The Narrows (27 page)

On the corner of the screen showing the stockroom I saw Thomas lean his face up to the rear door and look through a peephole. Apparently unalarmed by what he saw, he proceeded to turn the dead bolt and open the door. I stared intently at the screen, even though the image was small and I was viewing it upside down.

Thomas stepped back from the door and a man entered. He was wearing a dark shirt and matching shorts. He was carrying two boxes, one stacked on top of the other, and Thomas directed him to a nearby worktable. The deliveryman put the boxes down and then took an electronic clipboard off the top box and turned back to Thomas for a delivery confirmation signature.

Everything seemed all right. It was a routine delivery. I quickly got off the counter and went to the door. As I opened it I heard an electronic chime sound but I didn’t worry about that. I headed back to the Mercedes, running through the rain after putting the autographed book under my raincoat.

“What was all of that, with you leaning over the counter like that?” Rachel asked once I was behind the wheel again.

“He’s got a security box. There was a delivery and I wanted to make sure it was legit before I left. It’s after three o’clock in D.C.”

“I know. So what did you learn from him or were you just in there buying a book?”

“I learned a lot. Tom Walling is a customer. Or was, until he stiffed him for an order of Edgar Allan Poe books. It was mail order like we thought. He never saw him, just sent the books out to Nevada.”

Rachel sat up straight.

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. The books were out of some guy’s collection that Ed was selling. So they were marked and therefore traceable. That was why Backus burned them all in the fire barrel. He couldn’t risk that they’d survive the blast intact and be traced back to Thomas.”

“Why?”

“Because he is definitely in play here. He’s got to be setting up on Thomas.”

I started the car.

“Where are you going?”

“Around back to make sure about the delivery. Besides, it’s good to change locations every now and then.”

“Oh, you’re giving me surveillance one-oh-one lessons now.”

Without responding I drove around to the back of the plaza and saw the brown UPS van parked by the open rear door of Book Carnival. We drove on by and during the brief glimpse I had of the back of the truck and the open door of the stockroom, I saw the deliveryman struggling to carry several boxes up a ramp to the back of his truck. The returns, I guessed. I kept driving without hesitation.

“He’s legit,” Rachel said.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t give yourself away with Thomas, did you?”

“No. He was suspicious but then I was sort of saved by the bell. I wanted to talk to you first. I think we need to bring him in on it.”

“Harry, we talked about this. If we bring him into it he may change his routine and demeanor. It might be a giveaway. If Backus has been watching him, any little change could be a tell.”

“And if we don’t warn him and this thing goes wrong, then we . . .”

I didn’t finish. We had been over this argument twice before, each of us alternately taking the other side. It was a classic contradiction of intentions. Do we ensure Thomas’s safety at the risk of losing Backus? Or do we risk Thomas’s safety to ensure getting close to Backus? It was all about the means to an end and neither of us would be happy no matter which way we went.

“I guess that means we can’t let anything go wrong,” she said.

“Right. What about backup?”

“I also think it’s too risky. The more people we bring into this, the greater the chance of tipping our hand.”

I nodded. She was right. I found a spot on the opposite end of the parking lot from where we had parked and watched before. I wasn’t kidding myself, though. There were only so many cars in the lot in the middle of a rainy weekday and we were noticeable. I started to think that maybe we were like Ed Thomas’s cameras. Strictly a deterrent. Maybe Backus had seen us and it had stopped him from moving forward with his plan. For now.

“Customer,” Rachel said.

I looked across the lot and saw a woman heading toward the store. She looked familiar to me and then I remembered her from the Sportsman’s Lodge.

“That’s his wife. I met her once. I think her name is Pat.”

“She bringing him lunch, you think?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she works there.”

We watched for a while but there was no sign of Thomas or his wife in the front of the store. I grew concerned and took out my cell phone and called the store, hoping the call would bring them to the front counter, where the phone was.

But a woman answered right away and there was still no one at the counter. I quickly hung up.

“There must be a phone in the stockroom.”

“Who answered?”

