Elliot agreed to the two hours and we were about to end the conversation, when I thought of something else.

"Walter, I want to see the crime scene. Can I get into the house in Malibu tomorrow sometime before we meet?"

Again there was a pause.

"When?"

"You tell me what will work."

Again he covered the phone and I heard his m.u.f.fled conversation with Mrs. Albrecht. Then he came back on the line with me.

"How about eleven? I'll have someone meet you there to let you in."

"That'll work. See you tomorrow, Walter."

I closed the phone and looked at Cisco in the mirror.

"We got him."

Cisco hit the Lincoln's horn in celebration. It was a long blast that made the driver in front of us hold up a fist and send us back the finger. Out in the street the striking writers took the blast as a sign of support from inside the hated studio. I heard a loud cheer go up from the ma.s.ses.

Fifteen

Bosch arrived early the next morning. He was alone. His peace offering was the extra cup of coffee he carried and handed over to me. I don't drink coffee anymore-trying to avoid any addiction in my life-but I took it from him anyway, thinking that maybe the smell of caffeine would get me going. It was only 7:45 but I had been in Jerry Vincent's office for more than two hours already.

I led Bosch back into the file room. He looked more tired than I felt and I was pretty sure he was in the same suit he'd been wearing when I saw him the day before.

"Long night?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah."

"Chasing leads or chasing tail?"

It was a question I had once heard one detective ask another in a courthouse hallway. I guess it was a question reserved for brothers of the badge because it didn't go over so well with Bosch. He made some sort of guttural noise and didn't answer.

In the file room I told him to have a seat at the small table. There was a yellow legal tablet on the table, but no files. I took the other seat and put my coffee down.

"So," I said, picking up the legal pad.

"So," Bosch said when I offered nothing else.

"So I met with Judge Holder in chambers yesterday and worked out a plan by which we can give you what you need from the files without actually giving you the files."

Bosch shook his head.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"You should've told me this yesterday at Parker Center," he said. "I wouldn't have wasted my time."

"I thought you'd appreciate this."

"It's not going to work."

"How do you know that? How can you be sure?"

"How many homicides have you investigated, Haller? And how many have you cleared?"

"All right, point taken. You're the homicide guy. But I am certainly capable of reviewing files and discerning what const.i.tuted a legitimate threat to Jerry Vincent. Possibly because of my experience as a criminal defense attorney I could even perceive a threat that you would miss in your capacity as a detective."

"So you say."

"Yeah, I say."

"Look, all I'm pointing out here is the obvious. I'm the detective. I'm the one who should look through the files because I know what I am looking for. No offense, but you are an amateur at this. So I'm in a position here where I have to take what an amateur is giving me and trust that I'm getting everything there is to get from the files. It doesn't work that way. I don't trust the evidence unless I find it myself."

"Again, your point is well taken, Detective, but this is the way it is. This is the only method Judge Holder approved, and I gotta tell you that you're lucky to get this much. She wasn't interested in helping you out at all."

"So you're saying you went to bat for me?"

He said it in a disbelieving, sarcastic tone, as if it were some sort of a mathematical impossibility for a defense attorney to help a police detective.

"That's right," I said defiantly. "I went to bat for you. I told you yesterday, Jerry Vincent was a friend. I'd like to see you take down the person who took him down."

"You're probably worried about your own a.s.s, too."

"I'm not denying that."

"If I were you I would be."

"Look, do you want the list or not?"

I held the legal pad up as if I were teasing a dog with a toy. He reached for it and I pulled it back, immediately regretting the move. I quickly handed it to him. It was an awkward exchange, like shaking hands had been the day before.

"There are eleven names on that list, with a brief summary of the threat each made to Jerry Vincent. We were lucky that Jerry thought it was important to memorialize an account of each threat he received. I've never done that."

Bosch didn't respond. He was reading the first page of the legal pad.

"I prioritized them," I said.

Bosch looked at me and I knew he was ready to step on me again for a.s.suming the role of detective. I raised a hand to stop him.

