gone by tonight, back on the street. I guarantee it. And I told the ref that, but he wasn't going to book the kid into the monkey house just 'cause he was caught loitering and his mother happens to be a telephone whore."
"A what?" Bosch asked.
"It should be in the file. Yeah, while Sharkey's on the street, dear old mom is at home telling guys on the phone how she's gonna piss in their mouths and put rubber bands on their dicks. Advertises in skin mags. She gets forty bucks for fifteen minutes. Takes MasterCard, Visa, puts 'em on hold while she checks on another line to make sure the number is valid and they got credit. Anyway, she's been doing it, near as I can tell, five years now. Edward's formative years were listening to this shit. I mean, no wonder the kid's a scammer and runner. What do you expect?"
"How long ago did he leave with her?"
" 'Bout noon. You want to catch him there, you better go. You got the address?"
"Yeah."
"And Bosch, one thing: Don't be expecting no whore when you get there. His mom, she doesn't look like the part she plays on the phone, if you know what I mean. Her voice might do the job but her looks would scare a blind man."
Bosch thanked him for the warning and hung up. He took the 101 out to the Valley and then the 405 north to the 118 and west. He got off in Chatsworth and drove into the rocky bluffs at the top corner of the Valley. There was a condominium community built on what he knew was once a movie ranch. It had been one of the places Charlie Manson and his crew used to hide out. Parts of one member of that crew's body were supposedly still missing and buried around there someplace. It was near dusk when Bosch got there. People were off work and getting home. A lot of traffic on the development's thin roads. A lot of closing doors. A lot of calls to Sharkey's mother. Bosch was too late.
"I have no time to talk to more police," Veronica Niese said when she answered the door and looked at the badge. "As soon as I get him home he is out the door again. I don't know where he goes. You tell me. That's your job. I have three calls waiting, one long distance. I gotta go."
She was in her late forties, fat and wrinkled. She obviously wore a wig and the dilation of her eyes did not match. She had the dirty-socks smell of a speed addict. Her callers were better off with their fantasies, with just a voice with which to construct a body and face.
"Mrs. Niese, I'm not looking for your son for something he did. I need to talk to him because of something he saw. He could possibly be in danger."
"Oh, bullshit. I've heard that line before."
She closed the door and he just stood there. After a few moments he could hear her on the phone, and he thought it was a French accent but couldn't be sure. He could only make out a few of the sentences but they made him blush. He thought about Sharkey and realized he wasn't really a runaway, because there was nothing here to run away from. He left the doorstep and went back to the car. That would be it for the day. And he was out of time. Lewis and Clarke must have paper out on him by now. He'd be assigned to a desk at IAD by morning. He drove back to the station and signed out. Everyone was already gone and there were no messages on his desk, not even from his lawyer. On the way home he stopped by the Lucky and bought four bottles of beer, a couple from Mexico, a lager from England called Old Nick and a Henry's.
He expected to find a message from Lewis and Clarke on his phone tape when he got home. He wasn't wrong, but the message was not what he expected.
"I know you're there, so listen," said a voice Bosch recognized as Clarke's. "They can change their mind but they can't change ours. We'll see you around."
There were no other messages. He played Clarke's message over three times. Something had gone wrong for them. They must have been called off. Could his lame threat to the FBI to go to the media have worked? Even