15

15

THE BADGE BUYER was fifteen minutes late. Ballard was getting anxious. She checked on Bosch through her binoculars once again. She could see him in the Cherokee, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. He was anxious too. If the badge buyer didn't show, they had no plan B.

The Cherokee was parked in an open area in the vast beach lot off Ocean Park in Santa Monica. On an overcast Wednesday morning, the spot drew only a handful of beach enthusiasts. The parking lot was so empty that a local roller-hockey club was able to set up their nets, delineate boundaries with orange cones, and play a game at the far end of the lot.

Ballard saw the door of the Cherokee open. Bosch climbed out and was careful not to glance in her direction. She was parked up on Ocean Boulevard with a down-angle view on the beach lot. They had chosen the meeting spot for this vantage point and because there was only one entrance and exit to the lot.

Bosch was holding the burner cell they had used to contact the unnamed badge buyer. Lionel Boden had provided the number after deciding his best move was to cooperate. Bosch leaned back against his car, hiked one leg up, and put his heel against the front wheel. He started typing on the phone. Ballard understood that he had gotten out of the car so she would see what he was doing: texting the badge buyer, probably to ask where the hell he was.

But before Bosch finished typing the message, Ballard saw a white Ford panel van cruise across the white lines on the empty asphalt and directly toward Bosch. It had not entered the lot just now—it had been there, parked near the scattering of vehicles belonging to the roller-hockey players. Ballard had thought it was the group's equipment van, but now it was in the open and heading toward Bosch's position.

Ballard kept the binoculars up and watched as the van made a circle around Bosch's car and stopped in front of him. There were no markings on the van's panels and she had gotten only a fleeting glance at its license plate. She noted the plate was bright yellow with a red design or lettering on it. But her view of it disappeared quickly when the van made the loop around Bosch and his car. New Mexico was the only state she could recall with bright yellow plates.

The visors on the van were down and Ballard could see only the driver's bearded jaw from her angle. He stayed in the van and spoke to Bosch through an open window.

Bosch responded to the driver by opening his army-green field jacket to show his T-shirt—which advertised an organization engaged in preventing veteran suicides. He had chosen it based on a guess that the badge buyer was a veteran experienced with weapons. Bosch then pulled the shirt up, exposing his torso to show he was not wired or carrying a weapon. Through the binoculars, Ballard could see Bosch's ribs and realized how much weight he had lost during his cancer treatment. She felt an immediate pang of guilt for drawing him into her problem.

The conversation in the parking lot continued briefly before Bosch pushed himself off his car and took a step toward the van.

"Don't get in the van, Harry," Ballard said out loud.

Bosch held his phone up to the van's driver, and Ballard let out her breath. He was only showing the photos of machine guns they had downloaded to the phone for what they believed would be the play with the badge buyer. Bosch even offered the phone to the van driver so he could swipe through the photos. It was a move to possibly get fingerprints, but the driver was either too smart for that or had seen enough photos. He demurred.

The conversation soon ended. Through the binoculars, Ballard saw Bosch nod to the driver. It was the signal to Ballard that they were going to make a deal.

The van drove off with Bosch standing there. He turned back to his Cherokee. Ballard pushed the ignition button and put the Defender in drive. She was ready to follow the van once it left through the parking lot's exit. Bosch would be on the move as well but he would hang far back, since the van's driver had already seen his thirty-year-old car.

Ballard had a Bluetooth earbud in and wore her hair down, covering it. When Bosch called, she answered without taking her eyes off the van.

"How'd it go?" she asked.

"He said he wants to deal," Bosch said. "He wants four. But he could have been just bullshitting. Said he'd set up a meet for tomorrow for the exchange."

"Did you get a look inside the van? Was he alone?"

"I didn't want to be obvious. But I think he was alone."

"I saw you tried to get his prints."

"Yeah, that didn't work."

The white van exited the parking lot and turned left on Ocean. Ballard waited for traffic to clear and then pulled away from the curb, made a U-turn, and followed.

"So, what was he like?" Ballard asked. "I mean, formidable? Is he a player?"

"Uh… maybe," Bosch said. "Forty, forty-five, white, thick beard. He seemed fit, no paunch, but he could've had a wheelchair in the back of the van for all I could see. He stayed behind the wheel."

"He say his name?"

"No, no names."

"I saw you delay when he drove away. Did you get the plate?"

"There is no plate. He's got a Gadsden flag on there. Rattlesnake, the whole bit."

"‘Don't tread on me.'"

"Right."

This told Ballard that the badge buyer was either claiming to be a sovereign citizen or posing as one. She knew from FBI bulletins and LAPD intel alerts that sovereigns were considered anti-government extremists who did not recognize any taxing, licensing, or law enforcement authority. The last alert she remembered stated that the number of sovereigns in the country had grown markedly since the twin ideological earthquakes of the COVID pandemic and the failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The alert had concluded with the warning that all sovereigns should be considered armed and that law enforcement should approach with extreme caution. Because of this, most cops looked the other way when noticing the fake plates.

