Lost Light

23

Four hours and a nonstop drive across the desert later I was in the tech lab at Biggar amp; Biggar. I took the memory card from my pocket and handed it to Andre. He held it up and looked at it and then looked at me as though I had just put used gum in his hand.

“Where’s the case?”

“The case? You mean the clock? It’s still on the wall.”

I hadn’t figured out yet how to tell him that the clock was broken and probably the camera as well.

“No, the plastic case for the card. You put the spare card I gave you into the clock when you took this one out, right?”

I nodded.

“Right.”

“Well, you should have put this one into the spare card’s case. This is a delicate instrument. Carrying it around with your pocket change and lint is not the proper way of -”

“Andre,” Burnett Biggar interrupted, “let’s just see if it’s going to work. It was my mistake for not schooling Harry on the finer points of care and maintenance. I forgot he’s such a throwback.”

Andre shook his head and walked over to a workbench with a computer set up on it. I looked at Burnett and nodded my thanks for the rescue. He winked at me and we followed Andre.

The son used a pneumatic air gun that looked like it was from a dentist’s office to blast dust and debris off the memory card I had mishandled and then plugged it into a receptacle that was attached to the computer. He typed in a few commands and soon the images from Lawton Cross’s sitting room were playing on the computer screen.

“Remember,” Andre said, “we were using the motion sensor so it’s going to be a bit jerky. Watch the clock in the corner and you’ll be able to keep track.”

The first image on the screen was my own face. I was staring right at the camera as I adjusted the time on the clock. I then backed away, revealing Lawton Cross in his chair behind me.

“Oh, man,” Burnett said, seeing his former colleague’s condition and situation. “I don’t know if I want to see this.”

“It gets worse,” I said, confident in what I thought was ahead on the surveillance.

Cross’s voice croaked from the computer’s speakers.

“Harry?”

“What?” I heard myself ask.

“Did you bring me some?”

“A little.”

On the screen I flipped open the toolbox to get the flask.

In the lab I said, “Can you fast-forward this?”

Andre nodded and used the computer’s mouse to click a fast-forward button on the screen. The screen blinked black for a moment, indicating the camera had gone off for lack of movement. It then came back on as Danny Cross entered the room. Andre switched the playback to real time. I checked the time and saw this was just a few minutes after I had left the room. Danny stood with her arms crossed in front of her and stared at her invalid husband as though he was a misbehaving child. She started speaking and it was hard to hear because of the television noise.

“This is amateur hour here,” Andre said. “Why’d you put it next to the TV?”

He was right. I hadn’t thought about that. The camera’s microphone was picking up the voices from the television better than those in the room.

“Andre,” Burnett said, quieting his son’s complaint. “Just see if you can clean it up some.”

Andre used the mouse again to manipulate the sound. He backed the image up and played it again. The television noise was still intrusive but at least the conversation in the room was audible.

Danny Cross spoke with a sharp tone in her voice.

“I don’t want him coming back here,” she said. “He’s not good for you.”

“Yes, he is. He’s fine. He cares.”

“He’s using you. He pours booze into you so he gets the information he needs.”

“So what’s wrong with that? I think it’s a good trade.”

“Yes, until the morning, when the pain comes.”

“Danny, if one of my friends comes here, you let him in.”

“What did you tell him this time, that I’m starving you? That I abandon you at night? Which lie this time?”

“I don’t want to talk now.”

“Fine. Don’t talk.”

“I want to dream.”

“Be my guest. At least one of us still can.”

She turned and left the room and the picture held on Lawton’s motionless body. Soon his eyes closed.

“There’s a sixty-second cutoff,” Andre explained. “The camera stays on for a minute after motion ceases.”

“Fast-forward,” I said.

We spent the next ten minutes fast-forwarding and then stopping to watch mundane yet heart-ripping scenes of Lawton being fed and cleaned by Danny. At the end of the first night he was wheeled out by his wife and the camera went dark for nearly eight hours before he was wheeled back into the room. A new round of feedings and cleanings began.

It was horrible to look at, made more so because the clock was positioned just to the left of the television. Lawton Cross spent his time looking at the TV but the angle was so close it almost looked like he was staring up at the camera, looking right at us.

“This is pathetic,” Andre finally said. “And there’s nothing here. She treats him fine. Better than I would.”

“You want to see it through, Harry?” Burnett asked.

I nodded.

“I think you’re right. She’s clean. But there’s something coming up. He had visitors last night. I want to see that. You can fast-forward if you want. It was near midnight.”

Andre worked the toggle and sure enough at 12:10 A.M. on the surveillance clock two men entered the room. I recognized Parenting Today and his partner. The first thing Parenting Today did was walk behind Lawton to turn off the baby monitor on the bureau. He then signaled his partner to close the door. Lawton’s eyes were open and alert. He’d been awake before they had come into the room and the camera had activated. His eyes moved about in their sunken sockets as he tried to track the agent moving behind him.

“Mr. Cross, we need to have a little talk,” Parenting Today said.

He moved forward past Cross’s chair and reached up and turned off the television.

“Thank God for that,” Andre said.

“Who are you people?” Cross rasped from the screen.

Parenting Today turned and looked at him.

“We’re the FBI, Mr. Cross. Who the fuck are you?”

“What do you mean? I don’t -”

“I mean who the fuck do you think you are, compromising our investigation?”

“I don’t-what is this?”

“What did you tell Bosch that put the fire under his ass?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. He came to me, I didn’t go to him.”

“Doesn’t look like you can go anywhere now, does it?”

There was a short silence and I could see Lawton’s eyes working. The man couldn’t move a single limb but his eyes showed all the body language necessary.

