The Reversal

like we’ve got ourselves a witness. Many thanks to you, Mr. Clinton.”
    We shook hands and then I gestured to Bosch.
    “Harry, I should have asked you, did we cover everything?”
    Bosch stood up as well.
    “I think so. For now. I’ll take Mr. Clinton back to his shop.”
    “Excellent. Thank you again, Mr. Clinton.”
    Clinton stood up.
    “Please call me Bill.”
    “We will, I promise. We’ll call you Bill and we’ll call you as a witness.”
    Everybody laughed in that phony way and then Bosch shepherded Clinton out of the office. I went back to my desk and sat down.
    “So tell me about the hat,” I said to Maggie.
    “It’s a good connection,” she said. “When we interviewed Sarah she remembered that Kloster radioed from the bedroom down to the street and had them make Jessup take off his hat. That was when she made the ID. Harry then looked through the case file and found a property list from Jessup’s arrest. The Dodgers hat was on there. We’re still trying to track his property—hard to do after twenty-four years. But it might have gone up to San Quentin. Either way, if we don’t have the hat, we have the list.”
    I nodded. This was good on a number of levels. It showed witnesses independently corroborating each other, put a crack in any sort of defense contention that memories cannot be trusted after so many years and, last but not least, showed state of mind of the defendant. Jessup knew he was somehow in danger of being identified. Someone had seen him abduct the girl.
    “All right, good,” I said. “What do you think about the initial stuff, about how there was competition between them and somebody was going to get laid off? Maybe two of them.”
    “Again, it’s good state-of-mind material. Jessup was under pressure and he acted out. Maybe this whole thing was about that. Maybe we should put a shrink on the witness list.”
    I nodded.
    “Did you tell Bosch to find and interview Clinton?”
    She shook her head.
    “He did it on his own. He’s good at this.”
    “I know. I just wish he’d tell me a little more about what he’s up to.”

Eighteen
    Thursday, February 25, 11 A.M .
    R achel Walling wanted to meet at an office in one of the glass towers in downtown. Bosch went to the address and took the elevator up to the thirty-fourth floor. The door to the offices of Franco, Becerra & Itzuris, attorneys-at-law, was locked and he had to knock. Rachel answered promptly and invited him into a luxurious suite of offices that was empty of lawyers, clerks and anybody else. She led him to the firm’s boardroom, where he saw the box and files he had given her the week before on a large oval table. They entered and he walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over downtown.
    Bosch couldn’t remember being up so high in downtown. He could see all the way to Dodger Stadium and beyond. He checked out the civic center and saw the glass-sided PAB sitting next to the Los Angeles Times building. His eyes then scanned toward Echo Park and he remembered a day there with Rachel Walling. They had been a team then, in more ways than one. But now that seemed so long ago.
    “What is this place?” he said, still staring out and with his back to her. “Where is everybody?”
    “There isn’t anybody. We just used this in a money-laundering sting. So it’s been empty. Half of this building is empty. The economy. This was a real law office but it went out of business. So we just sort of borrowed it. The management was happy for the government subsidy.”
    “They were washing money from drugs? Guns?”
    “You know I can’t say, Harry. I am sure you’ll read about it in a few months. You’ll put it together then.”
    Bosch nodded as he remembered the firm’s name on the door. Franco, Becerra & Itzuris: FBI. Clever.
    “I wonder if management will tell the next tenants that this place was used by the bureau to take down some bad people. Friends of those bad people could come looking.”
    She didn’t respond to that. She just invited him to sit down at the table. He did, taking a good look at her as she sat across from him. Her hair was down, which was unusual. He had seen her that way before but not while she was on duty. The dark ringlets framed her face and helped direct attention to her dark eyes.
    “The firm’s refrigerator is empty or I’d offer you something to drink.”
    “I’m fine.”
    She opened the box and started taking out the files he had given