Irving looked down at the floor. He was working the thick muscles of his jaw again.
“You disappoint me, Detective Bosch,” he finally said. “This department has done a lot by you. So have I. I’ve stood by you through some tough spots. You’ve never been easy, but you have a talent that I think this department and this city certainly need. I suppose that makes you worth it. Do you want to possibly alienate me and others in this department?”
“Not particularly.”
“Then take my advice and do the right thing, son. You know what that is. That’s all I’m going to say on that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s all.”
When Bosch got to his house, he saw a dusty Ford Escort parked at the curb out front. It had Nevada plates. Inside the house, Eleanor Wish was sitting at the table in the small dining room with the classified ads section of the Sunday Times. She had a lit cigarette in the ashtray next to the paper and she was using a black marker to circle want ads. Bosch saw all of this and his heart jumped into a higher gear. What it meant to him was that if she was looking for a job, then she might be digging in, staying in L.A. and staying with him. To top it all off, the house was filled with the aroma of an Italian restaurant, heavy on the garlic.
He came around the table and put his hand on her shoulder and tentatively kissed her on the cheek. She patted his hand. As he straightened up, though, he noticed she was looking at ads for furnished apartments in Santa Monica, not the employment section.
“What’s cooking?” he asked.
“My spaghetti sauce. You remember it?”
He nodded that he did but he really didn’t. His memory of the days he had spent with her five years before were all centered on her, the moments they were intimate, and what happened afterward.
“How was Las Vegas?” he asked, just to be saying something.
“It was Vegas. The kind of place you never miss. If I never go back that will be fine with me.”
“You’re looking for a place here?”
“I thought I might as well start looking.”
She had lived in Santa Monica before. Bosch remembered her apartment with the bedroom balcony. You could smell the sea and if you leaned out over the railing, you could look down Ocean Park Boulevard and even see it. He knew she couldn’t afford a place like that now. She was probably looking at the listings east of Lincoln.
“You know there’s no hurry,” he said. “You can stay here. Nice view, it’s private. Why don’t you…I don’t know, take your time.”
She looked up at him but decided not to say what she was about to say. Bosch could tell.
“Do you want a beer?” she asked instead. “I bought some more. They’re in the fridge.”
He nodded, letting her escape from the moment, and went into the kitchen. He saw a Crock-Pot on the counter and wondered if she had bought it or brought it back with her from Las Vegas. He opened the refrigerator and smiled. She knew him. She had bought bottles of Henry Weinhard’s. He took two out and brought them back to the dining room. He opened hers and gave it to her, then his own. They both started to speak at the same time.
“Sorry, go ahead,” she said.
“No, you.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, what?”
“I was just going to ask how things went today.”
“Oh. Well, they went good and bad. We broke the guy down and he told us the story. He gave up the wife.”
“Tony Aliso’s wife?”
“Yeah. It was her plan all along. According to him. The Vegas stuff was just a misdirection.”
“That’s great. What’s the bad part?”
“Well, first of all, our guy is a cop and—”
“Oh, shit!”
“Yeah, but it’s even worse. He got away from us today.”
“Got away? What do you mean got away?”
“I mean he escaped. Right out of the station. He had a pistol, a little Raven, in his boot. We missed it when we hooked him up. Edgar and me took him into the can, and he must’ve stepped on his shoelace while we were going over. You know, on purpose. Then, when Edgar noticed it and told him to tie his shoe, he came up with the Raven. He got away from us, went into the back lot and just took a squad car. He was still in uniform.”
“Jesus, and they didn’t find him yet?”
“That was about eight hours ago. He’s in the wind.”
“Well, where could he go in a patrol car and in a uniform?”
“Oh, he dumped the car—they already found that—and I doubt, wherever he is, he’s in the uniform. It looks like he was into the far-right, white-supremacy thing. He probably knew people who’d get him clothes, no questions asked.”
“Sounds like a helluva cop.”
“Yeah. It’s funny. He was the guy who found the body, you know, last week. It was on his beat. And because he was a cop, I didn’t give him a second thought. I knew that day he was an asshole, but I didn’t even look at him at all as anything other than the cop who found the stiff. And he must’ve known that. And he timed it so that we’d be in a rush out there. He was pretty smart about it.”
“Or she was.”
“Yeah. More likely it was her. But, anyway, I feel more, I don’t know, upset or disappointed about that first day, that I didn’t take a look at him, than I do about letting him get away today. I should’ve looked at him. More often than not the one who finds the body is the one. His uniform blinded me to that.”
