Christmas Even [Short story]

The Three Kings Pawnshop on Hollywood Boulevard had been burglarized three times in two years. The criminal methods of each break-in were similar, so the Los Angeles Police Department suspected that the same thief was responsible. But the thief was careful to never leave a fingerprint. No arrests were ever made and no stolen property was recovered. Nikolai Servan, the Russian immigrant who owned the store, was left to wonder about the justice system of his adopted country.

On the day before Christmas of this year, Servan unlocked the rear door of the pawnshop, entered and found that his business had been victimized a fourth time. He also discovered that the burglar was still inside. It was this discovery that ultimately brought Detective Harry Bosch and his partner, Jerry Edgar, to the pawnshop. For the burglar was dead.

When the two homicide detectives arrived they were greeted by Detective Eugene Braxton from the burglary squad. He had investigated the previous burglaries at Three Kings and had gotten there first because Servan had his business card taped to the side of the telephone. When the shop owner came to work that morning and found the dead burglar behind the jewelry case, he didn’t dial 911. He dialed Braxton.

“Deck the halls, Harry,” Braxton said by way of greeting. “We’ve got one less burglar in the world. And that makes my Christmas merry already.”

Bosch nodded and looked at Servan, who was seated on a tall stool on the other side of the counter. He was about 50 with black hair thinning on the top. He had a lot of muscle that was going soft. Braxton made introductions and then Bosch asked that Servan be escorted outside while the death investigation proceeded.

Bosch moved to the area behind the glass jewelry counter. Sprawled on the floor in this close space was the body. He was a white man dressed head-to-toe in black. All except for the right hand — it was not gloved like the left hand was. Bosch crouched like a baseball catcher next to the body and studied it without touching anything. A knit ski mask had been pulled down over the face. Bosch noted that the eyes were open and the lips were pulled back despite the teeth being closed together lightly. He spoke without looking up.

“You know this guy, Brax?”

“I took a look, but I didn’t recognize him,” Braxton said.

Bosch took a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket, blew them up like balloons to make them go on easier and then slipped them on. He tried to roll the body a little to check for wounds and the missing glove. He didn’t find either.

He lifted the bare hand and studied it, trying to figure out why there w as no glove. He noticed a discoloration on the pad of the thumb, a brownish-yellow line. There was a matching line of discoloration on the index finger. Using both hands he placed the thumb and finger together. The two marks matched in alignment.

Bosch carefully placed the hand on the floor and moved down to the feet. He removed the right shoe, a black leather athletic style with black rubber sole, and peeled off the black sock. On the heel of the dead man’s fool was a circular discoloration that was brown at its center, tapering outward in yellow.

“Over here.”

It was Edgar. He was behind another display case on the other side of the shop. Bosch stood up and walked over. Edgar crouched and pointed beneath the case.

“Under the case. I don’t know if it’s a match, but there’s a glove.”

Bosch got down on his hands and knees next to the display case, reached under and pulled out the glove.

“Looks the same,” he said.

“If it does not fit, you must acquit,” said Edgar.

Bosch looked at him.

“Johnnie Cochran,” Edgar said. “You know, the O.J. gloves.”

“Right.”

Bosch stood up and looked into the case. It held two shelves lighted from inside and contained high-end items such as small jade sculptures, gold and silver pillboxes, cigarette cases and other ornate and bejeweled trinkets.

Bosch stepped away from the case and surveyed the shop. Other than the two display cases there was mostly junk, the property of financially desperate people willing to part with almost anything in exchange for cash.

“Brax,” Bosch said, “where’s the entry?”

Braxton signaled him toward the back and led the way. Bosch and Edgar followed. They came to a rear room that was used as an office and for storage. Gravel and other debris were scattered on the floor They all looked up. There was a hole roughly cut in the ceiling. It was two feet wide and there was blue sky above.

“It’s a composite roof,” Braxton said. “No big thing cutting through. A half hour maybe.”

