“You know, information. I’ve got the police department wired and you’ve got the courthouse wired. It would be a two-way street. You tell me what you’re hearing and I’ll tell you what I’m hearing. I have a feeling this is going to be a big case. I need any information I can get.”

I turned and looked up at him for a moment.

“But won’t the information you’d be giving me just end up in the paper the next day? I could just wait and read it.”

“Not all of it will be in there. Some stuff you can’t print, even if you know it’s true.”

He looked at me as though he were passing on a great piece of wisdom.

“I have a feeling you’ll be hearing things before I do,” I said.

“I’ll take my chances. Deal?”

“You got a card?”

This time he took a card out of his pocket and handed it to me. I held it between my fingers and draped my hand over the steering wheel. I held the card up and looked at it again. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get a line on inside information on the case.

“Okay, deal.”

I signaled him away again and pulled the door closed, then started the car. He was still there. I lowered the window.

“What?” I asked.

“Just remember, I don’t want to see your name in the other papers or on the TV saying stuff I don’t have.”

“Don’t worry. I know how it works.”

“Good.”

I dropped it into reverse but thought of something and kept my foot on the brake.

“Let me ask you a question. How tight are you with Bosch, the lead investigator on the case?”

“I know him, but nobody’s really tight with him. Not even his own partner.”

“What’s his story?”

“I don’t know. I never asked.”

“Well, is he any good at it?”

“At clearing cases? Yes, he’s very good. I think he’s considered one of the best.”

I nodded and thought about Bosch. The man on a mission.

“Watch your toes.”

I backed the Lincoln out. McEvoy called out to me just as I put the car in drive.

“Hey, Haller, love the plate.”

I waved a hand out the window as I drove down the ramp. I tried to remember which of my Lincolns I was driving and what the plate said. I have a fleet of three Town Cars left over from my days when I carried a full case load. But I had been using the cars so infrequently in the last year that I had put all three into a rotation to keep the engines in tune and the dust out of the pipes. Part of my comeback strategy, I guess. The cars were exact duplicates, except for the license plates, and I wasn’t sure which one I was driving.

When I got down to the parking attendant’s booth and handed in my stub, I saw a small video screen next to the cash register. It showed the view from a camera located a few feet behind my car. It was the camera Cisco had told me about, designed to pick up an angle on the rear bumper and license plate.