The paper was gray like Moore ’s skin. Bosch thought he could see one line of blue writing on the paper. Irving looked over at him as if seeing him for the first time.

“Bosch, you will have to go.”

Harry wanted to ask what the note said but knew he would be rejected. He saw a satisfied smirk on Chastain’s face.

At the yellow tape he stopped to light another cigarette. He heard the clicking of high heels and turned to see one of the reporters, a blonde he recognized from Channel 2, coming at him with a wireless microphone in her hand and a model’s phoney smile on her face. She moved in on him in a well-practiced and quick maneuver. But before she could speak Harry said, “No comment. I’m not on the case.”

“Can’t you just-”

“No comment.”

The smile dropped off her face as quick as a guillotine’s blade. She turned away angrily. But within a moment her heels were clicking sharply again as she moved with her cameraman into position for the A-shot, the one her report would lead with. The body was coming out. The strobes flared and the six cameramen formed a gauntlet. The two medical examiner’s men, pushing the covered body on a gurney, passed through it on the way to the waiting blue van. Harry noticed that a grim-faced Irving, walking stoically erect, trailed behind-but not far enough behind to be left out of the video frame. After all, any appearance on the nightly news was better than none, especially for a man with an eye on the chief’s office.

After that, the crime scene began to break up. Everybody was leaving. The reporters, cops, everybody. Bosch ducked under the yellow tape and was looking around for Donovan or Sheehan when Irving came up on him.

“Detective, on second thought, there is something I need you to do that will help expedite matters. Detective Sheehan has to finish securing the scene here. But I want to beat the media to Moore ’s wife. Can you handle next-of-kin notification? Of course, nothing is definite but I want his wife to know what is happening.”

Bosch had made such a show of indignation earlier, he couldn’t back away now. He wanted part of the case; he got it.

“Give me the address,” he said.

A few minutes later Irving was gone and the uniforms were pulling down the yellow tape. Bosch saw Donovan heading to his van, carrying the shotgun, which was wrapped in plastic, and several smaller evidence bags.

Harry used the van’s bumper to tie his shoe while Donovan stowed the evidence bags in a wooden box that had once carried Napa Valley wine.

“What do you want, Harry? I just found out you weren’t supposed to be here.”

“That was before. This is now. I just got put on the case. I got next-of-kin duty.”

“Some case to be put on.”

“Yeah, well, you take what they give. What did he say?”

“Who?”

“ Moore.”

“Look, Harry, this is-”

“Look, Donnie, Irving gave me next of kin. I think that cuts me in. I just want to know what he said. I knew this guy, okay? It won’t go anywhere else.”

Donovan exhaled heavily, reached into the box and began sorting through the evidence bags.

“Really didn’t say much at all. Nothing that profound.”

He turned on a flashlight and put the beam on the bag with the note in it. Just one line.

I found out who I was

The address Irving had given him was in Canyon Country, nearly an hour’s drive north of Hollywood. Bosch took the Hollywood Freeway north, then connected with the Golden State and took it through the dark cleft of the Santa Susanna Mountains. Traffic was sparse. Most people were inside their homes eating roasted turkey and dressing, he guessed. Bosch thought of Cal Moore and what he did and what he left behind.

I found out who I was.

Bosch had no clue to what the dead cop had meant by the one line scratched on a small piece of paper and placed in the back pocket. Harry’s single experience with Moore was all he had to go on. And what was that? A couple of hours drinking beer and whiskey with a morose and cynical cop. There was no way to know what had happened in the meantime. To know how the shell that protected him had corroded.

He thought back on his meeting with Moore. It had been only a few weeks before and it had been business, but Moore ’s problems managed to come up. They met on a Tuesday night at the Catalina Bar amp; Grill. Moore was working but the Catalina was just a half block south of the Boulevard. Harry was waiting at the bar in the back corner. They never charged cops the cover.

Moore slid onto the next stool and ordered a shot and a Henry’s, the same as Bosch had on the bar in front of him. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that hung loose over his belt. Standard undercover attire and he looked at home in it. The thighs of the jeans were worn gray. The sleeves of the sweatshirt were cut off and peeking from below the frayed fringe of the right arm was the face of a devil tattooed in blue ink. Moore was handsome in a rugged way, but he was at least three days past needing a shave and he had a look about him, an unsteadiness-like a hostage released after long captivity and torment. In the Catalina crowd he stood out like a garbage man at a wedding. Harry noticed that the narc hooked gray snakeskin boots on the side rungs of the stool. They were bulldoggers, the boots favored by rodeo ropers because the heels angled forward to give better traction when taking down a roped calf. Harry knew street narcs called them “dustbusters” because they served the same purpose when they were taking down a suspect high on angel dust.

They smoked and drank and small-talked at first, trying to establish connections and boundaries. Bosch noticed that the name Calexico truly represented Moore ’s mixed heritage. Dark complexioned, with hair black as ink, thin hips and wide shoulders, Moore’s dark, ethnic image was contradicted by his eyes. They were the eyes of a California surfer, green like anti-freeze. And there was not a trace of Mexico in his voice.

“There’s a border town named Calexico. Right across from Mexicali. Ever been there?”

“I was born there. That’s how come I got the name.”

“I’ve never been.”

“Don’t worry, you haven’t missed much. Just a border town like all the rest. I still go on down every now and then.”

“Family?”

“Nah, not anymore.”

Moore signaled the bartender for another round, then lit a cigarette off the one he had smoked down to the filter.

“I thought you had something to ask about,” he said.

“Yeah, I do. I gotta case.”

The drinks arrived and Moore threw his shot back in one smooth movement. He had ordered another before the bartender had finished writing on the tab.

Bosch began to outline his case. He had caught it a few weeks earlier and so far had gotten nowhere. The body of a thirty-year-old male, later identified through fingerprints as James Kappalanni of Oahu, Hawaii, was dumped beneath the Hollywood Freeway crossing over Gower Street. He had been strangled with an eighteen-inch length of baling wire with wooden dowels at the ends, the better to grip the wire with after it had been wrapped around somebody’s neck. Very neat and efficient job. Kappallani’s face was the bluish gray color of an oyster. The blue Hawaiian, the acting chief medical examiner had called him when she did the autopsy. By then Bosch knew through NCIC and DOJ computer runs that in life he had also been known as Jimmy Kapps, and that he had a drug record that printed out about as long as the wire somebody had used to take his life.

“So it wasn’t too big a surprise when the ME cut him open and found forty-two rubbers in his gut,” Bosch said.