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“I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Take your time,” Sears said. “I’m here if you need me.”

14

1964

THE PLATES CAME out of the Hobart at 180 degrees, hot enough to leave Harry’s hands red and raw. Still, he’d decided that he’d rather be on this end of the line than at the front, dealing with dirty plates and garbage. Chops didn’t seem to mind being the loader. He’d often sing while he worked. He had a good voice and knew all the Sam Cooke songs. But he didn’t sing when there was a Dodgers game to listen to.

They shared the best job in the Mac. It paid fifty cents an hour and they could sneak food when Lester, the kitchen manager and head cook, wasn’t looking. A slice of meat off the serving tray before it went out to the line, a finger swipe through a bowl of chocolate pudding. On top of that, Clemson, the line cook, sold them cigarettes that they’d smoke outside during their breaks.

But the best part of the job was that Lester let Harry bring his transistor radio. It was an old Regency TR-1 that his mother had given him many years before. He would put it on top of the Hobart and tune it to Vin Scully calling the Dodgers game. It helped Harry remember that there was a world outside the walls of the Mac. He had shaken Scully’s hand the year before when the broadcaster came with Sandy Koufax for the Mac’s Celebrity Day. Most of the kids were excited to see the Disney characters that came up from Anaheim or the actor who played Hoss on the Bonanza show, but for Bosch it was Scully and Koufax — the voice he listened to almost every night of the summer and the pitcher who was his favorite baseball player because he and Harry were both lefties.

It was a Thursday night in April and most of the work in the kitchen was done. They needed to wait for the final dishes to be collected in the dining hall before running the big dishwasher one more time. While waiting, they stepped out through the delivery doors at the back of the kitchen to smoke cigarettes on the stoop.

Harry brought the radio out with him. He was worried about the Dodgers. They’d won the World Series the year before, but so far this season they had only one win and seven losses. They were on the road in St. Louis and badly needed a win to turn things around. With Don Drysdale on the mound, it looked at first like they were going to get it. Except Drysdale gave up four runs and the Dodgers had had to rally in the seventh to build a slim two-run lead. Now Ron Perranoski was on the mound in the bottom of the ninth.

Harry set the radio on the step while he lit a cigarette. Chops lit his smoke off Harry’s.

“You think they win?” Chops asked.

“Two runs is usually safe,” Harry said. “But this year nothing’s safe with this team.”

The door opened behind them. Harry didn’t turn around, because he assumed it was Clemson coming out to sell them a couple more cigarettes for a dime.

But it wasn’t Clemson. It was Nick Stokely. He wasn’t the oldest kid in the Mac but he was the biggest and strongest. He had a face that seemed perpetually red, with a scar cutting through his left eyebrow. He had a bully’s swagger and was one of the ones to stay clear of.

“Who’s winning?” he said.

He scooped up the radio before Harry could grab it off the step. Harry tried to grab it back, but Stokely held the radio out of his reach.

“Take it easy, boy,” Stokely said. “I just want to hear the game.”

“Give it back,” Harry said.

“I will,” Stokely said. “Let’s just listen.”

“Give it back,” Chops said.

“What if I don’t?” Stokely said. “What are you gonna do? You gonna fight me for it, Lamb Chops?”

Chops didn’t reply.

“I didn’t think so,” Stokely said.

Harry could feel a deep anger rising in him. He had felt it before: When they took him away from his mother. When they told him that she was dead. When no one in this place did anything about Stokely and the other boys who salved their own anger by instilling fear in others.

Harry balled his fist and stared hard at the bigger boy.

“Give it back,” he said.

He said it calmly and it was clearly a last warning, a prelude to a physical confrontation — just the thing Stokely was looking for.

But something happened. Stokely stared back at Harry and read something in his eyes. Something that told him that superior physical strength did not always win the day. Stokely seemed to understand that he had tapped into something in the boy in front of him that should not be tested.

“I just wanted to hear the game,” he said. “You don’t have to get so mad about it.”

He handed the radio back and started walking to the kitchen door.