“So somebody probably dumped that body the night before you found it.”

“Could be,” Gundy said.

“Yeah, I’d say that was so,” Mercer added.

“With you two sleeping, what, forty, fifty feet away?”

This time they didn’t verbally agree. Bosch stepped over and dropped into a catcher’s squat so he was on their eye level.

“Tell me what you men saw that night.”

“We didn’t see nothin’,” Gundy said adamantly.

“But we heard things,” Mercer said. “Heard things.”

“What things?”

“A car pull up,” Mercer said. “A door open, then a trunk. We heard somethin’ heavy hit the ground. Then the trunk closed and the door, then the car drive off.”

“You didn’t even look?” Edgar asked quickly. He had stepped over and was leaning down, hands on his knees. “A body gets dumped there fifty feet away and you don’t look?”

“No, we don’t look,” Mercer retorted. “People be dumpin’ their garbage and whatnot in the field most every night. We never look. We keep our heads down. In the morning we look. We got some nice items time to time from what people throw away. We always wait till mornin’ to check out what they throw.”

Bosch nodded that he understood and hoped Edgar would leave the men alone.

“And you never told all of this to the cops?”

“Nope,” Mercer and Gundy said in unison.

“What about anybody else? You ever told it to somebody who could verify this has been the true story all along?”

The men thought about it. Mercer was shaking his head no when Gundy nodded yes.

“The only one we told was Mr. Elias’s man.”

Bosch glanced at Edgar and then back at Gundy.

“Who’s that?”

“His man. The investigator. We told him what we told you. He said Mr. Elias was gonna use us in court one day. He said Mr. Elias would be takin’ care of us.”

“Pelfry?” Edgar asked. “Was that his name?”

“Could be,” Gundy said. “I don’t know.”

Mercer didn’t say anything.

“You guys read the paper today?” Bosch asked. “See any TV news?”

“On what TV?” Mercer asked.

Bosch just nodded and stood up. They didn’t even know Elias was dead.

“How long ago was that when Mr. Elias’s man talked to you?”

“Be about a month,” Mercer said. “Somewhere around that.”

Bosch looked at Edgar and nodded that he was done. Edgar nodded back.

“Thanks for your help,” Bosch said. “Can I buy you guys some dinner?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his money. He gave each man a ten. They thanked him politely and he walked away.

As they sped north on Western to Wilshire, Bosch started riffing on what the information from the two homeless men meant.