Lost Light

24

The defining moment for me as a police officer did not occur on the street or while I worked a case. It occurred on March 5, 1991. It was during the afternoon and I was in the squad room in Hollywood Division ostensibly doing paperwork. But like everybody else in the squad I was waiting. When everybody started leaving their desks to gather at the televisions I got up, too. There was one in the lieutenant’s office and one was mounted overhead on the wall by the burglary table. I didn’t get along with the lieutenant at the time so I moved to the burglary pen to watch. We had already heard about it but few of us had actually seen the tape yet. And there it was. Grainy black-and-white but still clear enough to see and to know that things would change. Four uniform cops gathered around a man flopping on the ground. Rodney King, ex-con and now speeding scofflaw. Two of the cops were wailing on him with batons. A third kicked him while the fourth controlled the juice for the Taser gun. A second larger ring of uniforms stood around and watched. A lot of jaws dropped in the squad room as we looked up at the screen. A lot of hearts fell. We felt betrayed in some way. To a man and woman we all knew that the department would not withstand the tape. It would change. Police work in Los Angeles would change.

Of course we didn’t know how or whether it would be for better or for worse. We didn’t know then that political motives and racial emotions would rise up over the department like a tidal wave, that there would later be a deadly riot and complete tearing of the city’s social fabric. But as we watched that grainy video we all knew something was coming. All because of that one moment of anger and frustration acted out under a streetlight in the San Fernando Valley.

As I sat in the waiting room of a downtown law office I thought about that moment. I remembered the anger I felt and I realized it had come back to me across time. The recording I had of Lawton Cross being abused was no Rodney King tape. It would not set back law enforcement and community relations decades. It would not change the way people viewed police and decided whether to back them or cooperate with them. But it had a clear kinship in its sickeningly pure depiction of the abuse of power. It didn’t have the juice to change a city but it could change a bureaucracy like the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If I wanted it to.

But I didn’t. What I wanted was something else and I was going to use the recording to get it. In the short run at least. I wasn’t thinking yet about what might happen with it or with me further down the road.

The law library I sat in an hour after leaving Biggar amp; Biggar was lined with cherry wood paneling and bookshelves full of leather-bound volumes of law books. In the few open spaces on the walls there were lighted oil paintings depicting the law firm’s partners. I stood in front of one of the paintings studying the fine brushwork. It showed a handsome man standing tall with brown hair and piercing green eyes set off by a deep tan. The gold plate on the top of the mahogany frame said his name was James Foreman. He looked like everything a successful man should be.

“Mr. Bosch?”

I turned. The matronly woman who had escorted me to the library now beckoned to me at the door. I went to her and she led me down a hall thickly carpeted in a soft green that whispered money with every step I took. She led me to an office where a woman I didn’t recognize was waiting behind a desk. She stood up and offered her hand.

“Hello, Mr. Bosch, I’m Roxanne, Ms. Langwiser’s assistant. Would you like a bottle of water or coffee or anything?”

“Uh, no, I’m fine.”

“You can go on in, then. She’s waiting.”

She pointed me toward a closed door to the side of her desk and I walked to it, knocked once on it, and went in. I was carrying a briefcase I had borrowed from Burnett Biggar.

Janis Langwiser was sitting behind a desk that reminded me of a two-car garage. She also had the twelve-foot ceiling and the cherry wood paneling and shelves. She wasn’t a small woman. Rather, she was tall and slim. But the office made her look diminutive. She smiled when she saw me and I did likewise.

“They never asked me if I wanted bottled water or coffee when I came to see you at the DA’s office.”

“I know, Harry. Times have certainly changed.”

She stood up and reached her hand across the desk. She had to lean forward to make it. We shook hands. I met her when she was a rookie filing deputy in downtown criminal courts. I watched her grow up and handle some of the biggest and toughest cases. She was a good prosecutor. Now she was trying to be a good criminal defense attorney. Rare was the prosecutor who made a whole career of it. The money was too good at the other table. Judging by the office I was in, Janis Langwiser was sitting pretty at that other table.

“Have a seat,” she said. “You know I’ve been meaning to track you down and call you. You just turning up like this today is great.”

I was confused.

“Track me down for what? You’re not repping anybody I put in the clink, are you?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I wanted to talk to you about a job.”

I raised my eyebrows. She smiled like she was offering me the keys to the city.

“I don’t know what you know about us, Harry.”

“I know you were pretty hard to find. You’re not listed in the phone book. I had to call a friend of mine at the DA’s office and he got me the number.”

She nodded.

