The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

Sheehan and Edgar at the table.
    “I missed most of that,” he said to Sheehan. “Sounds like nothing happened.”
    “Right. After you dropped by, he went back out to the Valley in the afternoon and stopped by a bunch of different offices and warehouses in Canoga Park and Northridge. We’ve got the addresses if you want ‘em. They were all porno distributors. Never stayed more than a half hour at any of them but we don’t know what he was doing. Then he came back, did a little office work and went home.”
    Bosch assumed Mora was checking with other producers, trying to hunt down more victims, maybe asking about the mystery man Gallery had described four years ago. He asked Sheehan where Mora lived and wrote down the Sierra Bonita Avenue address in his notebook. He wanted to warn Sheehan about how close he had come to blowing the operation at the taco stand but didn’t want to do so in front of Rollenberger. He’d mention it later.
    “Anything new?” he asked Edgar.
    “Nothing on the survivor, yet,” Edgar answered. “I’m leaving in five minutes to go up to Sepulveda. The girls do a lot of rush-hour work up there, maybe I’ll see her, pick her up.”
    Having gotten the updates from everyone else, Bosch told the detectives in the room about the information he had gotten from Mora and what Locke thought of it. At the end, Rollenberger whistled at the information as if it were a beautiful woman.
    “Man, the chief should know this pronto. He might want to double up on the surveillance.”
    “Mora’s a cop,” Bosch said. “The more bodies you put on the watch, the better chance he has of making them. If he knows we’re watching him, you can forget the whole thing.”
    Rollenberger thought about this and nodded, but said, “Well, we still have to let the man know what’s developing. Tell you what, nobody go anywhere for a few minutes. I’ll see if I can get with him a little early and we’ll see where we go from there.”
    He stood up with some papers in his hand and knocked on the door leading to Irving’s office. He then opened it and disappeared through.
    “Dipshit,” Sheehan said after the door was closed. “Goin’ in for a little mouth-to-ass resuscitation.”
    Everybody laughed.
    “Hey, you two,” Bosch said to Sheehan and Opelt. “Mora mentioned your little meeting at the taco stand.”
    “Shit!” Opelt exclaimed.
    “I think he bought the kosher burrito line,” Bosch said and started laughing. “Until he tasted one! He couldn’t get why you guys’d come all the way over from Parker for one of those shitty things. He threw half of his out. So if he sees you again out there, he’ll put it together. Watch your ass.”
    “We will,” Sheehan said. “That was Opelt’s idea, that kosher burrito shit. He-”
    “What? What’d you want me to say? The guy we’re watching suddenly walks up to the car and says, ‘What’s happening, boys?’ I had to think of-”
    The door opened and Rollenberger came back in. He went to his place but didn’t sit down. Instead, he put both hands on the table and sternly leaned forward as if he had just been given orders from God.
    “I’ve brought the chief up to date. He’s very pleased with everything we’ve come up with in just twenty-four hours. He is concerned about losing Mora, especially with the shrink saying we are at the end of the cycle, but he doesn’t want to change the surveillance. Adding another team doubles the chance Mora will see something. I think he’s right. It’s a very good idea to maintain status quo. We-”
    Edgar tried to hold back a laugh but couldn’t. It sounded more like a sneeze.
    “Detective Edgar, something funny?”
    “No, I think I’m getting a cold or something. Go on, please.”
    “Well, that’s it. Proceed as planned. I will inform the other surveillance teams of what Bosch has come up with. We have Rector and Heikes taking the midnight shift, then the presidents tomorrow morning at eight.”
    The presidents were a pair of RHD partners named Johnson and Nixon. They didn’t like being called the presidents, especially Nixon.
    “Sheehan, Opelt, you are back on tomorrow at four. You’ve got Saturday night, so be bright. Bosch, Edgar, still freelancing. See what you can come up with. Keep your pagers on and the rovers handy. We might need to pull everybody together on short notice.”
    “OT approved?” Edgar asked.
    “All weekend. But if you’re on the clock, I want to see the work. Only