“The roof the entry point in the other three hits?” Bosch asked.

Braxton shook his head.

“He hit the back door the first two times and then the roof. This is the second time through the roof.”

“You think it was the same guy all three times?”

“Wouldn’t doubt it. That’s what they do. Hit the same places over and over. Especially a place like this. A lot of immigrants come here. Russians mostly. They pawn the stuff they brought with them from the homeland. Jade. Gold. Small, expensive stuff. Burglars love that shit, man. That case where you found the glove? It’s all in there. That’s what the guy came in for I don’t know why he ended up behind the jewelry case.”

The three detectives continued to huddle for a moment to discuss their initial impressions, Bosch’s theory on what had happened to the burglar and to set a case strategy. It was decided that Edgar would stay and assist the crime-scene teams. Bosch and Braxton would handle Servan and the next-of-kin notification.

As soon as the medical examiner’s investigator rolled a set of prints off the burglar’s exposed hand, Bosch and Braxton headed back to Hollywood Division along with Nikolai Servan.

Bosch scanned the prints into the computer and sent them downtown to the print lab at Parker Center. He then conducted a formal taped interview with Servan. Though the pawnbroker added nothing new to what he had told them in his shop, it was important for Bosch to lock down his story on tape.

By the time he was done with the interview he had a message waiting from a print technician. The latents were matched by computer to a 39-year-old ex-convict by the name of Montgomery George Kelman, who was on parole for a burglary conviction. It took Bosch three calls to locate Kelman’s parole officer and to obtain the dead man’s current address.

“Saddle up,” Bosch said to Braxton after hanging up.

Kelman’s address was an apartment on Los Feliz near Griffith Park. Bosch’s knock was answered by a young woman in shorts and a long-sleeve turtle-neck. She was thin to the point of being gaunt. A junkie. She abruptly collapsed into the fetal position on the couch when they gave her the bad news about Kelman. While Braxton attempted to console her and gather information from her at the same lime, Bosch took a quick look around the one-bedroom apartment. As he expected, there was no obvious sign that the premises belonged to a burglar. This apartment was the front — the place where the parole agent visited and Kelman kept the semblance of a law-abiding life. Bosch knew that any active burglar with a parole tail would keep a separate and secret place for his tools and swag.

As he turned to leave the bedroom Bosch saw a saxophone propped on a stand in the corner by the door. He recognized from its size that it was a tenor. He stepped over and lifted it into his hands. It looked old but well cared for. It was polished brass, with a buffing cloth pushed down into the mouth. Bosch had never played the saxophone, had never even tried, but the instrument’s sound was the only music that had ever been able to truly light him up inside.

For a moment he was tempted to raise the mouthpiece to his lips and try to sound a note. Instead, he gripped the instrument the way he had seen countless musicians — from Art Pepper to Wayne Shorter — hold theirs. Bosch carried it out to the living room. The woman was sitting up on the couch now, her arms folded lightly across her chest. Tears streaked her face. Bosch didn’t know if she was crying over her lost love or her lost junk ticket. He held up the saxophone.

“Whose is this?”

She swallowed before answering.

“It’s Monty’s. Was.”

“He played?”

“He tried. He always said he wanted to take lessons. He never did.”

A new rush of tears cascaded down her cheeks.

“It’s gotta be hot,” Braxton said, ignoring her and speaking to Bosch. “I can run a check when we get back. On those things the manufacturer and serial number are engraved inside. Wouldn’t surprise me if it came out of Servan’s shop on one of the earlier B and Es. I think I remember a sax being on the property list.”

Bosch pulled out the bulling cloth and looked inside. There was an inscription on the curved brass, but he couldn’t read it. He walked over to the window and angled the instrument so sunlight flooded into the bell.

Bosch read it again. His temples suddenly felt as if someone had pressed hot quarters against them. A flash memory filled his thoughts. A musician under the canopy set up on the deck of the ship. The soldiers crowded close. The music beautiful and agile.

“Jesus, Harry, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. What’s it say?”