“The wife.”

“Should I take a walk and go in?”

“No. If Backus is watching he’ll recognize you. You can’t be seen.”

“All right, then what?”

“Then nothing. They’re probably at the table I saw in the back room having lunch. Be patient.”

“I don’t want to be patient. I don’t like just sitting —”

She stopped when we saw Ed Thomas walk out the front of the store. He was wearing a raincoat and carrying an umbrella and a briefcase. He got into the car we had seen him arrive at the store in that morning, a green Ford Explorer. Through the store’s front window I saw his wife take a seat on a stool behind the front counter.

“Here we go,” I said.

“Where’s he going?”

“Maybe he’s going to get lunch.”

“Not with a briefcase. We stay on him, right?”

I restarted the car.

“Right.”

We watched as Thomas pulled out of a parking space in his Ford SUV. He headed toward the exit and turned right on Tustin Boulevard. After his car was absorbed into the passing traffic I pulled up to the exit and followed him into the rain. I pulled out my phone and called the store. Ed Thomas’s wife answered.

“Hi, is Ed there?”

“No, he’s not. Can I help you?”

“Is this Pat?”

“Yes, it is. Who’s this?”

“It’s Bill Gilbert. I think we met at the Sportsman’s Lodge a while back. I used to work with Ed in the department. I was going to be in the area and thought I’d drop by the store today to say hello. Will he be back later?”

“That’s hard to say. He went to do an appraisal and who knows, it might take the rest of the day. With this rain and the distance he had to go.”

“An appraisal? What do you mean?”

“A book collection. Someone wants to sell his collection and Ed just left to go see what it is worth. It’s all the way up in the San Fernando Valley and from what I understand it’s a big collection. He told me I’d probably be closing the store tonight.”

“Is it more of the Rodway collection? He told me about that the last time we talked.”

“No, that’s just about all been sold. This is a man named Charles Turrentine and he has over six thousand books.”

“Wow, that’s a lot.”

“He’s a well-known collector but I guess he needs the money because he told Ed he wants to sell everything.”

“Strange. A guy spends all that time collecting and then he sells it all.”

“We see it happen.”

“Well, Pat, I’ll let you go. And I’ll catch Ed next time. Tell him I said hello.”

“What was your name again?”

“Tom Gilbert. Bye now.”

I closed the phone.

“You were Bill Gilbert at the start of the conversation.”

“Whoops.”

I recounted the conversation for Rachel. I then called information in the 818 area code but there was no listing for a Charles Turrentine. I asked Rachel if she had a connection in the bureau’s Los Angeles field office who could get an address for Turrentine and maybe an unlisted number.

“Don’t you have somebody in the LAPD you can use?”

“At the moment I think I’ve used up all the favors owed me. Besides, I’m an outsider. You’re not.”

“I don’t know about that.”

She pulled out her phone and went to work on it and I concentrated on the taillights of Thomas’s SUV, just fifty yards ahead of me on the 22 freeway. I knew Thomas had a choice up ahead. He could turn north on the 5 and go through downtown L.A., or he could keep on going and take the 405 north. Both routes would lead him to the Valley.

Rachel got a call back in five minutes with the information she had asked for.

“He lives on Valerio Street in Canoga Park. Do you know where that is?”

“I know where Canoga Park is. Valerio runs east-west across the whole Valley. Did you get a phone number?”

She answered by punching in a number on her cell phone. She then held it to her ear and waited. After thirty seconds she closed the phone.

“There was no answer. I got the tape.”

We drove in silence as we thought about that.

Thomas passed by the exit to the 5 north and proceeded on toward the 405. I knew he would turn north there and take the Sepulveda Pass into the Valley. Canoga Park was on the west side. With the weather we were talking about at least an hour’s drive. If we were lucky.

“Don’t lose him, Bosch,” Rachel said quietly.

I knew what she meant. She was telling me she had the vibe, that she thought this was it. That she believed Ed Thomas might be leading us to the Poet. I nodded because I had it, too, almost like a humming coming from the center of my chest. I knew without really knowing that we were there.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t.”

