The Last Coyote

while. He turned the air down because it was too cool against his sunburned skin and put the car in gear. As he slowly cruised through Pelican Cove toward the gatehouse, his thoughts drifted to the woman who was trying to sell her dead father’s condo. She had signed the name Jazz on the self-portrait. He liked that.
    He turned the car around and drove toward her unit. It was still daylight and no lights shone from behind the building’s windows when he got there. He couldn’t tell if she was there or not. Bosch parked nearby and watched for a few minutes, debating what he should do, if anything at all.
    Fifteen minutes later, when it seemed that indecisiveness had paralyzed him, she stepped out the front door. He was parked nearly twenty yards away, between two other cars. His paralytic affliction eased enough for him to slide down in his seat to avoid detection. She walked out into the parking lot and behind the row of cars which included Bosch’s rental. He didn’t move or turn to follow her movement. He listened. He waited for the sound of a car starting. Then what, he wondered. Follow her? What are you doing?
    He jerked upright at the sound of sharp rapping on the window next to him. It was her. Bosch was flustered but managed to turn the key so he could lower the window.
    “Yes?”
    “Mr. Bosch, what are you doing?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’ve been sitting out here. I saw you.”
    “I…”
    He was too humiliated to finish.
    “I don’t know whether to call security or not.”
    “No, don’t do that. I, uh, I was just-I was going to go to your door. To apologize.”
    “Apologize? Apologize for what?”
    “For today. For earlier, when I was inside. I-you were right, I wasn’t looking to buy anything.”
    “Then what were you doing?”
    Bosch opened the car door and stepped out. He felt disadvantaged with her looking down at him in the car.
    “I’m a cop,” he said. “I needed to get in here to see someone. I used you and I’m sorry. I am. I didn’t know about your father and all of that.”
    She smiled and shook her head.
    “That’s the dumbest story I’ve ever heard. What about L.A., was that part of the story?”
    “No. I’m from L.A. I’m a cop there.”
    “I don’t know if I’d go around admitting that if I were you. You guys’ve got some bad PR problems.”
    “Yeah, I know. So…” He felt his courage rising. He told himself he was flying out in the morning and it didn’t matter what happened because he’d never see her or this state again. “You said something before about lemonade but I never got any. I was thinking, maybe I could tell you the story, apologize and have some lemonade or something.”
    He looked over toward the door of the condo.
    “You L.A. cops are pushy,” she said but she was smiling. “One glass and the story better be good. After that, we both gotta go. I’m driving up to Tampa tonight.”
    They started walking toward the door and Bosch realized he had a smile on his face.
    “What’s in Tampa?”
    “It’s where I live and I miss it. I’ve been down here more than up there since I put the condo on the market. I want to spend a Sunday at my own place and in my own studio.”
    “That’s right, a painter.”
    “I try to be.”
    She opened the door for him and allowed him in first.
    “Well, that’s okay by me. I have to get to Tampa sometime tonight. I fly out in the morning.”
    While nursing a tall glass of lemonade, Bosch explained his scam of using her to get into the complex to see another resident and she didn’t seem upset. In fact, he could tell she admired the ingenuity of it. Bosch didn’t tell her how it had backfired anyway when McKittrick had pulled a gun on him. He gave her a vague outline of the case, never mentioning its personal connection to himself and she seemed intrigued by the whole idea of solving a murder that happened thirty-three years earlier.
    The one glass of lemonade turned into four and the last two were spiked nicely with vodka. They took care of what was left of Bosch’s headache and put a nice bloom on everything. Between the third and the fourth she asked if he would mind if she smoked and he lit cigarettes for both of them. And as the sky darkened over the mangroves outside, he finally turned the conversation toward her. Bosch had sensed a loneliness about her, a mystery of some sort. Behind the pretty face there were scars. The kind that couldn’t be seen.
    Her name was Jasmine Corian but