I turned away from the window and sat down on the plastic couch. There was a magazine with Brenda Barstow’s photo on its cover on a beat-up coffee table. Under the picture the caption read “Brenda, America’s Sweetheart.” I was reaching for the magazine when the door to the interior offices opened and a man with a white shirt and tie stepped out.

“Mr. Bosch?”

I stood up and nodded. He reached his right hand forward while he used the left to keep the security door from closing and locking.

“Ken Nunez, thanks for coming in.”

The handshake was quick and then Nunez turned and led the way inside. He said nothing as he walked. He wasn’t what I had expected. On the phone he had sounded like a tired veteran who had seen it all twice. But he was young, just a year or two past thirty. And he didn’t really walk down the hallway. He strode. He was a young go-getter, still out to prove something to himself and others. I wasn’t sure which—old or new agent—I would have preferred.

He opened a door on the left and stepped back to allow me in. When I saw that the door opened outward and that there was a peephole I knew I was going into an interrogation room. And I knew then that this was not going to be a polite little meet-and-greet. More likely, I was about to get my ass kicked—federal style.

11

As I made the turn into the doorway I saw a square table positioned in the middle of the interrogation room. Sitting at the table, his back to me, was a man wearing a black shirt and jeans. He had close-cropped blond hair. As I entered I looked over his heavily muscled shoulder and saw he was reading an open investigative file. He closed it and looked up as I moved around the table to the other chair, opposite him.

It was Roy Lindell. He smiled at my reaction.

“Harry Bosch,” he said. “Long time no see there, podjo.”

I paused for a moment but then pulled the chair out and sat down. Meantime, Nunez closed the door, leaving me alone with Lindell.

Roy Lindell was about forty now. The heavy muscles I remembered were still in place, pressing his shirt to its boundaries. He still had the Las Vegas tan and the bleached teeth to go with it. I had first met him on a case that took me to Vegas and right into the middle of an undercover FBI operation. Forced to work together, we had managed to put aside jurisdictional and agency animosities to a certain extent and we closed the case, the bureau taking all the credit of course. That had been six or seven years earlier. I ran into him on a case in L.A. once after that, but we never stayed in touch. Not because the bureau had thieved the credit on that first case. Because cops and feds just don’t mix.