Harry stepped away from the body while Sakai and Osito unfolded a black, heavy plastic bag with a zipper running up the center. Once the body bag was unfolded and opened, the coroner’s men lifted Meadows and placed him inside.

“Looks like Rip Van-fucking-Winkle,” Edgar said as he walked up.

Sakai zipped the bag up and Bosch saw a few of Meadows’s curling gray hairs had been caught in the zipper. Meadows wouldn’t mind. He had once told Bosch that he was destined for the inside of a body bag. He said everybody was.

Edgar held a small notepad in one hand, a gold Cross pen in the other.

“William Joseph Meadows, 7-21-50. That sound like him, Harry?”

“Yeah, that’s him.”

“Well, you were right, we have multiple contacts. But not just hype shit. We’ve got bank robbery, attempted robbery, possession of heroin. We got a loitering right here at the dam a year or so ago. And he did have a couple hype beefs. The one in Van Nuys you were talking about. What was he to you, a CI?”

“No. Get an address?”

“Lives up in the Valley. Sepulveda, up by the brewery. Tough neighborhood to sell a house in. So if he wasn’t an informant, how’d you know this guy?”

“I didn’t know him-at least recently. I knew him in a different life.”

“What does that mean? When did you know the guy?”

“Last time I saw Billy Meadows was twenty years ago, or thereabouts. He was-it was in Saigon.”

“Yeah, that’d make it about twenty years.” Edgar walked over to the Polaroids and looked down at the three faces of Billy Meadows. “You know him good?”