Читаем The Black Echo полностью

Bosch walked to the sliding door and looked out. Wish stood behind a man who had his arms extended and his hands on the motel’s back wall. He was about thirty, with the sallow skin of a man who just did a month in county lockup. His pants were open in the front. His plaid shirt was buttoned incorrectly. And he stared straight down to the ground with the bugeyed look of a man who had no explanation but needed one badly. Bosch was momentarily struck by the man’s apparent decision to button his shirt before his pants.

“He’s clean,” she said. “Looks a little winded, though.”

“Looks like soliciting sex with a minor if you want to spend the time with it. Otherwise kick him loose.”

He turned to the girl on the bed.

“No bullshit, how old are you and what did he pay? I’m not here to bust you.”

She thought it over a moment. Bosch never took his eyes off hers.

“Almost seventeen,” she said in a bored monotone. “He didn’t pay me anything. He said he would, but he didn’t get to that yet.”

“Who’s in charge of your crew, Sharkey? Didn’t he ever tell you to get the money first?”

“Sharkey ain’t always around. And how’d you get his name?”

“Heard it around. Where is he today?”

“I tol’ you, I don’t know.”

The plaid-shirted man came into the room through the front door followed by Wish. His hands were cuffed behind him.

“I am going to book him. I want to. This is sick. She looks-”

“She told me she was eighteen,” Plaid Shirt said.

Bosch walked up to him and pulled open his shirt with a finger. There was a blue eagle with its wings spreading across his chest. In its talons it carried a dagger and a Nazi swastika. Beneath that it said One Nation. Bosch knew that meant the Aryan Nation, the white supremacist prison gang. He let the shirt fall back into place.

“Hey, how long you been out?” he asked.

“Hey, come on, man,” Plaid Shirt said. “This is bullshit. She pulled me in from the street. And let me at least button my goddam pants. This is bullshit.”

“Give me my money, fucker,” the girl said.

She jumped from the bed, the sheet falling to the floor, and lunged naked at the john’s pants pockets.

“Get her off me, get her off,” he called out as he squirmed to avoid her hands. “See, you see! She should be going, not me.”

Bosch moved in and separated the two and pushed the girl back to the bed. He moved behind the man and said to Wish, “Give me your key.”

She made no move, so he reached into his own pocket and got out his own cuff key. One size fits all. He unlocked the cuffs and walked Plaid Shirt over to the room’s front door. He opened it and pushed him through. In the hallway the man stopped to button his pants, which gave Bosch the opportunity to put his foot on his butt and push. “Get out of here, short eyes,” he said as the man stumbled down the hall. “This is your lucky day.”

The girl was wrapped in the dirty sheet again when Bosch went back into the room. He looked at Wish and saw anger in her eyes. He knew it wasn’t just for the man in the plaid shirt. Bosch looked at the girl and said, “Get your clothes, go into the bathroom and get dressed.” When she didn’t move, he said, “Now! Let’s go!”

After she grabbed up some clothes from the floor next to the bed and walked to the bathroom, letting the sheet fall to the ground, Bosch turned to Wish.

“We’ve got too much else to do,” he began. “You would have spent the rest of the afternoon getting her statement and booking that guy. In fact, it’s a state beef, so I would’ve had to book him. And it’s a flopper; can go felony or misdemeanor. And one look at that girl and the DA would have gone misdee if he filed it at all. It wasn’t worth it. It’s the life down here, Agent Wish.”

She looked at him with smoldering eyes, the same eyes he had seen when he had gripped her wrist to keep her from leaving the restaurant.

“Bosch, I had decided it was worth it. Don’t ever do that again.”

They stood there trying to outstare each other until the girl came out of the bathroom. She wore faded jeans that were split at the knees and a black tank top. No shoes, and Bosch noticed her toenails were painted red. She sat on the bed without saying anything.

“We need to find Sharkey,” Bosch said.

“About what? You got a cigarette?”

He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and shook one out for her. He gave her a match and she lit it herself.

“About what?” she said again.

“About Saturday night,” Wish said curtly. “We do not want to arrest him. We do not want to hassle him. We only want to ask him a few questions.”

“What about me?” the girl said.

“What about you?” Wish said.

“Are you going to hassle me?”

“You mean are we going to turn you over to Division of Youth Services, don’t you?” Bosch looked at Wish to try to gauge a reaction. He got no reading. He said, “No, we won’t call DYS if you help us. What’s your name? Your real name.”

“Bettijane Felker.”

“All right, Bettijane, you don’t know where Sharkey is? All we want to do is talk to him.”

“All I know is that he’s working.”

“What do you mean? Where?”