Bosch stressed the word Mister so that maybe Jardine would realize he was making a mistake screwing with the LAPD.

“Yeah,” Jardine said. “I got it.”

“Good.”

Bosch clicked off.

“You know what I remember most about ’ninety-two?” Entrenkin said. “One image. A photo that was in the Times. The caption was something like ‘Father and Son Looters’ and the picture showed a man leading his four-or five-year-old son out of the smashed-in door of a Kmart or something. And you know what each one was carrying, what they had looted?”

“What?”

“Each one had taken one of those Thigh-Master things. You know, that ridiculous exercise contraption that some television star from the ’eighties sold late at night on TV.”

Bosch shook his head at the inanity of her image.

“They saw it on TV and so they thought it was valuable,” he said. “Like Howard Elias.”

She didn’t respond and he realized he had been out of line, even if he believed there was something valid in what he had said.

“Sorry . . .”

They drove in silence for a few minutes before Bosch spoke again.

“You know what my image is of ’ninety-two?”

“What?”

“I was assigned to Hollywood Boulevard. And, as you know, we weren’t really supposed to do anything unless we saw people in danger of physical harm. Essentially, this meant that if the looters were orderly about it, we basically weren’t going to stop them. It made no — anyway, I was on the boulevard and I remember a lot of weird things. The Scientologists surrounding their buildings, standing practically shoulder to shoulder and carrying broomsticks, ready to make a stand if needed. The guy who ran the Army surplus store near Highland was in full combat infantry dress and carrying a sniper rifle over his shoulder. He was marching back and forth in front of his store like he was at the gate at Benning . . . People get crazy, the good and the bad. It’s day of the locusts.”

“Well, aren’t you the well-read detective, Detective Bosch.”

“Not really. I once lived with a woman who taught junior lit at Grant High in the Valley. It was one of the books she taught. I read it then. Anyway, the image that sticks with me from ’ninety-two is Frederick’s of Hollywood.”

“The lingerie place?”

Bosch nodded.