A Darkness More Than Night

Chapter 38

It took three hours to go carefully through the videotape. At the end of it McCaleb had nothing to show for his time except a parking ticket. Tafero had appeared nowhere in the video of the post office on the day the money order was purchased. Neither had Harry Bosch, for that matter. The missing forty-eight minutes of video, which had been taped over before McCaleb and Winston got there, now haunted him. If they had gone to the post office first and Hollywood station second, they might have had the killer on tape. Those forty-eight minutes might be the difference in the case, the difference in being able to clear Bosch or convict him.

McCaleb was thinking about what-if scenarios when he got to the Cherokee and found the parking ticket under the wiper. He cursed and pulled it off and looked at it. He had been so absorbed in watching the tape he had forgotten he had parked in a fifteen-minute zone in front of the post office. The ticket would cost him $ 40 and that stung. With few fishing charters in the winter months, his family had been living mostly off Graciela’s small paycheck and his monthly pension from the bureau. There wasn’t a lot of leeway with expenses for the two kids. This, coupled with Saturday’s canceled charter, would hurt.

He slipped the ticket back into place on the windshield and started walking down the sidewalk. He decided he wanted to go into Valentino Bonds, even if he knew Rudy Tafero would likely be up in Van Nuys in court. It was in keeping with his practice of viewing the target subject in comfortable surroundings. The target might not be there this time, but the surroundings where he felt safe would.

As he walked he took out his cell phone and called Jaye Winston but got her machine. He hung up without leaving a message and paged her. Four blocks later, when he was almost to Valentino Bonds, she called back.

“I got nothing,” he reported.

“Nothing?”

“No Tafero and no Bosch.”

“Damn.”

“It had to have been on that missing forty-eight minutes.”

“We should have -”

“Gone to the post office first. I know. My fault. The one thing I did get was a parking ticket.”

“Sorry, Terry.”

“Which at least gives me an idea. It was right before Christmas and crowded. If he was in a fifteen-minute zone he might have gone over while waiting in line. The parking enforcement goons in this city are like Nazis. They wait in the shadows. There’s always a chance there was a ticket. It should be checked.”

“Son of Sam?”

“Right.”

She was referring to the New York City serial killer who was tripped up in the 1970 s by a parking ticket.

“I’ll take a shot at it. See what I can do. What are you going to do?”

“I’m about to check out Valentino Bonds.”

“Is he there?”

“He’s probably up in court. I’m going to go up there next, see if I can talk to Bosch about all of this.”

“Better be careful. Your colleagues from the bureau said they were going up to see him at lunch. They might still be around when you get there.”

“What, they’re expecting Bosch to be so impressed by their suits that he confesses or something?”

“I don’t know. Something like that. They were going to brace him. Get some stuff on the record and then go find the contradictions. You know, routine word trap.”

“Harry Bosch is not routine. They’re wasting their time.”

“I know. I told ’em. But you can’t tell an FBI agent anything, you know that.”

He smiled.

“Hey, if this goes the other way and we take down Tafero, I want the sheriff to pay for this ticket.”

“Hey, you’re not working for me. You’re working for Bosch, remember? He pays parking tickets. The sheriff only pays for pancakes.”

“All right. I’m gonna go.”

“Call me.”

He slid the phone into the pocket of his windbreaker and opened the glass door of Valentino Bonds.

It was a small white room with a waiting couch and a counter. It reminded McCaleb of a motel office. There was a calendar on the wall depicting a beach scene from Puerto Vallarta. Behind the counter a man sat with his head down, filling in a crossword puzzle. Behind him was a closed door to what was probably a rear office. McCaleb put a smile on his face and started walking with purpose around the counter before the man there even looked up.

“Rudy? Hey, Rudy, come on outta there!”

The man looked up as McCaleb passed him and opened the door. He stepped into an office that was more than twice the size of the front room.

“Rudy?”

The man from the counter came in right behind him.

“Hey, man, what are you doing?”

McCaleb turned, scanning the room.

“Looking for Rudy. Where is he?”

“He’s not here. Now, if you would step -”

“He told me he’d be here, that he didn’t have to be in court until later.”

Scanning the office, he saw the rear wall was covered with framed photos. He took a step closer. Most of them were shots of Tafero with celebrities he had either bailed out or worked with as a security consultant. Some of the photos were clearly from his days working across the street at the cop shop.

“Excuse me, just who are you?”

McCaleb looked at the man as if insulted. He looked like he might be Tafero’s younger brother. The same dark hair and eyes with rough good looks.

“I’m a friend. Terry. We used to work together when he was across the street.”

McCaleb pointed to a group photo that was on the wall. It showed several men in suits and a few women standing in front of the brick facade of the Hollywood Division station. The detective squad. McCaleb saw both Harry Bosch and Rudy Tafero in the back row. Bosch’s face was turned slightly away from the camera. There was a cigarette in his mouth and smoke rising from it partially obscured his face.

The man turned and started looking at the photo.