“You’re not FBI,” he said gallantly. “Let me see badges and IDs.”

Parenting Today moved two steps toward Cross, his back blocking our view of the man in the chair.

“Badges?” he said in his best Mexican accent. “We don’t need no steenking badges.”

“Get out of here,” Cross said, his voice the clearest and strongest I had heard since I first visited him. “When I tell Harry Bosch about this, you better watch your ass.”

Parenting Today turned in profile to smile at his partner.

“Harry Bosch? Don’t worry about Harry Bosch. We’re taking care of him. Worry about yourself, Mr. Cross.”

He leaned down now, putting his face close to Cross’s. We now could see Lawton’s eyes as they looked into the agent’s.

“Because you are in harm’s way. You are trespassing on a federal case. That is federal with a capital F. You understand?”

“Fuck you. And that is fuck you with a capital F. You understand?”

I had to smile. Lawton was doing his best to stand up to him. The bullet had taken away his body but not his spine and not his balls.

On the screen Parenting Today moved away from the chair and to the left. The camera caught his face and I could see the anger in his eyes. He leaned against the bureau, just out of the reach of Cross’s view.

“Your hero, Harry Bosch, is gone and he might not be coming back,” he said. “The question is, do you want to go where he’s gone? A guy like you, in your condition, I don’t know. You know what they do to guys like you in lockup? They wheel them into the corner and make them give blow jobs all day. Nothing they can do about it but sit there and take it. You into that, Cross? That what you want?”

Cross closed his eyes for a moment but then came back strong.

“You think you can pull that off, then take your best shot, Big Man.”

“Yeah?”

Parenting Today came off the bureau and up behind Cross. He leaned over his right shoulder as if to whisper in his ear. But he didn’t.

“What if I take my shot here? Huh? How would that be?”

The agent brought his hands up on both sides of Cross’s face. He took hold of the plastic breathing tubes that were attached to Cross’s nostrils. With his fingers he crimped the tubes closed, cutting off the air supply.

“Hey, Milton…,” the other agent said.

“Shut up, Carney. This guy thinks he’s smart. Thinks he doesn’t have to cooperate with the federal government.”

Cross’s eyes grew wide and he opened his mouth to gulp for air. He wasn’t getting any.

“Motherfucker,” Burnett Biggar said. “Who is this guy?”

I said nothing. I watched silently, the anger rising in me. Biggar had it right, though. In the lexicon of cop talk “motherfucker” was the ultimate expletive, the one reserved for the worst offender, the worst enemy. I felt like saying it but my voice wouldn’t come. I was too consumed by what I saw on the screen. What they had done to me was nothing compared to the humiliation and scarring they were putting on Lawton Cross.

On the screen Cross was trying to speak but couldn’t get the words out with no air in his lungs. There was a sneer on the face of the agent I now knew was named Milton.

“What?” he asked. “What’s that? You want to talk to me?”

Cross tried again to talk but couldn’t.

“Nod your head if you want to tell me something. Oh, that’s right, you can’t nod your head, can you?”

He finally let go of the tubes and Cross began to pull in air like a man coming up out of the water from fifty feet down. His chest heaved and his nostrils flared as he tried to recover.

Milton came around in front of the chair. He looked down upon his victim and nodded.

“You see? That’s how easy it is. You want to cooperate now?”

“What do you want?”

“What did you tell Bosch?”

Cross’s eyes flicked up toward the camera for a moment and then back to Milton. In that moment I didn’t think he was checking the time. I suddenly thought that maybe Lawton knew about the camera. He’d been a good cop. Maybe he knew what I had been doing all along.

“I told him about the case. That’s all. He came to me and I told him what I knew. I don’t remember it all. I got hurt, you know. I got hurt and my memory isn’t so good. Things are just starting to come back to me. I -”

“Why did he come here tonight?”

“Because I forgot I had some files. My wife called for me and I left him a message. He came for the files.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else. What do you want?”

“What do you know about the money that was taken?”

“Nothing. We never got that far.”

Milton reached forward and held the breathing tubes again. He didn’t crimp them this time. The threat was enough.

“I’m telling you the truth,” Cross protested.

“You better be.”

The agent let go of the tubes.

“You are finished talking to Bosch, is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I’m finished talking to Bosch.”

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

When Milton moved away from the chair I saw Cross’s eyes were downcast. As the agents were leaving, one of them-probably Milton-hit the wall switch and the room and screen dropped into darkness.

We stood there staring at the screen and in the minute before the camera cut off we could hear but not see Lawton Cross crying. They were the deep sobs of a wounded and helpless animal. I did not look at the two men with me and they didn’t look at me. We just watched the dark screen and listened.

The camera finally-thankfully-cut off at the end of the minute but then the screen came alive again when the room’s light was flicked back on and Danny entered the room. I checked the time on the screen and saw this was only three minutes after the agents had left the room. Her husband’s face was streaked with tears. Tears he could do nothing to hide.

She crossed the room to him. Without a word she climbed onto the chair in front of him, her knees alongside his thin thighs. She lowered her hips onto his lap. She opened her bathrobe and pulled his face forward to her breasts. She held him there and he cried again. No words were spoken at first. She quietly and tenderly shushed him. And then she started to sing to him.

The song I knew and she sang it well. Her voice was as soft as a breeze, whereas the song’s original voice carried the rasp of all the world’s anguish in it. I didn’t think anybody could ever touch Louis Armstrong but Danny Cross certainly did.

I see skies of blue

And clouds of white

The bright blessed day

The dark sacred night

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world

And that was the hardest part of the surveillance to watch. That was the part that made me feel the most like an intruder, as if I had crossed some line of decency within myself.

“Turn it off now,” I finally said.