“No,” he said. “This is a small town. I do that and word will get back to both of them. I don’t want that yet.”

“I get you. How is it going up there?”

“It’s going. Today was just a recon day. Tomorrow I’m going to start pushing things. What was the other thing? You said two things.”

There was a pause before Chu spoke, so Bosch knew the second bit of news was not going to be good.

“The Tool called me into his office today.”

Of course, Bosch thought. O’Toole.

“What did he want?”

“He wanted to know what I was working on, but I could also tell he was worried that you weren’t really on vacation. He asked if I knew where you went, stuff like that. I told him that as far as I knew, you were home painting the house.”

“Painting the house. Okay, I’ll remember that. You warned me about this in an email?”

“Yeah, right after lunch.”

“Don’t put stuff like that in an email. Just call me. Who knows how far O’Toole will go if he’s trying to blow somebody out of the unit.”

“Okay, Harry, I won’t. Sorry.”

Bosch got a call-waiting beep. He looked at his screen and saw it was his daughter.

“Don’t worry about it, Dave, but I gotta go now. My daughter’s calling. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

“Okay, Harry, get some sleep.”

Bosch switched over to his daughter. She spoke in a low voice, almost a whisper.

“How was your day, Dad?”

Bosch thought for a moment about what to say. “Actually, it was kind of boring,” he said. “How was yours?”

“Mine was boring, too. When are you coming home?”

“Well . . . let’s see, I have a little more work up here tomorrow. A couple interviews. So maybe not till Wednesday. Are you in your room?”

“Uh-huh.”

Meaning she was alone and hopefully out of earshot of Hannah. Bosch leaned back on the pillows. They were thin and hard but it felt like the Ritz-Carlton to him.

“So how’s it going with Hannah?” he asked.

“It’s okay, I guess,” she said.

“You sure?”

“She was trying to get me to go to bed early. Like ten o’clock or something.”

Bosch smiled. He knew the score. The inverse law of waking a teenage girl too early was to suggest she go to bed too early.

“I told her before I left to let you do your own thing. I can talk to her again, remind her that you know your own body clock.”

It was the argument she had put to him when he had made the same mistake as Hannah.

“No, it’s okay. I can deal.”

“What about dinner? Don’t tell me you ordered in pizza.”

“No, she made dinner and it was really good.”

“What was it?”