“Bosch, you look. You listen. I’ve been working since six last night and this is the seventh scene I’ve been to. We got drive-bys, floaters, a sex case. People are dying to meet us, Bosch. There is no rest for the weary, and that means no time for what you think might be a case. Listen to your partner for once. This one is going on the routine schedule. That means we’ll get to it by Wednesday, maybe Thursday. I promise Friday at the latest. And tox results is at least a ten-day wait, anyway. You know that. So what’s your goddam hurry?”

“Are. Tox resultsare at least a ten-day wait.”

“Fuck off.”

“Just tell Sally I need the prelim done today. I’ll be by later.”

“Christ, Bosch, listen to what I’m telling you. We’ve got bodies on gurneys stacked in the hall that we already know are one eighty-sevens and need to be cut. Salazar is not going to have time for what looks to me and everybody else around here except you like a hype case. Cut and dried, man. What am I going to say to him that’s going to make him do the cut today?”

“Show him the finger. Tell him there were no tracks in the pipe. Think of something. Tell him the DB was a guy who knew needles too well to’ve OD’d.”

Sakai put his head back against the van’s side panel and laughed loudly. Then he shook his head as if a child had made a joke.

“And you know what he’ll say to me? He’ll say that it doesn’t matter how long he’d been spiking. They all fuck up. Bosch, how many sixty-five-year-old junkies do you see around? None of them go the distance. The needle gets them all in the end. Just like this guy in the pipe.”

Bosch turned and looked around to make sure none of the uniforms were watching and listening. Then he turned back to Sakai’s face.

“Just tell him I’ll be by there later,” he said quietly. “If he doesn’t find anything on the prelim, then fine, you can stick the body at the end of the line in the hall, or you can park it down at the gas station on Lankershim. I won’t care then, Larry. But you tell him. It’s his decision, not yours.”