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.”“All right.Say hello to He the she for me.”“Funny, Dad.Just don’t send me any more pictures of lungs, okay?”“Next time it will be a liver.Or maybe a spleen.Spleens photograph real nice.”“Daaaadd!”He closed the phone and let her go.He thought about what had been said during the conversation.It seemed to him that the weeks and months between seeing Maddie were getting more difficult.As she became her own person and grew more bright and communicative, he loved her more and missed her all the time.She had just been out to L.A.in July, taking the long flight for the first time on her own.Barely a teenager and already a world traveler, she was wise beyond her years.He’d taken off work and they’d enjoyed two weeks of doing things together, exploring the city.It had been a wonderful time for him and at the end it was the first time she had ever mentioned wanting to live in Los Angeles.With him.Bosch was smart enough to realize that these sentiments were expressed after two weeks of full-time attention from a father who began each day by asking what she wanted to do.It was far different from the full-time commitment of her mother, who raised her day after day while making a living for them.Still, the toughest day Bosch had ever had as a part-time father was the day he took his daughter back to the airport and put her on the plane to fly home alone.He half expected her to bolt and run, but she got on under protest and then was gone.He’d felt a hollowness inside ever since.Now his next vacation and trip to Hong Kong wasn’t scheduled for another month and he knew it was going to be a long, tough wait until then.“Harry, what are you doing out here?”Bosch turned.His partner, Ferras, was standing there, having come out of the squad room, probably to use the restroom.“I was talking to my daughter.I wanted some privacy.”“She all right?”“She’s fine.I’ll meet you back in the squad.”Bosch headed toward the door, putting his phone back in his pocket.11Bosch got home at eight that night, coming through the door with a to-go bag from the In-N-Out down on Cahuenga.“Honey, I’m home,” he called out as he struggled with the key, the bag and his briefcase.He smiled to himself and went directly into the kitchen.He put his briefcase down on the counter, grabbed a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and went out to the deck.Along the way he turned on his CD player, leaving the sliding door open so the music could mingle on the deck with the sound of the 101 Freeway down in the pass.The deck was positioned with a northeasterly view stretching across Universal City, Burbank and on to the San Gabriel Mountains.Harry ate his two hamburgers, holding them over the open bag to catch drippings, and watched the dying sun change the colors of the mountain slopes.He listened to “Seven Steps to Heaven” off Ron Carter’s Dear Miles album.Carter was one of the most important bassists of the last five decades.He had played with everybody and Bosch often wondered about the stories he could tell, the sessions he’d sat in on and the musicians he knew.Whether on his own recordings or on somebody else’s, Carter’s work always stood out.Harry believed this was because as a bassist he could never really be a sideman.He was always the anchor.He always drove the beat, even if it was behind Miles Davis’s horn.The song now playing had an undeniable momentum to it.Like a car chase.It made Bosch think about his own chase and the advances that had been made through the day.He was satisfied with his own momentum but uncomfortable with the realization that he had moved the case to a point where he was now reliant on the work of others.He had to wait for others to identify the triad bagman.He had to wait for others to decide whether to use the bullet casing as a test case for their new fingerprint technology.He had to wait for somebody to call.Bosch was most at home in a case when he was pushing the action himself, setting the track for others to follow.He wasn’t a sideman.He had to drive the beat.And at this juncture he had pushed it just about as far as he could.He started thinking about his next moves and the options were few.He could start hitting Chinese-owned businesses in South L.A.with the photo of the triad bagman.But he knew it would likely be an exercise in futility.The cultural divide was wide.No one would willingly identify a triad member to the police.Nevertheless, he was prepared to go that route if nothing else broke soon.It would at least keep him moving.Momentum was momentum, whether you found it in music or on the street or in the beat of your own heart.As the light started to disappear from the sky, Bosch reached into his pocket and pulled out the book of matches he always carried [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]