that lined the streets in that area. It was called The Fountains but they had been filled in with dirt and made into planters. It was about a block from the mansion that was headquarters for the Church of Scientology and the complex's white neon sign threw an eerie glow down to where Bosch was standing on the curb. It was near ten o'clock, so he wasn't worried about anyone offering him a personality test. He stood there smoking and studying the apartment building for a half hour before finally deciding to go ahead with the break-in.
It was a security building but it really wasn't. Bosch slipped the lock on the front gate with a butter knife he kept with his picks in the glove compartment of the Caprice. The next door, the one leading to the lobby, he didn't have to worry about. It needed to be oiled and showed this by not snapping all the way closed. Bosch went through the door, checked a listing of tenants and found Moore's name listed next to number seven, on the third floor.
Moore's place was at the end of a hallway that split the center of the floor. At the door, Harry saw the police evidence sticker had been placed across the jamb. He cut it with the small penknife attached to his key chain and then knelt down to look at the lock. There were two other apartments on the hallway. He heard no TV sound or talking coming from either. The lighting in the hall was good, so he didn't need the flashlight. Moore had a standard pin tumbler dead bolt on the door. Using a curved tension hook and sawtooth comb, he turned the lock in less than two minutes.
With his handkerchief-wrapped hand on the knob ready to open the door, he wondered again how prudent he was in coming here. If Irving or Pounds found out, he'd be back on the street in blue before the first of the year. He looked down the hall behind him once more and opened the door. He had to go in. Nobody else seemed to care what had happened to Cal Moore and that was fine. But Bosch did care for some reason. He thought maybe he would find that reason here.
Once inside the apartment, he closed and relocked the door. He stood there, a couple of feet inside, letting his eyes adjust. The place smelled musty and was dark, except for the bluish-white glow of the Scientology light that leaked through the sheer curtains over the living room window. Bosch walked into the room and switched on a lamp on an end table next to an old misshapen sofa. The light revealed that the place had come furnished in the same decor it had maybe twenty years ago. The navy blue carpet was worn flat as Astroturf in pathways from the couch to the kitchen and to the hallway that went off to the right.
He moved farther in and took quick glances in the kitchen and the bedroom and the bathroom. He was struck by the emptiness of the place. There was nothing personal here. No pictures on the walls, no notes on the refrigerator, no jacket hung over the back of a chair. There wasn't even a dish in the sink. Moore had lived here but it was almost as if he hadn't existed.
He didn't know what he was looking for, so he started in the kitchen. He opened cabinets and drawers. He found a box of cereal, a can of coffee and a three-quarters-empty bottle of Early Times. In another cabinet he found an unopened bottle of sweet rum with a Mexican label. Inside the bottle was a stalk of sugar cane. There was some silverware and cooking tools in the drawers, several books of matches from Hollywood area bars like Ports and the Bullet.
The freezer was empty, except for two trays of ice. On the top shelf in the refrigerator section below there was a jar of mustard, a half-finished package of now-rancid bologna and a lone can of Budweiser, its plastic six-pack collar still choking it. On the lower shelf on the door was a two-pound bag of Domino sugar.
Harry studied the sugar. It was unopened. Then he thought, What the hell, I've come this far. He took it out and opened it and slowly poured it into the sink. It looked like sugar to him. It tasted like sugar to him. There was nothing