41

T
HE RAIN WAS GETTING to Rachel. The relentlessness of it. It never let up, never paused. It just came down and hit the windshield in a nonstop torrent that overpowered the wipers. Everything was a blur. There were cars pulled off on the shoulders of the freeway. Lightning cracked the sky to the west, somewhere out over the ocean. They passed accident after accident and these just made Rachel all the more nervous. If they got into an accident and lost Thomas, they would carry an awful burden of responsibility for what happened to him.

She was afraid that if she looked away from the red glow of the taillights on Thomas’s car, they would lose him in the sea of blurred red. Bosch seemed to know what she was thinking.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m not going to lose him. And even if I do, we know where he is going now.”

“No, we don’t. We only know where Turrentine lives. That doesn’t mean his books are there. Six thousand books? Who keeps six thousand books in their house? He probably has them in a warehouse somewhere.”

Rachel watched Bosch adjust his grip on the steering wheel and add a few more miles to his speed, drawing them closer to Thomas.

“Didn’t think about that, did you?”

“No, not really.”

“So don’t lose him.”

“I told you, I won’t.”

“I know. It just helps me to say it.”

She gestured toward the windshield.

“How often does it get like this?”

“Almost never,” Bosch said. “They said on the news that it’s a hundred-year storm. It’s like something’s wrong, something’s broken. The canyons are probably washing out in Malibu. Landslides in the Palisades. And the river’s probably over its sides. Last year we had the fires. This year maybe it’s going to be rain. One way or another it’s always something. It’s like you always have to pass a test or something.”

He turned on the radio to pick up a weather report. But Rachel immediately reached over and turned it off and pointed ahead through the windshield.

“Concentrate on this,” she ordered. “I don’t care about the weather report.”

“Right.”

“Get closer. I don’t care if you’re right behind him. He won’t be able to see you in this mess.”

“I get behind him I might hit him, then what do we say?”

“Just don’t —”

“Lose him. Yeah, I know.”

They drove for the next half hour without a word. The freeway rose and crossed over the mountains. Rachel saw a large stone structure on the top of the mountain. It looked like some sort of postmodern castle in the gray and gloom and Bosch told her it was the Getty Museum.

As they descended into the Valley she saw the turn signal flare from the back of Thomas’s car. Bosch moved into the turning lane three cars back.

“He’s taking the one-oh-one. We’re almost there.”

“You mean to Canoga Park?”

“That’s right. He’ll take this out west and then go north again on surface streets.”

Bosch grew quiet again as he concentrated on the driving and following. In another fifteen minutes the turn signal on the Explorer flared again and Thomas exited on DeSoto Avenue and headed north. Bosch and Walling trailed behind on the exit ramp, but this time without the cover of other traffic.

On DeSoto, Thomas almost immediately pulled to the curb in a no parking area and Bosch had to drive by him or the surveillance would have been obvious.

“I think he’s looking at a map or directions,” Rachel said. “He had the light on and his head was down.”

“Okay.”

Bosch pulled into a service station, circled around the pumps and then drove back out to the street. He paused before pulling out, looking left down the street at Thomas’s Explorer. He waited and after a half minute Thomas pulled his Explorer back into traffic. Bosch waited for him to go by, holding his cell phone up to his left ear to block any view of his face in case Thomas was looking and could see in the rain. He let another car go by and then pulled out.

“He must be close,” Rachel said.

“Yeah.”

But Thomas drove several more blocks before turning right. Bosch slowed before doing the same.

“Valerio,” Rachel said, seeing the street sign in the murk. “This is it.”

When Bosch made the turn she saw the brake lights on Thomas’s car. He was stopped in the middle of the road three blocks ahead. He was at a dead end.

Bosch quickly pulled to the curb behind a parked car.

“The dome light’s on,” Rachel said. “I think he’s looking at his map again.”

“The river,” Bosch said.

“What?”

