The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

flapping pockets. He didn’t have to ask her where the Grandview was. He watched her cut in between two apartment buildings and disappear, probably going to get a rock. He wondered if she had told the truth and why he could find it in himself to give her money but not the woman in apartment six. The police operator had hung up by the time he got back to the pay phone.
    Bosch redialed and asked for her and she gave him the address that went with the phone number he’d gotten. Suite P-1, the Grandview Apartments, on Sepulveda in Sherman Oaks. He had just wasted twenty bucks on crack cocaine. He hung up.
    In the car, he finished looking through the mail. Half of it was junk mail, the rest credit card bills and mailers from Republican candidates. There was also a postcard invitation to an Adult Film Performers Guild awards banquet in Reseda the following week.
    Bosch opened the American Express bill. The illegality of this did not concern him in the least. Cerrone was a criminal who was lying to his probation officer. There would be no complaint from him. The pimp owed American Express $1855.05 this month. The bill was two pages, and Bosch noticed two billings for airline flights to Las Vegas and three billings from Victoria’s Secret. Bosch was familiar with Victoria’s Secret, having studied the mail-order lingerie catalog at Sylvia’s on occasion. In one month, Cerrone had ordered nearly $400 in lingerie by mail. The money paid by the poor woman who rented the apartment Cerrone was using as a front for a probation address was basically subsidizing the lingerie bills of Cerrone’s whores. It angered Bosch, but it gave him an idea.

    * * *

    The Grandview Apartments were the ultimate California ideal. Built alongside a shopping mall, the building afforded its tenants the ability to walk directly from their apartment into the mall, thereby cutting out the heretofore required middle ground for all Southern California culture and interaction: the car. Bosch parked in the mall’s garage and entered the outer lobby through the rear entrance. It was an Italian marble affair with a grand piano in its center that was playing by itself. Bosch recognized the song as a Cab Calloway standard, “Everybody That Comes to My Place Has to Eat.”
    There was a directory and a phone on the wall by the security door that led to the elevators. The name next to P-1 was Kuntz. Bosch took it to be an inside joke. He lifted the phone and pushed the button. A woman answered and he said, “UPS. Gotta package.”
    “Uh,” she said. “From who?”
    “Um, it says, I can’t read the writing-looks like Victor’s secretary or something.”
    “Oh,” she said and he heard her giggle. “Do I have to sign?”
    “Yes, ma’am, I need a signature.”
    Rather than buzz him in, she said she would come down. Bosch stood at the glass door for two minutes waiting before he realized the scam wouldn’t work. He was standing there in a suit and had no package in his hand. He turned his back to the elevator just as the polished chrome doors began to part.
    He took a step toward the piano and looked down as if he was fascinated by it and didn’t notice the elevator’s arrival. From behind him he heard the security door start to open and he turned around.
    “Are you UPS?”
    She was blonde and stunning even in her blue jeans and pale blue Oxford shirt. Their eyes met and right away Bosch knew she knew it was a scam. She immediately tried to close the door but Bosch got there in time and pushed his way through.
    “What are you doing? I-”
    Bosch clamped a hand over her mouth because he thought she was about to scream. Covering half her face accentuated the fright in her eyes. She didn’t seem as stunning to Bosch anymore.
    “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to talk to Tommy. Let’s go up.”
    He slowly pulled his hand back and she didn’t scream.
    “Tommy’s not there,” she said in a whisper, as if to signal her cooperation.
    “Then we can wait.”
    He gently pushed her toward the elevator and punched the button.
    She was right. Cerrone wasn’t there. But Bosch didn’t have to wait long. He had barely had time to check on the opulent furnishings of the two-bedroom, two-bath and loft apartment with private roof garden when the man arrived.
    Cerrone stepped through the front door,
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in hand, just as Bosch stepped into the living room from the balcony that overlooked Sepulveda and the crowded Ventura