The Narrows

we can provide it," Mecca said. "We got a license."
    "Okay, what happens when a guy drives all the way up from Vegas and gets too drunk to drive home?"
    "He can sleep it off," she responded. "He can take a room if he pays for it."
    "What if he wants to get back? What if he needs to get back?"
    "He can call over here and the mayor will take care of it. The driver will take him back in his car and then the driver just catches a ride back like with one of the casino cars or something. It works out."
    I nodded. It worked out for my theory as well. Rockland could have gotten drunk and had to be driven back by the driver, Backus. Only he wasn't driven back to Vegas. I knew I would have to ask Rachel to check the remains identified as Rockland's for a high alcohol level. It would be another confirmation.
    "Mister, are we gonna have to stay here all day?" Mecca asked. "I don't know," I said as I looked up at the trailer door.
    Rachel tried to keep her voice low because Billings Rett was at the other end of the bar acting like he was doing a crossword puzzle, when she knew he was trying to listen to and understand everything she was saying and that could be heard from the phone.
    "What's the ETA?" she asked.
    "We'll be in the air within twenty and then another twenty to you," Cherie Dei said. "So sit tight, Rachel."
    "Got it."
    "And Rachel, I know you. I know what you will want to do. Stay out of the suspect's trailer until we can go in there with an ERT. Let them do their job."
    Rachel almost told Dei that the fact was that she didn't know her, that she couldn't begin to understand the first thing about her. But she didn't.
    "Got it," she said instead.
    "What about Bosch?" Dei asked next.
    "What about him?"
    "I want him kept away from this."
    "That will be sort of hard since he found the place. This is all because of him."
    "I understand that but we would have gotten there eventually. We always do. We'll thank him but we have to brush him aside after that."
    "Well, you get to tell him that."
    "I will. So are we set? I've got to get over to Nellis."
    "All set. See you inside the hour." "Rachel, one last thing, why didn't you drive up there?"
    "It was Bosch's hunch, he wanted to drive. What's the difference?"
    "You were giving him control of the situation, that's all."
    "That's second-guessing after the fact. We thought we might get a line on the missing men, not be led right to-"
    "That's fine, Rachel. I shouldn't have brought it up. I have to go."
    Dei hung up on her end. Rachel couldn't hang up because the phone was stretched from the back wall and over the bar. She held it up to Rett and he put down his pencil and came over. He took the phone and hung it up.
    'Thank you, Mr. Rett. In about an hour a couple helicopters are going to land here. Probably right in front of this trailer. Agents will want to talk to you. More formally than I did. They will probably talk to a lot of people in your town."
    "Not good for business."
    "Probably not, but the faster people cooperate, the faster they'll take off and be out of here."
    She didn't mention anything about the horde of media that would also probably descend on the place once it was revealed publicly that the little brothel town in the desert was where the Poet had holed up unnoticed for all of these years and had chosen his latest victims.
    "If the agents ask where I am, tell them I went up to Tom Walling's trailer, okay?"
    "Sounded like you were getting told not to go up there." "Mr. Rett, just tell them what I asked you to tell them."
    "Will do."
    "By the way, have you been up there since he came in here and told you he was leaving for a while?"
    "No, I haven't managed to get up there. He paid the rent on the place so I didn't think it was my business to snoop around his things. That's not the way we are here in Clear."
    Rachel nodded.
    "Okay, Mr. Rett, thanks for your cooperation."
    He shrugged as if to say he either had no choice or his cooperation was minimal. Rachel turned from the bar and headed for the door. But just as she got there she hesitated. She reached inside her blazer and pulled the extra magazine for her Sig Sauer off her belt. She hefted its weight once in her hand and then slipped it into the pocket of her blazer. She then went out the door and got into the Mercedes next to Bosch.
    "So," he said, "is Agent Dei mad?"
    "Nope. We just brought in the case break, how could she be mad?"
    "I don't know. Some people have the ability to be mad no matter what you