“Busywork? Some of those guys threatened him when they were being led off to prison. Maybe some of them are out. Maybe one just got out and made good on the threat. Maybe they contracted it out from prison. There are a lot of possibilities and they shouldn’t be dismissed as just busywork. I don’t understand your attitude on this.”

Bosch smiled and shook his head. I remembered my father doing the same thing when he was about to tell me as a five-year-old that I had misunderstood something.

“I don’t really care what you think about my attitude,” he said. “We’ll check your leads out. But I’m looking for something a little more current. Something from Vincent’s open cases.”

“Well, I can’t help you there.”

“Sure you can. You have all the cases now. I assume you are reviewing them and meeting all your new clients. You’re going to come across something or see something or hear something that doesn’t fit, that doesn’t seem right, that maybe scares you a little bit. That’s when you call me.”

I stared at him without answering.

“You never know,” he said. “It might save you from…”

He shrugged and didn’t finish, but the message was clear. He was trying to scare me into cooperating far more than Judge Holder was allowing, or than I felt comfortable with.

“It’s one thing sharing threat information from closed cases,” I said. “It’s another thing entirely to do it with active cases. And besides that, I know you are asking for more than just threats. You think Jerry stumbled across something or had some knowledge that got him killed.”

Bosch kept his eyes on me and slowly nodded. I was the first to look away.

“What about it being a two-way street, Detective? What do you know that you aren’t telling me? What was in the laptop that was so important? What was in the portfolio?”

“I can’t talk to you about an active investigation.”

“You could yesterday when you asked about the FBI.”

He looked at me and squinted his dark eyes.

“I didn’t ask you about the FBI.”

“Come on, Detective. You asked if he had any federal cases. Why would you do that unless you have some sort of federal connection? I’m guessing it was the FBI.”

Bosch hesitated. I had a feeling I had guessed right and now he was in a corner. My mentioning the bureau would make him think I knew something. Now he would have to give in order to get.

“This time you go first,” I prompted.

He nodded.

“Okay, the killer took Jerry Vincent’s cell phone — either off his body or it was in his briefcase.”

“Okay.”