The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

camera out of the trunk. In the squad room, he took two shots of the face in the box and put them in his coat pocket after they developed.
    Edgar watched this and asked, “What’re you going to do?”
    “Might stop at that adult supermarket in the Valley on my way up to Sylvia’s.”
    “Don’t get caught in one of those little rooms with your dick out.”
    “Thanks for the tip. Let me know what Mora says.”

    * * *

    Bosch worked his way on surface streets up to the Hollywood Freeway. He went north and then exited on Lankershim, which took him into North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. He had all four windows down and the air was cool as it buffeted him from all directions. He smoked a cigarette, flicking the ashes into the wind. There was some techno-funk jazz on KAJZ so he turned the radio off and just drove.
    The Valley was the city’s bedroom community in more ways than the obvious. It was also home to the nation’s pornography industry. The commercial-industrial districts of Van Nuys, Canoga Park, Northridge and Chatsworth housed hundreds of porno production outfits, distributors and warehouses. Modeling agencies in Sherman Oaks provided ninety percent of the women and men who performed in front of the cameras. And, consequently, the Valley was also one of the largest retail outlets for the material. It was made here, it was sold here-through video mail-order businesses also nestled in the warehouses with the production outfits, and places like X Marks the Spot on Lankershim Boulevard.
    Bosch pulled into the lot in front of the huge store and appraised it for a few moments. It had formerly been a Pic N Pay supermarket, but the front plate-glass windows had been walled up. Under the red neon X Marks the Spot sign, the front wall was whitewashed and painted with black figures of naked and overly buxom female figures, like the metallic silhouettes Bosch saw all the time on the mudflaps of trucks on the freeway. The men who put those on their trucks were probably the same guys this place catered to, Bosch figured.
    X Marks the Spot was owned by a man named Harold Barnes, who was a front for the Chicago Outfit. It grossed more than a million dollars a year-on the books. Probably another one under the counter. Bosch knew all of this from Mora of Ad-Vice, whom he had partnered with on some nights while they both were on the task force four years earlier.
    Bosch watched a man of about twenty-five get out of his Toyota, walk quickly to the solid wood front door, and slip in like a secret agent. He followed. The front half of the former supermarket was dedicated to retail-the sale and rental of videos, magazines and other assorted adult-oriented and mostly rubber products. The rear was split between private “encounter” rooms and private video booths. The entry to this area was through a curtained doorway. Bosch could hear heavy-metal rock music coming from back there mixed with the canned-sounding cries of phony passion coming from the video booths.
    To his left was a glass counter with two men behind it. One was a big man, there to keep the peace; the other was smaller, older, there to take the money. Bosch knew by the way they looked at him and the skin stretched tight around their eyes that they had made him as soon as he had come in. He walked over and put one of the Polaroids on the counter.
    “I am trying to ID her. Heard she worked in video, do you recognize her?”
    The small guy leaned forward and looked while the other guy didn’t move.
    “Looks like a fucking cake, man,” the small guy said. “I don’t know any cakes. I eat cakes.”
    He looked back at the big guy and they exchanged clever smiles.
    “So you don’t recognize her. What about you?”
    “I say what he says,” the big guy said. “I eat cakes, too.”
    This time they laughed out loud and probably had to restrain themselves from exchanging a high five. The small guy’s eyes sparkled behind rose-tinted glasses.
    “Okay,” Bosch said. “Then I’ll just look around. Thanks.”
    The big guy stepped forward and said, “Just keep your gun covered, man, we don’t want to excite the patrons.”
    The big guy’s eyes were dull and he set out a five-foot zone of body odor. A duster, Bosch thought. He wondered why the small guy didn’t fire his ass.
    “No more excited than they are,” Bosch said.
    He turned from the counter to the two walls of shelves that were lined with hundreds of video boxes for sale or rent. There