Bosch looked over at Braxton, the memory retreating into the darkness.

“Let’s go.”

Bosch let Braxton drive so that he could hold and study the saxophone.

“You ever heard of Quentin McKinzie?” he asked after they were halfway back to the station.

“I don’t think so.”

“They called him Sugar Ray McK. On account of when he played the sax he’d bob and weave like the lighter Sugar Ray Robinson. He was good. He was mostly a session guy, but he put out a few records. The Sweet Spot, you never heard that tune?”

“Sorry, man, not into jazz. I listen to country, myself.”

Bosch felt disappointed. He wanted to tell him about that day on the ship, but if Braxton didn’t know jazz, it couldn’t be explained.

“What’s the connection?” Braxton asked.

Bosch held up the saxophone.

“This was his. It says so right inside: ‘Custom-made lor Quentin McKinzie.’ That’s Sugar Ray McK.”

“You ever see him play?”

“One time. Nineteen sixty-nine.”

Braxton whistled.

“Long time ago. You think he’s still alive?”

“I don’t know. He’s not recording. Not in a long time.”

Bosch looked at the saxophone.

“Can’t record without this anyway, I suppose.”

Bosch’s cell phone chirped. It was Edgar.

“We’ve got lividity issues,” he said. “This guy was moved.”

“And what’s the ME say about cause?”

“He’s going with your theory at the moment. Electrocution. The burns on the hand and foot — where the juice went in and out.”

“You find the source?”

“I looked around. Can’t find it.”

Bosch thought about all of this. Postmortem lividity was the settling of the blood in a dead body. It was a purple gravity line. If a body is moved after the blood has settled, a new gravity line will appear. An easy tip-off.

“You looked around the case where the glove was?”

“Yeah, I looked. I can’t find any electrical source that can explain this. The case you’re talking about has internal lighting, but there’s no malfunction.”

“You do a property inventory on the guy yet?”

“Yeah, nothing. Pockets empty. No ID or anything else.”

“I’ll call you back.”

When they got to the detective bureau, Braxton went to get the reports on the prior burglaries at Three Kings. Bosch went to interview room three. Servan was calmly sitting at the table.

“Mr. Servan, are you all right? It shouldn’t be loo much longer.”

“Yeah, OK, OK. You find?”

He pointed to the saxophone. Bosch nodded.

“Did this come from your store?”

Servan studied the instrument and nodded vigorously.

“I think so, yes.”

“OK, well, we’ll find out for sure. We’ve got a few things to do and then we’ll get back to you.”

Bosch left him there. When he got to the homicide table Braxton had the burglary reports. Bosch told him to take the photo of Kelman they had pulled off the computer and show it to Servan to see if he recognized Kelman as a customer.

After Braxton was gone, Bosch started looking through the burglary reports, beginning with the first break-in at Three Kings. He quickly flipped through the pages until he got to the stolen-property inventory. There was no saxophone on the list. He scanned the items listed and determined they were all small pieces taken from the lighted display cabinet.

He flipped back to the summary, which had been written by Braxton. It reported that the unknown suspect or suspects had broken through the rear door to enter the establishment, then had emptied the display case containing the highest-value items. Braxton noted that the display case had a key lock that had either been left unlocked or expertly picked by the thief.

He went on to the next report and found a saxophone listed on the stolen-property inventory. It was described as a tenor saxophone that had been pawned by someone named Donald Teed. Nikolai Servan had given him $200 for the instrument. Because the saxophone he pawned had been stolen, Teed was also a victim of the crime. He had been contacted by Braxton and informed. Teed’s work number was on the report.

Bosch picked up the telephone and punched in the number. It was answered immediately by a woman who said, “Splendid Age Retirement Home.”

“Yes, is Donald Teed a resident there?”

“A resident? No. We have a Donald Teed who works here.”

“Is he there?”

“He is here today, but I’m not sure where he is right now. He’s a custodian and moves around. Who is calling? Is this a solicitation?”