"Not from the standpoint of your investigation. From the standpoint of being a lawyer. Of putting myself in Jerry Vincent's shoes and looking at these things and determining which ones would concern me the most. Like the first one on that list. James Demarco. The guy goes away on weapons charges and thinks Jerry f.u.c.ked up the case. A guy like that can get a gun as soon as he gets out."

Bosch nodded and dropped his eyes back to the legal pad. He spoke without looking up from it.

"What else do you have for me?"

"What do you mean?"

He looked at me and waved the pad up and down as if it were as light as a feather and the information on it was equally so.

"I'll run these names and see where these guys are at now. Maybe your gunrunner is out and about and looking for revenge. But these are dead cases. Most likely if these threats were legit, they would've been carried out long ago. Same with any threats he got when he was a prosecutor. So this is just busywork you're giving me, Counselor."

"Busywork? Some of those guys threatened him when they were being led off to prison. Maybe some of them are out. Maybe one just got out and made good on the threat. Maybe they contracted it out from prison. There are a lot of possibilities and they shouldn't be dismissed as just busywork. I don't understand your att.i.tude on this."

Bosch smiled and shook his head. I remembered my father doing the same thing when he was about to tell me as a five-year-old that I had misunderstood something.

"I don't really care what you think about my att.i.tude," he said. "We'll check your leads out. But I'm looking for something a little more current. Something from Vincent's open cases."

"Well, I can't help you there."

"Sure you can. You have all the cases now. I a.s.sume you are reviewing them and meeting all your new clients. You're going to come across something or see something or hear something that doesn't fit, that doesn't seem right, that maybe scares you a little bit. That's when you call me."

I stared at him without answering.

"You never know," he said. "It might save you from..."

He shrugged and didn't finish, but the message was clear. He was trying to scare me into cooperating far more than Judge Holder was allowing, or than I felt comfortable with.

"It's one thing sharing threat information from closed cases," I said. "It's another thing entirely to do it with active cases. And besides that, I know you are asking for more than just threats. You think Jerry stumbled across something or had some knowledge that got him killed."

Bosch kept his eyes on me and slowly nodded. I was the first to look away.

"What about it being a two-way street, Detective? What do you know that you aren't telling me? What was in the laptop that was so important? What was in the portfolio?"

"I can't talk to you about an active investigation."

"You could yesterday when you asked about the FBI."

He looked at me and squinted his dark eyes.

"I didn't ask you about the FBI."

"Come on, Detective. You asked if he had any federal cases. Why would you do that unless you have some sort of federal connection? I'm guessing it was the FBI."

Bosch hesitated. I had a feeling I had guessed right and now he was in a corner. My mentioning the bureau would make him think I knew something. Now he would have to give in order to get.

"This time you go first," I prompted.

He nodded.

"Okay, the killer took Jerry Vincent's cell phone-either off his body or it was in his briefcase."

"Okay." "I got the call records yesterday right before I saw you. On the day he was killed he got three calls from the bureau. Four days before that, there were two. He was talking to somebody over there. Or they were talking to him."

"Who?"

"I can't tell. All outgoing calls from over there register on the main number. All I know is he got calls from the bureau, no names."

"How long were the calls?"

Bosch hesitated, unsure what to divulge. He looked down at the tablet in his hand and I saw him grudgingly decide to share more. He was going to get angry when I had nothing to share back.

"They were all short calls."

"How short?"

"None of them over a minute."

"Then, maybe they were just wrong numbers."

He shook his head.

"That's too many wrong numbers. They wanted something from him."

"Anybody from there check in on the homicide investigation?"

"Not yet."

I thought about this and shrugged.

"Well, maybe they will and then you'll know."

"Yeah, and maybe they won't. It's not their style, if you know what I mean. Now your turn. What do you have that's federal?"

"Nothing. I confirmed that Vincent had no federal cases."

I watched Bosch do a slow burn as he realized I had played him.

"You're telling me you have found no federal connections? Not even a bureau business card in that office?"

"That's right. Nothing."

"There's been a rumor going around about a federal grand jury looking into corruption in the state courts. You know anything about that?"

I shook my head.

"I've been on the shelf for a year."

"Thanks for the help."