Michael Connelly (70 page)

“Okay. Go on, what did they say?”

“I couldn’t hear all of it. But one man was telling the other, the one he called Joe, what he had learned about the police investigation. About the Metro side of things, I think. And I heard the one called Joe get very angry when he was told the gun had been found at Luke Goshen’s house. And I remember his words. Very clearly. He was yelling. He said, ‘How the hell did they find the gun there when we didn’t do the goddamned hit?’ And then he said some more things about the cops planting the gun and he said, ‘You tell our guy that if this is some kind of shakedown, then he can fuck off, he can forget it.’ I didn’t hear much after that. They lowered their voices and the first guy was just trying to calm the other guy down.”

Bosch stared at her for a few moments, trying to analyze what she had overheard.

“Do you think it was a show?” he asked. “You know, put on for your benefit because they figured you’d turn around and tell me what you heard?”

“I did at first, and that’s another reason I didn’t tell you this right away,” she said. “But now I’m not so sure. When they first took me, when Quillen was driving me out there and I was asking a lot of questions, he wouldn’t answer them. But he did say one thing. All he would tell me was that they needed me for a day or two to run a test on somebody. He would explain no further. A test, that’s all he said.”

“A test?”

Bosch looked confused.

“Listen to me, Harry. I’ve done nothing but think about this since you got me out of there.”

She held up a finger.

“Let’s start with what I overheard. Let’s say it was Joey Marks and his lawyer, and let’s say it wasn’t a show but what they said was true. They didn’t put the hit on Tony Aliso, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Look at it from their perspective. They had nothing to do with this, but one of their in-close guys gets picked up for it. And from what they hear from their source in Metro, it’s looking like a slam-bang case. I mean, the cops have fingerprints and the murder weapon found right there in Goshen’s bathroom. Joey Marks has to be thinking either it’s all been planted by the cops or maybe Goshen went and did this on his own for some unknown reason. Either way, what do you think his immediate concern would be?”

“Damage control.”

“Right. He has to figure out what is going on with Goshen and what’s the damage. But he can’t because Goshen has gone and gotten himself his own attorney. Torrino has no access to him. So what Joey does instead is he and Torrino set up a test to see if the reason Goshen’s gotten his own attorney is because he’s going to talk.”

“Make a deal.”

“Right. Now, let’s say that from their source in Metro they know that the lead cop on the case has a relationship with someone they know of and have their hooks in. Me.”

“So they just take you to the safe house and wait. Because they know that if I find out where the safe house is and show up to get you, or if I call up Metro and say I know where you are, then they know Goshen is the only one who could have told me. It means he’s talking. That was the test Quillen was talking about. If I don’t show, they’re cool. It means Goshen is standing up. If I
do
show up, then they know they’ve got to get to Goshen in Metro right quick and put a hit on him.”

“Right, before he can talk. That’s how I figured it, too.”

“So that would mean that Aliso wasn’t really a hit—at least by Marks and his people—and that they had no idea Goshen was an agent.”

She nodded. Bosch felt the surge of energy that comes with making a huge step through the murky darkness of an investigation.

“There was no trunk music,” he said.

“What?”

“The whole Las Vegas angle, Joey Marks, all of that, it was all a diversion. We went completely down the wrong path. It had to be engineered by someone very close to Tony. Close enough to know what he was doing, to know about the money washing, and to know how to make his killing look mob connected. To pin it on Goshen.”

She nodded.

“And that’s why I had to tell you everything. Even if it meant we . . .”

Bosch looked at her. She didn’t finish the line and neither did he.

Bosch took a cigarette out of his pocket and put it in his mouth but didn’t light it. He leaned across the table and picked up her plate and his own. He spoke to her as he slid off the bench.

“I don’t have any dessert, either.”

“That’s okay.”

He took the plates into the kitchen and rinsed them and put them into the dishwasher. He had never used the new appliance before and spent some time leaning over it and trying to figure out how to operate it. Once he got it going, he started cleaning the frying pan and the pot in the sink. The simple work began to relax him. Eleanor came into the kitchen with her wineglass and watched him for a few moments before speaking.