Bosch felt things falling into place. He decided to take a shot.

“Can you tell me if there is someone there named Quentin McKinzie?”

“Yes, Mr. McKinzie is one of our residents. What is this about?”

“I’ll call back.”

He hung up as Braxton came back to the homicide table.

“Yeah, he recognizes him,” he said. “Said he came into the store a couple days ago. Looked at some of the coins in the case.”

Bosch nodded but didn’t say anything. After a few moments Braxton got tired of waiting.

“Harry, what else you need from me?”

“Um, can you go back in there and ask him about the display case? Ask him if he’s sure he locked it every time. On all the burglaries.”

He could tell Braxton was still waiting by the table.

“What?”

“What am I? The errand boy here?”

“No, Brax, you’re the guy he trusts. Go ask him the question. And before you do, turn the video back on and ad vise him of his rights.”

“You sure?”

Bosch looked up at him.

“Just go do it.”

Braxton wasn’t long.

“He said he absolutely locks that case. Even when he’s open for business it’s locked. He only unlocks it to put something in or take something out. He keeps the key with him all the time. There are no copies.”

“Then our guy used picks.”

“Looks that way.”

Bosch nodded. He picked up the saxophone. He liked handling it, the feel and weight of it. Again, he remembered the day on the ship, Sugar Ray bobbing and weaving through The Sweet Spot and a few other tunes. Bosch fell in love with the sound. It felt like it had come from somewhere deep within himself. He was not the same after that day.

His cell phone chirped and he dug it out of his pocket. Edgar again.

“Harry, they’re about to clear here. You want me to come in?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, what are we doing?”

“There was nothing with the body, right? No tools, no picks?”

“That’s right. I already told you.”

“I just read through the reports from the three priors. That display case was hit each time. It was picked. Servan said it was always locked.”

“Well, we got no lock picks here, Harry. I guess whoever moved the body took the picks.”

“Servan.”

Edgar was quiet for a moment and then said, “Why don’t you run it down for me, Harry.”

Bosch thought for a moment before speaking.

“He had been hit three times in two years. Every time the high-end case was picked. It’s hard to work a set of picks with gloves on. Servan probably knew that the one time this guy took off his gloves was to work the picks. Steel picks going into a steel lock.”

“If he put 110 volts into that lock it could’ve shut this guy’s heart down.”

“Depends on the amps. There’s a formula. It has to do with resistance to the charge. You know, like dry skin versus moist skin, things like that.”

“This guy just took his glove off. He probably had sweaty hands.”

“It could work. The initial jolt could have contracted the muscles and left our burglar unable to let go of the pick. The juice goes through him, hits the heart and that’s it.”

“Then we’re talking more than just homicide. This is lying in wait.”

“The DA can decide all of that. We just have to bring in the facts. That means you have to get into that case and find out how he wired it.”

Bosch closed the phone and looked at Braxton.

“Now I’ll go talk to him.”

Nikolai Servan was still waiting calmly. Bosch took the seat across from him, folding his arms and putting his elbows on the table in almost a mirror image.

“We’ve hit a snag, Mr. Servan.”

“A snag?”

“A problem. And what I’d like to do here is give you the opportunity to tell me the truth this time.”

“I don’t understand. I tol’ you truth.”

“I think you left some things out, Mr. Servan.”

Servan clasped his hands together on the table and shook his head.

“No, I tol’ everything.”

“What did you do with the burglar’s lock picks, Mr. Servan?”

Servan held his lips tightly together for a long moment and then shook his head.

“I don’t understand.”

“Sure you do, Mr. Servan. Where are the picks?”

Servan only stared at him.

“OK,” Bosch said, “let’s try this one then. Tell me how you wired that display case.”

Bowing his head once, Servan said, “I have attorney now. Please, I have attorney now.”

Bosch pulled to a stop in front of the Splendid Age Retirement Home and got out with the saxophone and its stand. He heard Christmas music drifting out of an open window. Elvis Presley singing Blue Christmas.

