The Overlook

said. “Alone.”
    “Have a great time,” Brenner said. “We’ll be in here trying to track the cesium, maybe save a few lives.”
    Walling and Bosch didn’t respond. She led him down the hall. Just as they were at the door to the elevator hall Bosch heard a voice from behind him.
    “Hey, buddy!”
    He turned just in time to take Agent Maxwell’s shoulder in the chest. He was driven into the wall and held up against it.
    “You’re a little outnumbered this time, aren’t you, Bosch!”
    “Stop!” Walling shouted. “Cliff, stop it!”
    Bosch brought his arm up around Maxwell’s head and was going to pull him down into a headlock. But Walling waded in and pulled Maxwell away and then pushed him back up the hallway.
    “Cliff, get back! Get away!”
    Maxwell started moving backwards up the hall. He pointed a finger over Walling’s shoulder at Bosch.
    “Get out of my building, motherfucker! Get out and stay out!”
    Walling shoved him into the first open office and then closed the door on him. By then several other agents had come into the hallway to see what the commotion was about.
    “It’s all over,” Walling announced. “Everybody just go back to work.”
    She came back to Bosch and pushed him through the door to the elevator.
    “You okay?”
    “Only hurts when I breathe.”
    “Son of a bitch! That guy is getting out of control.”
    They took the elevator down to the garage level and walked from there up an incline and out onto Los Angeles Street. She turned right and he caught up. They were heading away from the noise of the freeway. She checked her watch and then pointed toward an office building of modern design and construction.
    “There’s decent coffee in there,” she said. “But I don’t want to take a lot of time.”
    It was the new Social Security Administration building.
    “Another federal building,” Bosch sighed. “Agent Maxwell might think that’s his, too.”
    “Can you drop that, please?”
    He shrugged.
    “I’m just surprised Maxwell even admitted we came back to the house.”
    “Why wouldn’t he?”
    “Because I figured he was posted on the house because he was already in the doghouse for being a fuckup. Why admit that we got the drop on him and have to stay in there longer?”
    Walling shook her head.
    “You don’t understand,” she said. “First of all, Maxwell has been wound a little tight lately but no one in Tactical Intelligence is in the doghouse. The work is too important to have any fuckups on the team. Secondly, he didn’t care what anyone would think. What he did think was that it was important for everyone to know about the way
you’re
fucking things up.”
    He tried another direction.
    “Let me ask you something. Do they know about you and me over there? Our history, I mean.”
    “It would be hard for them not to know after Echo Park. But, Harry, never mind all of that. That is not important today. What is wrong with you? We’ve got enough cesium out there to shut down an airport and you don’t seem all that concerned. You are looking at this like it’s a murder. Yes, a man is dead but that isn’t what this is about. It’s a heist, Harry. Get it? They wanted the cesium and now they’ve got it. And it would help us if maybe we could talk to the only known witness. So where is he?”
    “He’s safe. Where’s Alicia Kent? And where’s her husband’s partner?”
    “They’re safe. The partner is being questioned here and we’re keeping the wife at Tactical until we are sure we have everything there is to get from her.”
    “She’s not going to be very helpful. She couldn’t-”
    “That’s where you are wrong. She’s already been quite helpful.”
    Bosch couldn’t hold back the look of surprise in his eyes.
    “How? She said she didn’t even see their faces.”
    “She didn’t. But she heard a name. When they were speaking to each other, she heard a name.”
    “What name? She didn’t say this before.”
    Walling nodded.
    “And that is why you should turn over your witness. We have people who have one expertise: getting information from witnesses. We can get things that you are unable to get. We got them from her, we can get them from him.”
    Bosch felt his face turning red.
    “What was the name this master interrogator got from her?”
    She shook her head.
    “We’re not trading, Harry. This is a case involving national security. You’re on the outside. And by the way, that’s not going to change no matter who you get