“I told you, Valerio cuts across the whole Valley. But so does the river. So he’s probably figuring out a way to get around it. The river cuts off all these streets in here. He probably has to get to Valerio on the other side.”

“I don’t see any river up there. I see a fence and concrete.”

“It’s not what you would consider a river. In fact, technically that isn’t the river. It’s probably either the Aliso or Brown’s Canyon wash. It goes to the river.”

They waited. Thomas didn’t move.

“The river used to flood in storms like this. It would wipe out a third of the city. So they tried to control it. Contain it. Somebody had the idea to capture it in stone, put it in concrete. So that’s what they did and everybody’s house and home was supposedly safe after that.”

“I guess that’s called progress.”

Bosch nodded and then re-gripped his hands on the wheel.

“He’s moving.”

Thomas turned left and once his car was out of sight Bosch pulled away from the curb and followed. Thomas drove north to Saticoy and then took a right. He went over a bridge crossing the wash below. As they followed, Rachel looked down and saw the torrent of water in the concrete channel.

“Wow. I thought I lived in Rapid City.”

Bosch didn’t answer. Thomas turned south on Mason and came back down to Valerio. But now he was on the other side of the concrete channel. He turned right again on Valerio.

“That’ll be another dead end,” Bosch said.

He stayed on Mason and drove on by Valerio. Rachel looked through the rain and saw that Thomas had pulled into a driveway in front of a large two-story home that was one of five homes on the dead-end street.

“He pulled into a driveway,” she said. “He’s there. Jesus, it’s the house!”

“What house?”

“The one from the photo in the trailer. Backus was so sure of himself he left us a goddamn picture.”

Bosch pulled to the curb. They were out of sight of the homes on Valerio. Rachel turned and looked out all of the windows. Every home around them was dark.

“There must be a power outage around here.”

“Under your seat there’s a flashlight. Take it.”

Rachel reached down and got it.

“What about you?”

“I’ll be all right. Let’s go.”

Rachel started to open her door but then looked back at Bosch. She wanted to say something but hesitated.

“What?” he asked. “Be careful? Don’t worry, I will.”

“Actually, yes, be careful. But what I was going to say is that I have my second gun in my bag. Do you —”

“Thanks, Rachel, but this time I brought my own.”

She nodded.

“I should have figured that. And what are your views on backup now?”

“Call it in if you want. But I’m not waiting. I’m going down there.”

THE RAIN FELT COLD on my face and neck as I got out of the Mercedes. I pulled the collar on my jacket up and started heading back toward Valerio. Rachel came over and walked next to me without saying a word. When we got to the corner we used the wall surrounding the corner property as cover and looked down into the cul-de-sac and the dark house where Ed Thomas had parked his car. There was no sign of Thomas or anyone else. Every window at the front of the house was dark. But even in the grayness I could tell that Rachel was right. It was the house from the photo Backus had left for us.

I could hear the river but not see it. It was hidden behind the homes. But its furious power was almost palpable, even from this distance. In storms like this the whole city washed itself out over its smoothed concrete surfaces. It snaked through the Valley and around the mountains to downtown. And from there west to the ocean.

It was a mere trickle most of the year. A municipal joke even. But a rainstorm would awaken the snake and give it power. It became the city’s gutter, millions and millions of gallons banging against its thick stone walls, tons of water raging to get out, moving with a terrible force and momentum. I remembered a boy who was taken when I was a kid. I didn’t know him. I knew of him. Four decades later I even remembered his name. Billy Kinsey was playing on the river’s shoulder. He slipped in and in a moment he was gone. They found his body hung up in a viaduct 12 miles away.

My mother had taught me early and often, when it rains . . .

“Stay out of the narrows.”

“What?” Rachel whispered.

“I was thinking about the river. Trapped between those walls. When I was a kid we called it ‘the narrows.’ When it rains like this the water moves fast. It’s deadly. When it rains you stay away from the narrows.”

“But we’re going to the house.”

“Same thing, Rachel. Be careful. Stay out of the narrows.”

She looked at me. She seemed to understand what I meant.

