“That was before. This is now. I just got put on the case. I got next-of-kin duty.”
“Some case to be put on.”
“Yeah, well, you take what they give. What did he say?”
“Who?”
“ Moore.”
“Look, Harry, this is-”
“Look, Donnie, Irving gave me next of kin. I think that cuts me in. I just want to know what he said. I knew this guy, okay? It won’t go anywhere else.”
Donovan exhaled heavily, reached into the box and began sorting through the evidence bags.
“Really didn’t say much at all. Nothing that profound.”
He turned on a flashlight and put the beam on the bag with the note in it. Just one line.
I found out who I was
3
The address Irving had given him was in Canyon Country, nearly an hour’s drive north of Hollywood. Bosch took the Hollywood Freeway north, then connected with the Golden State and took it through the dark cleft of the Santa Susanna Mountains. Traffic was sparse. Most people were inside their homes eating roasted turkey and dressing, he guessed. Bosch thought of Cal Moore and what he did and what he left behind.
I found out who I was.
Bosch had no clue to what the dead cop had meant by the one line scratched on a small piece of paper and placed in the back pocket. Harry’s single experience with Moore was all he had to go on. And what was that? A couple of hours drinking beer and whiskey with a morose and cynical cop. There was no way to know what had happened in the meantime. To know how the shell that protected him had corroded.
***
He thought back on his meeting with Moore. It had been only a few weeks before and it had been business, but Moore ’s problems managed to come up. They met on a Tuesday night at the Catalina Bar amp; Grill. Moore was working but the Catalina was just a half block south of the Boulevard. Harry was waiting at the bar in the back corner. They never charged cops the cover.