Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories by Michael Connelly

poker?”
    Blitzstein made a dismissive gesture with his left hand.
    “Not since I was about thirteen.”
    Bosch held up the bill he had traded Gunn for. He folded it in his hand so Blitzstein would be unable to read the serial number.
    “Five sixes,” he said.
    The object of liar’s poker was to predict the total number of specific letters or numbers in the serial numbers of all dollar bills in the game. If Blitzstein took the bait, it would be a total coming from only two bills. Five sixes was a high bid.
    Blitzstein shook his head.
    “I don’t play with amateurs.”
    “With all those card rooms cutting you out, I would say that was all you had left to play with. Six sixes.”
    “Jesus,” Blitzstein said in an exasperated tone.
    “Come on, Mr. Pro. What’ve you got?”
    “I’ve got an hour in this room with you and I think you’re going to drive me nuts.”
    “Then I guess I win by default.”
    Bosch started putting his money away. Blitzstein leaned forward.
    “Just hold on, boy.”
    He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his cash. He found a dollar bill and crunched it in his fist.
    “You bid six sixes? Then I call without even looking. I know you’re bluffing. You’ve got a major tell.”
    “Yeah, what is that?”
    “You look away at the precise moment you should stare unflinchingly at your opponent.”
    “Is that right?”
    Blitzstein dropped his bill on the table and Bosch did likewise. Bosch had five sixes in his serial number. He carefully opened Blitzstein’s bill and it had one six. Bosch took both bills off the table.
    He held Blitzstein’s up and smiled.
    “I’m going to frame this!”
    He put it into his shirt pocket, shoved his winning dollar bill into his pants pocket and smiled.
    “Now I can tell people I beat a poker pro.”
    “Yeah, I hope it makes you happy.”
    This time Bosch stared unflinchingly at his opponent. And he saw Blitzstein’s tell. A quick moment where his confidence deserted him and he wondered if he had just stepped into a trap.
    “It does make me happy,” Bosch said. “Very happy.”
    Bosch and Gunn walked into the forensics lab on the fourth floor and asked the counterwoman if a lab rat named Ronald Cantor was working. They were in luck. Cantor was in the lab and they were buzzed through the gate.
    Cantor was an SEM jockey. His job was to analyze collected evidence with a scanning electron microscope. The normal wait time for this particular analysis ranged from four to six months. But there were unofficial ways around this. Lab rats were given morning, lunch and afternoon breaks. What they did on those breaks was up to them. It was personal time. If they wanted, for example, they could take cases out of order and put the evidence on the SEM lens. It was all about the incentives to do so.
    Ronald Cantor had an ongoing incentive when it came to Bosch. Five years earlier Bosch had solved the murder of his nine-year-old niece, who had been snatched from her front yard in Laurel Canyon by a man who asked her for help finding a lost dog. Though devastated by the loss of the young girl, the Cantor family was always grateful to Bosch, primarily because not only did he solve the case but he also saved them the agony of going through a trial. During the killer’s capture, Bosch had shot the man to death in a struggle for control of Bosch’s gun. Ever since that day, Bosch was gold when it came to getting case time on the scanning electron microscope.
    “Ronnie, how are you?” Bosch said as he approached.
    “Doing good, Harry. This your new partner?”
    “For the day, you could say. Detective Gunn, this is Ronnie Cantor, SEM expert. Have you taken your morning break yet, Ronnie?”
    “No, just beginning to think about some hot chocolate, actually.”
    “Well, I got a little thing here I was hoping you’d take a look at real quick. We got a guy down in one of our rooms and we need to pull the trigger on him in the next hour. Keep him or kick him