Lost Light

13

Roy Lindell was sitting on the same bench I had used before entering the building. There were three cigarettes crushed on the pavement between his feet. A fourth was between his fingers.

“You took your sweet-ass time,” he said.

I sat down next to him and put the file between us.

“Putting you in the OPR-isn’t that like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse?”

I was thinking about the case I had met him on six years before. I’d had no clue he was law enforcement. This was mostly because he was running a strip club in Vegas and bedding the strippers two and three at a time. His front was so convincing that even after I learned he was an undercover I entertained the idea that he had crossed over. Eventually and completely, I was convinced otherwise.

“Once a smart-ass always a smart-ass, eh, Bosch?”

“Something like that, I guess. So who was listening to our little conversation up there?”

“I was told to tape it. That the tape would be forwarded.”

“To who?”

He didn’t say anything. It was like he was still deciding something.

“Come on, Roy, you want to give me a clue about what’s going on? I looked through your file. It’s pretty thin, not much that helps me.”

“That’s just the highlights-stuff I kept in a backup file. The real file used to fill a whole drawer.”

“Used to?”

Lindell looked around as if realizing for the first time he was sitting outside a building that housed more agents and spooks than anywhere west of Chicago. He looked down at the file lying there between us for the world to see.

“I don’t like sitting out here. Where’s your car? Let’s take a ride.”

We walked out into the parking lot without talking. But seeing Lindell acting the way he was unnerved me and made me think again about Kiz Rider’s warning about some sort of higher authority being involved in the case. Once we got inside the Benz, I put the file on the backseat and keyed the engine. I asked him where he wanted to go.

“I don’t care, just drive.”

I went west on Wilshire, thinking I’d cut over to San Vicente and cruise through Brentwood. It would be a nice drive on a street lined with trees and joggers, even if the conversation wasn’t nice.

“Were you being square on the tape?” Lindell asked. “That’s your real story about not working on this for anybody?”

“Yeah, that’s the square story.”

“Well, you better watch your ass, podjo. There are larger forces at work here. People that don’t -”

“Fuck around. Yeah, I know. I’ve been told that but nobody wants to tell me who this higher authority is and why this connects to Gessler or means anything to the movie money heist four years after it went down.”

“Well, I can’t tell you because I don’t know. All I know is that after you called today I made a few calls myself and the next thing I know the walls came down on me. Hard, man, they came down hard.”

“This came out of Washington?”

“No, right here.”

“Who, Roy? There’s no use in us driving around and talking if you’re not talking. What do we have here? Organized Crime? I read the report on Gessler’s RICO case. It looked like the only thing you had going on it.”

Lindell laughed as though I had suggested something absurd.

“Organized crime. Shit, I wish this was just an OC deal.”

I pulled to the side of San Vicente. We were a couple blocks from where Marilyn Monroe had OD’d, one of the city’s lasting scandals and mysteries.

“Then what, Roy? I’m tired of talking to myself.”

Lindell nodded and then looked over at me.

“Homeland security, baby.”

“What do you mean? Somebody thinks there’s a terrorist connection to this?”

“I don’t know what they think. I wasn’t made privy. All I know is that I was told to shut you down, tape it and send it down to the ninth floor.”

“The ninth floor…”

I said it just to be saying something. I was trying to think. My mind scanned quickly through the images of the case, Angella Benton on the tile, the gunman waving weapons and firing, the impact of one of my shots catching one of them in the body and knocking him-at least I think it was a him-backward into the van. Nothing seemed to fit with what Lindell was telling me.

“The ninth is where they put the REACT squad,” Lindell said, pulling me out of the reverie. “They’re heavy hitters, Bosch. You walk out in front of them in the street and they won’t stop. They won’t even tap the brakes.”

“What’s REACT?”

I knew it had to be another federal acronym. All law enforcement agencies are good for putting together acronyms. But the feds are the best at it.

“Regional Response… no, it’s Rapid Enforcement Against something Terrorism. I forget the whole thing-oh, I got it, Rapid Response Enforcement And Counterterrorism. That’s it.”

“That one must’ve come straight out of the director’s office in D.C. That took some thought.”

“Funny. Basically, it’s a multi-agency gang bang. You’ve got us, Secret Service, DEA, everybody.”

I figured that last “everybody” was a catchall for the agencies that didn’t like their initials bandied about. NSA, CIA, DIA and so on through the federal alphabet.

A man on a bike rode by the Benz and slapped the side view mirror hard, making Lindell jump. The biker kept going, keeping his gloved hand up and giving me the finger. I realized I had pulled over in the bike lane and pulled the Benz back out onto the street.

“These fucking bikers think they own the road,” Lindell said. “Pull up next to him and I’ll give him a whack.”

Ignoring the request, I sped past the biker, giving him a wide berth.

“I don’t get it, Roy. What does the ninth floor have to do with my case?”

“First of all, it’s not your case anymore. Secondly, I don’t know. They ask me the questions. I don’t get to ask them.”

“When did they start asking?”

“Today. You call up and ask about Marty Gessler and tell Nunez it has something to do with the movie money case. He comes to me and I tell him to have you come in. Meantime, I start doing some checking. Turns out, we’ve got the movie money caper listed on our computer. With a REACT flag on it. So I call down to the ninth and say, ‘What’s up, fellas?’ and two seconds later I get crapped on pretty good.”

“You were told to find out what I know, then shut me down and send me on my way. Oh, and to tape it so they could listen and make sure you were a good little agent and did what you were told to do.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“So why’d you let me read the file? And take it? Why are we driving around talking?”

