He punched the name Thomas Cerrone into the computer and ran a search on the California Department of Justice information network. As he expected, he got a hit. The computer file on Cerrone, who was forty years old, showed he had been popped nine times in as many years for soliciting for prostitution and twice for pandering.

He was a pimp, Bosch knew. Kaminski’s pimp. Harry noticed that Cerrone was on thirty-six months’ probation for his last conviction. He got out his black telephone book and rolled his chair over to a desk with a phone. He dialed the after-hours number for the county probation department and gave the clerk who answered Cerrone’s name and DOJ number. She gave back Cerrone’s current address. The pimp had come down in the world, from Studio City to Van Nuys, since Kaminski had gone to the Hyatt and not come back.

After hanging up, he thought of calling Sylvia and wondered if he should tell her it was likely he would be called by Chandler to testify the next day. He was unsure if he wanted her to be there, to see him cornered on the witness stand by Money Chandler. He decided not to call.

Cerrone’s home address was an apartment on Sepulveda Boulevard in an area where prostitutes were not too discreet about how they got their customers. It was still daylight and Bosch counted four young women spread apart over a two-block stretch. They wore halter tops and short shorts. They held their thumb out like hitchhikers when cars went by. But it was clear they were only interested in a ride around the corner to a parking lot where they could take care of business.

Bosch parked at the curb across from the Van-Aire Apartments, where Cerrone had told his probation officer he was living. A couple of the numbers from the address had fallen off the front wall but it was readable because the smog had left the rest of the wall a dingy beige. The place needed new paint, new screens, some plastering to fill in the cracks in the facade and probably new tenants.

Actually, it needed to be knocked down. Start over, Bosch thought as he crossed the street. Cerrone’s name was on the residents list next to the front security door but no one answered the buzzer at apartment six. Bosch lit a cigarette and decided to hang around for a while. He counted twenty-four units on the residents list. It was six o’clock. People would be coming home for dinner. Someone would come along.

He walked away from the door and back out to the curb. There was graffiti on the sidewalk, all of it in black paint. The monikers of the local home-boys. There was also a scrip painted in block letters that asked, R U THE NEX RODDY KING? He wondered how someone could misspell a name that had been heard and printed so many times.

A woman and two young children came to the steel-grated door from the other side. Bosch timed his approach so that he was at the door just as she opened it.

“Have you seen Tommy Cerrone around?” he asked as he passed her.

She was too busy with the children to answer. Bosch walked into the courtyard to get his bearings and to look for a door with a six on it-Cerrone’s apartment. There was graffiti on the concrete floor of the courtyard, a gang insignia Bosch couldn’t make out. He found number six on the first floor toward the back. There was a rusted-out hibachi grill on the ground next to the door. There was also a child’s bike with training wheels parked under the front window.

The bike didn’t fit. Bosch tried to look in but the curtains were drawn, leaving only a three-inch band of darkness he could not see beyond. He knocked on the door and as was his practice, stepped to the side. A Mexican woman with what looked like an eight-month pregnancy beneath her faded pink bathrobe answered the door. Behind the small woman Bosch could see a young boy sitting on the living room floor in front of a black-and-white TV tuned to a Spanish language channel.

“Hola,”Bosch said.“Señor Tom Cerrone aquí?”

The woman stared at him with frightened eyes. She seemed to close in on herself, as if to get smaller before him. Her arms moved up from her side and closed over her swollen belly.

“No migra,”Bosch said.“Policía. Tomás Cerrone. Aquí?”

She shook her head no and began to close the door. Bosch put his hand out to stop it. Struggling with his Spanish he asked if she knew Cerrone and where he was. She said he only came once a week to collect the mail and the rent. She moved back a step and gestured to the card table where there was a small stack of mail. Bosch could see an American Express bill on top. Gold Card.

“Teléfono? Necesidad urgente?”

She looked down from his eyes and her hesitation told him she had a number.

“Por favor?”

She told him to wait and she left the doorway. While she was gone the boy sitting ten feet inside the door turned from the TV-Bosch could see it was some kind of game show-and looked at him. Bosch felt uncomfortable. He looked away, into the courtyard. When he looked back the boy was smiling. He had his hand up and was pointing a finger at Bosch. He made a shooting sound and giggled. Then the mother was back at the door with a piece of paper. There was a local phone number on it, that was all.

Bosch copied it down in a small notebook he carried and then told her he would take the mail. The woman turned and looked at the card table as if the answer to what she should do was sitting on it with the mail. Bosch told her it would be okay and she finally lifted the stack and handed it to him. The frightened look was in her eyes again.

He stepped back and was going to walk away when he stopped and looked back at her. He asked how much the rent was and she told him it was one hundred dollars a week. Bosch nodded and walked away.

Out on the street he walked down to a pay phone that was in front of the next apartment complex. He called the downtown communications center, gave the operator the phone number he had just gotten and said he needed an address. While he waited he thought about the pregnant woman and wondered why she stayed. Could things be worse back in the Mexican town she came from? For some, he knew, the journey here was so difficult that returning was out of the question.

As he was flipping through Cerrone’s mail, one of the hitchhikers walked up to him. She wore an orange tank top over her surgically augmented breasts. Her cutoff jeans were cut so high above the thighs that the white pockets hung out below. In one of the pockets he could see the distinctive shape of a condom package. She had the gaunt, tired look of a strawberry-a woman who would do anything, anytime, anywhere to keep crack in her pipe. Factoring in her deteriorated appearance, he put her age at no more than twenty. To Bosch’s surprise, she said, “Hey, darling, looking for a date?”

He smiled and said, “You’re going to have to be more careful than that, you want to stay out of the cage.”

“Oh, shit,” she said and turned to walk away.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Don’t I know you? Yeah, I know you. It’s… what’s your name, girl?”

“Look, man, I’m not talking to you and I’m not blowing you, so I gotta go.”

“Wait. Wait. I don’t want anything. I just thought, you know, that we’d met. Aren’t you one of Tommy Cerrone’s girls? Yeah, that’s where I met you.”

The name put a slight stutter in her step. Bosch let the phone dangle by its cord and caught up to her. She stopped.

“Look, I’m not with Tommy anymore, okay? I gotta go to work.”

She turned from him and put her thumb out as a wave of southbound traffic started by.

“Wait a minute, just tell me something. Tell me where Tommy is these days. I need to get with him on something.”

“On what? I don’t know where he is.”