He looked up at Bosch, squinting in the light from the sun that was beginning to go down behind Bosch.
"You're telling me," Bosch replied.
"Well, I can tow it in and then have my guy put a new valve on the tire. Take about fifteen minutes once we get it into the garage."
"Fine. Do it."
"This going to be on Triple A or insurance?"
"No, cash."
Mackey told him it would be eighty-five dollars for the tow plus three dollars for every mile his car was towed. The charge for the valve replacement would be another twenty-five plus the cost of the valve.
"Fine, do it," Bosch said again.
Mackey stood up and looked at Bosch. He appeared to glance directly at Bosch's neck and then away. He said nothing about the tattoos.
"You should close the back," he said instead. "Unless you want to dump everything out on the way."
He smiled. A little tow truck humor.
"I'll grab my shirt out of there and close it," Bosch said. "All right if I ride with you?"
"Unless you want to call a cab and ride in style."
"I'd rather ride with somebody who speaks English."
Mackey laughed loudly while Bosch went to the back of his car. Bosch then stood off to the side while Mackey went through the procedures for hooking the vehicle to the truck. It took him no more than ten minutes before he was standing at the side of his truck, holding down a lever that raised the front end of the SUV into the air. After it was high enough for Mackey, he checked all the chains and harnesses and said he was ready to go. When Bosch got into the tow truck he had his shirt over his arm and the folded newspaper in his hand. It was folded so the photo of Rebecca Verloren was noticeable.
"Does this thing have air-conditioning?" Bosch said as he pulled the door closed. "I was sweating my ass off out there."
"You and me both. You should've stayed in the vehicle with your own AC blowing while you waited. This piece of shit doesn't have air in the summer or heat in the winter. Kind of like my ex-wife."
More tow truck humor, Bosch guessed. Mackey handed him a clipboard with an information page and a pen attached.
"Fill that out," he said. "Then we're set."
"Okay."
Bosch started to fill the form in with the false name and address he had come up with earlier. Mackey pulled a microphone off the dashboard and spoke into it.
"Hey, Kenny?"
A few moments later there was a response.
"Go ahead."
"Tell Spider not to leave yet," Mackey said. "I'm bringing in a tire that needs a valve."
"He's not going to like that. He's already washed up."
"Just tell him. Out."
Mackey returned the microphone to its dash holder.
"Think he'll stay?" Bosch asked.
"You better hope so. Or you're going to be waiting till tomorrow for your tire to get done."
"I can't do that. I have to get back on the road."
"Yeah? Where to?"
"Barstow."
Mackey started the tow truck and turned his body to the left so he could look out the side window and make sure it was okay to pull off the shoulder onto the road. He could not see Bosch from this position. Bosch quickly hiked the left sleeve on his T-shirt up so that more than half of the skull tattoo was visible.
The tow truck pulled into the street and they started off. Bosch glanced out his window and saw the cars belonging to both Rider and the other surveillance team in the parking lot of the golf course. Bosch put his elbow on the sill of the open window and his hand on the top frame. Out of Mackey's view, he was able to give the thumbs-up sign to the watchers.
"What's out in Barstow?" Mackey asked.
"Home, that's all. I want to get home tonight."
"What have you been doing down here?"
"This and that."
"What about South-Central? What were you doing down there with those people last week?"
Bosch understood the reference to those people as meaning the predominant minority population of South L.A. He turned and looked pointedly at Mackey, as if telling him he was asking too many questions.
"This and that," he said evenly.
"That's cool," Mackey responded, taking his hands off the wheel in a backing off gesture.
"Tell you what, though, it doesn't matter what I was doing, you can just fucking keep this city, man."
Mackey smiled.
"I know what you mean," he said.
Bosch thought they were close to sharing more than small talk. He believed Mackey had gotten a glimpse of the tattoos and was trying to draw from Bosch a signal as to what kind of person he was. He thought the moment was right for another subtle move toward the newspaper article.
Bosch put the newspaper down on the seat between them, making sure the photo of Rebecca Verloren was still noticeable. He then started putting his shirt back on. He leaned forward and extended his arms to do it. He didn't look at Mackey but knew the skull on his left arm would be very noticeable as he did this. He put his right arm into the shirt first and then brought the shirt behind his back and put his left arm into its sleeve. He leaned back and started buttoning the shirt.
"Just a little too third world around here for me," Bosch said.
"I'm with you on that."
"Yeah? Is this where you're from?"
"My whole life."
