“Olivas?”

“Yeah. You brought the file?”

“I brought the file.”

“Then come on back, Hotshot.”

Olivas headed back toward the door he had come through. Rider made a move to follow but Bosch put his hand on her arm. When Olivas looked back and saw they were not following him, he stopped.

“You coming or not?”

Bosch took a step toward him.

“Olivas, let’s get something clear before we go anywhere. You call me ‘Hotshot’ again and I’m going to shove the file up your ass without taking it out of my briefcase.”

Olivas raised his hands in surrender.

“Whatever you say.”

He held the door and they followed him into the internal hallway. They went down a long corridor and took two rights before coming to O’Shea’s office. It was a large space, particularly by district attorney’s office standards. Most of the time prosecutors shared offices, two or four to a room, and held their meetings in strictly scheduled interview rooms at the end of each hallway. But O’Shea’s office was double-sized with room for a piano-crate desk and a separate seating area. Being the head of Special Prosecutions obviously had its perks. Being the heir apparent to the top job did as well.

O’Shea welcomed them from behind his desk, standing up to shake hands. He was about forty and handsome with jet-black hair. He was short, as Bosch already knew, even though he had never met him before. He had noticed while catching some of the TV coverage of the Waits prelim that most of the reporters who gathered around O’Shea in the hallway outside the courtroom were taller than the man they pointed their microphones at. Personally, Bosch liked short prosecutors. They were always trying to make up for something and usually it was the defendant who ended up paying the price.

Everybody took seats, O’Shea behind his desk, Bosch and Rider in chairs facing him, and Olivas to the right side of the desk in a chair positioned in front of a stack of RICK O’SHEA ALL THE WAY posters leaning against the wall.