The Overlook

trouble. It didn’t come out right and he stopped.
    “He not here yet,” the counterman said.
    Relieved he hadn’t missed him, Bosch paid for the coffee and put the change in the tip jar. He went to an empty table in the corner. It was mostly a takeout operation at this time of morning. People grabbing fuel on their way into work. For ten minutes Bosch watched a cross section of the city’s culture step up to the counter, all united by the addiction to caffeine and sugar.
    Finally, he saw the black Town Car pull in. The chief was riding in the front passenger seat. Both he and the driver got out. Both scanned their surroundings and headed toward the doughnut shop. Bosch knew the driver was an officer and served as a bodyguard as well.
    There was no line at the counter when they came in.
    “Hiyou, Chief,” the counterman said.
    “Good morning, Mr. Ming,” the chief responded. “I’ll have the usual.”
    Bosch stood up and approached. The bodyguard, who was standing behind the chief, turned and squared himself in Bosch’s direction. Bosch stopped.
    “Chief, can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Bosch asked.
    The chief turned and did a double take when he recognized Bosch and realized he wasn’t a citizen wanting to make nice. For a moment Bosch saw a frown move across the man’s face-he was still dealing with some of the fallout from the Echo Park case-but then it quickly disappeared into impassivity.
    “Detective Bosch,” he said. “You’re not here to give me bad news, are you?”
    “More like a heads-up, sir.”
    The chief turned away to accept a cup of coffee and a small bag from Ming.
    “Have a seat,” he said. “I have about five minutes and I’ll pay for my own coffee.”
    Bosch went back to the same table as the chief paid for his coffee and doughnuts. He sat down and waited while the chief took his purchase to another counter and put cream and sweetener into his coffee. Bosch believed that the chief had been good for the department. He had made a few missteps politically and some questionable choices in command staff assignments but had largely been responsible for raising the morale of the rank and file.
    That was no easy task. The chief had inherited a department operating under a federal consent decree negotiated in the wake of the FBI’s Rampart corruption probe and myriad other scandals. All aspects of operation and performance were subject to review and compliance assessment by federal monitors. The result was that the department was not only answering to the feds but was awash in federal paperwork. Already an undersized department, it was hard sometimes to see where any police work was getting done. But under the new chief the rank and file had somehow pulled together to get the job done. Crime stats were even down, which to Bosch meant there was a good possibility that actual crime was down as well-he viewed crime statistics with suspicion.
    But all of that aside, Bosch liked the chief for one overarching reason. Two years earlier he had given Bosch his job back. Bosch had retired and gone private. It didn’t take him long to realize it was a mistake and when he did, the new chief welcomed him back. It made Bosch loyal and that was one reason he was forcing the meeting at the doughnut shop.
    The chief sat down across from him.
    “You’re lucky, Detective. Most days I would have been here and gone an hour ago. But I worked late last night hitting Crime Watch meetings in three parts of the city.”
    Rather than open his doughnut bag and reach in, the chief tore it down the middle so he could spread it and eat his two doughnuts off it. He had a powdered-sugar and a chocolate-glazed.
    “Here’s the most dangerous killer in the city,” he said as he raised the chocolate-glazed doughnut and took a bite.
    Bosch nodded.
    “You’re probably right.”
    Bosch smiled uneasily and tried an icebreaker. His old partner Kiz Rider had just come back to work after recovering from gunshot wounds. She transferred out of Robbery-Homicide to the chief’s office, where she had worked once before.
    “How’s my old partner doing, Chief?”
    “Kiz? Kiz is good. She does fine work for me and I think she’s in the right spot.”
    Bosch nodded again. He did that a lot.
    “Are you in the right spot, Detective?”
    Bosch looked at the chief and wondered if he might already be questioning his jumping the chain of command. Before he could work up an answer the chief asked another question.
    “Are