The Narrows - Michael Connelly [118]
“The Badlands are really quite beautiful in the summer,” she said.
She stood up and headed to the door.
“Agent Walling?” Alpert said to her back. “Hold on a second.”
39
RACHEL’S PLANE LANDED a half hour late at Burbank because of the rain and wind. It had not let up through the night and the city was cast in a shroud of gray. It was the kind of rain that paralyzed the city. Traffic moved at a crawl on every street and every freeway. The roads weren’t built for it. The city wasn’t either. By dawn the storm water culverts were overflowing, the tunnels were at capacity and the runoff to the Los Angeles River had turned the concrete-lined canal that snaked through the city to the sea into a roaring rapids. It was black water, carrying with it the ash of the fires that had blackened the hills the year before. There was an end-of-the-world gloom about it all. The city had been tested by fire first and now rain. Living in L.A. sometimes felt like you were riding shotgun with the devil to the apocalypse. People I saw that morning carried a what’s-next look in their eyes. Earthquake? Tsunami? Or maybe a disaster of our own making? A dozen years earlier fire and rain had been the harbingers of both tectonic and social upheaval in the City of Angels. I didn’t think there was anybody here who doubted it could happen again. If we are doomed to repeat ourselves in our follies and mistakes, then it is easy to see nature and balance operating on the same cycle.
I thought about this as I waited for Rachel at the curb outside the terminal. The rain pounded the windshield, turning it translucent and murky. The wind rocked the car on its springs. I thought about rejoining the cops, already second-guessing my decision and wondering if I would be repeating myself in folly or if I had a chance this time at grace.
I didn’t see Rachel in the rain until she knocked on the passenger-side window. She then opened the back hatch and threw in her bag. She was wearing a green parka with the hood up. It must have done her well facing the elements in the Dakotas but it looked too large and bulky on her in L.A.
“This better be good, Bosch,” she said as she climbed in and dropped wetly onto the passenger seat. She showed no outward sign of affection and neither did I. It was one of the agreements we’d made on the phone. We were to act as professionals until we played my hunch out.
“Why, you got alternatives?”
“No, it’s just that I put everything on the line last night with Alpert. I’m one fuckup short of a permanent posting in South Dakota, where, by the way, the weather might actually be nicer than this.”
“Well, welcome to L.A.”
“I thought this was Burbank.”
“Technically.”
After we cleared the airport I dropped down to the 134 and took that east to the 5. Between the rain and the morning rush hour our progress was slow as we skirted around Griffith Park and pointed south. I wasn’t ready to begin worrying about time yet but I was getting close.
For a long time we rode silently because the mix of rain and traffic made the drive intense, probably more so for Rachel who had to sit and do nothing while I had control of the wheel. Finally she spoke, if only to siphon off some of the tension in the car.
“So are you going to tell me this grand plan of yours?”
“No plan, just a hunch.”
“No, you said you knew his next move, Bosch.”
I noticed that since we had made love on the bed of my efficiency unit she had started calling me by my last name. I wondered if this was part of the agreement to act as professionals or some form of reverse endearment, calling someone you had been most intimate with by his least intimate name.
“I had to get you here, Rachel.”
“Well, all right then, I’m here. Tell it to me.”
“It’s the Poet who has the grand plan. Backus.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“Remember the books I told you about yesterday, the books in the barrel and the one I pulled out?”
“Yes.”