Ballard turned to Bosch to see if he had any questions that she had missed. He shook his head and she looked back at Calvente.
“Thank you, Mr. Calvente,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” Calvente said.
Bosch took the steps down to the street slowly. Ballard had to wait for him. When he reached the sidewalk, he whispered under his breath.
“Ambulance chaser. He barely knows the guy and he goes to his memorial?”
“Yeah. You ever see that Sidney Lumet movie The Verdict?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t go to a lot of movies anymore.”
“It’s an old one with Paul Newman. I went through a Paul Newman phase. Anyway, he’s a lawyer — a drunk, actually — and he tries to drum up business by going to funerals and passing out business cards.”
Bosch looked back up at the house.
“This guy must go to a lot of funerals,” he said.
“Well, what he gave us was good,” Ballard said. “Javier wanted out of the contract. There’s a motive in that.”
“There is. But Hoyle’s going to be protected by the contract. Calvente said it was legit. We still need to find the factor man and hope he leads us to the man with the Walther P-twenty-two.”
“Tonight I’ll go back to Gang Intel. They had a snitch who told them years ago that Javier bought his way out of Las Palmas. I think it was a woman. They wouldn’t give me her name before but I’ll make them give it to me now. She might know who set him up with Hoyle.”
“That sounds like a plan.”
Fifteen minutes later Ballard had just dropped Bosch at his car and was on her way to the ER at Hollywood Presbyterian when she got a call from EMT Single.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Actually, I’m on my way to the ER,” she said.
“Oh, no, what’s happening?”
“Nothing, I’m fine. My boss won’t let me go back to work tonight unless I get a clean bill from the ER. I told him a very good EMT had cleared me today but they’re making me go anyway.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. I was about to invite you to a firehouse dinner.”
“Wow, I’ve never had an invitation like that before. What are you guys having?”
“All kinds of stuff. Grilled cheese, chili. I think somebody dropped off a couple of apple pies. We’ve got some salad, some corn on the cob.”
“Well, I’d take a salad and grilled cheese.”
“Ooh, it sounds like we’ve got a veggie on our hands.”
“Just no red meat anymore.”
“Not a problem, but I thought you’re going to the ER.”
“I’d rather come for dinner and go to the ER on company time.”
“Well, come on over. Dinner’s in thirty-five minutes. Unless we catch a call and go out on a run.”
“On my way. But are you allowed to invite a guest?”
“One of us can. One guest allowed a night. I traded with a guy to get tonight ’cause I hoped you’d like firehouse chili. But grilled cheese is just as good.”
“All right, cool. See you in a bit. One last question …”
“Sure.”
“What’s your first name?”
“Oh, it’s Garrett.”
“Garrett. Cool. I’ll see you soon, Garrett.”
After disconnecting, Ballard created an entry with Single’s full name in her contact list. She hoped it would stay in there for a while. She parked her car behind the police station. Before going over to the firehouse, she ducked into the locker room in the station and put on some light makeup. She was only going to a firehouse for a grilled cheese dinner, but she wanted to make an impression.
22
The dinner was fun, with Single introducing Ballard to his colleagues and her receiving a round of applause. And the grilled cheese was not bad, but the food and fun were cut short when EMT Single and his rescue team were called out on a traffic accident at Highland and Hollywood, one of the busiest intersections in the city. They raced off to the scene, and Ballard carried the second half of her grilled cheese sandwich on a napkin around the wall that separated the firehouse from the police station. She finished eating in the station while sitting in on the mid-watch roll call. Mid-watch rolled out at eight — Ballard’s usual start time — and it was small squad, making roll calls less crowded and more informal. No one objected to her finishing her sandwich.
After, she went directly down the second-floor hallway to the GED squad room to look for Sergeant Davenport. He was sitting where she had last seen him three nights earlier. If he wasn’t in different clothes, she might have thought he had never moved. She pulled the file he had given her out of her briefcase and dropped it on his desk. She pointed at the file.
“LP-three,” she said. “I need to talk to her. For real this time.” Davenport took his legs off the upside-down trash can where they had been propped up and sat up straight.
“Ballard, you know I can’t just hand out the name of a CI,” he said.
“I do know,” Ballard said. “You have to go through the captain. Or you could go see the CI and I could tag along. Either way is fine with me but this is now a premeditated murder case that’s connected to another premeditated murder case and I need to find out what she knows. So how do you want to play that?”
“First of all, I told you, I’m not saying it’s — ”
“A woman, yeah, I know. Let’s just say I guessed. Are you going to help or hinder this investigation?”
“If you would stop cutting me off and just listen, you would learn that LP-three is no longer active — hasn’t been active in years — and is not going to be interested in talking to reminders of her dirty history.”
“Okay, then. I’ll call the captain at home.”
Ballard turned toward the door.
“Ballard, come on,” Davenport said. “Why do you always have to be such a bi — ”
Ballard turned back to him.
“What?” she said. “Such a bitch? If you call wanting to solve a homicide being a bitch, then fine, I’m a bitch. But there are still people in this department who want to get off their asses and knock on doors. I’m one of them.”
Davenport’s temples grew pink with either rage or embarrassment. As a Sergeant II he was one rank above her Detective II, but though he was in street clothes, he was not a detective, and that difference knocked down his rank advantage. Ballard could say what she wanted to say to him without consequence.
“Okay, look,” Davenport said. “It’s going to take me a while to reach her and talk her into it. I’ll do that and let you know.”
“I want to meet tonight,” Ballard said. “This is a homicide. And by the way, you just revealed again that she’s a woman.”
“It was pretty much out of the bag, wouldn’t you say, Ballard?”
“I have to run over to Hollywood Pres for a few minutes and then I expect to hear from you that we have a meet set up.”
“Fine, you do that.”
“I’ll call you when I’m clear.”
Ballard checked out a rover and drove her city car over to the hospital, where she badged her way to the front of the line at the ER. She was checked out and cleared by a doctor and then, back in the car, called Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds at home and gave him the news.
“That’s good, Ballard,” he said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“I told you I was,” Ballard said.
“Yeah, well, we had to make it official,” he said. “Those paramedics are a bunch of yahoos. If my mother was the one thrown down the stairs, I’d want a doctor looking at her, you know what I mean?”
Ballard didn’t know which part of that to object to or whether it was even worth it. But the part about her being thrown down the stairs could have later consequences in terms of how Robinson-Reynolds viewed her and her capabilities.
“I don’t know what you were told, L-T, but I wasn’t thrown down the stairs,” she said. “I was going up the stairs when the so-called victim came running at me. I grabbed him and we both went down.”
“Semantics, Ballard,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “So, you’re ready to go back to work?”
“I’ve been working. I never stopped.”
“Okay, okay, my bad. So, why don’t you just tell me what you’ve been doing, since you never stopped working. Where are we on the cases?”