A Darkness More Than Night

Chapter 40

They settled into a booth at Nat’s after getting bottles of Rolling Rock from the bartender with the tattoo of the barbed-wire-wrapped heart. While she pulled the bottles from the cold case and opened them, the woman hadn’t said anything about McCaleb having come in the other night asking questions about the man he had now returned with. It was early and the place was empty except for groups of hard-cores at the bar and crowded into the booth all the way to the rear. Bruce Springsteen was on the jukebox singing, “There’s a darkness on the edge of town.”

McCaleb studied Bosch. He thought he looked preoccupied by something, probably the trial. The last witness had been a wash at best. Good on direct, bad on cross. The kind of witness you don’t use – if you have the choice.

“Looked like you guys got sandbagged there with your wit.”

Bosch nodded.

“My fault. I should’ve seen it coming. I looked at her and thought she was so beautiful she couldn’t possibly… I just believed her.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Last time I trust a face.”

“You guys still look like you’re in good shape. What else you got coming?”

Bosch smirked.

“That’s it. They were going to rest today but decided to wait until the morning so Fowkkes wouldn’t have the night to get ready. But we’ve fired all the bullets in the gun. Starting tomorrow we see what they’ve got.”

McCaleb watched Bosch take down almost half the bottle in one long pull. He decided he’d better get to the real questions while Bosch was still sharp.

“So tell me about Rudy Tafero.”

Bosch shook his shoulders in a gesture of ambivalence.

“What about him?”

“I don’t know. How well do you know him? How well did you know him?”

“Well, I knew him when he was on our team. He worked Hollywood detectives about five years while I was there. Then he pulled the pin, got his twenty-year pension and moved across the street. Started working on getting people we put in the bucket out of the bucket.”

“When you were both on the same team, both in Hollywood, were you close?”

“I don’t know what close means. We weren’t friends, we weren’t drinking buddies, he worked burglaries and I worked homicides. What are you asking so much about him for? What’s he got to do with -”

He stopped and looked at McCaleb, the wheels obviously turning inside. Rod Stewart was now singing “Twisting the Night Away.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bosch finally asked. “You’re looking at -”

“Let me just ask some questions,” McCaleb interjected. “Then you can ask yours.”

Bosch drained his bottle and held it up until the bartender noticed.

“No table service, guys,” she called over. “Sorry.”

“Fuck that,” Bosch said.

He slid out of the booth and went to the bar. He came back with four more Rocks, though McCaleb had barely begun to drink his first one.

“Ask away,” Bosch said.

“Why weren’t you two close?”

Bosch put both elbows on the table and held a fresh bottle with both hands. He looked out of the booth and then at McCaleb.

“Five, ten years ago there were two groups in the bureau. And to a large extent it was this way in the department, too. It was like the saints and the sinners – two distinct groups.”

“The born agains and the born againsts?”

“Something like that.”

McCaleb remembered. It had become well known in local law enforcement circles a decade earlier that a group within the LAPD known as the “born agains” had members in key positions and was holding sway over promotions and choice assignments. The group’s numbers – several hundred officers of all ranks – were members of a church in the San Fernando Valley where the department’s deputy chief in charge of operations was a lay preacher. Ambitious officers joined the church in droves, in hopes of impressing the deputy chief and enhancing their career prospects. How much spirituality was involved was in question. But when the deputy chief delivered his sermon every Sunday at the 11 o’clock service, the church would be packed to standing room only with off-duty cops casting their eyes fervently on the pulpit. McCaleb had once heard a story about a car alarm going off in the parking lot during an 11 o’clock service. The hapless hype rummaging through the vehicle’s glove compartment soon found himself surrounded by a hundred guns pointed by off-duty cops.

“I take it you were on the sinners’ team, Harry.”

Bosch smiled and nodded.

“Of course.”

“And Tafero was on the saints’.”

“Yeah. And so was our lieutenant at the time. A paper pusher named Harvey Pounds. He and Tafero had their little church thing going and so they were tight. I think anybody who was tight with Pounds, whether because of church or not, wasn’t somebody I was going to gravitate toward, if you know what I mean. And they weren’t going to gravitate toward me.”

McCaleb nodded. He knew more than he was letting on.

“Pounds was the guy who messed up the Gunn case,” he said. “The one you pushed through the window.”

“He’s the one.”

