The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

Freeway.
    Cerrone initially smiled at Bosch but then the face became blank. This often happened to Bosch with crooks. He believed it was because the crooks often thought they recognized him. And it was true they probably did. Bosch’s picture had been in the paper and on TV several times in the last few years, including once this week. Harry believed that most crooks who read the papers or watched the news looked closely at the pictures of the cops. They probably thought it gave them an added advantage, someone to look out for. But instead it bred familiarity. Cerrone had smiled as though Bosch was a long-lost friend, then he realized it was probably the enemy, a cop.
    “That’s right,” Bosch said.
    “Tommy, he made me bring him up,” the girl said. “He called on the-”
    “Shut up,” Cerrone barked. Then, to Bosch, he said, “If you had a warrant, you wouldn’t be here alone. No warrant, get the fuck out.”
    “Very observant,” Bosch said. “Sit down. I have questions.”
    “Fuck you and the questions you rode in on. Get out.”
    Bosch sat down on a black leather couch and took out his cigarettes.
    “Tom, if I go, it’s to go see your PO and see about getting you revoked for this address scam you’re playing. The probation department frowns on cons telling them they live one place when they actually live somewhere else. Especially when one’s a dump and one’s the Grandview.”
    Cerrone threw the
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across the room at the girl. “See?” he said. “See the shit you got me in?”
    She seemed to know better than to say anything. Cerrone folded his arms and stood in the living room but he wasn’t going to sit down. He was a well-built guy gone to fat. Too many afternoons at Hollywood or Del Mar, sipping cocktails and watching the ponies.
    “Look, what do you want?”
    “I want to know about Becky Kaminski.”
    Cerrone looked puzzled.
    “You remember, Maggie Cum Loudly, the blonde with the tits you probably had her enlarge. You were bringing her up through the video business, doin’ some outcall work on the side, and then she disappeared on you.”
    “What about her? That was a long time ago.”
    “Twenty—two months and three days, I am told.”
    “So what? She turned up and is saying some shit about me, it don’t matter. Take it to court, man. We’ll see-”
    Bosch jumped up off the couch and slapped him hard across the face, then pushed him over a black leather chair onto the floor. Cerrone’s eyes immediately went to the girl’s, which told Bosch that he had complete control of the situation. The power of humiliation sometimes was more awesome than a gun held to the head. Cerrone’s face was a bright red all over.
    Bosch’s hand stung. He bent over the fallen man and said, “She didn’t turn up and you know it. She’s dead and you knew it when you made the missing person report. You were just covering your ass. I want to know how you knew.”
    “Look, man, I didn’t have any-”
    “But you knew she wasn’t coming back. How?”
    “I just had a hunch. She didn’t turn up for a couple days.”
    “Guys like you don’t go to the police on hunches. Guys like you, they get their place broken into, they don’t even call the cops. Like I said, you were just covering your ass. You didn’t want to get blamed ‘cause you knew she wasn’t coming back alive.”
    “Awright, awright, it was more than a hunch. Okay? It was the guy. I never saw him but his voice and some of the things he said. It was familiar, you know? Then after I sent her and she didn’t come back, it dawned on me. I remembered him. I had sent him somebody else once and she ended up dead.”
    “Who?”
    “Holly Lere. I can’t remember her real name.”
    Bosch could. Holly Lere was the porno name of Nicole Knapp. The seventh victim of the Dollmaker. He sat back down on the couch and put a cigarette in his mouth.
    “Tommy,” the girl said, “he’s smoking.”
    “Shut the fuck up,” he said to her.
    “Well, you said no smoking in here except on the bal-”
    “Shut the fuck up!”
    “Nicole Knapp,” Bosch said.
    “Yeah, that’s it.”
    “You knew the cops said the Dollmaker got her?”
    “Yeah, and I always thought that until Becky disappeared and I remembered this guy and what he said.”
    “But you didn’t tell anybody. You didn’t call the cops.”
    “It’s like you said, man, guys like me, we don’t call.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “What did he say? The caller, what was it he