"Well, pal, you ought to take your family-if you have a family-and the flag with you and leave. Just fucking leave this place."
Mackey laughed and nodded.
"I got a friend says the same thing. All the time."
"Yeah, well, it's not an original idea."
"Got that right."
Then the radio interrupted the momentum of the conversation.
"Hey, Ro?"
Mackey grabbed the mike.
"Yeah, Ken?"
"I'm gonna run over to KFC while Spider's waiting on you. You want something?"
"Nah, I'll go out later. Out."
He hung the mike up. They drove in silence for a few moments while Bosch tried to think of a way to naturally get the conversation going again and in the right direction. Mackey had driven down to Burbank Boulevard and gone right. They were coming up on Tampa. He would turn right again and then it would be a straight shot to the station. In less than ten minutes the ride would be over.
But it was Mackey who got it going again.
"So where'd you do your time?" he suddenly asked.
Bosch waited a moment so that his excitement wouldn't show.
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
"I saw your markings, man. It's no big deal. But they're either homemade or prison-made. That's obvious."
Bosch nodded.
"Obispo. I spent a nickel up there."
"Yeah? For what?"
Bosch turned and looked at him again.
"This and that."
Mackey nodded, apparently not put off by his passenger's reluctance to open up.
"That's cool, man. I have a friend that was there for a while. Late nineties. He said it wasn't so bad. It's kind of a white-collar place. Not as many niggers there as other places, at least."
Bosch was silent for a long moment. He knew Mackey's use of the racial slur was like a password. If Bosch responded in the proper way, then he would be accepted. It was code work.
"Yeah," Bosch said, nodding his head. "That made the conditions a little more livable. I probably missed your friend, though. I got out in early 'ninety-eight."
"Frank Simmons. That's his name. He was only there for like eighteen months or something. He was from Fresno."
"Frank Simmons from Fresno," Bosch said as if trying to recall the name. "I don't think I knew him."
"He's good people."
Bosch nodded.
"There was one guy who came in like a few weeks before I walked out of that place," he said. "I heard he was from Fresno. But, man, I was on short time and I wasn't into meeting new people, yo
u know what I mean?"
"Yeah, that's cool. I was just wondering, you know."
"Did your guy have dark hair and his face had a lot a scars like from zits and stuff?"
Mackey started smiling and nodding.
"That's him! That's Frank. We used to call him Crater Face from Crater Lake."
"And I'm sure he was happy about that."
The tow truck turned onto Tampa and headed north. Bosch knew he might have more time with Mackey in the service station while the tire was being fixed but he couldn't count on it. There could be another tow call or myriad other distractions. He had to finish the play and plant the seed now, while he was alone with the target. He picked up the newspaper and held it in his lap, glancing down as if he was reading the headlines. He had to figure out a way to naturally steer the conversation directly toward the Verloren article.
Mackey took his right hand off the wheel and pulled off his glove by biting one of the fingers. It reminded Bosch of the way a child would do it. Mackey then extended his hand to Bosch.
"I'm Ro, by the way."
Bosch shook his hand.
"Ro?"
"Short for Roland. Roland Mackey. Pleased to meet you."
"George Reichert," Bosch said, giving the name he had made up after careful thought earlier in the day.
"Reichert?" Mackey said. "German, right?"
"Means 'heart of the Reich.'"
"That's cool. And I guess that explains the Mercedes. You know, I deal with cars all fucking day. You can tell a lot about people by the cars they drive and how they take care of them."
"I suppose."
Bosch nodded. He now saw the direct way to his goal. Once again Mackey had unwittingly helped.
"German engineering," Bosch said. "The best fucking carmakers in the world. What do you drive when you're not in this rig?"
"I'm restoring a 'seventy-two Camaro. It's going to be a sweet ride when I'm finished."
"Good year," Bosch offered.
"Yeah, but I wouldn't buy anything out of Detroit nowadays. You know who's making our cars now, don't you? All the fucking mud people. I wouldn't drive one, let alone put my family in one."
"In Germany," Bosch responded, "you go into a factory and everybody's got blue eyes, you know what I mean? I've seen pictures."
Mackey nodded thoughtfully. Bosch thought it was time to make the direct move. He unfolded the newspaper on his lap. He held it up so that the full front page, and the full Verloren story, could be seen.
"Talk about mud people," he said. "Did you read this story?"
"No, what's it say?"
"It's about this mother sittin' on a bed boohooing about her mud child who got killed seventeen years ago. And the police are still on the case. But I mean, who cares, man?"
