The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

drawer, every cabinet. What little evidence they gathered of Detective Ray Mora’s secret life they put on the dining room table. All the while, their host remained in the upstairs gym room, cuffed to one of the chrome bars of the weight machine. He was accorded fewer rights than a murderer would have received had he been arrested in his home. No phone call. No lawyer. No rights. This was always the case when cops investigated cops. Every cop knew the most flagrant abuses of police power occurred when cops turned on their own.
    Occasionally, as they began the initial work, they would hear Mora call out. He called for Bosch most often, sometimes Rollenberger. But no one came to him until finally Sheehan and Opelt-concerned that the neighbors would hear and maybe call the police-went into the room and gagged him with a bathroom towel and black electrical tape.
    The silence of the searchers was not in deference to the neighbors, however. The detectives worked quietly because of the tensions among them. Though Rollenberger was visibly angry with Bosch, most of the tension was derived from Sheehan and Opelt having blown the surveillance, which directly led to Mora’s discovery of Bosch inside his house. No one except Rollenberger was upset by Bosch’s illegal entry of the house. Bosch’s own home had been similarly violated at least twice that he knew about during times when he had been the focus of internal investigations. Just like the badge, it came with the job.
    When they completed the search the dining room table was stacked with the porno magazines and store-bought tapes, the video equipment, the wig, the women’s clothing and Mora’s personal phone book. The television that had been hit by Mora’s stray shot was also there. By then Rollenberger had cooled somewhat, having apparently used the hours to consider his situation as well as to search.
    “All right,” he said as the other four convened around the table and surveyed its contents. “What have we got? Number one, are we confident Mora is not our man?”
    Rollenberger looked around the room and his eyes stopped on Bosch.
    “What do you think, Bosch?”
    “You heard my story. He denied it and what was on the last tape before he made me erase it doesn’t fit with the Follower. Looked completely consensual, though the boy and girl with him were obviously underage. He isn’t the Follower.”
    “Then what is he?”
    “Somebody with problems. I think he got bent by staying too long in vice and started making his own flicks.”
    “Was he selling them?”
    “I don’t know. I doubt it. No evidence of that here. He didn’t go very far in hiding himself in the tape I saw. I think it was just his own stuff. He wasn’t in it for money. It was something deeper.”
    No one said anything, so Bosch continued.
    “My guess is that he made our tail sometime after we set up on him and began getting rid of the evidence. Tonight he was probably playing around with the tail, trying to figure what we were on him for. He got rid of most of the evidence, but if you put somebody on that phone book, my bet is you’ll put it together. Some of those listings with only a first name. You track them and you’ll probably find some of the kids he used in his videos.”
    Sheehan made a move to pick up the phone book.
    “Leave it,” Rollenberger said. “If anybody continues this it will be Internal Affairs.”
    “How they going to do that?” Bosch asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “It’s all fruit of the poison tree. The search, everything. All of it’s illegal. We can’t move against Mora.”
    “And we can’t let him carry a badge, either,” Rollenberger said testily. “The man should be in jail.”
    The following silence was broken by the sound of Mora’s hoarse but loud voice from upstairs. He had somehow slipped the gag.
    “Bosch! Bosch! I wanna deal, Bosch. I’ll give-” he began coughing “-I’ll give him to you, Bosch. You hear me! You hear me!”
    Sheehan headed toward the stairs, which began in the alcove outside the dining room. He said, “This time I’ll make it so tight the fuck will strangle.”
    “Wait a minute,” Rollenberger ordered.
    Sheehan stopped at the archway leading to the alcove.
    “What’s he saying?” Rollenberger said. “Who will he give?”
    He looked at Bosch, who shrugged his shoulders. They waited, Rollenberger looking up at the ceiling, but Mora was silent.
    Bosch stepped over to the table and picked up the phone