The Crossing by Michael Connelly Page A

bar.
    Ellis felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and he retreated to the back hall. He put the beer bottle down on the floor of one of the phone booths and accepted the call from Long as he closed the door for privacy.
    “I think he’s buttoned up for the night,” Long said.
    “Where?” Ellis asked.
    “House in the hills. Nice on a cop’s salary.”
    “You sure he’s staying in?”
    “No, but if you want me to sit on it, I’m still in the vicinity. I can go back.”
    Ellis thought for a moment. A plan was forming. A shortterm plan. He needed Long to come back. While he was working it out, Long broke the silence.
    “I got his ID.”
    “How? Who is he?”
    “There was another car but I checked it and it’s got a law enforcement block on it too. But tomorrow’s trash pickup. I grabbed a couple bags out of the bin on the street, then drove away and looked through the shit. I found some mail. The guy’s name—not sure how to pronounce it—is Hermonius Bosch or something. All the mail was addressed to him.”
    “Spell it. First and last.”
    “H-I-E-R-O-N-Y-M-U-S and B-O-S-C-H.”
    “Hieronymus, like the painter.”
    “What painter?”
    “Never mind. Just get back here. I have a plan to slow our guy here down.”
    “Give me fifteen.”
    “Make it ten. I think he’s about to split.”
    Ellis disconnected, picked up his beer, and went back to the bar in the old room. Haller was still in place but the woman he had been working was gone and had been replaced by a man in a black leather jacket over a white T-shirt. Haller was holding a silver credit card up and trying to get the bartender’s attention with it. He was ready to leave.
    Ellis squeezed between two patrons and put his bottle up on the bar. He then went up the steps and out of the restaurant. Walking back out to Las Palmas, he saw a shadowed recess beside the pedestrian entrance of a public parking garage. From there, he would have a line of sight to Musso’s parking lot while he waited for Long.
    As he moved into the shadows, he nearly tripped over something in the darkness. There was a rustling sound followed by a groan and a complaint.
    “What the fuck, man. You’re in my space.”
    Ellis reached into his pocket for his phone. He engaged the screen and turned it so that dim light washed across the concrete floor. There was a man clawing his way out of a dirty sleeping bag, his belongings in plastic bags lined against the wall. Ellis glanced behind him and saw no one in the street and no sign of Haller walking to his car in the lot. He turned back to the homeless man and made a decision. He kicked the man in the ribs as he moved on all fours. Ellis felt the impact of the kick through his whole leg and knew he had broken bone. The man flipped onto his back and released the sound of a wounded animal. Before he could scream Ellis stomped down on the man’s throat with all of his weight, crushing the air passage. He then backed off and came right back with a heel to the bridge of the man’s nose. The man was silent and unmoving after that.
    Ellis returned his phone to his pocket and took a position in the alcove where he could watch for Haller. Soon enough he saw the lawyer emerge from the restaurant’s back steps.
    “Shit,” Ellis whispered.
    He noticed that Haller showed no signs of alcohol impairment as he paid the attendant and retrieved his keys. Ellis called Long.
    “The fuck are you?”
    “Two minutes. Just turned onto Hollywood.”
    “I’ll be at the same spot. Put on the radio.”
    “Okay. Why?”
    Ellis disconnected without answering. He noticed that Haller was talking on his cell phone as he walked to his Lincoln. Ellis reached into another pocket and pulled out a second phone and turned it on. He always carried a burner. While he waited for it to boot up he heard a gurgling sound from behind him. In the enclosed concrete space it echoed. He turned and drove his foot, heel first, into the darkness where he knew the homeless man