“I’m sorry, Harry.”

“It’s okay. You were in a bad situation and you did what you had to do, Eleanor. Nobody can be blamed for that. I probably would have done everything you did.”

It was a few moments before she spoke again.

“Do you want me to go?”

Bosch turned off the water and looked into the sink. He could make out his dark image reflected in the new stainless steel.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Bosch arrived at the station at seven Friday morning with a box of glazed doughnuts from the Fairfax Farmers Market. He was the first one in. He opened the box and put it on the counter near the coffee machine. He took one of the doughnuts and put it on a napkin and left it at his spot on the homicide table while he went up to the watch office to get coffee from the urn. It was much better than what came out of the detective bureau’s machine.

Once he had his coffee, he took his doughnut and moved to the desk that was behind the bureau’s front counter. His assignment to desk duty meant that he would handle most of the walk-ins as well as the sorting and distribution of overnight reports. The phones he wouldn’t have to worry about. They were answered by an old man from the neighborhood who donated his time to the department.

Bosch was alone in the squad room for at least fifteen minutes before the other detectives started to trickle in. Six different times he was asked by a new arrival why he was at the front desk, and each time he told the detective who asked that it was too complicated to get into but that the word would be out soon enough. Nothing remained a secret for long in a police station.

At eight-thirty the lieutenant from the
A.M
. watch brought the morning reports in before going off shift and smiled when he saw Bosch. His name was Klein and he and Bosch had known each other in a surface way for years.

“Who’d you beat up this time, Bosch?” he kidded.

It was well known that the detective who sat at the desk where Bosch now sat was either there by fate of the bureau rotation or on a desk duty assignment while the subject of an internal investigation. More often than not it was the latter. But Klein’s sarcasm revealed that he had not yet heard that Bosch actually was under investigation. Bosch played off the question with a smile but didn’t answer. He took the two-inch-thick stack of reports from Klein and gave him a mock salute back.

The stack Klein had given him constituted nearly all crime reports filed by Hollywood Division patrol officers in the last twenty-four hours. There would be a second, smaller delivery of stragglers later in the morning, but the stack in his hands constituted the bulk of the day’s work in the bureau.

Keeping his head down and ignoring the buzz of conversations around him, it took Bosch a half hour to sort all the reports into piles according to crimes. Next he had to scan them all, using his experienced eye to possibly make connections between robberies and burglaries or assaults and so on, and then deliver the individual piles to the detective tables assigned to that particular classification of crime.

When he looked up from his work, he saw that Lieutenant Billets was in her office on the phone. He hadn’t noticed that she had come in. Part of his desk job would be to give her a morning briefing on the reports, informing her of any significant or unusual crimes or anything else she should be aware of as the detective bureau commander.

He went back to work and weeded through the auto-theft reports first because they made up the largest pile he had culled from the stack of reports. There had been thirty-three cars reported stolen in Hollywood in the last twenty-four hours. Bosch knew that this was probably a below-average tally. After reading the summaries in the reports and checking for other similarities, he found nothing of significance and took the pile to the detective in charge of the auto-theft table. As he was heading back to the front of the squad room, he noticed that Edgar and Rider were standing at the homicide table putting things into a cardboard box. As he approached, he realized they were packing up the murder book and the ancillary files and evidence bags relating to the Aliso case. It was all being sent to the feds.

“Morning, guys,” Bosch said, unsure of how to start.

“Harry,” Edgar said.

“How are you doing, Harry?” Rider said, genuine concern in her voice.

“I’m hangin’ in. . . . Uh, listen, I just . . . I just want to say that I’m sorry you guys have been pulled into this, but I wanted you to know there is no way I —”

“Forget it, Harry,” Edgar said. “You don’t have to say one damn thing to us. We both know the whole thing is bullshit. In all my years on the job you are the most righteous cop I know, man. All the rest is bullshit.”

Bosch nodded, touched by Edgar’s words. He didn’t expect such sentiments from Rider because it had been their first case together. But she spoke anyway.

