The Last Coyote

Flakes?”
    “You have to eat a full meal.”
    “I just woke up. You people kept me up all night. I can’t eat this. It’s making me sick.”
    She quickly picked up the tray and headed to the door.
    “I’ll see what I can do. About the Frosted Flakes.”
    She looked back at him and smiled before heading out the door.
    “Cheer up.”
    “Yeah, that’s the prescription.”
    Bosch didn’t know what to do with himself but wait for time to pass. He started thinking about his encounter with Mittel, about what was said and what was meant. There was something about it that bothered him.
    He was interrupted by a beeping sound coming from the side panel of the bed. He looked down and found it was the phone.
    “Hello?”
    “Harry?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s Jazz. Are you okay?”
    There was a long silence. Bosch didn’t know if he was ready for this yet, but now it was unavoidable.
    “Harry?”
    “I’m fine. How’d you find me?”
    “The man who called me yesterday. Irving something. He-”
    “Chief Irving.”
    “Yes. He called and told me you were hurt. He gave me the number.”
    That annoyed Bosch but he tried not to show it.
    “Well, I’m fine, but I can’t really talk.”
    “Well, what happened?”
    “It’s just a long story. I don’t want to go through it now.”
    Now she was quiet. It was one of those moments when both people try to read the silence, pick up each other’s meanings in what they weren’t saying.
    “You know, don’t you?”
    “Why didn’t you tell me, Jasmine?”
    “I…”
    More silence.
    “Do you want me to tell you now?”
    “I don’t know…”
    “What did he tell you?”
    “Who?”
    “ Irving.”
    “It wasn’t from him. He doesn’t know. It was somebody else. Somebody trying to hurt me.”
    “It was a long time ago, Harry. I want to tell you what happened…but not on the phone.”
    He closed his eyes and thought for a minute. Just hearing her voice had renewed his sense of connection to her. But he had to question whether he wanted to get into this.
    “I don’t know, Jazz. I’ve got to think about-”
    “Look, what was I supposed to do? Wear a sign or something to warn you away from the start? You tell me, when was a good time for me to tell you? Was it right after that first lemonade? Should I have said, ‘Oh, by the way, six years ago I killed the man I was living with when he tried to rape me for the second time in the same night?’ Would that have been proper?”
    “Jazz, don’t…”
    “Don’t what? Look, the cops didn’t believe my story here, what should I expect from you?”
    He could tell she was crying now, not so that he was supposed to hear. But he could tell it in her voice, full of loneliness and pain.
    “You said things to me,” she said. “I thought…”
    “Jazz, we spent a weekend together. You’re putting too much-”
    “Don’t you dare! Don’t you tell me it didn’t mean anything.”
    “You’re right. I’m sorry…Look, this isn’t the right time. I’ve got too much going on. I gotta call you back…”
    She didn’t say anything.
    “Okay?”
    “Okay, Harry, you call me.”
    “Okay, goodbye, Jazz.”
    He hung up and kept his eyes closed for a while. He felt the numbness of disappointment that comes from broken hopes and wondered if he would ever talk to her again. In analyzing his thoughts he realized how much they seemed to be the same. And so his fear was not of what she had done, whatever the details were. His fear was that he would indeed call her and that he would become entwined with someone with more baggage than himself.
    He opened his eyes and tried to put the thoughts aside. But he came back to her. He found himself marveling at the randomness of their meeting. A newspaper want ad. It might as well have said Single White Killer Seeks Same. He laughed out loud but it wasn’t funny.
    He turned the television on as a distraction. There was a talk show on and the host was interviewing women who stole their best friend’s men. The best friends were also on and every question devolved into a verbal cat fight. Bosch turned the sound down and watched for ten minutes in silence, studying the contortions of the women’s angry faces.
    After a while he turned it off and rang the nurses’ station on the intercom to inquire about his cereal. The nurse he spoke to knew nothing about his request for breakfast at lunch time. He tried Meredith Roman’s number again but hung up when he got the tape.
    Just as Bosch was