The concrete blonde - By Michael Connelly Page 0,36

and that's what got her started. Before that it was just the loops.”

Bosch went back to the W's and found the box for Whore of the Roses. It also was empty and there were no photos of Magna Cum Loudly on it. Her name was last billing on the credits. He went back to the small guy and pointed to the Tails from the Crypt box.

“What about the box, then? I'll buy it.”

“We can't sell you just the box because then how do we display the video when it comes back? We don't sell many boxes here. Guys want stills, they buy magazines.”

“What's the price of the whole video? I'll buy it. When the renter brings it back you can hold it for me and I'll come pick it up. How much?”

“Well, Tails is popular. We're going with a $39.95 price tag but for you, Officer, I'll give our law enforcement discount. Fifty bucks.”

Bosch said nothing to that. He had the cash and paid it.

“I want a receipt.”

After the purchase was completed, the small guy put the video box in a brown paper bag.

“You know,” he said, “Maggie Cum Loudly is still on a couple of our loops in the back. You might want to check it out.”

He smiled and pointed to a sign on the wall behind him.

“We have a no-exchange policy, by the way.”

Bosch smiled back.

“I'll check it out.”

“Hey, by the way, what name you want us to hold this video under when it comes back in?”

“Carlo Pinzi.”

It was the name of the Outfit's L.A. capo.

“Very fucking funny, Mr. Pinzi, we'll do that.”

Bosch went through the curtain into the back rooms and was almost immediately met by a woman wearing high heels, a black G-string and an ice-cream man's coin changer on a belt, nothing else. Her large silicone-perfected breasts were dotted by unusually small nipples. Her dyed blonde hair was short and she had too much makeup around her glassy brown eyes. She looked like she was either nineteen or thirty-five.

“Do you want a private encounter or change for the video booths?” she asked.

Bosch took out his now thin fold of cash and gave her two dollars for quarters.

“Can I keep a dollar for myself? I don't get paid nothin', just tips.”

Bosch gave her another dollar and took his eight quarters to one of the small curtained booths where the occu-pied light wasn't on.

“Let me know if you need anything in there,” the woman in the G-string called after him.

She was either too stoned or too stupid or both not to have made him as a cop. Bosch waved her away and pulled the curtain shut behind him. The space he had was about the size of a phone booth. There was a glass viewing window through which he could see a video screen. Displayed on the screen was a directory of twelve different videos he could select from. It was all video now, though they were still called loops, after the 16mm film loops that ran over and over again in the first peep machines.

There was no chair but there was a small shelf with an ashtray and a Kleenex box on it. Used tissues were littered on the floor and the booth smelled like the industrial disinfectant they used in the coroner's vans. He put all eight quarters in the coin slot and the video picture came on.

It was two women on a bed kissing and massaging each other. It took Bosch only a few seconds to eliminate them as possibly being the girl on the video box. He began pushing the channel button and the picture jumped from coupling to coupling—heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual—his eyes lingering only long enough to determine whether the woman he was looking for was there.

She was on the ninth loop. He recognized her from the video box he had bought. Seeing her in motion also helped convince him that the woman who used the name Magna Cum Loudly was the concrete blonde. In the video she lay on a couch on her back, biting one of her fingers while a man knelt between her legs on the floor and rhythmically ground his hips into hers.

Knowing this woman was dead, had died violently, and standing there watching her submit to another kind of violence affected him in a way he was unsure he even understood. Guilt and sorrow welled up as he watched. Like most cops, he had spent a stint in vice. He had also seen some of the films