Michael Connelly (71 page)

When he looked up, he saw a woman standing at the counter with a young girl. The girl had red-rimmed eyes and a marble-sized swelling on her lower lip that looked like it might have been the result of a bite. She was disheveled and stared at the wall behind Bosch with a distance in her eyes that suggested that a window was there. But there wasn’t.

Bosch could have asked how he could help them without moving from his desk, but it didn’t take a detective to guess why they were there. He got up, came around the desk and approached the counter so they could speak confidentially. Rape victims were the people who evoked the most sadness in Bosch. He knew he wouldn’t be able to last a month on a rape squad. Every victim he had ever seen had that stare. It was a sign that all things in their lives were different now and forever. They would never get back to what they had had before.

After speaking briefly to the mother and daughter, Bosch asked if the girl needed immediate medical attention and the mother said she didn’t. He opened the half door in the counter and ushered them both back to one of the three interview rooms off the hallway to the rear of the bureau. He then went to the sex crimes table and approached Mary Cantu, a detective who had been handling for years what Bosch knew he couldn’t handle for a month.

“Mary, you’ve got a walk-in back in room three,” Bosch said. “She’s fifteen. Happened last night. She got too curious about the pusher who works the nearby corner. He grabbed her and sold her and a rock to his next customer. She’s with her mother.”

“Thanks, Bosch. Just what I needed on a Friday. I’ll go right back. You ask if she needed medical?”

“She said no, but I think the answer is yes.”

“Okay, I’ll handle it. Thanks.”

Back at the front desk, it took Bosch a few minutes to clear his thoughts about the girl from his mind and another forty-five to finish reading through the reports and deliver them to the appropriate detective squads.

When he was done, he checked on Billets through the window and saw she was on the phone with a pile of paperwork in front of her. Bosch got up and went to his file cabinet and took out the copy of the murder book he had put there earlier. He lugged the thick binder back to his desk at the front counter. He had decided that in his free time between his duties at the front desk he would begin reviewing the murder book. The case had taken off so quickly earlier in the week that he had not had the time he usually liked to spend reviewing the paperwork. He knew from experience that command of the details and the nuances of an investigation was often the key to closing it out. He had just started turning through the pages in a cursory review when a vaguely familiar voice addressed him from the counter.

“Is that what I think it is?”

Bosch looked up. It was O’Grady, the FBI agent. Bosch felt his face burn with embarrassment that he’d been caught red-handed with the file and with his growing dislike for the agent.

“Yeah, it’s what you think it is, O’Grady. You were supposed to be here a half hour ago to pick it up.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t run on your time. I had things to do.”

“Like what, get your buddy Roy a new ponytail?”

“Just give me the binder, Bosch. And all the rest.”

Bosch still had not gotten up and made no move to now.

“What do you want it for, O’Grady? We all know you’re going to let the thing drop. You people don’t care who killed Tony Aliso and you don’t want to know.”

“That’s bullshit. Give me the file.”

O’Grady reached over the counter and was reaching around blindly for the release button on the half door.

“Hold your fucking horses, man,” Bosch said as he stood up. “Just wait there. I’ll get it all.”

Carrying the binder, Bosch walked back to the homicide table and, using his back to shield O’Grady’s view, placed the binder on the table and picked up the box containing the original binder and the ancillary reports and evidence bags that Edgar and Rider had put in with it. He carried it back and dropped it on the counter in front of O’Grady.

“You gotta sign for it,” he said. “We’re extra careful about how we handle evidence and who gets to handle it.”

“Yeah, right. The whole world knows that from the O.J. case, don’t they?”

Bosch grabbed O’Grady’s tie and jerked his upper body down over the counter. The agent could not find a purchase with his hands that would give him the leverage to pull back. Bosch bent down so that he was talking directly into his ear.

“Excuse me?”

“Bosch, you —”

“Harry!”

Bosch looked up. Billets was standing in the door of her office. Bosch let go of the tie and O’Grady’s body sprang backward as he straightened up. His face was crimson with embarrassment and anger. As he jerked his tie loose from around his neck he yelled, “You’re certifiable, you know that? You’re a fucking asshole!”

