"Are you hungry? We can go down to Gorky's or the Pantry."
"Yeah. Is Gorky's still open? I want some soup."
It took them fifteen minutes to wend their way through eight blocks of downtown traffic and to find a parking space. Inside Gorky's they ordered mugs of home-brewed Russian beer and Teresa had the chicken-rice soup.
"Long day, huh?" he offered.
"Oh, yeah. No lunch. Was in the suite for five hours." Bosch needed to hear about the Moore autopsy but knew he could not just blurt out a question. He would have to make her want to tell it.
"How was Christmas? You and your husband get together?"
"Not even close. It just didn't work. He never could deal with what I do and now that I have a shot at chief ME, he resents it even more. He left Christmas Eve. I spent Christmas alone. I was going to call my lawyer today to tell her to resume filing but I was too busy."
"Should've called me. I spent Christmas with a coyote."
"Ahh. Is Timido still around?"
"Yeah, he still comes around every now and then.
There was a fire across the pass. I think it spooked him."
"Yeah, I read about that. You were lucky."
Bosch nodded. He and Teresa Corazón had had an on-and-off relationship for four months, each meeting sparked with this kind of surface intimacy. But it was a relationship of convenience, firmly grounded on physical, not emotional, needs and never igniting into deep passion for either of them. She had separated earlier in the year from her husband, a UCLA Medical School professor, and had apparently singled Harry out for her affections. But Bosch knew he was a secondary diversion. Their liaisons were sporadic, usually weeks apart, and Harry was content to allow Teresa to initiate each one.
He watched her bring her head down to blow onto a spoonful of soup and then sip it. He saw slices of carrot floating in the bowl. She had brown ringlets that fell to her shoulders. She held some of the tresses back with her hand as she blew on another spoonful and then sipped. Her skin was a deep natural brown and there was an exotic, elliptical shape to her face accentuated by high cheekbones. She wore red lipstick on full lips and there was just a whisper of fine white peach fuzz on her cheeks. He knew she was in her mid-thirties but he had never asked exactly how old. Lastly, he noticed her fingernails. Unpolished and clipped short, so as not to puncture the rubber gloves that were the tools of her trade.
As he drank the heavy beer from its heavy stein, he wondered if this was the start of another liaison or whether she really had come to tell him of something significant in the autopsy results of Juan Doe #67.
"So now I need a date for New Year's Eve," she said, looking up from the soup. "What are you staring at?"
"Just watching you. You need a date, you got one. I read in the paper that Frank Morgan's playing at the Catalina."
"Who's he and what does he play?"
"You'll see. You'll like him."
"It was a dumb question anyway. If he's someone you like, then he plays the saxophone."
Harry smiled, more to himself than her. He was happy to know he had a date. Being alone on New Year's Eve bothered him more than Christmas, Thanksgiving, any of the other days. New Year's Eve was a night for jazz, and the saxophone could cut you in half if you were alone.
She smiled and said, "Harry, you're so easy when it comes to lonely women."
He thought of Sylvia Moore, remembering her sad smile. "So," Teresa said, seeming to sense that he was drifting away. "I bet you want to know about the bugs inside Juan Doe #67."
"Finish your soup first."
"Nope, that's okay. It doesn't bother me. I always get hungry, in fact, after a long day chopping up bodies."
She smiled. She said things like that often, as if daring him not to like what she did for a living. He knew she was still hooked by her husband. It didn't matter what she said. He understood.
"Well, I hope you don't miss the knives when they make you permanent chief. You'll be cutting budgets then."
"No, I'd be a hands-on chief. I'd handle the specials. Like today. But after today, I don't know if they'll ever make me permanent."