Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [109]
It was the best dinner he knew how to cook in a kitchen. He would have preferred grilling something on the deck, but the grill had been hauled away when the original house was demolished after the earthquake. While he had replaced the house, he had not yet gotten around to getting a new grill. He decided as he mixed rice into the boiling water that if Eleanor chose to stay for a while, he would get the grill.
“Smells good.”
He turned and she was standing in the doorway. She was dressed in blue jeans and a denim shirt. Her hair was damp from the shower. Bosch looked at her and felt the desire to make love to her again.
“I hope it tastes good,” he said. “This is a new kitchen, but I don’t really know how to use it yet. Never did much cooking.”
She smiled.
“I can tell already it will be good.”
“Tell you what, will you stir this every few minutes while I take a shower?”
“Sure. I’ll set the table.”
“Okay. I was thinking we’d eat out on the deck. It doesn’t smell like paint out there.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I mean it will be nice out there. I’m not complaining about the paint. In fact, that was all a ruse, you know, to leave the wall half painted like that. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
She smiled.
“A regular Tom Sawyer, detective third grade.”
“Maybe not for long.”
His comment ruined the moment and she stopped smiling. He silently chastised himself on the way back to the bedroom.
After his shower, Bosch put the last part of his recipe into the frying pan. He took a handful of frozen peas and mixed them into the simmering chicken-and-tomato stew. As he brought the food and wine out to the picnic table on the deck, he told Eleanor, who was standing at the railing, to have a seat.
“Sorry,” he said as they settled in. “I forgot about a salad.”
“This is all I need.”
They started the meal in silence. He waited.
“I like it a lot,” she finally said. “What do you call this?”
“I don’t know. My mother just called it Chicken Special. I think that’s what it was called in a restaurant where she first had it.”
“A family recipe.”
“The only one.”
They ate quietly for a few minutes during which Bosch surreptitiously tried to watch her to see if she really enjoyed the food. He was pretty sure she did.
“Harry,” Eleanor said after a while, “who are the agents involved in this?”
“They’re from all over; Chicago, Vegas, L.A.”
“Who from L.A.?”
“Guy named John O’Grady? You know him?”
It had been more than five years since she had worked in the bureau’s L.A. field office. FBI agents moved around a lot. He doubted she would know O’Grady and she said she didn’t.
“What about John Samuels? He’s the AUSA on it. He’s from the OC strike force.”
“Samuels I know. Or knew. He was an agent for a while. Not a particularly good one. Had the law degree and when he figured out he wasn’t much of an investigator, he decided he wanted to prosecute.”
She started laughing and shook her head.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just something they used to say about him. It’s kind of gross.”
“What?”
“Does he still have his mustache?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they used to say that he could sure put a case together for prosecution, but as far as investigating it out on the street went, he couldn’t find shit if it was in his own mustache.”
She laughed again — a little too hard, Bosch thought. He smiled back.
“Maybe that’s why he became a prosecutor,” she added.
Something occurred to Bosch then and he quickly withdrew into his thoughts. Eventually he heard Eleanor’s voice.
“What?”
“You disappeared. I asked what you were thinking. I didn’t think it was that bad a joke.”
“No, I was just thinking about what a bottomless hole I’m in. About how it doesn’t really matter whether Samuels actually believes I’m dirty on this. He needs me to be dirty.”
“How so?”
“They’ve got cases to make with their undercover guy against Joey Marks and his crew. And they’ve got to be ready and able to explain how a murder weapon got to be in their guy’s house. Because if they can’t explain it, then Joey’s lawyers are going to shove it down