“I didn’t know you agents used that kind of language,” Bosch said.

“Harry, just sit down,” Billets commanded. “I’ll take care of this.”

She had come up to the counter now.

“He’s got to sign the receipt.”

“I don’t care! I’ll handle it!”

Bosch went back to his desk and sat down. He stared dead-eyed at O’Grady while Billets dug through the box until she found the inventory list and receipt Edgar had prepared. She showed O’Grady where to sign and then told him to go.

“You better watch him,” he said to Billets as he picked the box up off the counter.

“You better watch yourself, Agent O’Grady. If I hear anything else about this little disagreement here, I’ll file a complaint against you for inciting it.”

“He’s the one who —”

“I don’t care. Understand? I don’t care. Now leave.”

“I’m leaving. But you watch your boy there. Keep him away from this.”

O’Grady pointed to the contents of the box. Billets didn’t answer. O’Grady picked the box up and made a move to step away from the counter but stopped and looked once more at Bosch.

“Hey, Bosch, by the way, I got a message from Roy.”

“Agent O’Grady, would you please leave!” Billets said angrily.

“What is it?” Bosch said.

“He just wanted to ask, who’s the meat now?”

With that he turned around and headed down the hall to the exit. Billets watched him until he was gone and then turned around and looked at Bosch with anger in her eyes.

“You just don’t know how to help yourself, do you?” she said. “Why don’t you grow up and quit these little pissing wars?”

She didn’t wait for his reply because he didn’t have one. She walked quickly back into her office and shut the door. She then closed the blinds over the interior window. Bosch leaned back with his hands laced behind his neck, looked up at the ceiling and exhaled loudly.

After the O’Grady incident Bosch almost immediately became busy with a walk-in case involving an armed robbery. At the time, the entire robbery crew was out on a carjacking that had involved a high-speed chase, and that meant Bosch, as the desk man, had to interview the walk-in victim and type up a report. The victim was a young Mexican boy whose job it was to stand on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard at Sierra Bonita and sell maps to the homes of movie stars up in the hills. At ten that morning, shortly after he had set up his plywood sign and begun waving down cars, an old American-made sedan had pulled up with a man driving and a woman in the passenger seat. After asking how much the maps cost and whether he had sold very many of them, the woman had pointed a gun at the boy and robbed him of thirty-eight dollars. He had come in to report the crime with his mother. As it turned out, he had sold only one map that day before the robbery, and nearly all of the money taken from him was his own—he had brought it with him to make change. His loss was about what he made for a whole day of standing on the corner and waving his arm like a windmill.

Because of the small take and sloppy method used by the robbers, Bosch immediately thought the suspects were a couple of hypes looking for a quick score to buy their next balloon of heroin. They had not even bothered to hide the car’s license plate, which the boy had spotted and memorized as they drove away.

After he was finished with the boy and his mother, he went to the teletype machine and put out a wanted on the car with a description of the suspects. He found when he did this that there was already a wanted out on the vehicle for its use in two prior robberies in the last week. A lot of good that did the kid who lost a day’s pay, Bosch thought. The robbers should have been picked up before they got to the boy. But this was the big city, not a perfect world. Disappointments like that didn’t stay long with Bosch.

By this time the squad room had pretty much cleared out for lunch. Bosch saw only Mary Cantu at the sex crimes table, probably working on the paper from that morning’s walk-in job.

Edgar and Rider were gone, apparently having decided it would be better to go separately to Musso’s. As Bosch got up to leave, he noticed that the blinds were still drawn over the window to the lieutenant’s office. Billets was still in there, he knew. He went to the homicide table and put the copy of the murder book into his briefcase and then went and knocked on her door. Before she could answer, he opened the door and stuck his head in.

“I’m going to go catch some lunch and then go downtown for the IAD thing. You won’t have anybody out on the counter.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll put Edgar or Rider up there after lunch. They’re just waiting around for a case, anyway.”

“Okay then, I’ll see you.”