“That’s right. We’re not listed. We don’t need to be. We have very few clients and we handle every legal detail that crops up in their lives.”

“And you handle the criminal details.”

She hesitated. She was trying to judge where I was coming from.

“That’s right. I’m the firm’s criminal expert. That’s why I was meaning to call you. When I heard you retired I thought this would be perfect. Not full-time, but sometimes-depending on the case-it gets hot and heavy. We could really use somebody with your skills, Harry.”

I took a moment to compose my answer. I didn’t want to offend her. I wanted to hire her. So I decided not to tell her that what she was suggesting was impossible. That I could never move to the other table, no matter what the money was. It wasn’t in me. Retired or not, I had a mission in life. Working for a defense attorney wasn’t part of it.

“Janis,” I said, “I’m not looking for a job. I sort of already have one. The reason I’m here is because I want to hire you.”

She giggled.

“You’re kidding,” she said. “Are you in trouble?”

“Probably. But that’s not why I want to hire you. I need a lawyer I can trust to hold something for me and take the appropriate actions with it if necessary.”

She leaned forward in her desk. She still was at least six feet away from me.

“Harry, this is getting mysterious. What is going on?”

“First off, what is your normal retainer? Let’s get the client thing out of the way first.”

“Harry, our minimum retainer is twenty-five thousand dollars. So forget about that. I owe you for all of those airtight cases you brought me. Consider yourself a client.”

I pushed the surprise off my face.

“Really? Twenty-five grand just to open a file?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, they got the right person for it.”

“Thank you, Harry. Now what is this thing you want me to do?”

I opened the briefcase Burnett Biggar had given me to carry the second round of equipment I borrowed from him along with the memory card and the three CDs containing copies of the clock surveillance. Andre had made the copies. I put the card and the CDs on her desk.

“This is a surveillance I took. I want you to hold the original-the memory card-in a safe place. I want you to hold an envelope with one of the CDs and a letter from me. I want your private office number. I’m going to call it every night by midnight and tell you I am okay. In the morning you come in and if the message is there, then everything is all right. If you come in and there is no message from me, then you deliver the envelope to a reporter at the Times named Josh Meyer.”

“Josh Meyer. That name is familiar. Is he on courts?”

“I think he used to cover local crime stuff. Now he’s on terrorism. I think he works out of D.C. now.”

“Terrorism, Harry?”

“It’s a long story.”

She checked her watch.

“I’ve got time. I’ve also got a computer.”

I first took fifteen minutes to tell her about my private investigation and everything that had happened since Lawton Cross had called me out of the blue and I had pulled down the box of old cases off the closet shelf. Then I let her put the CD in her computer and watch the surveillance video. She didn’t recognize Lawton Cross until I told her who he was. She reacted with appropriate outrage when she viewed the section with Agents Milton and Carney. I had her turn it off before Danny Cross came into the room and comforted her husband.

“First question, were they real agents?” she asked after the computer kicked the disk out.

“Yeah, they’re part of the anti-terrorism squad working out of Westwood.”

She shook her head in disgust.

“If this ever gets to the Times and then onto TV, then -”

“I don’t want it to get there. Right now, that is the worst-case scenario.”

“Why not, Harry? Those are rogue agents. At least that one Milton is. And the other is just as guilty for standing there and letting him do it.”

She gestured toward her computer, where the surveillance video had been replaced by a screensaver that showed a bucolic scene of a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the waves rolling endlessly to shore.

“Do you think this is what the attorney general and the Congress of the United States wanted when they enacted legislation that changed and streamlined the bureau’s rules and tools after September eleventh?”

“No, I don’t,” I answered. “But they should have known what could happen. What’s the saying, absolute power corrupts absolutely? Something like that. Anyway, it’s a given that this sort of thing would happen. They should have known. The difference here is that that isn’t some Middle Eastern bag man on there. That’s an American citizen. He’s a former cop and he’s a goddamn quadriplegic because he took a bullet in the line of duty.”

Langwiser nodded somberly.

“That is exactly why you should get this out. It has to be see-”

“Janis, are you working for me or should I gather all this up and just find somebody else?”

She threw her hands up in surrender.

“Yes, I’m working for you, Harry. I’m just saying that this should not be allowed to just go by.”

“I’m not talking about letting it go by. I just don’t want it out yet. I need to use it as leverage first. I need to get what I want out of it first.”

“Which is what?”

“I was going to get to that but you started in like Ralph Nader.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I’m all calmed down now. Tell me your plan, Harry.”

And so I did.