He thought about Nikolai Servan spending Christmas Day in the Parker Center jail. It would probably be the only jail time he’d ever see. The district attorney’s office would not decide until after the holiday whether to charge him or kick him loose. And Bosch knew it would probably be the latter. Prosecuting the case against the pawnbroker was fraught with difficulties. Servan had lawyered up and slopped talking. Afternoon-long searches of his home, car, the pawnshop and the trash containers in the rear alley failed to produce Kelman’s lock picks or the method by which the display case had been rigged to deliver the fatal charge. Even the cause of death would be difficult to prove in a court of law. Kelman’s heart had stopped beating. A burst of electricity had most likely caused ventricular fibrillation, but in court a defense lawyer would argue that the burn marks on the victim’s hand and foot were inconclusive and not even related to the cause of death.

Bosch planned to go back to the pawnshop the following morning. He would look until he found the picks or the wire Servan had used to kill Kelman. He didn’t mind giving up his Christmas to do it. He had no plans anyway.

As he approached the front doors of the retirement home he noticed that not much about it looked particularly splendid. It looked like a final stop for pensioners and people who hadn’t planned on living as long as they had. Quentin McKinzie, for example. Few jazzmen and drug users went the distance. He probably never thought he would make it this far.

Bosch entered and walked up to a welcome counter. The place smelled like most of the low-rent retirement homes he had ever been in. Urine and decay, the end of hopes and dreams. He asked for directions to Quentin McKinzie’s room. The woman behind the counter suspiciously eyed the saxophone under Bosch’s arm but sent him down a hallway to room 107.

The door to the room was ajar. Bosch could hear the sounds of a television coming from inside. He knocked softly and didn’t get a response. He slowly pushed the door open and stuck his head in. He saw an old man sitting in a chair next to a bed. A television mounted high on the opposite wall was droning. The old man’s eyes were closed. He was gaunt and depleted, his body taking up only half of the chair. His black skin looked gray and powdery. But Bosch recognized him. It was Sugar Ray McK.

Bosch stepped into the room and quietly made his way around the bed. He stood there still for a moment, wondering what he should do. He decided not to wake the man. He put the instrument stand down on the floor in the corner. He then cradled the saxophone in it. He straightened up, took another look at the sleeping jazzman and nodded to him in some sort of acknowledgment. As he headed out of the room he reached up and turned off the television.

At the door he was stopped by a raspy voice.

“Hey!”

Bosch turned. Sugar Ray was awake and looking at him with rheumy eyes.

“You turned off my box.”

“Sorry, I thought you were asleep.”

He came back in and reached up to turn the television on again.

“Who are you? You don’t work here.”

Bosch turned to face him. “My name is Harry Bosch. I came—”

Sugar Ray noticed the saxophone sitting in the corner of the room.

“That’s my ax.”

Bosch picked up the saxophone and handed it to him.

“I found it and I wanted to get it back to you.”

The man held the instrument like it was as precious as a new baby. He slowly turned it in his hands, studying it for flaws or maybe just wanting to look at it the way he would look at a loved one long gone away. Bosch felt a constriction rising in his chest as the jazzman brought the instrument to his mouth, licked the mouthpiece and then held it between his teeth. His chest rose as he drew in a breath.

But as his fingers went to work and he blew out the riff, the wind escaped from the weak seal his lips made around the mouthpiece. Sugar Ray closed his eyes and tried again. The same result sounded from his instrument. He was too old and too weak. His lungs were gone. He could no longer play.

Sugar Ray cradled the instrument in his lap as if he were protecting it. He looked up at Bosch.

“And where did you gel this, Harry Bosch?”

“I took it from a guy who stole it from a pawnshop.”

Sugar Ray nodded like he knew the story.

“Was it stolen from you?” Bosch asked.

“No. I pawned it. A fellow here did it for me so I could get money for the box. I don’t like being in the dayroom with the others. They’re all suicides waiting to happen. So I needed my own box.”

