A Darkness More Than Night

Chapter 33

On the walk back to the pier his cell phone chirped. It was Jaye Winston returning his call. She was talking very quietly and said she was calling from her mother’s house. McCaleb had difficulty hearing so he sat down on one of the benches along the casino walk. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, one hand holding the phone tightly to one ear, his other hand clasped over the other.

“We missed something,” he said. “I missed something.”

“Terry, what are you talking about?”

“In the murder book. In Gunn’s arrest record. He was -”

“Terry, what are you doing? You’re off the case.”

“Says who, the FBI? I don’t work for them anymore, Jaye.”

“Then says me. I don’t want you getting any further -”

“I don’t work for you, either, Jaye. Remember?”

There was a long silence on the phone.

“Terry, I don’t know what you are doing but it’s got to stop. You have no authority, no standing in this case anymore. If those guys Twilley and Friedman find out you’re still snooping around on this, they can arrest you for interference. And you know they’re just the type that will.”

“You want standing, I have standing.”

“What? I withdrew my authorization to you yesterday. You can’t use me on this.”

McCaleb hesitated and then decided to tell her.

“I have standing. I guess you could say I’m working for the accused.”

Now Winston’s silence was even longer. Finally she spoke, her words delivered very slowly.

“Are you telling me that you went to Bosch with this?”

“No. He came to me. He showed up on my boat this morning. I was right about the other night. The coincidence; me showing up at his place, then the call from his partner about you. He put it together. The reporter from the New Times called him, too. He knew what was going on without me having to tell him a thing. The point is, Jaye, none of that matters. What matters is that I think I jumped on Bosch too soon. I missed something and now I’m not so sure. There’s a chance all of this could be a setup.”

“He’s convinced you.”

“No, I convinced myself.”

There were voices in the background and Winston told McCaleb to hold on. He then heard voices muffled by a hand over the phone. It sounded like arguing. McCaleb stood up and continued walking toward the pier. Winston came back on in a few seconds.

“Sorry,” she said. “This is not a good time. I’m in the middle of something right now.”

“Can we meet tomorrow morning?”

“What are you talking about?” Winston said, her voice almost shrill. “You just told me you are working for the target of an investigation. I’m not going to meet with you. How the fuck would that look? Hold on -”

He heard her muffled voice apologizing for her language to someone. She then came back on the line.

“I really have to go.”

“Look, I don’t care how it would look. I’m interested in the truth and I thought you would be, too. You don’t want to meet me, fine, don’t meet me. I’ve gotta go myself.”

“Terry, wait.”

He listened. She said nothing. He sensed that she was distracted by something there.

“What, Jaye?”

“What is this thing you said we missed?”

“It was in the arrest package from Gunn’s last duice. I guess after Bosch told you he had spoken to him in lockup you pulled all the records. I just scanned through it the first time I looked at the book.”

“I pulled the records,” she said in a defensive tone. “He spent the night of December thirtieth in the Hollywood tank. That’s where Bosch saw him.”

“And he bonded out in the morning. Seven-thirty.”

“Yeah. Okay? I don’t get it.”

“Look who bailed him out.”

“Terry, I’m at my parents’. I don’t have -”

“Right, sorry. He was bailed out by Rudy Tafero.”

Silence. McCaleb was at the pier. He walked out toward the gangway that led down to the skiff dock and leaned on the railing. He cupped his free hand over his ear again.

“Okay, he was bailed out by Rudy Tafero,” Winston said. “I assume he is a licensed bail bondsman. What does that mean?”

“You haven’t been watching your TV. You’re right, Tafero is a licensed bail bondsman – at least he put a license number on the bail sheet. But he’s also a PI and security consultant. And – ready for this – he works for David Storey.”

Winston didn’t say anything but McCaleb could hear her breathing into the phone.

“Terry, I think you better slow down. You are reading too much into this.”

“No coincidences, Jaye.”

“What coincidence? The man’s a bail bondsman. It’s what he does. He gets people out of jail. I’ll bet you a box of doughnuts his office is right across the street from Hollywood station with all the others. He probably bails every third drunk and fourth prostitute out of the tank there.”

“You don’t believe it’s that simple and you know it.”

“Don’t tell me what I believe.”

“This was when he was in the middle of preparing for Storey’s trial. Why would Tafero come over and write a duice ticket himself?”

“Because maybe he’s a one-man show and maybe, like I said, all he had to do was cross the street.”

“I don’t buy it. And there’s something else. On his booking slip it says Gunn got his one phone call at three A.M. December thirty-first. The number’s on the slip – he called his sister in Long Beach.”

“Okay, what about it? We knew that.”

“I called her today and asked if she’d called a bondsman for him. She said no. She said she was tired of getting calls in the middle of the night and literally bailing him out all the time. She told him he was on his own this time.”

“So he went with Tafero. What about it?”

“How’d he get him? He already used his call.”

Winston had no answer for that. They were both silent for a while. McCaleb looked out across the harbor. The yellow taxi boat was moving slowly down one of the fairways, empty except for the man at the wheel. Men alone in their boats, McCaleb thought.

“What are you going to do?” Winston finally asked. “Where are you going with this?”

“I’m coming back across tonight. Can you meet me in the morning?”

“Where? When?”

The tone of her voice revealed that she was put out by the prospect of a meeting.

“Seven-thirty, out front at the Hollywood station.”

There was a pause and then Winston said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I can’t do this. If Hitchens gets wind of it, that will be the end. He’ll ship me out to Palmdale. I’ll spend the rest of my career pulling bones out of the desert sand.”

McCaleb was ready for that protest.

“You said the bureau guys want the murder book back, right? You meet me, I’ll have it with me. What’s Hitchens going to say about that?”

There was silence as Winston considered this.

“Okay, that’ll work. I’ll be there.”