“Okay, Bosch.”

“How about you take the front and I take the back?”

“Fine.”

“Be ready for anything.”

“You, too.”

The target house was three properties away. We walked quickly along the wall surrounding the first property and then cut up the driveway of the next. We skirted the fronts of two houses until we came to the home where Thomas’s car was parked. Rachel gave me a last nod and we separated then, both of us pulling our weapons in unison. Rachel moved to the front while I started down the driveway toward the rear. The gloom and the sound of the rain and the river channel gave me visual and sound cover. The driveway was also lined with squat bougainvillea trees that had been let go for some time without training or trimming. But the house behind the windows was dark. Someone could be behind any glass watching me and I wouldn’t know it.

The rear yard was flooded. In the middle of the big puddle stood the rusted twin A-frames of a swing set with no swings left on it. Behind it was a six-foot fence that separated the property from the river channel. I could see the water was near the top of its concrete siding and was rushing by in a mad torrent. It would flood by day’s end. Further upstream, where the channels were shallower, it probably already had stemmed its sides.

I turned my attention back to the house. There was a full porch off the rear. There were no gutters on the roof here and the rain was coming off in sheets, so heavy that it obscured everything within. Backus could’ve been sitting in a rocker on the porch and I wouldn’t have seen him. The line of bougainvilleas carried along the porch railing. I ducked below the sight line and moved quickly to the steps. I took the three steps up in one stride and was in out of the rain. My eyes and ears took a moment to adjust and that was when I saw it. There was a white rattan couch on the right side of the porch. On it a blanket covered the unmistakable shape of a human form sitting upright but slumped against the left arm. Dropping to a crouch I moved closer and reached for a corner of the blanket on the floor. I slowly pulled it off the form.

It was an old man. He looked like he had been dead at least a day. The odor was just starting. His eyes were open and bugged, his skin was the color of white paint in a smoker’s bedroom. A snap-cuff had been pulled tight—too tight—around his neck. Charles Turrentine, I presumed. I also presumed he was the old man in the photo Backus had taken. He had been killed and then left there on the porch like a stack of old newspapers. He’d had no business with the Poet. He’d just been a means to an end.

I raised my Glock and went to the house’s back door. I wanted to get a warning to Rachel but there was no way to do it without revealing my own position and possibly compromising hers. I just had to keep moving, going further into the darkness of this place until I came across her or Backus.

The door was locked. I decided I would go around, catch up to Rachel from the front. But as I turned, my eyes fell back on the body and I was struck with a possibility. I moved to the couch and patted down the old man’s pants. And I was rewarded. I heard the jingle of keys.

RACHEL WAS SURROUNDED. Stacks and stacks of books lined every wall in the front hallway. She stood there, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other, and looked into the living room to her right. More books. Shelves lined every wall and every shelf was filled to capacity. Books stacked on the coffee table and the end tables and every horizontal surface. Somehow it made the place seem haunted. It was not a place of life but a place of doom and gloom where bookworms ate through the words of all the authors.

She tried to keep moving without dwelling on her rising fears. She wavered and thought about turning back to the door and leaving before she was discovered. But then she heard the voices and knew she must press on.

“Where is Charles?”

“I said
sit down
.”

The words came to her from an unknown direction. The pounding of the rain outside, the rage of the nearby river, and the books stacked everywhere combined to obliquely camouflage the origin of sounds. She heard the voices but could not tell where they came from.

More sounds and voices came to her. Murmurs mostly and every few moments a recognizable word, sculpted in anger or fear.

“You thought . . .”

She bent down and left the flashlight on the floor. She had not used it yet and couldn’t risk it now. She moved into the deeper gloom of the hallway. She had already checked the front rooms and knew the voices were coming from somewhere further into the house.

The hallway led to a foyer from which doors opened in three different directions. As she got there she heard the voices of two men and thought for sure that they came from somewhere to the right.

“Write it!”

“I can’t see!”

Then a popping sound. A ripping sound. Curtains being pulled off a window.