And all of these obstacles were minor in comparison with the main difficulty-the victim was a thief killed during the commission of a crime. He had engaged in repeated offenses against the defendant. Would a jury even care that Nikolai Servan had set a fatal trap for him? Probably not, the prosecutor told Bosch and Edgar.

Bosch planned to go back to the pawnshop the following morning. In his personal ledger, everybody counted or nobody counted. That included burglars. He would look until he found the picks or the wire Servan had used to kill Monty Kelman.

As he approached the front doors of the retirement home he noticed that not much about it looked particularly splendid. It looked like a final stop for pensioners and people who hadn’t planned on living as long as they had. Quentin McKinzie, for example. Few jazzmen and drug users went the distance. He probably never thought he’d make it this far. According to the information Bosch got off the computer, he was seventy-two years old.

Bosch entered and walked up to a welcome counter. The place smelled like most of the low-rent retirement homes he had ever been in. Urine and decay, the end of hopes and dreams. He asked for directions to Quentin McKinzie’s room. The woman behind the counter suspiciously eyed the saxophone under Bosch’s arm.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked. “Evening visiting is by appointment only.”

“Is that to give you time to clean the place up before the kids come by to see dear old dad?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I don’t need an appointment. Where is Mr. McKinzie?”

He held his badge up, a foot from her face. She looked at it for a long moment-longer than it took to read it-and then cleared her throat.

“He’s in one-oh-seven. Down the hall on the left side. He’s probably sleeping.”