She got up from the table and came over to him. She put her arms around his neck and smiled up at him.
“You’ll get him. Don’t worry.”
He nodded. They kissed.
“What were you going to say before?” she asked. “When we both talked at once.”
“Oh…I don’t remember now.”
“Must not have been important, then.”
“I wanted to tell you to stay here with me.”
She put her head down against his chest so that he couldn’t see her eyes.
“Harry…”
“Just to see how it works. I feel like…it’s almost like all this time hasn’t gone by. I want—I just want to be with you. I can take care of you. You can feel safe and you can have all the time you need to make a new start here. Find a job, whatever you want to do.”
She stepped back from him and looked up into his eyes. The warning Irving had given him was the furthest thing from his mind. Right now all he cared about was keeping her close and doing whatever it took to accomplish that.
“But a lot of time has gone by, Harry. We just can’t jump in like this.”
Bosch nodded and lowered his eyes. He knew she was right but he still didn’t care.
“I want you, Harry,” she said. “Nobody else. But I want to take it slow. So that we’re sure. Both of us.”
“I already know I’m sure.”
“You just think you are.”
“Santa Monica is so far away from here.”
She smiled and then laughed and shook her head.
“Then you’re just going to have to sleep over when you come visit.”
He nodded again and they embraced for a long moment.
“You can make me forget a lot of things, you know that?” he whispered into her ear.
“You, too,” she said back.
While they made love the phone rang, but whoever was calling did not leave a message when the machine picked up. Later, after Bosch got out of the shower, Eleanor reported that another call had come in but no message was left.
Finally, while Eleanor was boiling water for the pasta, the phone rang a third time and Bosch got it before the machine picked up.
“Hey, Bosch?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Roy Lindell. Remember me, Luke Goshen?”
“I remember. Was that you who called a couple times before?”
“Yeah, why didn’t you pick up?”
“I was busy. What do you need?”
“So, it was the bitch, huh?”
“What?”
“Tony’s wife.”
“Yeah.”
“Did you know this guy Powers?”
“Not really. Just to see around.”
Bosch didn’t want to tell him anything he didn’t already know.
Lindell exhaled in a bored way loudly into the phone.
“Yeah, well, Tony once told me that he was more afraid of his wife than he was of Joey Marks.”
“Yeah?” Bosch said, suddenly interested. “He said that? When?”
“I don’t know. One night we were talking in the club and he just said it. I remember the place was closed. He was waiting for Layla and we were talking.”
“Lindell, thanks a lot for telling me this. What else did he say?”
“Hey, I’m telling you now, Bosch. Anyway, I couldn’t before. I was in character, man, and in that character you don’t tell the cops shit. And then after, I…well, then I thought you were trying to fuck me over. I wasn’t going to tell you shit then, either.”
“And now you know better.”
“Yeah, right. Look, Bosch, most guys you would’ve never heard from. But I’m calling. You think you’ll hear from anybody else from the bureau saying maybe we made a mistake about you? No way. But I like your style. I mean, you get pulled off the case and what do you do, you turn around and get right back on it. Then you solve the fucker. That takes balls and style, Bosch. I can dig that.”
“You can dig it. That’s great, Roy. What else did Tony Aliso tell you about his wife?”
“Nothing much. He just said she was cold. He said that she had him by the short hairs. Hooked and snooked and that was that. He couldn’t get a divorce from her without losing half his wad and then having her running around out there with all that she knew about his business and his business associates. If you know what I mean.”
“Why didn’t he just go to Joey Marks and ask for a whack on her?”
“I think on account that she knew Joey from way back and he liked her. It was Joey who introduced her to Tony way back when. I think Tony knew that if he went to Joey, it would get KO’d pretty quick and it might get back to her. And if he went to somebody else, he’d have to answer to Joey. Joey had the final say on that kind of stuff, and he wouldn’t want Tony getting involved in a freelance job like that and possibly endangering the wash operation.”
“How well do you think she knew Joey Marks? You think she could’ve gone back to him now?”
“No way. She killed the golden goose. Tony made Joey legitimate money. His first allegiance is always to the money.”
Bosch was quiet for a few moments and so was Lindell.
“So what happens with you now?” Bosch finally said.
“You mean with my thing? I go back to Vegas tonight. I sit down in front of the grand jury in the morning. I figure I’ll be talking to them at least a couple weeks. I’ve got a pretty good story to tell ’em. We should have Joey and his crew tagged and bagged by Christmas.”