Mackey glanced over at the paper and saw the photo with the inset shot of Rebecca Verloren's face. But he didn't say anything and his own face did not betray any recognition. Bosch lowered the paper so as not to be too obvious about it. He refolded it and discarded it on the seat between them. He pushed things one more time.
"I mean, you mix the races like that and what are you going to get?" he asked.
"Exactly," Mackey said.
It wasn't a strong reply. It was almost hesitant, as if Mackey was thinking about something else. Bosch took this as a good sign. Maybe Mackey had just felt that cold finger go down his spine. Maybe it was the first time in seventeen years.
Bosch decided he had given it his best shot. If he tried to do anything more he might cross the line into obviousness and give himself away. He decided to ride the rest of the way silently, and Mackey seemed to make the same choice.
But a few blocks later Mackey swerved the truck into the second lane to get around a slow-moving Pinto.
"You believe there is still one of those on the street?" he said.
As they passed the little car Bosch saw a man of Asian descent huddled behind the wheel. Bosch thought he might be Cambodian.
"Figures," Mackey said, as he saw the driver. "Watch this."
Mackey then steered back into the original lane, squeezing the Pinto between the towed Mercedes and a row of cars parked against the curb. The Pinto driver had no choice but to pull to a screeching stop. Mackey's laughter drowned out the weak horn blast from the Pinto.
"Fuck you!" Mackey yelled. "Get back on your fucking boat!"
He looked to Bosch for affirmation and Bosch smiled, the hardest thing he'd had to do in a long while.
"Hey, man, that was my car you almost hit that guy with," he said in mock protest.
"Hey, were you in Vietnam?" Mackey asked.
"Why?"
"Because, man. You were there, weren't you?"
"So?"
"So, man, I had a friend who was there. He said they dusted mooks like that guy back there like it was nothing. A dozen for breakfast and another dozen for lunch. I wish I'd been there, is all I'm saying."
Bosch looked away from him and out the side window. Mackey's statement had left an opening for him to ask about guns and killing people. But Bosch couldn't bring himself to go there. All at once he just wanted to get away from Mackey.
But Mackey kept talking.
"I tried to sign up for the Gulf-the first one-but they wouldn't take me."
Bosch recovered some and got back into it.
"Why not?" he asked.
"I don't know. They needed the slot for a nigger, I guess."
"Or maybe you had a criminal record."
Bosch had turned to look at him as he said this. He immediately thought he had sounded too accusatory about it. Mackey turned and held his stare for as long as he could before having to return his eyes to the road.
"I've got a record, man, big fucking deal. They still could've used me over there."
The conversation died there, and in a few blocks they were pulling into the service station.
"I don't think we'll need to put it in the garage," Mackey said. "Spider can just take the wheel off while I have it on the hook. We'll do it quick."
"Whatever you want to do," Bosch said. "You're sure he didn't leave yet?"
"No, that's him right there."
As the tow truck went by the double bays of the garage a man emerged from the shadows and headed toward the back of the truck. He was holding a pneumatic drill with one hand and pulling the air line with the other. Bosch saw the webwork tattooed on his neck. Prison blue. Something about the man's face immediately struck Bosch as familiar. In a rushed moment of dread he thought he knew the man because he'd had dealings with him as a cop. He had arrested him or questioned him before, maybe even sent him to the prison where he had gotten the webwork done.
Bosch suddenly knew he had to stay clear of the man called Spider. He pulled his phone off his belt.
"All right if I sit here and make a call?" he asked Mackey, who was getting out of the truck.
"Yeah, go ahead. This won't take long."
Mackey closed the door, leaving Bosch alone. As he heard the drill start taking the lugs off the wheel of his SUV, Bosch rolled the window up and called Rider's cell phone.
"How's it going?" she said by way of a greeting.
"It was going good till we got back to the station," Bosch said in a low voice. "I think I know the mechanic. If he knows me, this could be a problem."
"You mean he might know you're a cop?"
"Exactly."
"Shit."
"Exactly."
"What do you want us to do? Tim and Rick are still floating around."
"Call them and tell them what's happening. Tell them to stay loose until I get clear. I'm going to stay in the truck as long as I can. If I hold the phone up like I am talking I can keep him from seeing my face."
"Okay."
"I just hope Mackey doesn't want to introduce me. I think I made an impression on him. He might want to show me off."
"Okay, Harry, just stay cool and we'll move in if we have -"
"I'm not worried about me. I'm worried
about the play with -"
"Hey, he's coming over."
The Closers Page 27