“He’s got no local address,” he replied. “He’s a drifter. We just dropped him off at the Denny’s on Sunset. That’s where he wanted to go. We gave him a twenty to cover breakfast.”

Bosch felt Ferras staring at him as he lied.

“Can you hold a second, Harry?” Brenner said. “I’ve got another call coming in here. It might be Washington.”

Back to first names, Bosch noted.

“Sure, Jack, but I can just go.”

“No, hold on.”

Bosch heard the line go to music and he looked over at Ferras. His partner started to speak.

“Why’d you tell him we-”

Bosch held a finger to his lips and Ferras stopped.

“Just hold it a second,” Bosch said.

Half a minute went by while Bosch waited. A saxophone version of “What a Wonderful World” started to play on the phone. Bosch had always loved the line about the dark sacred night.

The light finally changed and Bosch turned onto Sunset. Then Brenner came back on the line.

“Harry? Sorry about that. That was Washington. As you can imagine, they’re all over this thing.”

Bosch decided to draw things out into the open.

“What’s new on your end?”

“Not a lot. Homeland is sending a fleet of choppers with equipment that can track a radiation trail. They’ll start up at the overlook and try to pick up a signature specific to cesium. But the reality is it’s got to come out of the pig before they’ll pick up a signal. Meantime, we’re organizing the status meeting so that we can make sure everybody’s on the same page.”

“That’s all the big G has accomplished?”

“Well, we’re just getting organized. I told you how it would be. Alphabet soup.”

“Right. You called it pandemonium. The feds are good at that.”

“No, I’m not sure I said all of that. But there’s always a learning curve. I think after the meeting we’ll be hitting this thing on all cylinders.”

Bosch now knew for sure that things had changed. Brenner’s defensive response told him the conversation was either being taped or overheard by others.

“It’s still a few hours till the meeting,” Brenner said. “What’s your next move, Harry?”

Bosch hesitated but not for long.

“My next move is to go back up to the house and talk to Mrs. Kent again. I have some follow-up. Then we’ll go over to the south tower at Cedars. Kent ’s office is there and we need to see it and to talk to his partner.”

There was no response. Bosch was coming up on the Denny’s on Sunset. He pulled into the lot and parked. Through the windows he could see that the twenty-four-hour restaurant was largely deserted.

“You still there, Jack?”

“Uh, yeah, Harry, I’m here. I should tell you that it probably won’t be necessary, you going back to the house and then by Kent ’s office.”

Bosch shook his head. I knew it, he thought.

“You’ve already scooped everybody up, haven’t you?”

“Wasn’t my call. Anyway, from what I hear, the office was clean and we have Kent ’s partner in here being questioned right now. We brought Mrs. Kent in as kind of a precautionary thing. We’re still talking to her, too.”

“Not your call? Then whose call was it, Rachel’s?”

“I’m not going to get into that, Harry.”

Bosch killed the car’s engine and thought about how to respond.

“Well, then maybe my partner and I should head downtown to TIU,” he finally said. “This is still a homicide investigation. And last I heard, I was still working it.”

There was a long thread of silence before Brenner responded.

“Look, Detective, the case is taking on larger dimensions. You have been invited to the status meeting. You and your partner. And at that time you will be updated on what Mr. Kelber has had to say and a few other things. If Mr. Kelber is still here with us I will do my best to get you in to speak with him. And with Mrs. Kent, too. But to be clear, the priority here is not the homicide. The priority is not finding out who killed Stanley Kent. The priority is finding the cesium and we’re now almost ten hours behind.”

Bosch nodded.

“I have a feeling that if you find the killer you find the cesium,” he said.

“That may be so,” Brenner responded. “But the experience is that this material is moved very quickly. Hand to hand. It takes an investigation with a lot of velocity. That’s what we’re engaged in now. Building velocity. We don’t want to be slowed down.”

“By the local yokels.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure. I’ll see you at ten, Agent Brenner.”

Bosch closed his phone and started to get out. As he and Ferras crossed the lot to the restaurant’s doors, his partner barraged him with questions.

“Why did you lie to him about the wit, Harry? What’s going on? What are we doing here?”

Bosch held his hands up in a calming motion.

“Hold on, Ignacio. Just hold on. Let’s sit down and have some coffee and maybe something to eat and I’ll tell you what is going on.”

They almost had their pick of the place. Bosch went to a booth in a corner that would allow them a clear view of the front door. The waitress came over quickly. She was an old battle-ax with her steel-gray hair in a tight bun. Working graveyard at a Denny’s in Hollywood had leached the life out of her eyes.

“Harry, it’s been a long time,” she said.

“Hey, Peggy. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve had to chase a case through the night.”

“Well, welcome back. What can I get you and your much younger partner?”

Bosch ignored the dig. He ordered coffee, toast and eggs-over medium well. Ferras ordered an egg-white omelet and a latte. When the waitress smirked and told him that neither could be accomplished he settled for scrambled eggs and regular coffee. As soon as the waitress left them alone Bosch answered Ferras’s questions.

“We’re being cut out,” he said. “That’s what’s going on here.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

“Because they’ve already scooped up our victim’s wife and partner and I can guaran-damn-tee you they are not going to let us talk to them.”

“Harry, did they say that? Did they tell you that we couldn’t talk to them? There’s a lot at stake here and I think you’re being a little paranoid. You’re jumping to-”

“Am I? Well, wait and see, partner. Watch and learn.”

“We’re still going to the meeting at nine, aren’t we?”

“Supposedly. Except now it’s at ten. And it will probably be a dog and pony show just for us. They’re not going to tell us anything. They’re going to sweet-talk us and brush us aside. ‘Thanks a lot, fellas, we’ll take it from here.’ Well, fuck that. This is a homicide and nobody, not even the FBI, brushes me off a case.”

“Have a little faith, Harry.”

“I have faith in myself. That’s it. I’ve been on this road before. I know where it goes. On the one hand, who cares? Let them run with the case. But on the other hand, I care. I can’t trust them to do it right. They want the cesium. I want the bastards who terrorized Stanley Kent for two hours and then forced him down on his knees and put two slugs in the back of his head.”

“This is national security, Harry. This is different. There’s a greater good here. You know, the good of the order.”

It sounded to Bosch like Ferras was quoting from an academy textbook or the code of some sort of secret society. He didn’t care. He had his own code.

“The good of the order starts with that guy lying dead on the overlook. If we forget about him, then we can forget about everything else.”

Nervous about debating his partner, Ferras had picked up the salt shaker and was manipulating it in his hand, spilling salt on the table.

“Nobody’s forgetting, Harry. It’s about priorities. I am sure that when things shake out during the meeting, they will share any information relating to the homicide.”

Bosch grew frustrated. He was trying to teach the kid something but the kid wasn’t listening.

“Let me tell you something about sharing with the feds,” Bosch said. “When it comes to sharing information, the FBI eats like an elephant and shits like a mouse. I mean, don’t you get it? There will be no meeting. They put that out there so we would stay in line until nine and now ten, all the while thinking we’re still part of the team. But then we’ll show up there and they’ll delay it again and then they’ll delay it again until they finally trot out with some organizational chart that’s supposed to make us feel like we’re part of everything when the reality is we’re part of nothing and they’ve run out the back door.”