He shook his head. His eyes went up to the television on the wall over Bosch’s shoulder.

“Imagine, a man trading the love of his life for that.”

Bosch didn’t know whether to feel good or bad about what he had done. He had returned an instrument to a musician who could no longer play it. But as this indecision gripped his heart he saw Sugar Ray pull the saxophone closer to his body. He held it there tightly, as if it were all he had in the world. He brought his eyes to Bosch’s and in them Harry saw that he had done the right thing.

“Merry Christmas, Sugar Ray.”

Sugar Ray nodded and looked down.

“Why did you do this for me? You think that you’re playing Santa Claus or something?”

Bosch smiled and squatted down next to the chair. He was now looking up into the old man’s eyes.

“I did it to try to make us even, I guess.”

The old man just looked back at him, waiting.

“In December 1969 I was on a hospital ship in the South China Sea.”

Bosch touched his left side, just above the hip.

“I got bamboo-bladed in a tunnel four days before. You probably don’t remember this but—”

“The USS Sanctuary. Off Da Nang. You were one of the boys in the blue bathrobes, huh?”

Sugar Ray smiled. Bosch nodded and continued.

“I remember the announcement that the show was canceled because the seas were too high and the fog was too thick. The big Hueys with all the equipment couldn’t land. We had all been waiting on deck. We saw the choppers coming in through the mist and then just turning around to go back.”

Sugar Ray raised a finger

“You know, it was Mr. Bob Hope who told our pilot to turn that son of a bitch around again and put it down on that boat.”

Bosch nodded. He had heard it was Hope. One chopper turned again and came to the Sanctuary. The small one. The one with the headliners onboard.

“I remember it was Bob Hope, Connie Stevens, you and Teresa Graves, that beautiful woman from Laugh-In.”

“The man on the moon was there, too.”

“Neil Armstrong, yeah. But the rest of the band — the Playboy All-Stars — was on one of the other choppers and it went back to Da Nang. It was only you and you carried your own ax. You played for us. Solo.”

Bosch looked at the instrument in the old man s gray hands. He remembered that day on the Sanctuary as clearly as he remembered any other moment of his life.

“You played The Sweet Spot and then Auld Lang Syne.”

“I played the Tennessee Waltz, too. By request of a young man in the front row. He’d lost both his legs and he asked me to play that waltz.”

Bosch nodded solemnly.

“Bob Hope told his jokes and Connie Stevens sang Promises, Promises. A cappella. In less than an hour it was all over and the chopper took off. Man, I can’t explain it, but it meant something. It made something right in a messed-up world, you know? I was only 19 years old and I wasn’t sure how or why I was even over there...

“Anyway, I’ve listened to a lot of saxophone since then but I haven’t heard it any better.”

Bosch nodded and stood up.

“I just wanted to tell you that,” he said. “You take it easy. Sugar Ray.”

He headed toward the door and one more time Sugar Ray stopped him.

“Hey, Santa Claus.”

Bosch turned back.

“You strike me as a man who is alone in the world,” Sugar Ray said.

Bosch nodded without hesitation.

“Most of the time.”

“You got plans for Christmas dinner?”

Bosch hesitated. He finally shook his head.

“No plans.”

“Then come back here at three tomorrow. We have a dinner and I can bring a guest. I’ll sign you up.”

Bosch hesitated. He had been alone so often on Christmases past he thought it might be too late, that being around anyone might be intolerable.

“Don’t worry,” Sugar Ray said. “They won’t put your turkey in the blender as long as you’ve got teeth.”

Bosch smiled.

“All right, Sugar Ray, I’ll be by.”

“I’ll see you then.”

Bosch walked down the yellowed corridor and out into the night. As he headed to the car he heard Christmas music still playing from an open window. It was an instrumental, slow and heavy on the saxophone. He stopped and it took him a moment to recognize it as I’ll Be Home for Christmas. He stood there on the walkway and listened until the end of the song.