Trunk Music

in the sole that Donovan had noticed.
    Bosch’s eyes looked up from the ground and followed the trail into the brush and trees. He decided to take a few more steps in, lifted a branch of an acacia and ducked under it. After his eyes adjusted to the darkness under the canopy of foliage, they were drawn to a blue object he could see but not identify about twenty yards further into the dense growth. He would have to leave the trail to get to it, but he decided to investigate.
    After slowly moving ten feet into the brush, he could see that the blue object was part of a plastic tarp, the kind you saw on roofs all over the city after an earthquake knocked down chimneys and opened up the seams of buildings. Bosch stepped closer and saw that two corners of the tarp were tied to trees and it was hung over the branch of a third, creating a small shelter on a level portion of the hillside. He watched for a few moments but saw no movement.
    It was impossible to come up on the shelter quietly. The ground was covered with a thick layer of dead and dried leaves and twigs that crackled under Bosch’s feet. When he was ten feet from the canvas tarp, a man’s hoarse voice stopped him.
    “I’ve got a gun, you fuckers!”
    Bosch stood stock-still and stared at the tarp. Because it was draped over the long branch of an acacia tree, he was in a blind spot. He could not see whoever it was who had yelled. And the man who yelled probably couldn’t see him. Bosch decided to take a chance.
    “I’ve got one, too,” he called back. “And a badge.”
    “Police? I didn’t call the police!”
    There was a hysterical tinge to the voice now, and Bosch suspected he was dealing with one of the homeless wanderers who were dumped out of mental institutions during the massive cutbacks in public assistance in the 1980s. The city was teeming with them. They stood at almost every major intersection holding their signs and shaking their change cups, they slept under overpasses or burrowed like termites into the woods on the hillsides, living in makeshift camps just yards from million-dollar mansions.
    “I’m just passing through,” Bosch yelled. “You put down yours, I’ll put down mine.”
    Bosch guessed that the man behind the scared voice didn’t even have a gun.
    “Okay. It’s a deal.”
    Bosch unsnapped the holster under his arm but left his gun in place. He walked the final few steps and came slowly around the trunk of the acacia. A man with long gray hair and beard flowing over a blue silk Hawaiian shirt sat cross-legged on a blanket under the tarp. There was a wild look in his eyes. Bosch quickly scanned the man’s hands and the surroundings within his immediate reach and saw no weapon. He eased up a bit and nodded at the man.
    “Hello,” he said.
    “I didn’t do nothin’.”
    “I understand.”
    Bosch looked around. There were folded clothes and towels under the shelter of the tarp. There was a small folding card table with a frying pan on it along with some candles and Sterno cans, two forks and a spoon, but no knife. Bosch figured the man had the knife under his shirt or maybe hidden in the blanket. There was also a bottle of cologne on the table, and Bosch could tell that it had been liberally sprinkled about the shelter. Also under the tarp were an old tar bucket filled with crushed aluminum cans, a stack of newspapers and a dog-eared paperback copy of Stranger in a Strange Land.
    He stepped to the edge of the man’s clearing and squatted like a baseball catcher so they could face each other on the same level. He took a look around the outer edge of the clearing and saw that this was where the man discarded what he didn’t need. There were bags of trash and remnants of clothing. By the base of another acacia there was a brown-and-green suit bag. It was unzipped and lying open like a gutted fish. Bosch looked back at the man. He could see he wore two other Hawaiian shirts beneath the blue one on top, which had a pattern of hula girls on surfboards. His pants were dirty but had a sharper crease in them than a homeless man’s pants would usually have. His shoes were too well polished for a man of the woods. Bosch guessed that the pair he wore had made some of the prints up on the trail, the ones with the sharp-edged heels.
    “That’s a nice shirt,” Bosch said.
    “It’s mine.”
    “I know. I just said it was nice. What’s your name?”
    “Name’s George.”
    “George what?”
    “George whatever the hell you