I held my hands out as though I had nothing to hide.

“I’m not sure what you can do for me. I just wanted to drop by and sort of introduce myself. I’m working on the Angella Benton case and of course that includes the BankLA case so… here I am.”

“Oh, man, BankLA. That’s some serious ancient history there.”

He looked at his partner and laughed.

“That was like another lifetime ago. I don’t want to go there, man. That’s a bad memory.”

“Yeah, well, not as bad for you as it was for Angella Benton.”

Simonson suddenly got serious and leaned forward on his desk.

“I don’t get this, man. What are you doing here? You’re not a cop. Cops come in twos. If you are a cop, then you aren’t legit. What do you want? Let me see a badge.”

“I didn’t tell anybody I had a badge. I was a cop, but not now. In fact, I thought maybe you’d recognize me from that other lifetime you were talking about.”

Simonson looked at Oliphant and smirked.

“Recognize you from what?”

“I was there that day you took it in the ass. I’m talking about the bullet. But then again, you were rolling around and screaming so much you probably didn’t have time to look at me.”

But Simonson’s eyes widened in recognition. Maybe not physical recognition but recognition of who I was and what I had done.

“Shit, you’re the guy. You’re the cop that was there. You’re the one who shot -”

He stopped himself from saying a name. He looked at Oliphant.

“He’s the one who hit one of the robbers.”

I looked at Oliphant and I saw recognition-physical recognition-and maybe something like hate or anger in his eyes.

“That’s not known for sure because we never got the robber. But, yeah, I think I hit him. That was me.”

I said it with a smile of pride. I kept it on my face as I turned back to Simonson.

“Who are you working for?” Simonson asked.

“Me? I’m working for somebody who isn’t going to stop, who isn’t going to let up. Not for a minute. He’s going to find out who put Angella Benton down on the tile and he’ll go at it until he either dies or he knows.”

Simonson smirked again arrogantly.

“Well, good luck to you and him, Mr. Bosch. I think you ought to go now. We’re kind of busy here.”

I nodded to him and then looked at Oliphant, giving him the best deadeye in my repertoire.

“Then I guess I’ll see you boys around.”

I went through the door and down the hallway back to the bar. Chet Baker was now singing “My Funny Valentine.” As I headed for the main door I noticed the bartender flexing her bicep for two men sitting at the bar where I had stood. They were laughing. I recognized them as the remaining two kings from the magazine photo.

They stopped laughing when they saw me and I felt their eyes on me all the way out the door.

On the way home I stopped at the twenty-four-hour Ralph’s on Sunset and bought a bag of coffee. I didn’t expect that I’d be getting much sleep between the night and the multi-agency confab the following morning.

On the drive up the hill to my house there are too many curves to use the rearview mirror to check for a tail. But there is one sweeping curve halfway up that allows you to look to your right out the passenger window and across the drop-off to the road you just covered. It’s always been my habit to slow at this spot and check for a trailer.

This night I slowed more than usual and watched a little longer. I didn’t expect my visit to Chet’s to be taken as anything other than a threat and I wasn’t wrong. As I looked across the drop-off I saw a car with no lights on round the hill and move into the sweeping curve. I eased the gas pedal down and slowly picked up speed again. After the next curve I punched it and put a little more distance between us. I pulled all the way into the carport next to my house and quickly got out with the bag from the store. I moved into the darkest corner of the carport and waited. I heard the trail car before I saw it. Then I watched it glide by. A long Jaguar. Someone was lighting a cigarette in the backseat, and in the glow from the flame I saw the car was full. The four kings were coming for me.

After the Jag had gone by I saw the bushes across the street glow red and I knew they were stopping just past my house. I moved to the door that led into the kitchen and went inside, making sure to lock the door afterward.

This was the moment when people without badges called the police for help. It’s when they desperately whispered, “Hurry, please! They are coming!” But badge or no badge, I knew that was not an option for me now. This was my play and I didn’t care in that moment about what authority I had or didn’t have.

I had not carried a gun since the night I left my badge and service pistol in a drawer at Hollywood Division and walked out. But I had a weapon. I’d bought a Glock P7 for personal protection. It was wrapped in an oil rag and in a box on the shelf of the walk-in closet in the bedroom. I put the bag from Ralph’s down on the counter and moved into the hallway and down to the bedroom without turning on any lights.

When I opened the closet door I was suddenly shoved backwards with great force by a man who had been waiting in there for me. I hit the opposite wall and slid to the floor. He was on me immediately, straddling and pushing the barrel of a pistol up under my jaw. I managed to look up and in the pale light coming in through the French door leading to the deck I could see who it was.

“Milton. What the -”

“Shut up, asshole. You surprised to see me? Did you think I was going to let them wash me down the toilet without doing something about it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Listen, there are people -”

“I said, shut the fuck up. I want the disks, you understand? I want the original data chip.”

“Listen to me! There are people about to come in here for me. They want -”

He shoved the barrel in so deep under my jaw that I had to stop talking. The pain sent shards of red glass across my vision. Milton held the gun there and leaned down, his breath in my face as he spoke.

“I’ve got your gun right here, Bosch. And I’m going to turn you into another suicide statistic if you don’t -”

There was a sudden crashing sound from the hallway and I knew it was the front door coming in off its hinges. Then there were footsteps. Milton jumped up off of me and stepped through the bedroom door into the hallway. Almost immediately, there was the booming thunder of a shotgun blast and Milton was slammed back against the wall, his eyes wide with the terror of knowing he was dying. He then slid down the wall, his heels pushing back the hallway rug to reveal the handle of the trapdoor that led beneath the house.

I knew they had mistaken him for me. It was a break worth a few seconds at the most. I rolled over and quickly moved to the French door. As I opened it I heard someone’s panicked voice call out from the hallway.

“It’s not him!”

The door squealed when I opened it, its hinges protesting from lack of use. I quickly crossed the deck and went over the railing like a cowboy mounting a stolen horse. I went down the railing until I was hanging from the deck, twenty feet above the sharply sloping ground below. In the dim moonlight I looked for one of the iron support beams that held the deck and house to the side of the hill. I was intimately familiar with the design of the house from having supervised its reconstruction from the ground up after the ’ninety-four earthquake.

I had to move six feet along the edge of the deck before I could reach in and grab hold of one of the support beams. I wrapped my arms and legs around it and slid down to the ground. As I went down I heard their footsteps on the deck above me.

“He went down there! He went down there!”