Bosch dropped his head and shook it in self-disgust.

“Was Tafero there that day?”

“Tafero? I don’t know, probably.”

“Well, wasn’t there an IAD investigation with witness reports?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t look at it. I mean, I pushed the guy through a window in front of the squad. I wasn’t going to deny it.”

“And later – what, a month or so? – Pounds ends up dead in the tunnel up in the hills.”

“Griffith Park, yeah.”

“And it’s still open…”

Bosch nodded.

“Technically.”

“You said that before. What does that mean?”

“It means it’s open but nobody’s working it. The LAPD has a special classification for cases like it, cases they don’t want to touch. It’s what is called closed by circumstances other than arrest.”

“And you know those circumstances?”

Bosch finished his second bottle, slid it to the side and pulled a fresh bottle in front of him.

“You’re not drinking,” he said.

“You’re doing enough for both of us. Do you know those circumstances?”

Bosch leaned forward.

“Listen, I’m going to tell you something very few people know about, okay?”

McCaleb nodded. He knew better than to ask a question now. He would just let Bosch tell it.

“Because of that window thing I went on suspension. When I got tired of walking around my house staring at the walls, I started investigating an old case. A cold case. A murder case. I went freelancing on it and I ended up following a blind trail to some very powerful people. But at the time I had no badge, no real standing. So a few times, when I made some calls, I used Pounds’s name. You know, I was trying to hide what I was doing.”

“If the department found out you were working a case while on suspension things would’ve gotten worse for you.”

“Exactly. So I used his name when I made what I thought were some routine, innocuous calls. But then one night somebody called Pounds up and told him that they had something for him, some urgent information. He went to the meet. By himself. Then they found him later in that tunnel. He’d been beaten pretty bad. Like they had tortured him. Only he couldn’t answer their questions because he was the wrong guy. I was the one who had used his name. I was the one they wanted.”

Bosch dropped his chin to his chest and was silent for a long moment.

“I got him killed,” he said without looking up. “The guy was a pure-bred asshole but my actions got him killed.”

Bosch suddenly jerked his head up and drank from his bottle. McCaleb saw his eyes were dark and shiny. They looked weary.

“Is that what you wanted to know, Terry? Does that help you?”

McCaleb nodded.

“How much of this would Tafero have known?”

“Nothing.”

“Could he have thought you were the one who called Pounds out that night?”

“Maybe. There were people who did and probably still do. But what does it mean? What’s it got to do with Gunn?”

McCaleb took his first long drink of beer. It was cold and he felt the chill in his chest. He put the bottle down and decided it was time to give something back to Bosch.

“I need to know about Tafero because I need to know about reasons, motives. I have no proof of anything – yet – but I think Tafero killed Gunn. He did it for Storey. He set you in the frame.”

“Jesus…”

“Nice perfect frame. The crime scene is connected to the painter Hieronymus Bosch, the painter is connected to you as his namesake and then you are connected to Gunn. And you know when Storey probably got the idea for it?”

Bosch shook his head. He looked too stunned to talk.

“The day you tried to interview him in his office. You played the tape in court last week. You identified yourself on it by your full first name.”

“I always do. I…”

“He then connects with Tafero and Tafero has the perfect victim to put in the frame. Gunn – a man he knew walked away from you and a murder charge six years ago.”

Bosch lifted his bottle a couple of inches off the table and brought it back down hard.

“I think the plan was twofold. If they got lucky the connection would be made quickly and you’d be fighting a murder charge before Storey’s trial even started. If that didn’t happen, then plan B. They would still have it to crush you with at trial. Destroy you, they destroy the case. Fowkkes already took out that woman today and pot-shotted a few of the other wits. What does the case rest on? You, Harry. They knew it would come down to you.”

Bosch turned his head slightly and his eyes seemed to go blank as he stared at the scarred table top while considering what McCaleb had said.

“I needed to know your background with Tafero. Because that’s a question; why would he do this? Yes, there probably is money in it and a hook into Storey if he walks. But there had to be something more. And I think you just told me what it was. He’s probably hated you for a long time.”

Bosch looked up from the table and directly at McCaleb.

“It’s a payback.”

McCaleb nodded.

“For Pounds. And unless we get the proof of it, it might just work.”

Bosch was silent. He stared down at the table. He looked tired and washed out to McCaleb.

