driver standing next to the limo, waiting. There was nobody left in the cemetery.
"There is something I hope you will tell me," she said. "Either now or sometime. If you can, I mean . . . Um, is he . . . is there a chance he will be back?"
Bosch looked at her and slowly shook his head. He studied her eyes for reaction. Sadness or fear, even complicity. There was none. She looked down at her gloved hands, which grasped each other in front of her dress.
"My driver . . . ," she said, not finishing the thought. She tried a polite smile and for the hundredth time he asked himself what had been wrong with Calexico Moore. She took a step forward and touched her hand to his cheek. It felt warm, even through the silk glove, and he could smell perfume on her wrist. Something very light. Not really a smell. A scent.
"I guess I should go," she said.
He nodded and she backed away.
"Thank you," she said.
He nodded. He didn't know what he was being thanked for but all he could do was nod.
"Will you call? Maybe we could . . . I don't know I—"
"I will call."
Now she nodded and turned to walk back to the black limousine. He hesitated and then spoke up.
"You like jazz? The saxophone?"
She stopped and turned back to him. There was sharpness in her eyes. That need for touch. It was so clear he could feel it cut him. He thought maybe it was his own reflection.
"Especially the solos," she said. "The ones that are lonely and sad. I love those."
"There is . . . is tomorrow night too soon?"
"It's New Year's Eve."
"I know. I was thinking . . . I guess it might not be the right time. The other night—that was . . . I don't know."
She walked back to him and put her hand on his neck and pulled his face down to hers. He went willingly. They kissed for a long time and Bosch kept his eyes closed. When she let him go he didn't look to see if anyone was watching. He didn't care.
"What is a right time?" she asked.
He had no answer.
"I'll be waiting for you."
He smiled and she smiled.
She turned for the last time and walked to the car, her high heels clicking on the asphalt once she left the carpet of grass. Bosch leaned back against the tree and watched the driver open the door for her. Then he lit a cigarette and watched as the sleek black machine carried her out through the gate and left him alone with the dead.
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Michael Connelly!
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LOST LIGHT
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March 2004.
1
THE LAST THING I EXPECTED WAS for Alexander Taylor to answer his own door. It belied everything I knew about Hollywood. A man with a billion-dollar box-office record answered the door for nobody. Instead, he would have a uniformed man posted full-time at his front door. And this doorman would only allow me entrance after carefully checking my identification and appointment. He would then hand me off to a butler or the first-floor maid, who would walk me the rest of the way in, footsteps falling as silent as snow as we went.
But there was none of that at the mansion on Bel-Air Crest Road. The driveway gate had been left open. And after I parked in the front turnaround circle and knocked on the door, it was the box-office champion himself who opened it and beckoned me into a home whose dimensions could have been copied directly from the international terminal at LAX.
Taylor was a large man. Over six feet and 250 pounds. He carried it well, though, with a full head of curly brown hair and contrasting blue eyes. The hair on his chin added the highbrow look of an artist to this image, though art had very little to do with the field in which he toiled.
He was wearing a soft blue running suit that probably cost more than everything I was wearing. A white towel was wrapped tightly around his neck and stuffed into the collar. His cheeks were pink, his breathing heavy and labored. I had caught him in the middle of something and he seemed a little put out by it.
I had come to the door in my best suit, the ash gray single-breasted I had paid twelve hundred dollars for three years before. I hadn't worn it in over nine months