The Closers

yesterday.”
    “I see.”
    “Um, I have a number that he gave me. It’s not a direct line. He doesn’t have a phone in his room. But it’s in the kitchen and he’s there in the mornings. He said it slows down after about nine.”
    “Okay.”
    “Do you want the number, Muriel?”
    This question was followed by the longest silence of all. Bosch finally answered the question himself.
    “I’ll tell you what, Muriel. I’ve got the number, and if you ever want it you can just call me. Is that okay?”
    “That would be fine, Detective. Thank you.”
    “No problem. I’m going to go now. We’re hoping something breaks on the case today.”
    “Please call me.”
    “It will be the first call I make.”
    After hanging up, Bosch realized that talking about breakfast had made him hungry. It was now almost noon and he hadn’t eaten anything since the steak at Musso’s the night before. He decided that he would go into the bedroom and rest for a while and then have a late lunch before reporting for the surveillance. He would go over to Dupar’s in Studio City. It was on the way out to Northridge. Pancakes were the perfect surveillance food. He would order a full stack of buttered pancakes and they would sit in his stomach like clay and keep him full all night if necessary.
    In the bedroom he lay on his back and shut his eyes. He tried to think of the case but his mind wandered to the drunken time he got the tattoo put on his arm in a dirty studio in Saigon. As he drifted off to sleep he remembered the man with the needle and his smile and his body odor. He remembered the man had said, “Are you sure? Remember, you’ll be marked forever with this.”
    Bosch had smiled back and said, “I already am.”
    Then in his dream the man’s smiling face turned into Vicki Landreth’s face. She had red lipstick smeared across her mouth. She held up a buzzing tattoo needle.
    She said, “Are you ready, Michael?”
    He said, “I’m not Michael.”
    She said, “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter who you are. Everybody’s dodging the needle. But nobody gets away.”

28
    KIZ RIDER WAS already at the meeting spot when Bosch got there. He got out of his car and brought the murder book and the other files to her car, a nondescript white Taurus.
    “You have any room in your trunk?” he asked before getting in.
    “It’s empty. Why?”
    “Pop it. I forgot to leave my spare tire at home.”
    He went back to his car, a Mercedes-Benz SUV, and took the spare tire out of the back and transferred it to Rider’s trunk. Using a screwdriver from the tool kit he removed the license plates from his car and put them in the trunk as well. He then got in with her and they drove up Tampa to the plaza shopping center across from the service station where Mackey worked. The day team, Marcia and Jackson, were waiting in their car in the lot.
    The space next to them was open and Rider pulled in. Everybody put down their windows so they could talk and transfer the two rovers without having to get out of their cars. Bosch took the radios but knew he and Rider wouldn’t use them.
    “Well?” Bosch asked.
    “Well, nothing,” Jackson said. “Seems like we’re pumping a dry hole here, Harry.”
    “Nothing at all?” Rider asked.
    “There has been absolutely no indication at all that he’s seen the paper or that anybody he knows has seen it. We checked with the sound room twenty minutes ago and this guy hasn’t even gotten a phone call, let alone one about this. He hasn’t even had a tow call since he came on.”
    Bosch nodded. He wasn’t concerned yet. Sometimes things needed a little push and that was what he was ready to do.
    “I hope you’ve got a good plan, Harry,” Marcia called over. He was in the driver’s side of their car and Bosch was furthest away on the passenger side of Rider’s car.
    “You want to stick around?” Bosch replied. “No use waiting on it if there hasn’t been any action. I’m ready to go.”
    Jackson nodded.
    “I don’t mind,” he said. “You going to need backup?”
    “I doubt it. I’m just going to plant a seed. But you never know. It couldn’t hurt.”
    “All right. We’ll watch anyway. Just in case, what’s your flare going to be?”
    Bosch hadn’t thought about how he would send up a flare if things went wrong and he had to call in backup.
    “I guess I’ll hit the horn,” he said. “Or you’ll hear the shots.”
    He smiled and everybody nodded and then Rider backed out of