My call was transferred and picked up by someone who simply said, “Nunez.”

“Agent Nunez?”

“Yes, what can I help you with?”

I knew that handling a supervising FBI agent would not be the same as handling the secretary of a movie mogul. I had to be as up-front as I could with Nunez.

“Yes, my name is Harry Bosch. I just retired from the LAPD after about thirty years and I —”

“Good for you,” he said curtly. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. About four years ago I was working a homicide case that was connected to a large cash robbery involving currency that had been recorded.”

“What case?”

“Well, you probably won’t recognize it by case name but it was the murder of Angella Benton. The murder preceded the robbery, which took place on a movie set in Hollywood. It made a big splash. The bad guys got away with two million dollars. Eight hundred of the hundred-dollar bills had been recorded.”

“I remember it. But we did not work it. We had noth—”

“I know that. Like I told you, I worked the case.”

“Then go on, what can I do for you?”

“Several months into the case an agent from your office contacted the LAPD to report an anomaly in the recorded numbers. She had received the list of serials because we had sent it all over.”

“An anomaly, what is that?”

“An anomaly is a deviation, something that doesn’t —”

“I know what the word means. What anomaly are you talking about?”

“Oh, sorry. This agent called and said one of the numbers was a misprint or a couple of the numbers got inverted, something like that. But that’s not what I’m calling about. She said she had a computer program that cross-referenced and cross-matched numbers from these sorts of cases. I think it was her own program, something that she worked up on her own. Does any of this ring a bell? Not the case but the agent. An agent who had this program. A female agent.”

“Why?”

“Well, because I have misplaced her name. Actually, I never got it because she spoke to one of the other investigators on the case. But I would like to speak to her, if I could.”

“Speak to her about what? You said you are retired.”

I knew it would come to this, and this is where I was weak. I had no station, no validity. You either had a badge that opened all doors or you didn’t. I didn’t.

“Some cases die hard, Agent Nunez. I’m still working it. Nobody else is, so I figured I’d take the shot. You know how it is.”

“No, actually, I don’t. I’m not retired.”

A real hard-ass. He was silent after that and I found myself getting angry with this faceless man who was probably trying to balance a burdensome caseload with a lack of manpower and funding. L.A. was the bank robbery capital of the world. Three a day was the norm and the FBI had to respond to every one of them.