Lindell took his time before responding. We had made the curve onto Ocean Boulevard in Santa Monica. I pulled off the road again next to the cliffs that look down to the beach and the Pacific. The horizon was blurred white by the marine layer. The Ferris wheel on the Pacific Park pier stood still, and without its neon blazing.

“I did it because Marty Gessler was a friend of mine.”

“Yeah, I could sort of tell from the file. Close friends?”

My meaning was obvious.

“Close,” he said.

“Wasn’t that sort of a conflict, you leading the case?”

“Let’s just say my relationship with her was not known until we were down the road a ways on the investigation. I then cashed in every chip I had to stay on it. Not that it did a hell of a lot of good. Here we are three-plus years later and I still have no idea what happened to her. Then you call up and tell me something that was brand-fucking-new to me.”

“So you were being square. There was no record of her talking to Dorsey about the currency number?”

“Nothing we found. But she kept a lot of stuff on her computer and that’s gone, man. There had to be stuff she hadn’t backed up on the office box. You know, the rule is back everything up every night before going home, but nobody does that. Nobody has the time.”

I nodded and thought about things. I was gathering a lot of information but had little time to process it. I tried to think about what else I needed to ask Lindell while I was with him.

“I’m still not tracking something,” I finally said. “Why was it one way up in the interrogation room and another way out here? Why are you talking to me, Roy? Why let me see the file?”

“REACT is a BAM squad, Bosch. By Any Means. There are no rules with these guys. The rules went out the window September eleventh, two thousand one. The world changed, so did the bureau. The country sat back and let it happen. They were watching the war over there in Afghanistan when they were changing all the rules here. Homeland security is what it’s all about now and everything else can take a back-fucking-seat. Including Marty Gessler. You think the ninth floor took over this case because an agent is missing? They couldn’t care less. There is something else and whether or not they find out what happened to her doesn’t matter. To them, that is. It’s not the same for me.”

Lindell stared straight ahead as he spoke. I understood a little better what was happening now. The bureau told him to cease and desist. It could keep him in check but I was a free agent. Lindell would help me when and if he could.

“So you’ve got no idea what their interest is in this case.”

“Not a clue.”

“But you want me to keep going.”

“If you ever repeat it I’ll deny it. But the answer is yes. I want to be your client, podjo.”

I put the Benz in drive and pulled back onto the roadway. I headed back toward Westwood.

“I can’t pay you, of course,” Lindell said. “And I probably can’t contact you after today, either.”

“Tell you what. Stop calling me podjo and we’ll call it even.”

Lindell nodded as though I had been serious and to say that he had agreed to the deal. We drove in silence while I dropped down the California Incline to the coast highway and took it up to Santa Monica Canyon and then back up to San Vicente.

“So what did you think about what you read up there?” Lindell finally asked.

“Looked like you made all the right moves to me. What about the gas station guy who saw her that night? He checked out?”

“Yeah, we came down on him six ways till Sunday. He was clean. The place was busy and he was there till midnight. We have him on the security video. And he never left the booth after she came and went. His alibi for after midnight checked out, too.”

“Anything else from the video? I didn’t see anything in the file.”

“Nah, the video was worthless. Other than the fact it shows her and it was the last time she was ever seen.”

He looked out the window. Three years later and Lindell was still hooked in deeply on this one. I had to remember that. I had to filter everything he said and did through that prism.

“What are the chances of me getting a look at the whole investigative file?”

“I’d say somewhere between zero and none.”

“The ninth floor?”

He nodded.

“They came up and popped the drawer out and took it. I won’t see that stuff again. I probably won’t even get the goddamn drawer back.”

“Why didn’t they put the freeze on me? Why you?”

“Because I knew you. But mostly because you’re not supposed to even know about them.”

I nodded as I turned onto Wilshire, the federal building in sight up ahead.

“Look, Roy, I don’t know if the two things are connected, know what I mean? I’m talking about Martha Gessler and the thing in Hollywood. Angella Benton. Martha made a call on it but it doesn’t mean that they are connected. I’ve got other things I’ll be chasing down. This is just one of them. Okay?”

He looked out the window again and mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

“What?”

“I said nobody ever called her Martha until she disappeared. Then it was in the papers and on TV that way. She hated that name, Martha.”

I just nodded because there was nothing else to do. I turned into the federal parking lot and drove up to the plaza to drop him off.

“That phone number in the file, it’s okay to call you on that?”

“Yeah, anytime. Make sure your own phones are safe before you do.”

I thought about that until I brought the Benz to a stop at the curb in front of the plaza. Lindell looked out the window and surveyed the plaza as if he was judging whether it was safe to get out.

“You get back to Vegas much?” I asked him.

He answered without looking back at me. He kept his eyes on the plaza and the windows of the building looming above.

“Whenever I get the chance. Have to go in disguise. A lot of people over there don’t like me.”

“I can imagine.”

His undercover work coupled with my team’s homicide investigation had toppled a major underworld figure and most of his minions.

“I saw your wife over there about a month ago,” he said. “Playing cards. I think it was at the Bellagio. She had a nice stack of chips in front of her.”

He knew Eleanor Wish from that first case in Vegas. That was when and where I had married her.

“Ex-wife,” I said. “But that wasn’t why I was asking.”

“Sure, I know.”

Seemingly satisfied with the view he opened the door and got out. He looked back in at me and waited for me to say something. I nodded.

“I’ll take your case, Roy.”

He nodded back.

“Then call me anytime. And watch yourself out there, podjo.”

He gave me the rogue’s got-you-last smile and closed the door before I could say anything.