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By Root 437 0

the menu and planned his meal. In the past year his palate had finally returned with a vengeance. For the first eighteen months of his life after surgery, his sense of taste had deserted him. He had not cared what he ate because it all tasted the same — bland. Even a heavy dousing of habañera sauce on everything from sandwiches to pasta only registered a minor blip on his tongue. But then, slowly, his taste started coming back and it became a second rebirth for him following the transplant itself. He now loved everything Graciela made. He even loved everything he made — and this despite his general ineptitude with anything other than the barbecue grill. He ate everything with a gusto he’d never had before, even before the transplant. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the middle of the night was something he privately savored as much as a trip overtown with Graciela to dine in style at Jozu on Melrose. Consequently, he had started filling out, gaining back the twenty-five pounds he’d lost while his own heart had withered and he’d waited for a new one. He was now back to his pre-illness weight of 180 and food intake, for the first time in four years, was something he had to watch. On his last cardio checkup, his doctor had taken notice and raised a warning. She told him that he had to slow down the intake of calories and fat.

But not at this lunch. He had been waiting a long time for a chance to come to this place. Years earlier he had spent a good bit of time in Florida on a serial case and the only good that had come out of it was his love of Cuban food. When he later transferred to the Los Angeles field office it was hard to find a Cuban restaurant that compared with the places where he had eaten in Ybor City outside of Tampa. Once on an L.A. case he’d come across a patrol cop who he learned was of Cuban descent. McCaleb asked him where he went to eat when he wanted real home cooking. The cop’s answer was El Cochinito. And McCaleb quickly became a regular.

McCaleb decided that studying the menu was a waste of time because he had known all along what he wanted. Lechon asada with black beans and rice, fried bananas and yucca on the side and don’t bother telling the doctor. He just wished Winston would hurry up and get there so he could place his order.

He put the menu aside and thought about Harry Bosch. McCaleb had spent most of the morning on the boat, watching the trial on television. He thought Bosch’s performance on the witness stand had been outstanding. The revelation that Storey had been linked to another death was shocking to McCaleb and apparently to the media horde as well. During the breaks the talking heads in the studio were beside themselves with excitement over the prospect of this new fodder. They cut at one point to the hallway outside the courtroom where J. Reason Fowkkes was being peppered with questions about these new developments. Fowkkes, for probably the only time in his life, was not commenting. The talking heads were left to speculate about this new information and to comment on the methodical yet thoroughly gripping procession of the prosecution’s case.

Still, watching the trial only caused uneasiness within McCaleb. He had a difficult time coming to terms with the idea that the man he had watched so capably describing the aspects and moves of a difficult investigation was also the man he was investigating, the man his gut instincts told him had committed the same kind of crime he was now involved in prosecuting.

At noon, their agreed-upon meeting time, McCaleb looked up from his thoughts to see Jaye Winston come through the restaurant’s front door. She was followed by two men. One was black and one was white and that was the best way to differentiate between them because they wore almost identical gray suits and maroon ties. Before they even got to his table McCaleb knew they were bureau men.

Winston had a look of washed-out resignation on her face.

“Terry,” she said before sitting down, “I want you to meet a couple guys.”

She indicated the black agent first.

“This is Don Twilley