The Narrows

away from them and put his hands on his hips, striking a pose that showed the burden that weighed upon him as the only intelligent and savvy agent left on the planet. "Then let us go back up there," Rachel said. "Maybe in the debris we'll find something that-"
    "No!" Alpert yelled.
    He spun back around to them.
    "That won't be necessary, Agent Walling. You have done enough."
    "I know Backus and I know the case. I should be out there."
    "I decide who should be and shouldn't be out there. I want you to get back to the field office and start the paperwork on this fiasco. I want it on my desk by eight a.m. tomorrow. I want a detailed listing of everything you saw inside that trailer."
    He waited to see if she would argue the order. Rachel remained silent and this seemed to please him.
    "Now, I've got the media all over this. What do we put out that doesn't give away the store and won't upstage the director tomorrow?"
    Dei shrugged.
    "Nothing. Tell them the director will address it tomorrow, end of story."
    "That won't work. We have to give them something."
    "Don't give them Backus," Rachel said. "Tell them agents wanted to speak to a man named Thomas Walling about a missing persons case. But Walling had rigged his trailer and it exploded while agents were on the premises."
    Alpert nodded. It sounded good to him.
    "What about Bosch?"
    "I'd leave him out of it. We don't have any control over him. If a reporter got to him he might lay the whole thing out." "And the body. Do we say it was Walling?"
    "We say we don't know because we don't. ID is forthcoming, so on and so forth. That should be enough."
    "If the reporters go to the brothels they'll get the whole story."
    "No, they won't. We never told anyone the whole story."
    "By the way, what happened to Bosch?"
    Dei answered that one.
    "I took his statement and released him. Last I saw he was driving back to Vegas."
    "He'll keep quiet about this?"
    Dei looked at Rachel and then back at Alpert.
    "Put it this way, he isn't going to be looking to talk to anybody about it. And as long as we keep bis name out of it, there will be no reason for anyone to go looking for him."
    Alpert nodded. He dug a hand into one of his pockets and came out with a cell phone.
    "When we are finished here I have to call Washington. Gut reaction time: Was that Backus in that trailer?"
    Rachel hesitated, not wanting to respond first.
    "At this point there is no way to tell," Dei said. "If you are asking if you should tell the director that we got him, my answer right now is no, don't tell the director that. That could've been anybody in that trailer. For all we know it was an eleventh victim and we may never know who it was. Just somebody who went to one of the brothels and was intercepted by Backus."
    Alpert looked at Rachel, expecting her take.
    "The fuse," she said.
    "What about it?" "It was long. It was like he wanted me to see the body but not get too close. But he also wanted me to get out of there."
    "And?"
    "On the body there was a black cowboy hat. I remember there was a man on my plane from Rapid City in a black cowboy hat."
    "For chrissake, you were flying from South Dakota. Doesn't everybody wear cowboy hats there?"
    "But he was there, with me. I think this whole thing was a setup. The note in the bar, the long fuse, the photos in the trailer and the black hat. He wanted me to get out of there in time to tell the world he was dead."
    Alpert didn't respond. He looked down at the phone in his hands.
    "There's too much we don't know yet, Randal," Dei offered.
    He shoved the phone back into his pocket.
    "Very well. Agent Dei, is your car here?"
    "Yes."
    "Take Agent Walling to the field office now."
    They were dismissed, but not before Alpert looked at Rachel and threw one more grimace at her.
    "Remember, Agent Walling, my desk by eight."
    "You got it," Rachel said.

CHAPTER 35
    Eleanor Wish answered my knock and that surprised me. She stepped back to let me in.
    "Don't look at me that way, Harry," she said. "You have this impression that I'm never here and that I work every night and leave her with Marisol. I don't. I work three or four nights a week and that's usually it."
    I raised my hands in surrender and she saw the bandage around my right palm.
    "What happened to you?"
    "Cut myself on a piece of metal."
    "What metal?"
    "It's a long story."
    "That thing up in the desert today?"
    I nodded.
    "I should have known. Is that going to hurt you playing the saxophone?"
    Bored with retirement, I