The Wrong Side of Goodbye(21)

Bosch brought the microfilm copies to the counter and asked Flora what he owed for sixty-seven birth certificates.

“You law enforcement,” she said. “No charge.”

“Yeah, but I’m not saying that, Flora,” he said. “This is private.”

Again he refused to play the San Fernando card where it was not necessary. He had no choice when it came to running names through law enforcement databases, but this was different. If he accepted free copies under false pretenses, then there would be financial gain to his bending the rules and the blowback could be extreme. He pulled out his wallet.

“Then you pay five dollar for every copy,” Flora said.

The price shocked him, even though he had made ten thousand dollars that very morning. It must have shown on his face. Flora smiled.

“You see?” she said. “You are law enforcement.”

“No, Flora, I’m not,” Bosch said. “Can I pay with a credit card?”

“No, you pay cash.”

Bosch frowned and looked through his billfold to get the secreted hundred-dollar bill he always carried for emergencies. He combined it with the cash he carried in a fold in his pocket and made the $335 copy bill with six bucks left over. He asked for a receipt even though he didn’t think he would be filing an expense report with Vance.

He waved the stack of printouts as a farewell and thank-you to Flora and left the office. A few minutes later he was in his car, lining up to get out of the parking lot with everybody else leaving the government building at five o’clock sharp. He put the CD player on and switched things up a bit, listening to the latest album from Grace Kelly, the saxophonist. She was one of the few jazz musicians his daughter liked and appreciated. He wanted to have the disc playing in the car in case Maddie chose a restaurant they had to drive to.

But instead his daughter chose a place in the Old Towne circle that was walking distance from her house on Palm Avenue. Along the way she explained how much happier she was renting a house with three girls than she’d been sharing a two-room, one-bathroom dorm, as she did her freshman year. She was also much closer to the satellite campus where the psychology school was located. All in all, life seemed good for her, but Bosch worried about security at the private house. There was no campus police patrol. The four girls were left on their own in the jurisdiction of the City of Orange Police Department. The drop-off in response time between the campus and the municipal law enforcement was minutes, not seconds, and that bothered Bosch too.

The restaurant was a pizza joint where they stood in line to each order a customized pie that they took to their table hot from the oven. Sitting across from her, Bosch was distracted by the neon-pink highlights accenting his daughter’s hair. Finally he asked why she had gone and done that to herself.

“Solidarity,” she said. “I have a friend whose mom has breast cancer.”

Bosch didn’t get the connection and she easily read him.

“Are you kidding?” she said. “October is breast cancer awareness month, Dad. You should know that.”

“Oh, yeah, right. I forgot.”

He had recently seen on TV some football players from the Los Angeles Rams wearing some pink equipment. Now he understood. And while it made him happy that Maddie had dyed her hair for a good cause, he was also secretly pleased that it was probably only a temporary thing. In a few weeks the month would be over.

Maddie ate exactly half of her pizza and put the other half in a cardboard to-go box, explaining that the remainder would serve as breakfast.

“So what case are you on?” she asked when they were walking back down Palm to her house.

“How do you know I’m on a case?” he asked.

“You said in your text, plus you’re wearing a suit. Don’t be so paranoid. You’re like a secret agent or something.”

“I forgot. It’s just an heir-hunting case.”

“‘Air hunting’? What is that?”

“Heir like in heir to the throne.”

“Oh, got it.”

“I’m trying to find out if an old man up in Pasadena with a lot of money has an heir out there that he can give it all to when he dies.”

“Wow, cool. Did you find anybody yet?”

“Well, I have sixty-seven possibilities at the moment. That’s what I was doing in Norwalk. Looking at birth records.”

“Cool.”

He didn’t want to tell her about what happened to Vibiana Duarte.

“But you can’t tell anyone about this, Mads. It’s top secret, whether I’m a secret agent or not.”

“Like, who am I going to tell?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want you putting it out there on MyFace or SnapCat or something.”

“Funny, Dad, but my generation is visual. We don’t tell people what other people are doing. We show what we’re doing. We put up photos. So you don’t need to worry.”

“Good.”

Once back at the house, he asked if he could come in to check the locks and other security measures. With the landlord’s permission he had added extra locks on all doors and windows back in September. He checked everything and couldn’t avoid thoughts of the Screen Cutter as he moved about the house. He finally stepped into the small backyard to make sure the wooden fence that ran the perimeter was locked from the inside. He saw that Maddie had done as he had advised and bought a dog bowl for the back step even though the girls didn’t have a dog and the landlord didn’t allow it.