh, I care. You know?”
    “Me too.”
    Bosch had taken a shower, but his clothes were as fresh as the ashtray in a used car. After a while he said he had to leave, to go by his house and change. Eleanor said she would go into the bureau and check for fallout from last night’s activities and get whatever was on file about Binh. They agreed to meet at Hollywood Station, on Wilcox, because it was closest to Binh’s business, and Bosch needed to turn in his damaged car, anyway. She walked him to the door and they kissed as if she were seeing him off to a day at the office at the accounting firm.
    When Bosch got to his house, he found no messages on the phone machine and no sign that the place had been entered. He shaved and changed clothes and then headed down the hill through Nichols Canyon and then over to Wilcox. He was at his desk, updating the Investigating Officer’s Chronological Report forms, when Eleanor came in at ten. The squad room was full and most of the detectives who were male stopped what they were doing to check her out. She had an uncomfortable smile on her face when she sat down in the steel chair next to the homicide table.
    “Anything wrong?”
    “I just think I would rather walk through Biscailuz,” she said, referring to the sheriff’s jail downtown.
    “Oh. Yeah, these guys can leer better than most flashers. You want a glass of water?”
    “No. I’m fine. Ready?”
    “Let’s do it.”
    They took Bosch’s new car, which was actually at least three years old and had seventy-seven thousand miles on it. The station fleet manager, a permanent desk assignee since he’d had four fingers blown off by a pipe bomb he stupidly picked up one Halloween, said it was the best he could do. Budget restraints had halted the replacement of cars, though repairing the old ones actually cost the department more. At least, Bosch learned after starting the car, the air conditioner worked reasonably well. There was a light Santa Ana condition kicking up and the forecast was for an unseasonably warm holiday weekend.
    Eleanor’s research on Binh showed he had an office and business on Vermont near Wilshire. There were