To the left of the door was a six-stool bar with three shelves of glasses and take-your-pick poison behind it. There was no one in the bar but before Rachel or Bosch could call out a hello, a set of black curtains to the left of the bar split and a man stepped out, his eyes creased with sleep even though it was almost noon.

"Can I he'p you? Kind a' early, idn't it?"

Rachel hit him with the credentials and that seemed to crack his eyes open a little wider. He was in his early sixties, she guessed, though his unkempt bed hair and the unshaven white stubble on his cheeks may have skewed her estimate.

He nodded as though he had just solved some sort of internal mystery.

"So you're the sister, right?" he asked.

"Excuse me?"

"You're Tom's sister, right? He said you might come."

"Tom who?"

"Tom Walling. Who do you think?"

"We're looking for a man named Tom who drives customers from the brothels. Is that Tom Walling?"

"That's what I'm telling you. Tom Walling was my driver. He told me that one day his sister might come here looking for him. He never said she was no FBI agent."

Rachel nodded, trying to cover the jolt. It wasn't necessarily the surprise that buzzed her. It was the audacity and the deeper meaning, the magnitude of Backus's plan.

"What is your name, sir?"

"Billings Rett. I own this place and I'm also the mayor around here."

"The mayor of Clear." "That's right."

Rachel felt something tap her arm and looked down to see the file containing the photos. Bosch was giving it to her but staying back. He seemed to know things had suddenly swung. This was now more about her than Terry McCaleb, or even Bosch. She took the file and removed one of the photographs McCaleb had taken of the fishing client known to him as Jordan Shandy. She showed it to Billings Rett.

"Is that the man you knew of as Tom Walling?" Rett spent only a few seconds looking at the photo. "That's it. Right down to that Dodgers hat. We get all the games here on the dish and Tom was Dodger blue through and through." "He drove a car for you?" "The only car. I'm not that big of an operation." "And he told you his sister would come here?" "No, he said she might. And he gave me something." He turned and looked at the shelves behind the bar. He saw what he was looking for and reached up to the top shelf. He pulled down an envelope and handed it to Rachel. The envelope left a rectangle in the dust on the glass shelf. It had been up there awhile.

The envelope had her full name on it. She turned her body slightly as if to shield it from Bosch and started to open it.

"Rachel," Bosch said. "Should you process it first?" "It doesn't matter. I know it's from him." She tore the envelope open and pulled out a three-by-five card. She started to read the handwritten note on it. Dear Rachel,

If as I hope you are the first to read this, then I have taught you well. I hope this finds you in good health and spirits. Most of all, I hope this means you have survived your interment within the bureau and are back on top. I hope he who taketh away can also giveth back. It was never my intention, Rachel, to doom you. It is my intention now, with my last act, to save you.

Good-bye, Rachel. R

She reread it quickly and then handed it over her shoulder to Bosch. As he read she continued with Billings Rett.

"When did he give you that and what exactly did he say?"

"It was about a month ago, give or take a few days, and it was when he told me he was leaving. He paid me the rent, said he wanted to keep the place, and he gives me the card and says that it's for his sister and that she might come by looking for him. And here you are."

"I'm not his sister," she snapped at him. "When did he first come to Clear?"

"Hard to remember, three or four years ago."

"Why did he come here?"

Rett shook his head.

"Beats me. Why do people go to New York City? Everybody's got their reasons. He didn't share his particular reason with me."

"How did he end up driving for you?" "He was in here shootin' balls one day and I asked him if he needed some work. He said he wouldn't mind and it went from there. It's not a full-time gig. Just when we get a call for somebody looking for a ride. Most people drive themselves up here."

"And back then, three or four years ago, he told you his name was Tom Walling?"

"No, he told me that when he rented the trailer from me. That was when he first got here."

"What about a month ago? Did you say he paid rent and then left?"

"Yeah, he said he'd be back and wanted to keep the place. He rented it up through August. But he went traveling and I haven't heard from him."

From outside the trailer an alarm sounded. The Mercedes. Rachel turned to Bosch but he was already heading to the door.

"I got it," he said.

He went through the door, leaving Rachel alone with Rett. She turned back to him.

"Did Tom Walling ever tell you where he came from?"

"No, he never mentioned it. He didn't talk much."

"And you never asked."

"Honey, you don't ask questions in a place like this. People that come here, they don't like answering questions. Tom, he liked to do the driving and pick up a few bucks and every now and then he'd come in and shoot a game by hisself. He didn't drink, he just chewed gum. He never messed with the whores and he was never late on a pickup. All that was fine by me. The guy I got driving now, he's always-" "I don't care about the guy you've got now."

The bell rang behind her and she turned to see Bosch coming through. He nodded to her, telling her everything was all right.

"They tried the door. I guess the child lock doesn't work."

She nodded and turned her attention back to Rett, proud mayor of a brothel town.

"Mr. Rett?" she asked. "Where is Tom Waiting's placeT'

"He's got the single-wide on the ridge west of town."

Rett smiled, revealing a rotten tooth on the front lower row, and continued.

"He liked being outside of town. He told me he didn't like being so close to all the excitement around here. So I set him up out there behind Titanic Rock."

"Titanic Rock?"

"You'll know when you get there-if you saw the movie. One of these smart-ass rock climbers that comes out here marked it, too. You'll see it. Just take the road behind this place west and you'll be all right. Just look for the ship going down."

I was outside with the two women in the Mercedes, running the air-conditioning and cooling them down. Rachel was still inside on the bar's phone talking to Cherie Dei and coordinating the arrival of backup. My guess was that agents would soon drop out of the sky in helicopters and descend on Clear, Nevada, in force. The trail was fresh. They were close.

I tried to talk to the two girls-it was hard to think of them as women despite what they did for a living and even though they were old enough. They probably knew everything there was to know about men but they didn't seem to know anything about the world. In my mind they were just girls who had taken wrong turns or been kidnapped and taken away from womanhood. I was beginning to understand what Rachel had said earner.

"Did Tom Walling ever come into the trailer and hire any of the girls?" I asked.

"Not that I seen," Tammy said. "Somebody said he was probably queer or something," Mecca added.

"Why did they say that?"

"'Cause he lived like a hermit or something," Mecca replied. "An' he never wanted no pussy even though Tawny would' ve thrown him some on the house like with the other drivers."

"Are there a lot of drivers?"

"He was the only one from around here," Tammy said quickly, apparently not liking Mecca in the lead. "The others come up from Vegas. Some of 'em work for the casinos."