His daughter seemed to have forgotten about killing a flight attendant. Bosch was glad for that but wasn’t too happy about pushing his own memory buttons.

He suddenly smiled.

“What?” Maddie asked.

“Nothing, I just sort of jumped to another memory from back then. A crazy thing.”

“Well, tell me. You just told me a super-sad story, so tell me the crazy story.”

He waited while the waitress put down their food. She had been working there since Bosch had been a cadet nearly forty years before.

“Thanks, Margie,” Bosch said.

“You’re welcome, Harry.”

Madeline put ketchup on her Bratton Burger, and they took a few bites of food before Bosch began his story.

“Well, when I graduated and got my badge and was put out on the street, it was sort of the same thing all over again. You know, counterculture, the war-protest movement, crazy stuff like that going on.”

He pointed to the framed front page on the wall next to them.

“The police were viewed by a lot of people out there as maybe just a slight level above the baby killers coming back from Vietnam. You know what I mean?”

“I guess.”

“So my first job out on the street as a slick sleeve was to walk—”

“What’s that, a ‘slick sleeve’?”

“A rookie, a boot. No stripes on my sleeves yet.”

“Okay.”

“My first assignment out of the academy was a foot beat on Hollywood Boulevard. And back then it was pretty grim on the boulevard. Really run down.”

“It’s still pretty sketchy in some parts.”

“That’s true. But anyway, I was assigned to a partner who was an old guy named Pepin, and he was my training officer. I remember everybody called him the French Dip because on the beat he stopped every day for an ice cream at this place called Dips near Hollywood and Vine. Like clockwork. Every day. Anyway, Pepin had been around a long time, and I walked the beat with him. We’d do the same routine. Walk up Wilcox from the station, go right on Hollywood till we got to Bronson, then turn around and walk all the way down to La Brea and then back to the station. The French Dip had a built-in clock, and he knew just what pace to keep so that we were back at the station by end of watch.”

“Sounds boring.”