got bodies on gurneys stacked in the hall that we already know are one eighty-sevens and need to be cut. Salazar is not going to have time for what looks to me and everybody else around here except you like a hype case. Cut and dried, man. What am I going to say to him that's going to make him do the cut today?"
"Show him the finger. Tell him there were no tracks in the pipe. Think of something. Tell him the DB was a guy who knew needles too well to've OD'd."
Sakai put his head back against the van's side panel and laughed loudly. Then he shook his head as if a child had made a joke.
"And you know what he'll say to me? He'll say that it doesn't matter how long he'd been spiking. They all fuck up. Bosch, how many sixty-five-year-old junkies do you see around? None of them go the distance. The needle gets them all in the end. Just like this guy in the pipe."
Bosch turned and looked around to make sure none of the uniforms were watching and listening. Then he turned back to Sakai's face.
"Just tell him I'll be by there later," he said quietly. "If he doesn't find anything on the prelim, then fine, you can stick the body at the end of the line in the hall, or you can park it down at the gas station on Lankershim. I won't care then, Larry. But you tell him. It's his decision, not yours."
Bosch dropped his hand from the door and stepped back. Sakai got in the van and slammed the door. He started the engine and looked at Bosch through the window for a long moment before rolling it down.
"Bosch, you're a pain in the ass. Tomorrow morning. It's the best I can do. Today is no way."
"First cut of the day?"
"Just leave us alone today, okay?"
"First cut?"
"Yeah. Yeah. First cut."
"Sure, I'll leave you alone, See you tomorrow, then."
"Not me, man. I'll be sleeping."
Sakai rolled the window back up and the van moved away. Bosch stepped back to let it pass, and when it was gone he was left staring at the pipe. It was really for the first time then that he noticed the graffiti. Not that he hadn't seen that the exterior of the pipe was literally covered with painted messages, but this time he looked at the individual scrawls. Many were old, faded together—a tableau of letters spelling threats either long forgotten or since made good. There were slogans: Abandon LA. There were names: Ozone, Bomber, Stryker, many others. One of the fresher tags caught his eye. It was just three letters, about twelve feet from the end of the pipe— Sha. The three letters had been painted in one fluid motion. The top of the S was jagged and then contoured, giving the impression of a mouth. A gaping maw. There were no teeth but Bosch could sense them. It was as though the work wasn't completed. Still, it was good work, original and clean. He aimed the Polaroid at it and took a photo.
Bosch walked to the police van, putting the exposure in his pocket. Donovan was stowing his equipment on shelves and the evidence bags in wooden Napa Valley wine boxes.
"Did you find any burned matches in there?"
"Yeah, one fresh one," Donovan said. "Burned to the end. It was about ten feet in. It's there on the chart."
Bosch picked up a clipboard on which there was a piece of paper with a diagram of the pipe showing the body location and where the other material taken from the pipe had been. Bosch noticed that the match was found about fifteen feet from the body. Donovan then showed him the match, sitting at the bottom of its own plastic evidence bag. "I'll let you know if it matches the book in the guy's kit," he said. "If that's what you're thinking."
Bosch said, "What about the uniforms? What'd they find?"
"It's all there," Donovan said, pointing to a wooden bin in which there were still more plastic evidence bags. These contained debris picked up by patrol officers who had searched the area within a fifty-yard radius of the pipe. Each bag contained a description of the location where the object had been found. Bosch took each bag out and examined its contents. Most of it was junk that would have nothing to do with the body in the pipe. There were newspapers, clothing rags, a high-heeled shoe, a