“Uh, Harry?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry for what happened earlier. Not for what I said. I meant what I said, but I should have taken you in here and spoken to you. Doing it out there in front of the others was wrong. I apologize.”

“Don’t worry about it. Have a nice weekend.”

“You, too.”

“I’ll try, Lieutenant.”

“Grace.”

“Grace.”

Bosch got to Musso and Frank’s Restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard at exactly twelve-thirty and parked in the back. The restaurant was a Hollywood landmark, having been on the Boulevard since 1924. In its heyday it had been a popular destination for Hollywood’s elite. Fitzgerald and Faulkner held forth. Chaplin and Fairbanks once raced each other down Hollywood Boulevard on horseback, the loser having to pick up the dinner tab. The restaurant now subsisted mostly on its past glory and faded charm. Its red leather padded booths still filled every day for lunch and some of the waiters looked and moved as if they had been there long enough to have served Chaplin. The menu hadn’t changed in all the years Bosch had been eating there—this in a town where the hookers out on the Boulevard lasted longer than most restaurants.

Edgar and Rider were waiting in one of the prized round booths, and Bosch slid in after they were pointed out by the maître d’—he was apparently too old and tired to walk Bosch over himself. They were both drinking iced tea and Bosch decided to go along with that, though privately he lamented that they were in the place that made the best martini in the city. Only Rider was looking at the menu. She was new in the division and hadn’t been to Musso’s enough times to know what the best thing was to order for lunch.

“So what are we doing?” Edgar asked while she looked.

“We’ve got to start over,” Bosch said. “The Vegas stuff was all misdirection.”

Rider glanced over the top of the menu at Bosch.

“Kiz, put that down,” he said. “If you don’t get the chicken pot pie you’re making a mistake.”

She hesitated, nodded and put the menu aside.

“What do you mean, misdirection?” she asked.

“I mean whoever killed Tony wanted us to go that way. And they planted the gun out there to make sure we stayed out there. But they screwed up. They didn’t know the guy they planted the gun on was a fed who would have a bunch of other feds as an alibi. That was the screwup. Now, once I learned that our suspect was an agent, I thought Joey Marks and his people must have figured out he was a fed and set the whole thing up to taint him.”

“I still think that sounds good,” Edgar said.

“It does, or it did until last night,” Bosch said as an ancient waiter in a red coat came to the table.

“Three chicken pot pies,” Bosch said.

“Do you want something to drink?” the waiter asked.

Hell with it, Bosch decided.

“Yeah, I’ll have a martini, three olives. You can bring them some more iced tea. That’s it.”

The waiter nodded and slowly glided away without writing anything on his pad.

“Last night,” Bosch continued, “I learned from a source that Joey Marks did not know the man he thought was named Luke Goshen was a plant. He had no idea he was an informant, let alone an agent. In fact, once we picked Goshen up, Joey was engaged in a plan to try to find out whether Goshen was going to stand up or talk. This was because he had to decide whether to put a contract on him in the Metro jail.”

He waited a moment to let them think about this.

“So, you can see with that information in the mix now, the second theory no longer works.”

“Well, who’s the source?” Edgar asked.

“I can’t tell you that, guys. But it’s solid. It’s the truth.”

He watched their eyes float down to the table. He knew they trusted him, but they also knew how informants were often the most skilled liars in the game. It was a tough call to base everything from here on out on an informant.

“Okay,” Bosch said. “The source was Eleanor Wish. Jerry, have you told Kiz about all of that?”

Edgar hesitated, then nodded.

“Okay, then you know who she is. She overheard all of what I told you while they had her in that house. Before we got there, both Joey and the lawyer, Torrino, were there. She overheard them and from what she heard, they didn’t know about Goshen. See, that whole abduction was part of the test. They knew the only way I could find out where the safe house was would be to get it from Goshen. That was the test, to see if he was talking or not.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes while Edgar and Rider digested this.

“Okay,” Edgar finally said. “I see what you’re saying. But if Vegas was one big fucking red herring, how does the gun get over there in the agent’s house?”