The Night Fire (Renée Ballard, #3)(54)

“There were several calls from Hilton’s apartment line to a payphone number in South Central. It was in a shopping plaza at Slauson and Crenshaw, the heart of Rolling 60s turf. The original investigators didn’t do anything with it, thought it was a dealer connection, but I think Hilton was calling Kidd there or trying to reach him, and it was becoming a problem for him.”

Bosch sat back and considered her theory as their food arrived. Once the waiter was gone, he summarized.

“Forbidden love,” he said. “Lovers in prison, but outside that was a threat to Kidd’s position and power. It could get him ousted—maybe even killed.”

Ballard nodded.

“Nineteen-ninety?” she said. “That wasn’t going to go over on the gang streets.”

“That wouldn’t go over now,” Bosch said. “I heard about this case a few years before I quit where guys on a no-knock search warrant hit a stash house and caught a guy from Grape Street in bed with another guy. They used it to turn him into an inside man in five minutes flat. That was more leverage than holding a five-year sentence over his head. They know they can do the time if necessary, come out and be an operator. But nobody wants a gay rap in the gang. They get that and they’re done.”

They started to eat, both so hungry that they stopped talking. Bosch ran everything through his filters while silent and spoke when his hunger had been pushed back into its cage.

“So, tomorrow,” he said. “How are you going to push his buttons?”

“For one, I hope to catch him at home,” Ballard answered, her mouth still full with the last bite of her steak. “He’s married now and his business is in his wife’s name. When I start mentioning Hilton and their prior relationship, I hope he panics. I doubt the wife knows about his gay relationships. I have the sketchbook. I start showing the drawings and he’ll shit a brick.”

“But how does that get him on the phone? You’re making it between him and her.”

“What do you suggest, then?”

“I’m not sure yet. But you have to tie it back to the gang.”

“I thought about that, but then I put the risk on Dennard Dorsey. He’s in the Rolling 60s module at Men’s Central. If Kidd gets the word to somebody in there, Dorsey’s toast.”

“We need to scheme it some other way. Don’t use Dorsey.”

“There was another guy in the murder book who worked the street with Dorsey: Vincent Pilkey. But he died a few years back.”

“That was after Kidd left South Central, right? Think he’d know that Pilkey’s dead?”

Ballard shrugged and attacked the garlic toast.

“Hard to say,” she answered. “It could be risky using his name. Kidd might see right through the scam.”

“He might,” Bosch conceded.

He watched her eat the toast. She looked worn down, like a homeless person who had found a pizza crust in a trash can.

“I assume you’re going out there without backup,” he said.

“There is none,” she said. “This is you and me, and I need you on the phones.”

“What if I’m nearby? Someplace with Wi-Fi. There’s gotta be a Starbucks near whatever place you’re going. Or you can show me how to make my phone a hot spot. Maddie does that.”

“It’s too risky. You lose signal and you lose any calls that get made. I’ll be fine. It’s an in-and-out operation. I go in, light the fire, I get out. He—hopefully—starts making calls. Maybe texts.”

“We still need to figure out how you light the fire.”

“I think I just tell him I work cold cases, was assigned this one, and saw that he was never interviewed back in the day. I let it drop that back then there was a witness who described a shooter that looked a lot like him. He’ll deny, deny, I’ll leave, and my bet is he gets on the phone to try to find out who this witness is.”

Bosch thought about that and decided it could work.

“Okay,” he said. “Good.”

But he knew that if that was the plan, he needed to say something about Ballard’s readiness.

“Look, I know we made a deal and all that, but we’re talking about a high-risk move here and you need to be ready,” he said. “So, I have to say it: you look tired—and you can’t be tired when you do this. I think you should put it off until you’re ready.”

“I am ready,” Ballard protested. “And I can’t put it off. It’s a seventy-two-hour tap. That’s all the judge would give me. It starts as soon as the service providers begin sending the signal—which is supposed to be end of day today. So, we have three days to get this going. We can’t put it off.”

“Okay, okay. Then you take a sick day tonight so you can sleep.”

“I’m not doing that either. I’m needed on the late show and I’m not going to leave them high and dry.”

“Okay, then we go back to my house. I have a spare room you can use. You sleep on a bed, not sand, until it’s time to go to work tonight.”

“No. I have too much to do.”

“Then that’s too bad. You think this guy is safe because he’s supposedly not in the gang anymore. Well, he’s not safe—he’s dangerous. And I’m not going to monitor anything if I think there’s something wrong with the setup.”