The Concrete Blonde (hb-3)

Dollmaker?’ Things like that. I put her off. No comment...”
    “And then?”
    “Then, well, she offered me something. I’m two back on the mortgage and Brenda doesn’t even know.”
    “What’d I tell you? I don’t want to hear your sad story, Edgar. I’m telling you, I don’t have any sympathy for that. You tell it and it will only make me madder.”
    “All right, all right. She offered me money. I said I’d think about it. She said if I wanted to deal to meet her at the Hung Jury that night... You won’t let me say why, but I had reasons and so I went. Yeah, I went.”
    “Yeah, and you fucked yourself up,” Bosch said, hoping to knock down the defiant tone that had crept into Edgar’s voice.
    He had finished the last of his Jack Black and signaled the barmaid but she didn’t see him. The musicians were taking their places behind their instruments. The front man was a saxophone player and Bosch wished he was here under other circumstances.
    “What did you give her?”
    “Just what we knew that day. But she already had just about everything already. I told her you said it looked like the Dollmaker. It wasn’t a lot, Ha-and most of it was in the paper the next day, anyway. And I wasn’t Bremmer’s source on that. You have to believe me.”
    “You told her I came out there? To the scene?”
    “Yeah, I told her. What was the big secret about that?”
    Bosch thought about all of this for a few minutes. He watched the band start up with a Billy Strayhorn number called “Lush Life.” Their table was far enough away from the quartet that it wasn’t too loud. Harry’s eyes scanned the rest of the bar to see if anyone else was into it and he saw Bremmer sitting at the bar nursing a beer. He was with a group of what looked like reporter types. One of the other men even had one of those long, skinny notebooks that reporters always carry sticking out of his back pocket.
    “Speaking of Bremmer, there he is. Maybe he wants to check a detail or two with you after we’re done.”
    “Harry, it’s not me.”
    Bosch let him get away with the Harry that time. He was getting tired and depressed with this scene. He wanted to get it over with and get out of there, go see Sylvia.
    “How many times did you talk to her?”
    “Every night.”
    “She turned it on you, didn’t she? You had to go see her.”
    “I was stupid. I needed the money. Once I met her the first night she had me by the balls. She said she wanted updates on the investigation or she’d tell you I was the leak, she’d inform IAD. Fuck, she never even paid me.”
    “What happened tonight to make her split early?”
    “She said the case was over, going to closing arguments tomorrow, so it didn’t matter what was happening in the case. She cut me loose.”
    “But it won’t end there. You know that, don’t you? Whenever she needs a plate run, an address from DMV, a witness’s unlisted number, she’s going to call you. She’s got you, man.”
    “I know. I’ll have to deal with it.”
    “All for what? What was the price, that first night?”
    “I wanted one goddamn mortgage payment... Can’t sell the fuckin’ house, can’t make the mortgage, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
    “What about me? Aren’t you worried about what I’m going to do?”
    “Yes. Yes, I am.”
    Bosch looked back at the quartet. They were staying with a Strayhorn set and were on to “Blood Count.” There was a journeyman quality to the sax man’s work. He stayed on point and his phrasing was clean.
    “What are you going to do?” Edgar asked.
    Bosch didn’t have to think, he already knew. He didn’t take his eyes from the sax man as he spoke.
    “Nothing.”
    “Nothing?”
    “It’s what you are going to do. I can’t work with you anymore, man. I know we got this thing with Irving but that’s it, that’s the end. After this is over you go to Pounds and tell him you want to transfer out of Hollywood.”
    “But there aren’t openings in homicide anywhere else. I looked at the board, you know how rarely they come.”
    “I didn’t say anything about homicide. I just said you’re going to ask for a transfer. You ask for the first thing open, understand? I don’t care if you end up on autos in the Seventy-seventh, you take the first thing you can get.”
    Now he looked at Edgar, whose mouth was slightly open, and said, “That’s the price you pay.”
    “But homicide is what I do, you know that. It’s where it’s at.”
    “And