The Closers

irony was not lost on him. It appeared that the place with the highest concentration of homeless people in the city was also the place where a citizen was safest from their entreaties, if nothing else.
    The Los Angeles Mission and the Salvation Army had major help centers here. Bosch decided to start with them. He had a twelve-year-old driver’s license photo of Robert Verloren and an even older photograph of him at his daughter’s funeral. He showed these to the people operating the help centers and the kitchen workers who put free food on hundreds of plates every day. He got little response until a kitchen worker remembered Verloren as a “client” who came through the chow line pretty regularly a few years before.
    “It’s been a while,” the man said. “Haven’t seen him.”
    After spending an hour in each center Bosch started working his way down the street, stepping into the smaller missions and flop hotels and showing the photos. He got a few recognitions of Verloren but nothing fresh, nothing to lead him to the man who had completely dropped off the human radar screen so many years before. He worked it until ten-thirty and decided he would return the next day to finish canvassing the street. As he walked back toward Japantown he was depressed by what he had just immersed himself in and by the dwindling hopes of finding Robert Verloren. He walked with his head down, hands in his pockets, and therefore didn’t see the two men until they had already seen him. They stepped out of the alcoves of two side-by-side toy stores as Bosch passed. One blocked his path. The other stepped out behind him. Bosch stopped.
    “Hey, missionary man,” said the one in front of him.
    In the dim glow from a streetlight half a block away Bosch saw the glint of a blade down at the man’s side. He turned slightly to check the man behind him. He was smaller. Bosch wasn’t sure but it looked like he was simply holding a chunk of concrete in his hand. A piece of broken curb. Both men were dressed in layers, a common sight in this part of the city. One was black and one was white.
    “The kitchens are all closed up and we’re still hungry,” said the one with the knife. “You got a few bucks for us? You know, like we could borrow.”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “No, not really.”
    “Not really? You sure ’bout that, boy? You look like you got a nice fat wallet on you now. Don’t be holding back on us.”
    A black rage grew in Bosch. In a moment of sharp focus he knew what he could and would do. He would draw his weapon and put bullets into both of these men. In that same instant he knew he would walk away from it after a cursory departmental investigation. The glint of the blade was Bosch’s ticket and he knew it. The men on either side of him didn’t know what they had just walked into. It was like being in the tunnels so many years before. Everything closed down to a tight space. Nothing but kill or be killed. There was something absolutely pure about it, no gray areas and no room for anything else.
    Then suddenly the moment changed. Bosch saw the one with the knife staring intently at him, reading something in his eyes, one predator taking the measure of another. The knife man seemed to grow smaller by an almost imperceptible measure. He backed off without physically backing off.
    Bosch knew there were people considered to be mind readers. The truth was they were face readers. Their skill was interpreting the myriad muscle constructions of the eyes, the mouth, the eyebrows. From this they decoded intent. Bosch had a level of skill in this. His ex-wife made a living playing poker because she had an even higher skill. The man with the knife had a measure of this skill as well. It had surely saved his life this time.
    “Nah, never mind,” said the man.
    He took a step back toward the store’s alcove.
    “Have a good night, missionary man,” he said as he retreated into the darkness.
    Bosch fully turned and looked at the other man. Without a word, he too stepped back into his crack to hide and wait for the next victim.
    Bosch looked up and down the street. It seemed deserted now. He turned and headed on toward his ride. As he walked he took out his cell phone and called the Central Division patrol office. He told the watch sergeant about the two men he encountered and asked him to send a patrol car.
    “That kind of stuff happens on every block down there in that hellhole,” the sergeant said. “What do you want me