cracked the door.
“Okay, I can walk. I need the exercise.”
I got out and started walking toward Mulholland. Lindell threw open his door, hitting the side of the old van. He came hurrying after me.
“Listen, Bosch, listen to me.”
He caught up to me and stood in front of me, very close, forcing me to stop. He put his hands into fists and held them up in front of his chest as if he was trying to break apart a chain that was binding him.
“Harry, I’m here for me. Nobody sent me, okay? Do not drop this. Those guys down there, they were probably just throwing you a scare, that’s all.”
“Tell that to the people they’ve been holding in there. I don’t feel like disappearing, Roy. You know what I mean?”
“Bullshit. You’ve never been the kind of guy who would —”
“Hey! Asshole!”
I turned around at the sound of the voice and saw two men piling out of the sliding door of the Volkswagen van. They were bearded longhairs who looked like they belonged on Harleys, not in a hippie van.
“You dented the shit out of the door,” the second one yelled.
“How the fuck can you tell?” Lindell shot back.
Here we go, I thought. I looked past the approaching behemoths and could see a four-inch crease in the front passenger door of the Volkswagen. Lindell’s door was still open and in contact with it, the obvious culprit.
“You think it’s a joke?” said the first heavy. “How about if we put a dent in your face?”
Lindell reached behind his back and in one swift move his hand came out from under his jacket with a pistol. With his free hand he reached forward and grabbed the first heavy by the front of his shirt and pulled him forward, taking a handful of beard in the process. The gun came up and the barrel was pressed into the taller man’s throat.
“How ’bout you and David Crosby get back in that piece of shit and flower power your way the fuck out of here?”
“Roy,” I said. “Easy.”
The smell of marijuana was just now reaching us from the van. There was a long moment of silence while Lindell held eyes with the first heavy. The second stood nearby watching but unable to make a move because of the gun.
“Okay, man,” the first one finally said. “Everything’s cool. We’ll just back on out of here.”
Lindell shoved him away and dropped the gun down to his side.
“Yeah, you do that, Tiny. Back on out. Go smoke the peace pipe somewhere else.”
We watched silently while they went back to the van, the second man angrily slamming Lindell’s door so he could get into the front passenger seat of the van. The engine started and the van backed out and pulled out onto Mulholland. The requisite hand gestures were offered from both driver and passenger and then they were gone. I thought about myself just a few hours earlier giving the same salute to the camera in the cube. I knew how helpless the two men in the van felt.
Lindell turned his attention back to me.
“That was good, Roy,” I said to him. “With skills like that I’m surprised they didn’t tap you for a ninth-floor gig.”
“Fuck those guys.”
“Yeah, that’s the way I was feeling a few hours ago.”
“So then what’s it going to be, Bosch?”
He had just pulled a gun on two strangers in a near-violent collision of high-testosterone levels and already the tide had subsided. The surface was calm. The incident was off his radar screen after only one sweep. It was a trait that in the past I had most often seen in psychopaths. I wanted to give Lindell the benefit of the doubt so I chalked it up to the sort of federal arrogance I had also seen before as a genetic trait in bureau men.
“You staying or running?” he asked.
That made me angry but I tried not to show it. I cracked a smile.
“Neither,” I said. “I’m walking.”
I turned and left him there. I started walking up Mulholland toward Woodrow Wilson and home. He threw a barrage of curses at my back but that didn’t slow me down.
21
The garage door was open at Lawton Cross’s house and it looked as though it might have been left that way through the night. I had the cab drop me off in the street next to my Mercedes. It didn’t look like the car had been moved, though I had to assume it had been searched. I had left