The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

Aqui?”
    She shook her head no and began to close the door. Bosch put his hand out to stop it. Struggling with his Spanish he asked if she knew Cerrone and where he was. She said he only came once a week to collect the mail and the rent. She moved back a step and gestured to the card table where there was a small stack of mail. Bosch could see an American Express bill on top. Gold Card.
    “Telefono? Necesidad urgente?”
    She looked down from his eyes and her hesitation told him she had a number.
    “Por favor?”
    She told him to wait and she left the doorway. While she was gone the boy sitting ten feet inside the door turned from the TV-Bosch could see it was some kind of game show-and looked at him. Bosch felt uncomfortable. He looked away, into the courtyard. When he looked back the boy was smiling. He had his hand up and was pointing a finger at Bosch. He made a shooting sound and giggled. Then the mother was back at the door with a piece of paper. There was a local phone number on it, that was all.
    Bosch copied it down in a small notebook he carried and then told her he would take the mail. The woman turned and looked at the card table as if the answer to what she should do was sitting on it with the mail. Bosch told her it would be okay and she finally lifted the stack and handed it to him. The frightened look was in her eyes again.
    He stepped back and was going to walk away when he stopped and looked back at her. He asked how much the rent was and she told him it was one hundred dollars a week. Bosch nodded and walked away.
    Out on the street he walked down to a pay phone that was in front of the next apartment complex. He called the downtown communications center, gave the operator the phone number he had just gotten and said he needed an address. While he waited he thought about the pregnant woman and wondered why she stayed. Could things be worse back in the Mexican town she came from? For some, he knew, the journey here was so difficult that returning was out of the question.
    As he was flipping through Cerrone’s mail, one of the hitchhikers walked up to him. She wore an orange tank top over her surgically augmented breasts. Her cutoff jeans were cut so high above the thighs that the white pockets hung out below. In one of the pockets he could see the distinctive shape of a condom package. She had the gaunt, tired look of a strawberry-a woman who would do anything, anytime, anywhere to keep crack in her pipe. Factoring in her deteriorated appearance, he put her age at no more than twenty. To Bosch’s surprise, she said, “Hey, darling, looking for a date?”
    He smiled and said, “You’re going to have to be more careful than that, you want to stay out of the cage.”
    “Oh, shit,” she said and turned to walk away.
    “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Don’t I know you? Yeah, I know you. It’s... what’s your name, girl?”
    “Look, man, I’m not talking to you and I’m not blowing you, so I gotta go.”
    “Wait. Wait. I don’t want anything. I just thought, you know, that we’d met. Aren’t you one of Tommy Cerrone’s girls? Yeah, that’s where I met you.”
    The name put a slight stutter in her step. Bosch let the phone dangle by its cord and caught up to her. She stopped.
    “Look, I’m not with Tommy anymore, okay? I gotta go to work.”
    She turned from him and put her thumb out as a wave of southbound traffic started by.
    “Wait a minute, just tell me something. Tell me where Tommy is these days. I need to get with him on something.”
    “On what? I don’t know where he is.”
    “A girl. You remember Becky? Couple years ago. Blonde, liked red lipstick, had a set like yours. She mighta used the name Maggie. I want to find her and she was working for Tom. You remember her?”
    “I wasn’t even around then. And I haven’t seen Tommy in four months. And you are full of shit.”
    She walked off and Bosch called after her, “Twenty bucks.”
    She stopped and came back.
    “For what?”
    “An address. I’m not bullshitting. I want to talk to him.”
    “Well, give it.”
    He took the money out of his wallet and gave it to her. It occurred to him that Van Nuys Vice might be watching him from somewhere around here and wondering why he was giving a hooker a twenty.
    “Try the Grandview,” she said. “I don’t know the number or anything but it’s on the top floor. You can’t tell’m I sent ya. He’ll fuck me up.”
    She walked away putting the money in one of the