McCaleb’s eyes took another swing around the office. The room was nicely appointed with a desk to the left and a sitting area to the right with two short couches and an oriental rug. He stepped closer to the desk to look at a file sitting at center on the blotter but the file, though an inch thick with documents, had nothing written on the tab.

“What the fuck, you’re not on here.”

“Yes, I am,” McCaleb said without turning from the desk. “I was smoking. You can’t see my face.”

There was a file tray to the right of the blotter that was stacked with folders. McCaleb leaned his head at an angle to check the tabs. He saw an assortment of names, some of them recognizable as entertainers or actors but none of them correlating to his investigation.

“Bullshit, man, that ain’t you. That’s Harry Bosch.”

“Really? You know Harry?”

The man didn’t answer. McCaleb turned around. The man was looking at him with angry, suspicious eyes. For the first time McCaleb saw that he held an old billyclub down at his side.

“Let me see.”

He walked over and looked at the framed photo. “You know, you’re right, that’s Harry. I must’ve been in the one they took the year before. I was working undercover when they took this one and couldn’t be in the picture.”

McCaleb nonchalantly took a step toward the door. Inside he was bracing to get hit with the bat.

“Just tell him I was here, okay? Tell him Terry stopped by.”

He made it to the door but one last framed photo caught his eye. It showed Tafero and another man side by side, jointly holding a polished wood plaque in their hands. The picture was old, Tafero looked almost ten years younger. His eyes were brighter and his smile seemed genuine. The plaque itself was hanging on the wall next to the photo. McCaleb leaned closer and read the brass plate attached at the bottom.

RUDY TAFERO

HOLLYWOOD BOOSTERS DETECTIVE OF THE MONTH

FEBRUARY 1995

He glanced back at the photo again and then moved through the door to the front room.

“Terry what?” the man said as he passed.

McCaleb walked to the front door before turning back to him.

“Just tell him it was Terry, the undercover guy.”

He left the office and walked back up the street without looking back.

McCaleb sat in his car in front of the post office. He felt uneasy, the way he always did when he knew the answer was within reach but he just couldn’t quite see it. His gut told him he was on the right track. Tafero, the PI who hid his upscale Hollywood practice behind a bail bonds shack, was the key. McCaleb just couldn’t find the door.

He realized he was very hungry. He started the car and thought about a place to eat. He was a few blocks from Musso’s but had eaten there too recently. He wondered if they served food at Nat’s but figured if they did that it would be dangerous to the stomach. Instead, he drove over to the In ’n Out on Sunset and ordered at the drive-through.

While he was eating his hamburger over the to-go box in the Cherokee, his phone chirped. He put the burger down in the box, wiped his hands on a napkin and opened the phone.

“You’re a genius.”

It was Jaye Winston.

“What?”

“Tafero got a ticket on his Mercedes. A black four-thirty C-L-K. He was in the fifteen-minute zone right in front of the post office. The ticket was written at eight-nineteen A.M. on the twenty-second. He hasn’t paid it yet. He has till five today and then it’s overdue.”

McCaleb was silent as he considered this. He felt nerve synapses firing like dominoes running up his backbone. The ticket was a hell of a break. It proved absolutely nothing but it told him that he was following the correct path. And sometimes knowing you were on the right path was better than having the proof.

His thoughts jumped to his visit to Tafero’s office and the photographs he had seen.

“Hey, Jaye, did you get a chance to look up anything on the case with Bosch’s old lieutenant?”

“I didn’t have to go looking. Twilley and Friedman already had a file on it with them today. Lieutenant Harvey Pounds. Somebody beat him to death about four weeks after he had that altercation with Bosch over Gunn. Because of the bad blood Bosch was a likely suspect. But he apparently was cleared – by the LAPD at least. The case is open but inactive. The bureau kind of watched from afar and has kept an open file, too. Twilley told me today that there are some people in the LAPD who think Bosch was cleared on it a little too quickly.”

“Oh, and I bet Twilley loves that.”

“He does. He already has Bosch down for it. He thinks Gunn is only the tip of the iceberg with Harry.”

McCaleb shook his head but immediately moved on. He couldn’t dwell on other peoples’ foibles and motivations. There was a lot to think about and plan for with the investigation at hand.

“By the way, do you have a copy of the parking ticket?” he asked.

“Not yet. It was all phone work. But it’s being faxed. The thing is, you and I know what it means but it’s a long way off from being proof of anything.”

“I know. But it will make a good prop when the time comes.”

“When the time comes for what?”

“To make our play. We’ll use Tafero to get to Storey. You know that’s where this is heading.”

“We? You’ve got it all planned out, don’t you, Terry?”

“Not quite but I’m working on it.”

He didn’t want to have an argument with her about his role in the investigation.

“Listen, my lunch is getting cold here,” he said.

“Well, excuse me. Go ahead and eat.”

“Call me later. I’m going up to see Bosch later on. Anything from Twilley and Friedman on that?”

“I think they’re still up there with him.”

“All right. Check you later.”

He closed the phone, got out of the car and carried the food box to a trash can. He then jumped back in and started the engine. On the way back to the post office on Wilcox he opened all the windows to air the smell of greasy food out of the car.