“I haven’t worked with you long, Harry, but from what I do know I agree with what Jerry says. You watch, this will blow over and we’ll be back at it again.”

“Thanks.”

Bosch was about to head back to his new desk when he looked down into the box they were packing. He reached in and pulled out the two-inch-thick murder book that Edgar had been charged with preparing and keeping up to date on the Aliso case.

“Are the feds coming here or you just sending it out?”

“S’posed to have somebody come pick it up at ten,” Edgar said.

Bosch looked up at the clock on the wall. It was only nine.

“Mind if I copy this? Just so we have something in case the whole thing drops into that black hole they keep over there at the bureau.”

“Be my guest,” Edgar said.

“Did Salazar ever send over a protocol?” Bosch asked.

“The autopsy?” Rider asked. “No, not yet. Unless it’s in dispatch.”

Bosch didn’t tell them that if it was in transit, then the feds had somehow intercepted it. He took the murder book to the copy machine, unhooked the three rings and removed the stack of reports. He set the machine to copy both sides of the original documents and put the stack into the automatic feed tray. Before starting he checked to make sure the paper tray was filled with three-hole paper. It was. He pressed the start button and stood back to watch. There was a copying franchise chain in town that had donated the machine and regularly serviced it. It was the one thing in the bureau that was modern and could be counted on to work most of the time. Bosch finished the job in ten minutes. He put the original binder back together and returned it to the box on Edgar’s desk. He then took a fresh binder from the supply closet, put his copies of the reports on the rings and dropped it into a file cabinet drawer that had his business card taped to it. He then told his two partners where it was if they needed it.

“Harry,” Rider said in a low voice, “you’re thinking of doing a little freelancing on it, aren’t you?”

He looked at her a moment, unsure of how to answer. He thought about her relationship with Billets. He had to be careful.

“If you are,” she said, perhaps sensing his indecision, “I’d like to be in on it. You know the bureau isn’t going to work it with any due diligence. They’re going to let it drop.”

“Count me in, too,” Edgar added.

Bosch hesitated again, looked from one to the other and then nodded.

“How ’bout we meet at Musso’s at twelve-thirty?” he said. “I’m buying.”

“We’ll be there,” Edgar said.

When he got back to the front of the bureau, he saw through the glass window of her office that Billets was off the phone and looking at some paperwork. Her door was open and Bosch stepped in, knocking on the doorjamb as he entered.

“Good morning, Harry.” There was a wistfulness to her voice and demeanor, as if maybe she was embarrassed that he was her front-desk man. “Anything happening I should know about right away?”

“I don’t think so. It looks pretty tame. Uh, there’s a hot prowler working the Strip hotels again, though. At least it looks like one guy. Did one at the Chateau and another at the Hyatt last night. People never woke up. Looks like the same MO on both.”

“Were the vics anybody we should know and care about?”

“I don’t think so but I don’t read
People
magazine. I might not recognize a celebrity if they came up and bit me.”

She smiled.

“How much were the losses?”

“I don’t know. I’m not done with that pile yet. That’s not why I came in. I just wanted to say thanks again for sticking up for me like you did yesterday.”

“That was hardly sticking up for you.”

“Yes it was. In those kinds of circumstances what you said and did was sticking your neck way out. I appreciate it.”

“Well, like I said, I did it because I don’t believe it. And the sooner IAD and the bureau get on with it, the sooner they won’t believe it. When’s your appointment, by the way?”

“Two.”

“Who is your defense rep going to be?”

“Guy I know from RHD. Name’s Dennis Zane. He’s a good guy and he’ll know what to do for me. You know him?”

“No. But listen, let me know if there is anything else I can do.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

“Grace.”

“Right. Grace.”

When Bosch went back to his desk he thought about his appointment with Chastain. In accordance with departmental procedures, Bosch would be represented by a union defense rep who was actually a fellow detective. He would act almost as an attorney would, counseling Bosch on what to say and how to say it. It was the first formal step of the internal investigation and disciplinary process.