Ballard checked the van ahead and goosed the Defender to catch up and not be left behind at a traffic light.

"He has a bumper sticker on there too," Bosch said. "‘Your Vaccine Is a Bioweapon.'"

"Nice," Ballard said.

"These nutters like to stockpile weapons and they talk a good game, but they're usually guys who just don't want to pay taxes, whether it's on income, property, or cars."

"Not the case here, I don't think. He's up to something."

"You sure?"

"No, but why buy guns illegally when you don't have to? Why would a guy who supposedly doesn't recognize the police as a legit authority buy a police badge?"

"There's that."

Both were quiet for a long moment as they contemplated the badge buyer and what he might be planning. Bosch finally spoke.

"I'm out of the lot now. I'll hang back, but which way are you going?"

"North on Ocean. Coming up on Broadway now."

"Okay, I'm five behind and will cut it to two."

"Sounds good. Keeping the line open."

Ballard kept her eyes on the white van, which was now about two blocks ahead of her in moderate traffic. She was watching the crosswalk countdowns and maintaining a pace that would keep her from getting stopped by a traffic signal.

She saw the van glide into the left-turn lane ahead and she prepared to follow suit. "Harry, he's going down the California Incline."

"Got it."

Cars stacked up in the turning lane and Ballard ended up only three cars behind the van. She caught a glimpse of the badge buyer in the van's rectangular side-view mirror. He was wearing sunglasses.

The arrow turned green and the van made the turn. Ballard followed, keeping the three-car separation. The traffic dropped down and the road merged with the Pacific Coast Highway. The van moved to the inner lane, indicating to Ballard that the guy would not be turning off anytime soon.

"On PCH, heading toward Malibu."

"I missed the light at the Incline. You got him for now."

"Not a problem."

She thought about where the badge buyer might be headed. She knew that the sovereigns fit in nicely with most of the other extremist groups nowadays, from Aryan Nation to the Oath Keepers to the grab bag of other groups that had charged the Capitol three years before. That didn't quite fit with Malibu, but beyond Malibu was Ventura County and towns like Oxnard and Fillmore, where such groups were known to have roots.

But the badge buyer stopped well short of Ventura County or even Malibu. Just past Sunset Beach, still within the city limits of Los Angeles, the van pulled to the side of the road across the coast highway from the beach at Castle Rock. The van eased into a spot behind a large RV that was parked in a line of other RVs, smaller campers, and vans below the cliff facings of the Pacific Palisades.

To Ballard, it looked like someone had been waiting there for the van and had moved an orange cone that had been used to reserve the spot so the badge buyer could slip into it.

Ballard drove by to avoid notice.

"Harry, he just pulled over on the east side at Castle Rock. I drove by and I'll figure out a way to double back."

"Got it. I'll find a place to pull over short of there. Give me a meetup point when you've got one."

Ballard pulled into the left-turn lane and cut quickly through an opening in the oncoming traffic into the parking lot on the beach side of the PCH. She worked her way through the lot and found a spot with an angle on the white van across the four lanes of highway.

"I went into the lot on the beach side," she said. "I have eyes on the van but not the guy."

Bosch didn't respond but Ballard assumed he was maneuvering and wanted his hands free. He wasn't a Bluetooth-and-earbuds kind of guy.

She took up the binoculars and tried to see into the van through its windshield, but there were curtains hanging down behind the front seats. She hadn't noticed them earlier and thought the badge buyer might have gone into the back of the van and pulled the privacy curtains closed behind him.

"Harry, what's your twenty?"

His answer was a knock on her front passenger window. Ballard unlocked the door and he climbed in.

"You see him?" he asked.

"No, I think he's in the back of the van," Ballard said. "There are curtains behind the front seats. Did you see that when you talked to him?"

"I didn't notice."

"The other thing was that it was like he knew that spot. Like it was waiting for him."

"You see anybody else talk to him?"

"I think somebody moved a cone blocking the spot out of the way for him. But then I had to drive by and didn't get a look."

"So, is that reserved camper parking over there?"

"I don't think so. Probably just unregulated mobile homeless people."

The city was not enforcing most laws that were designed to help curtail the number of people living on the streets. Despite curfews and laws about sidewalk obstruction, encampments proliferated. Unenforced overnight-parking regulations had created a population of homeless people who lived in vans and campers that lined public streets at night.

"Great," Bosch said. "Now we have homeless terrorists."

"You really think that's what he is?" Ballard asked. "A terrorist?"

"I wouldn't bet against it. If he's downloaded the sovereign bullshit, that could be exactly what he is. A lot of people like that stormed the Capitol."

Ballard said nothing. She continued to stare across the street, her view of the van repeatedly interrupted by passing cars.

"So, what do you think?" Bosch asked.

"I think there's a good chance that my badge is in that van," Ballard said, "waiting for me to come get it."