“Hope you’re bringing your bodyguards.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m not alone.”
“Well, good luck, Lindell. All the bullshit aside, I like your style, too. Let me ask you something, why’d you tell me about the safe house and the Samoans? That wasn’t in keeping with your character.”
“I had to, Bosch. You scared me.”
“You thought I’d actually clip you for them?”
“I wasn’t sure, but that didn’t really worry me. I had people watching over me that you didn’t know about. But I was sure that they’d clip her. And I’m an agent, man. It was my duty to try to stop that. So I told you. I was surprised you didn’t guess I was undercover right then.”
“Never crossed my mind. You were good.”
“Well, I fooled the people I had to fool. I’ll see you around, Bosch.”
“Sure. Oh, Lindell?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Joey Marks ever think that Tony A. was skimming off him?”
Lindell laughed.
“You don’t give up, do you, Bosch?”
“I guess not.”
“Well, that information would be part of the investigation and I can’t talk about it. Officially.”
“What about unofficially?”
“Unofficially you didn’t hear it from me and I never talked to you. But to answer your question, Joey Marks thought everybody was skimming off him. He trusted no one. Every time I wore a wire with the guy, I was sweating bullets. Because you never knew when he was going to put his hand down your chest. I was with him more than a year and he was still doin’ that every now and then. I had to wear the bug in my armpit, man. You try pulling tape out of your armpit sometime, man. It hurts.”
“What about Tony?”
“That’s what I’m getting at. Sure, Joey thought Tony was skimming. He thought I was, too. And you gotta understand, a certain amount of that was permissible. Joey knew everybody had to make a buck to be happy. But he mighta felt Tony was taking more than his share. He never told me that’s what he thought, but I know he had the boy followed a couple times over here in L.A. And he got to somebody in Tony’s bank in Beverly Hills. Joey was being copied on the monthly statements.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. He would’ve known if there were any deposits that were outta line.”
Bosch thought a moment but couldn’t think what else to ask.
“Why’d you ask that, Bosch?”
“Oh, I don’t know, something I’m workin’ out. Powers said the wife told him Tony had a couple million he skimmed. It’s hidden somewhere.”
Lindell whistled over the line.
“Seems like a lot to me. Seems like Joey would’ve caught that and put the hammer down on Tony pronto. That’s not what you call permissible.”
“Well, I think it accrued over the years, you know. He could have piecemealed it. Also, he was washing money for some of Joey’s friends in Chicago and Arizona, remember? He could’ve skimmed them, too.”
“Anything’s possible. Listen, Bosch, let me know how it all shakes out. I have to catch a plane.”
“One more thing.”
“Bosch, I gotta get to Burbank.”
“You ever heard of anybody in Vegas named John Galvin?”
Galvin was the name of the man who had last visited Veronica Aliso on the night she disappeared. There was a beat of silence before Lindell finally said the name was not familiar. But that silence was what Bosch really heard.
“You sure?”
“Look, I never heard of the guy, okay? I gotta go.”
After hanging up, Bosch opened his briefcase on the dining room table and took out a notebook so he could write down a few notes about what Lindell had said. Eleanor came out of the kitchen with utensils and napkins in her hands.
“Who was that?”
“Lindell.”
“Who?”
“The agent who was Luke Goshen.”
“What did he want?”
“I guess to apologize.”
“That’s unusual. The bureau usually doesn’t apologize for anything.”
“It wasn’t an official call.”
“Oh. Just one of those macho male bonding calls.”
Bosch smiled because she was so right.
“What’s this?” she asked as she put the silverware down and took the tape of Casualty of Desire out of his briefcase. “Oh, was this one of Tony Aliso’s movies?”
“Yeah. Part of his Hollywood legacy. It’s one of the ones Veronica was in. I was supposed to give it back to Kiz.”
“You already saw it?”
Bosch nodded.
“I would’ve liked to see it. Did you like it?”
“It was pretty bad, but we can put it on tonight if you want.”
“You sure you wouldn’t mind?”
“I’m sure.”
During dinner Bosch updated her in detail about the case. Eleanor asked few questions and eventually they lapsed into a com
fortable quiet. The Bolognese sauce and linguini Eleanor had made was fantastic and Bosch broke the silence to tell her so. She had opened a bottle of red wine and that tasted good, too. He told her about that as well.