“Still want to shake his hand?” McCaleb asked.

Bosch raised his eyes.

“Sorry, Harry, that was a cheap shot.”

Bosch shook his head, shrugging it off.

“I deserve it. So tell me, what do you have?”

“Not a lot. But you were right. I missed something. Tafero bailed Gunn out on New Year’s Eve. I think the plan was to kill him that night, set the scene and let things take their course. The Hieronymus Bosch connection would come to light – either through Jaye Winston or a bureau VICAP inquiry – and you’d become a natural target. But then Gunn went and got himself drunk in here.”

He raised his bottle and gestured to the bar.

“And then he got himself duiced while driving home. Tafero had to get him out so they could stay with the plan. So he could kill him. That bail slip is the one direct link we have.”

Bosch nodded. McCaleb could tell he was seeing the scheme.

“They leaked it to that reporter,” Bosch said. “Once it hit the media they could jump on it and use it and act like it was news to them, like they were behind the curve when all along they were bending the goddamn curve.”

McCaleb nodded hesitantly. He didn’t bring up Buddy Lockridge’s admission because it threw a jam into the working theory.

“What?” Bosch asked.

“Nothing. I’m just thinking.”

“You’ve got nothing other than Tafero posting the bail?”

“A traffic ticket and that’s it for now.”

In detail McCaleb described his morning’s visits to Valentino Bonds and the post office and how his being forty-eight minutes late at the post office might be the difference in being able to clear Bosch and take down Tafero.

Bosch winced and picked up his bottle, but then put it down without drinking from it.

“The parking ticket puts him at the post office,” McCaleb offered.

“It’s nothing. He’s got an office five blocks away. He could claim it was the only parking place he could find. He could say he lent his car to somebody. It’s nothing.”

McCaleb didn’t want to concentrate on what they didn’t have. He wanted to fill in pieces.

“Listen, the morning watch sergeant told us you had a standing request to be notified every time Gunn was brought in. Would Tafero have known about it? Either from before when he was still in the squad or some other way?”

“He could have. It wasn’t a secret. I was working on Gunn. Someday I was going to break him.”

“By the way, what did Pounds look like?”

Bosch gave him a confused look.

“Short, wide and balding with a mustache?”

Bosch nodded and was about to ask a question when McCaleb answered it.

“His picture is on the wall in Tafero’s office. Pounds giving him the detective-of-the-month plaque. I bet you never got one of those, Harry.”

“Not with Pounds making the pick.”

McCaleb looked up and saw that Jaye Winston had entered the bar. She was carrying a briefcase. He nodded to her and she started toward the booth, walking with her shoulders up as though she were carefully stepping through a landfill.

McCaleb moved over and she slid into the booth next to him.

“Nice place.”

“Harry,” McCaleb said, “I believe you know Jaye Winston.”

Bosch and Winston looked at each other.

“First thing,” Winston said, “I’m sorry about the thing with Kiz. I hope -”

“We do what we have to do,” Bosch said. “You want a drink? They don’t come to the table here.”

“I’d be shocked if they did. Maker’s Mark, rocks, if they have it.”

“Terry, you cool?”

“Cool.”

Bosch slid out to get the drink. Winston turned to look at McCaleb.

“How is it going?”

“Little pieces, here and there.”

“How’s he taking it?”

“Not bad, I guess, for a guy who’s been put into a pretty big box. How’d you do?”

She smiled in a way that McCaleb could tell meant she had come up with something.

“I got you the photo and a couple other… interesting… pieces.”

Bosch put Winston’s drink down in front of her and slid back into the booth.

“She laughed when I said Maker’s Mark,” he said. “That’s the house swill there.”

“Wonderful. Thank you.”

Winston moved her glass to the side and brought her briefcase up onto the table. She opened it, removed a file and then closed the briefcase and put it back on the floor next to the booth. McCaleb watched Bosch watching her. There was an expectant look on his face.

Winston opened the file and slid a five-by-eight photo of Rudy Tafero over to McCaleb.

“That’s from his bonding license. It’s eleven months old.”

She then referred to a page of typed notes.

“I went to county lockup and pulled everything on Storey. He was held there until they transferred him to Van Nuys jail for the trial. During his stay in county he had nineteen visits from Tafero. The first twelve visits coming during the first three weeks he was in there. During that same period, Fowkkes only visited him four times. A lawyer in Fowkkes’s office visited an additional four times and Storey’s executive assistant, a woman named Betilda Lockett, visited six times. That’s it. He was meeting with his investigator more often than his lawyers.”

