The Wrong Side of Goodbye(62)

“Okay, then, I will take it as a threat and a bribe and you are under arrest.”

Bosch grabbed him by the elbow and in one swift move directed him face-first to the tiled wall of the lobby. With one hand pressing against Creighton’s back, he snaked his other hand under his jacket and behind his own back to his handcuffs. Creighton tried to turn his head to face him.

“What the hell are you doing?” Creighton barked.

“You are under arrest for threatening a police officer and attempted bribery,” Bosch said. “Spread your legs and keep your face against that wall.”

Creighton seemed too stunned to react. Bosch kicked one of his heels and the man’s foot slipped across the tile. Bosch finished cuffing him and then did a hand search, coming up with a holstered pistol on Creighton’s right hip.

“You’re making a big mistake,” Creighton said.

“Maybe,” Bosch said. “But it feels right because you’re such a pompous ass, Cretin.”

“I’ll be out in fifteen minutes.”

“You know they always called you that, right? Cretin? Let’s go.”

Bosch nodded to the desk officer behind the plexiglass window and he buzzed the door open. Bosch walked Creighton back to the holding section of the station, where he turned him over to the jail officer.

Bosch filled out an arrest report and booked the gun into a property locker, then took the jail officer aside and told him to take his time getting around to letting Creighton make his lawyer call.

The last he saw of Creighton was him being locked behind a solid steel door in a single-bed cell. He knew he wouldn’t be in there long but it would give Bosch enough time to head south without being followed.

Bosch decided to leave the interview with Ida Townes Forsythe for another day. He jumped on the 5 freeway, which would take him all the way to San Diego, with a possible stop in Orange.

He checked his watch and did some math, then called his daughter. As usual the call went straight to message. He told her he would be passing through her area between 12:30 and 1 p.m., and made the offer to take her to lunch or to grab a cup of coffee if she had the time and was up for it. He told her he had something to talk to her about.

A half hour later he was just moving past downtown L.A. when he got the call back from Maddie.

“Are you coming down the Five?” she asked.

“Hello to you too,” he said. “Yes, I’m on the Five. It’s moving pretty good so I think I’ll be down your way closer to twelve-fifteen.”

“Well, I can do lunch. What did you want to tell me?”

“Well, let’s talk at lunch. You want to meet or should I come in and pick you up?”

It would be about a fifteen-minute ride from the freeway to campus.

“I’ve got such a good parking spot, any chance you can come get me?”

“Yeah, I just offered to. What do you feel like eating?”

“There’s a place I wanted to try over on Bolsa.”

Bosch knew that Bolsa was in the heart of an area known as Little Saigon, and far from campus.

“Uh,” he said. “That’s kind of far out from the school. To come in to get you, then go out there and then back in to drop you is probably going to take too much time. I need to get down to—”

“Okay, I’ll drive. I’ll meet you there.”

“Can we just go someplace near the school, Mads? If it’s Vietnamese, you know that I don’t…”

“Dad, it’s been, like, fifty years. Why can’t you just eat the food? It’s really being racist.”

Bosch was quiet for a long moment while he composed an answer. He tried to speak calmly as he delivered it, but things were boiling up inside him. Not just what his daughter had said. But Creighton, the Screen Cutter, all of it.

“Maddie, racism has nothing to do with it and you should be very careful about throwing an accusation like that around,” he said. “When I was your age I was in Vietnam, fighting to protect the people over there. And I had volunteered to be there. Was that racist?”

“It wasn’t that simple, Dad. You were supposedly fighting communism. Anyway, it just seems weird that you put up this big stand against the food.”

Bosch was silent. There were things about himself and his life that he never wanted to share with her. The whole four years of his military service was one of them. She knew he had served but he had never spoken to her about details of his time in Southeast Asia.

“Look, for two years when I was over there I ate that food,” he said. “Every day, every meal.”

“Why? Didn’t they have regular American food on the base or something?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t eat it. If I did they would smell me in the tunnels. I had to smell like them.”

Now it was her turn to be silent.

“I don’t—what does that mean?” she finally said.

“You smell like what you eat. In enclosed spaces. It comes out of your pores. My job—I had to go into tunnels, and I didn’t want the enemy to know I was there. So I ate their food every day, every meal, and I can’t do it anymore. It brings it all back to me. Okay?”

There was only silence from her. Bosch held the top of the wheel and drummed his fingers against the dashboard beyond it. He immediately regretted telling her what he just had.