A Darkness More Than Night

Chapter 35

McCaleb was leaning against the Cherokee parked in front of the LAPD’s Hollywood station when Winston pulled up in a BMW Z 3 and parked. When she got out she saw McCaleb studying her car.

“I was running late. I didn’t have time to pick up a company car.”

“I like your wheels. You know what they say about L.A., you are what you drive.”

“Don’t start profiling me, Terry. It’s too fucking early. Where’s the book and the tape?”

He noted her profanity but kept his thoughts on that to himself. He pushed off the car and went around to the passenger side. He opened the door and took out the murder book and the crime scene tape. He handed them to her and she took them back to her car. McCaleb closed and locked the Cherokee, looking down through the window to the floor of the backseat where he had covered the Kinko’s box with the morning newspaper. Before coming to the rendezvous he had gone to the twenty-four-hour shop on Sunset and photocopied the entire murder book. The tape was a problem; he didn’t know where to get it dubbed on short notice. So he’d simply bought a videocassette at the Rite-Aid near the marina and slipped the blank tape into the case Winston had given him. It was his guess that she wouldn’t check to make sure he had returned the correct tape.

When she came back from her car he pointed with his chin across the street.

“I guess I owe you a box of doughnuts.”

She looked. Across Wilcox from the station was a shabby two-story building with a handful of storefront bail bond operations with phone numbers advertised in each window in cheap neon, maybe to help prospective clients memorize them from the backseat of passing patrol cars. The middle business had a painted sign above the window: Valentino Bonds.

“Which one?” Winston asked.

“Valentino. As in Rudy Valentino Tafero. That’s what they used to call him when he worked this side of the street.”

McCaleb appraised the small business again and shook his head.

“I still don’t see how a neon bondsman and David Storey ever hooked up.”

“Hollywood is just street trash with money. So what are we doing here? I don’t have a lot of time.”

“You bring your badge?”

She gave him a don’t-fuck-with-me look and he explained what he wanted to do. They went up the steps and into the station. At the front desk Winston flashed her badge and asked for the A.M. watch sergeant. A man with Zucker on his name plate and sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve of his uniform came out from the small office. Winston showed her badge again, introduced herself and then introduced McCaleb as her associate. Zucker knitted his healthy set of eyebrows together but didn’t ask what associate meant.

“We’re working a homicide case from New Year’s Eve. The victim spent the night before in your tank. We -”

“Edward Gunn.”

“Right. You knew him?”

“He’d been in a few times. And of course I heard he won’t be coming back.”

“We need to talk to whoever runs the tank on A.M. watch.”

“Well, that would be me, I guess. We don’t have a specific duty. It’s sort of catch as catch can around here. What do you want to know?”

McCaleb took a set of photocopies from the murder book out of his jacket pocket and spread them on the counter. He noticed Winston’s look but ignored it.

“We’re interested in how he made bail,” he said.

Zucker turned the pages around so he could read them. He put his finger on Rudy Tafero’s signature.

“Says it right here. Rudy Tafero. He’s got a place across the street. He came over and bailed him out.”

“Did someone call him?”

“Yeah, the guy did. Gunn.”

McCaleb tapped his finger on the copy of the booking slip.

“It says here that when he got his call he called this number. It’s his sister.”

“Then she must’ve called Rudy for him.”

“So nobody gets two calls.”

“Nope, ’round here we’re usually so busy they’re lucky if they get the one.”

McCaleb nodded. He folded the photocopies and was about to put them back in his pocket when Winston took them from his hand.

“I’ll hang on to those,” she said.

She slipped the folded copies into a back pocket of her black jeans.

“Sergeant Zucker,” she said. “You wouldn’t be the kind of nice guy who would call Tafero, being that he’s former LAPD, and tip him that he had a potential fish over here in the tank, would you?”

Zucker stared at her for a moment, his face a stone.

“It’s very important, Sergeant. If you don’t tell us, it could come back on you.”

The stone cracked into a humorless smile.

“No, I’m not that kind of nice guy,” Zucker said. “And I don’t have any nice guys like that on A.M. watch. And speaking of which, I just got off shift which means I don’t have to be talking to you anymore. Have a nice day.”

He started to step away from the counter.

“One last thing,” Winston said quickly.

Zucker turned back to her.

“Were you the one who called Harry Bosch and told him Gunn was in the tank?”

Zucker nodded.

“I had a standing request from him. Any and every time Gunn was brought in here, Bosch wanted to know about it. He’d come in and talk to the guy, try to get him to say something about that old case. Bosch wouldn’t give up on it.”

“It says Gunn wasn’t booked until two-thirty,” McCaleb said. “You called Bosch in the middle of the night?”

“That was part of the deal. Bosch didn’t care what time it was. And actually, the procedure was that I would page him and then he’d call in.”

“And that’s what happened that last night?”

“Yeah, I paged and Bosch called in. I told him we had Gunn again and he came down to try to talk to him. I tried to tell him to wait until morning ’cause the guy was on his ass drunk – Gunn, I mean – but Harry came down anyway. Why are you asking so much about Harry Bosch?”

Winston didn’t answer so McCaleb jumped in.

“We’re not. We’re asking about Gunn.”

“Well, that’s all I know. Can I go home now? It’s been a long one.”

“Aren’t they all,” Winston said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

They stepped away from the counter and walked out to the front steps.

“What do you think?” Winston asked.

“He sounded legit to me. But you know what, let’s watch the employee lot for a few minutes.”

“Why?”

“Humor me. Let’s see what the sergeant drives home.”

“You’re wasting my time, Terry.”

They got into McCaleb’s Cherokee anyway and drove around the block until they came to the entrance-exit of the Hollywood station employee parking lot. McCaleb drove fifty yards past it and parked in front of a fire hydrant. He adjusted the side-view mirror so he could see any car that left the lot. They sat and waited in silence for a couple minutes until Winston spoke.

“So if we are what we drive, what’s this make you?”

McCaleb smiled.

“Never thought about it. A Cherokee… I guess that makes me the last of a breed or something.”

He glanced at her then looked back at the mirror.

“Yeah, and what about this coating of dust on everything, what does that -”

“Here we go. Think it’s him.”

McCaleb watched a car leave the exit and turn left in their direction.

“Coming this way.”

Neither of them moved. The car drove up and stopped right next to them. McCaleb looked over casually and his eyes met Zucker’s. The cop lowered his passenger-side window. McCaleb had no choice. He lowered his.

“You’re parked in front of a plug there, Detective. Don’t get a ticket.”

McCaleb nodded. Zucker saluted with two fingers and drove off. McCaleb noted that he was driving a Crown Victoria with commercial bumpers and wheels. It was a secondhand patrol car, the kind you pick up at auction for four hundred bucks and slap on an $ 89. 95 paint job.

“Don’t we look like a couple of assholes,” Winston said.

“Yeah.”

“So what’s your theory about that car?”

“He’s either an honest man or he drives the beater to work because he doesn’t want people to see the Porsche.”

He paused.

“Or the Z 3.”

He turned to her and smiled.

“Funny, Terry. Now what? Eventually, I have to get some real work done today. And I’m supposed to meet with your bureau buddies this morning as well.”

“Stick with me – and they aren’t my buddies.”

He started the Cherokee and pulled away from the curb.

“You really think this car’s dirty?” he asked.