“That’s when they planned it,” McCaleb said.

She nodded and then smiled in that same way again.

“What?” McCaleb asked.

“Just saving the best for last.”

She brought her briefcase back up and opened it.

“The jail keeps records of all property and possessions of inmates – things that were brought in with them, things approved and passed to them by visitors. There is a notation in Storey’s records that his assistant, Betilda Lockett, was allowed to give him a book during the second of her six visits. According to the property report, it was called The Art of Darkness. I went to the downtown library and checked it out.”

From her briefcase she took a large, heavy book with a blue cloth cover. She started opening it on the table. There was a yellow Post-it sticking out as a marker.

“It’s a study of artists who used darkness as a vital part of the visual medium, according to the introduction.”

She looked up and smiled as she got to the Post-it.

“It has a rather long chapter on Hieronymus Bosch. Complete with illustrations.”

McCaleb lifted his empty bottle and clicked against her glass, which she still hadn’t touched. He then leaned in, along with Bosch, to look at the pages.

“Beautiful,” he said.

Winston turned the pages. The book’s illustrations of Bosch’s work included all of the paintings from which pieces of the crime scene could be traced: The Stone Operation, The Seven Deadly Sins with the eye of God, The Last Judgment and The Garden of Earthly Delights.

“He planned the thing right there from his cell,” McCaleb marveled.

“Looks like it,” Winston said.

They both looked at Bosch, who was nodding his head almost imperceptibly.

“Now your turn, Harry,” McCaleb said.

Bosch looked perplexed.

“My turn at what?”

“At making good luck.”

McCaleb slid the picture of Tafero across the table and nodded toward the bartender. Bosch slid out and took the photo to the bar.

“We’re still just dancing around the edges,” Winston said as they both watched Bosch question the bartender about the photo. “We’ve got little pieces but that’s it.”

“I know,” McCaleb said. He couldn’t hear what was being said at the bar. The music was too loud, Van Morrison singing, “The wild night is coming.”

Bosch nodded to the bartender and came back to the booth.

“She recognizes him – drinks Kahlúa and cream of all things. She can’t put him here with Gunn, though.”

McCaleb shrugged his shoulders in a no-big-deal gesture.

“It was worth the shot.”

“You know where this is going, don’t you?” Bosch said, his eyes shifting from McCaleb’s to Winston’s and then back. “You’re going to have to make a play. It’s going to be the only way. And it’s gotta be a damn good play because my ass is on the line.”

McCaleb nodded.

“We know,” he said.

“When? I’m running out of time.”

McCaleb looked at Winston. It was her call.

“Soon,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow. I haven’t gone into the office with this yet. I have to finesse my captain on it because last he knew, Terry here was banished and I was working with the bureau on you. I also have to get a DA involved because when we make the move we’ll have to move fast. If it all works out I say we take Tafero in tomorrow night and make the play to him.”

Bosch looked down at the table with a rueful smile. He slid an empty bottle back and forth between his hands.

“I met those guys today. The agents.”

“I heard. You didn’t exactly assure them of your innocence. They came back all hot and bothered.”

Bosch looked up.

“So what do you need from me on this?”

“We need you to sit tight,” Winston said. “We’ll let you know about tomorrow night.”

Bosch nodded.

“There is one thing,” McCaleb said. “The exhibits from the trial, do you have access to them?”

“During court, yeah. Otherwise they stay with the clerk. Why?”

“Because Storey obviously had existing knowledge of the painter Hieronymus Bosch. He had to have recognized your name during that interview and known what he could do with it. So I’m thinking that book his assistant brought him in jail had to be his own. He told her to bring it to him.”

Bosch nodded.

“The picture of the bookcase.”

McCaleb nodded.

“You got it.”

“I’ll let you know.” Bosch looked around the place. “Are we done here?”

“We’re done,” Winston said. “We’ll be in touch.”

She slid out of the booth, followed by Bosch and McCaleb. They left two beers and a whiskey rocks untouched on the table. At the door, McCaleb glanced back and saw a couple of the hard-cores moving in on the treasure. From the jukebox John Fogerty was singing, “There’s a bad moon on the rise…”