The Closers

messages. He called the retrieval number anyway and replayed a message he had saved from the week before. It was his daughter’s tiny voice, left the night she and her mother went traveling far away from him.
    “Hello, Daddy,” she said. “Good night, Daddy.”
    That was all she had said but that was enough. Bosch saved the message for the next time he needed it and then killed the line.

Part Two.
HIGH JINGO

20
    AT 7:50 A.M. THE NEXT DAY Bosch was back on the Nickel. He was watching the food line at the Metro Shelter and he had his eye on Robert Verloren back in the kitchen behind the steam tables. Bosch had gotten lucky. In the early morning, it was almost as if there had been a shift change among the homeless. The people who patrolled the street in darkness were sleeping off the night’s failures. They were replaced by the first shift of homeless, the people who were smart enough to hide from the street at night. Bosch’s intention had been to start at the big centers again and go from there. But as he had made his way into the homeless zone after parking again in Japantown, he started showing the photo of Verloren to the most lucid of the street people he encountered and almost immediately started getting responses. The day people recognized Verloren. Some said they had seen the man in the photo around but that he was much older now. Eventually Bosch came across one man who matter-of-factly said, “Yeah, that’s Chef,” and he pointed Bosch toward the Metro Shelter.
    The Metro was one of the smaller satellite shelters that were clustered around the Salvation Army and the Los Angeles Mission and designed to handle the overflow of street people, particularly in the winter months when warmer weather in L.A. drew a migration from colder points north. These smaller centers didn’t have the means to provide three squares a day and by agreement specialized in one service. At the Metro Shelter the service was a breakfast that started at 7 a.m. daily. By the time Bosch got there the line of wobbling, disheveled men and women was extending out the door of the chow center and the long rows of picnic-style tables inside were maxed out. The word on the street was that the Metro had the best breakfast on the Nickel.
    Bosch had badged his way through the door and very quickly spotted Verloren in the kitchen beyond the serving tables. It didn’t appear that Verloren was doing one particular job. Instead, he seemed to be checking on the preparation of several things. It appeared that he was in charge. He was neatly dressed in a white, double-breasted kitchen shirt over dark pants, a spotless white apron that went down past his knees and a tall white chef’s hat.
    The breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs with red and green peppers, hash browns, grits and disc sausages. It looked and smelled good to Bosch, who had left home without eating anything because he wanted to get moving. To the right of the serving line was a coffee station with two large serve-yourself urns. There were racks containing cups made of thick porcelain that had chipped and yellowed over time. Bosch took a cup and filled it with scalding black coffee and he sipped it and waited. When Verloren strode to the serving table, using the skirt of his apron to hold a hot and heavy replacement pan of eggs, Bosch made his move.
    “Hey, Chef,” he called above the clatter of serving spoons and voices.
    Verloren looked over and Bosch saw him immediately determine that Bosch was not a “client.” As with the night before, Bosch was dressed informally, but he thought Verloren might have even been able to guess he was a cop. He stepped away from the serving table and approached. But he didn’t come all the way. There seemed to be an invisible line on the floor that was the demarcation between kitchen and eating space. Verloren didn’t cross it. He stood there using his apron to hold the near-empty serving pan he had taken from the steam table.
    “Can I help you?” he asked.
    “Yes, do you have a minute? I would like to talk to you.”
    “No, I don’t have a minute. I’m in the middle of breakfast.”
    “It’s about your daughter.”
    Bosch saw the slight waver in Verloren’s eyes. They dropped for a second and then came back up.
    “You’re the police?”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Can I just get through this rush? We’re putting out the last trays now.”
    “No problem.”
    “You want to eat? You look like you’re hungry.”
    “Uh…”
    Bosch