“And he bonded out in the morning. Seven-thirty.”

“Yeah. Okay? I don’t get it.”

“Look who bailed him out.”

“Terry, I’m at my parents’. I don’t have -”

“Right, sorry. He was bailed out by Rudy Tafero.”

Silence. McCaleb was at the pier. He walked out toward the gangway that led down to the skiff dock and leaned on the railing. He cupped his free hand over his ear again.

“Okay, he was bailed out by Rudy Tafero,” Winston said. “I assume he is a licensed bail bondsman. What does that mean?”

“You haven’t been watching your TV. You’re right, Tafero is a licensed bail bondsman – at least he put a license number on the bail sheet. But he’s also a PI and security consultant. And – ready for this – he works for David Storey.”

Winston didn’t say anything but McCaleb could hear her breathing into the phone.

“Terry, I think you better slow down. You are reading too much into this.”

“No coincidences, Jaye.”

“What coincidence? The man’s a bail bondsman. It’s what he does. He gets people out of jail. I’ll bet you a box of doughnuts his office is right across the street from Hollywood station with all the others. He probably bails every third drunk and fourth prostitute out of the tank there.”

“You don’t believe it’s that simple and you know it.”

“Don’t tell me what I believe.”

“This was when he was in the middle of preparing for Storey’s trial. Why would Tafero come over and write a duice ticket himself?”

“Because maybe he’s a one-man show and maybe, like I said, all he had to do was cross the street.”

“I don’t buy it. And there’s something else. On his booking slip it says Gunn got his one phone call at three A.M. December thirty-first. The number’s on the slip – he called his sister in Long Beach.”

“Okay, what about it? We knew that.”

“I called her today and asked if she’d called a bondsman for him. She said no. She said she was tired of getting calls in the middle of the night and literally bailing him out all the time. She told him he was on his own this time.”

“So he went with Tafero. What about it?”

“How’d he get him? He already used his call.”

Winston had no answer for that. They were both silent for a while. McCaleb looked out across the harbor. The yellow taxi boat was moving slowly down one of the fairways, empty except for the man at the wheel. Men alone in their boats, McCaleb thought.

“What are you going to do?” Winston finally asked. “Where are you going with this?”

“I’m coming back across tonight. Can you meet me in the morning?”

“Where? When?”

The tone of her voice revealed that she was put out by the prospect of a meeting.

“Seven-thirty, out front at the Hollywood station.”

There was a pause and then Winston said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I can’t do this. If Hitchens gets wind of it, that will be the end. He’ll ship me out to Palmdale. I’ll spend the rest of my career pulling bones out of the desert sand.”

McCaleb was ready for that protest.

“You said the bureau guys want the murder book back, right? You meet me, I’ll have it with me. What’s Hitchens going to say about that?”

There was silence as Winston considered this.

“Okay, that’ll work. I’ll be there.”

When Bosch got home that evening he found the message light on his phone machine was blinking. He pushed the button and listened to two messages, one from each of the prosecutors on the Storey case. He decided to call Langwiser back first. As he punched her number into the phone, he wondered what urgency had caused both members of the prosecution team to call him. He thought maybe they had been contacted by the FBI agents McCaleb had mentioned. Or possibly by the reporter.

“What’s up?” he asked when Langwiser answered. “With both of you guys calling me I know it must be big and bad.”

“Harry? How are you?”

“Hanging in. What do you two have cooking?”

“It’s funny you should mention that. Roger’s on his way over and I’m going to cook tonight. We’re going to go over Annabelle Crowe’s grand jury testimony one more time. You want to come by?”

He knew she lived up in Agua Dulce, an hour’s drive north.

“Uh, you know what, I’ve been driving all day. Down to Long Beach and back. You think you really need me there?”

“Totally optional. Just didn’t want you to feel left out. But that’s not why we were calling.”

“What was the reason?”

He was in the kitchen, sliding a six-pack of Anchor Steam onto a shelf in the refrigerator. He pulled one bottle out of its sleeve and closed the door.

“Roger and I have been conferencing all weekend about this. We also talked to Alice Short about it.”

Alice Short was a chief deputy who was in charge of major trials. Their boss. It sounded as though they had been contacted about the Gunn case.

“What’s the ‘it’ you’re talking about?” Bosch asked. He slid the bottle into the opener and yanked down, popping the cap.

“Well, we think the case has really gone by the numbers. Really fallen together. In fact, it’s bulletproof, Harry, and we think we should pull the trigger tomorrow.”

Bosch was quiet a moment while he tried to decipher all the weaponry coding.

“You’re saying you’re going to rest tomorrow?”

“We think so. We’ll probably talk about it again tonight but we have Alice’s blessing and Roger really thinks it’s the right move. What we’d do is put on a bunch of cleanup wits in the morning and then bring Annabelle Crowe out after lunch. We’d end with her – a human story. She’ll be our closer.”

Bosch was speechless. It might be the right move from a prosecutorial point of view. But that would put J. Reason Fowkkes in control of things as early as Tuesday.

“Harry, what do you think?”

He took a long pull on the bottle. The beer wasn’t that cold. It had been in the car for a while.

“I think you only get one shot,” he said, continuing the weaponry imagery. “You two better think long and hard about it tonight while you’re making the pasta. You don’t get a second chance to put on a case.”

“We know, Harry. And how’d you know I was making pasta?”

He could hear the smile in her voice.

“Lucky guess.”

“Well, don’t worry, we’ll think long and hard. We have been.”

She paused, allowing him a chance to respond but he was silent.

“In case we go this way, what’s the status on Crowe?”

“She’s waiting in the wings. Good to go.”

“Can you reach her tonight?”

“No problem. I’ll tell her to be there by noon tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Harry. See you in the morning.”

They hung up. Bosch thought about things. He wondered if he should call McCaleb and tell him what was happening. He decided to wait. He walked out into the living room and turned on the stereo. The Art Pepper CD was still in the play slot. The music soon filled the room.