“Jesus Christ!”

Chu had recently moved out to Pasadena. The commute to South Bureau would be a nightmare.

“Well, what did you tell her?” he demanded. “Did you stick up for me?”

“South is a good gig, man. I told her you’d get seasoned down there in two years. It would take five anywhere else.”

“Harry!”

Bosch started laughing. It was a good release. The impending meeting with Irving was weighing on him. It was coming and he wasn’t sure yet how to play it.

“Are you shitting me?” Chu cried, fully turned in his seat now. “Are you fucking shitting me?”

“Yes, I’m fucking shitting you, Chu. So chill out. All she told me was that my DROP came through. You’re going to have to put up with me for another three years and three months, okay?”

“Oh. . well, that’s good, right?”

“Yes, that’s good.”

Chu was too young to worry about things like the DROP. Almost ten years before, Bosch had taken a full pension and retired from the department in an ill-advised decision. After two years as a citizen he came back under the department’s Deferred Retirement Option Plan, which was designed to keep experienced detectives in the department and doing the work they did best. For Bosch that was homicide. He was a retread with a seven-year contract. Not everybody in the department was happy with the program, especially divisional detectives hoping for a shot at some of the prestige slots in the downtown Robbery-Homicide Division.

Department policy allowed for one extension of the DROP of three to five years. After that, retirement was mandated. Bosch had applied for his second contract the year before and, bureaucracy being what it was in the department, waited more than a year for the news the lieutenant gave him, going well past his original DROP date. He had been anxious while waiting, knowing that he could be dismissed from the department immediately if the police commission decided not to extend his stay.