Then her phone started to buzz and she saw Bosch’s name on the screen.
“Harry!”
“What just happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. Where are you? Can you see them?”
“You mean the other car? Yeah, he just blew the light and started up the PCH toward Malibu.”
“Can you follow him? He grabbed my key and I’m stuck. He’s taking her home and I need to know who she is and where she lives.”
“I’m on it.”
Ballard heard the phone clunk into the center console as Bosch fired up his car and took off. Ballard jumped out of her car and scanned the businesses and parking lots along Pacific Coast Highway. She saw the squared-off Jeep Cherokee coming out of the supermarket lot onto the PCH and heading through the light at Sunset and toward Malibu.
“Get ’im, Harry,” she said out loud.
24
Davenport didn’t come back for nearly forty minutes. Ballard was leaning against the side of her car with her arms crossed as she watched his car come across the lot to her. He held his arm out the car window, the key to Ballard’s car dangling from his hand. He wasn’t staying. He kept his eyes cast forward through the windshield as he spoke.
“Had to do it, Ballard.”
Ballard grabbed the key out of his hand.
“Why?”
“Because we’re sinking, Ballard. All we need is to drag another cop into another scandal. Don’t you get that?”
“No, Davenport, I don’t get it. Who’s the cop you’re protecting?”
Now he turned his face to her.
“I don’t know and I didn’t ask her, because I don’t want to know. It’s the department I’m protecting, Ballard, not the cop. That’s why if you beef me and I beef you, you’re going to lose. The department always comes first. The department always wins. Think about that.”
He hit the gas and his car took off. Ballard didn’t flinch or move. She tracked the wide turn he made to go back to the gate, then pulled her phone and called Bosch.
“Harry, you got her?”
“She’s in a house up here on PCH. On the water just past the light at Topanga Canyon. What happened? Did he bring back your key?”
“I have it. Give me the address and I’ll come to you.”
Fifteen minutes later, Ballard pulled to the side of Pacific Coast Highway behind Bosch’s Jeep. She got out, walked up, and got into the passenger seat next to him.
“It’s that one with the portholes,” Bosch said.
He pointed across the street. The road was lined with houses cantilevered over the rocks, sand, and water. They were jammed next to each other like teeth in a mouth, so close that it was impossible to tell they were on the ocean save for the sound of the waves echoing from behind them. The house Bosch pointed at was a two-story with a single-slot carport. It was gray wood with white trim and two round windows on the second level. Ballard knew the view would be on the other side. There would be big glass looking out over the ocean.
“They pulled up,” Bosch said. “He walked her in, stayed two or three minutes, and then left. What’s going on, Renée?”
“She was about to name the money man,” Ballard said. “She called him the street banker and said he was a cop. Then Davenport jumped in and shut it down. He acted all noble like he was trying to protect the department. But I don’t buy it. I think she was about to reveal something he knew about.”
“He’s dirty?”
“Where’s the line on dirty? I think he at least knows something about the department that could damage it. His decision is to cover it up rather than clean it up. If that’s dirty, then, yeah, he’s dirty. But whatever it is, he didn’t know she was going to spill it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have set up the meeting.”
“Makes sense. So, what do you want to do?”
“I want the street banker’s name.”
“Then let’s go get it.”
It was a Sunday night and Malibu had emptied out at the end of the holiday weekend. There was little traffic and no threat to Ballard and Bosch as they crossed four lanes of PCH in the dark. The front door to the house where the informant apparently lived was off the carport near the driver’s side of the Porsche Panamera parked there. Ballard banged hard with the side of her fist so it would be heard over the sound of the waves crashing behind the house.
The door was opened before she had to hit it again. A man stood there. He was in his sixties, white, with the cliché attempts to look younger on full display: earring, bracelets, dyed hair and chin beard, fraying blue jeans, and a gray hoodie. It all went with the Porsche.