Lost Light

25

Kate Mantilini’s on Wilshire Boulevard had a row of high-backed booths that afforded their inhabitants more interior privacy than the lap dance cubicles in the back rooms of any of the strip clubs in town. That was why I chose the restaurant for the meeting. It was very private yet very public. I was there fifteen minutes before the appointed time, got a booth with a window fronting Wilshire and waited. Special Agent Peoples got there a little early, too. He had to walk along the row of booths and look into each one to find me. He then slipped silently and morosely into the space across from me.

“Agent Peoples, glad you could make it.”

“I didn’t feel like I had much choice.”

“I guess you didn’t.”

He flipped open one of the menus that were on the table.

“Never been here before. Food any good?”

“It’s not bad. Good chicken pot pie on Thursdays.”

“It’s not Thursday.”

“And you’re not here to eat.”

He looked up from the menu and gave me his best deadeye stare but he didn’t have the juice this time. We both knew I was holding the high card this time. I looked out the window and glanced up and down Wilshire.

“You have your people out there, Agent Peoples? Are they waiting for me?”

“I came alone as instructed by your attorney.”

“Well, just so you’re clear. If your people grab me again or make any move against my attorney, then the consequences are that the surveillance recording you were e-mailed will go to the media and out across the Internet. There are people who will know if I disappear. They’ll put it out, no hesitation.”

Peoples shook his head.

“You keep saying that. ‘Disappear.’ This isn’t South America, Bosch. And we’re not Nazis.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Sitting in this nice restaurant it sure doesn’t seem so. But when I was sitting in that cube on the ninth floor and nobody knew I was there, that was a different story. Mouse Aziz and those other guys you’ve got up there probably don’t know the difference between California and Chile right now either.”

“And you are defending them now, is that it? The men who would like to see this country burn to the ground.”

“I’m not de-”

I stopped when the waitress came to the booth. She said her name was Kathy and asked if we were ready to order. Peoples ordered coffee and I ordered coffee and an ice cream sundae with no whipped cream. After Kathy left, Peoples looked at me funny.

“I’m retired. I can have a sundae.”

“Some retirement.”

“They make good sundaes here and they’re open late. That’s a good combination.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“Did you ever see the movie Heat? This is the place where Pacino the cop meets De Niro the burglar. It’s where they both tell each other they won’t hesitate to put the other down if it comes to that.”

Peoples nodded and we held each other’s eyes for a long moment. Message delivered. I decided to get down to the business at hand.

“So what did you think of my clock camera?”

The façade dropped and Peoples suddenly looked wounded. He looked as though he had been thrown to the lions. He knew what the future held for him if that recording got out. Milton worked for him; therefore he’d take the fall, too. The Rodney King tape cut a swath through the LAPD that went all the way to the top. Peoples was smart enough to know he would get trampled if he didn’t contain this problem.

“I was disgusted by what I saw. First off, I apologize to you and my plan is to go out to see that man, Lawton Cross, and apologize as well.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“Don’t think for a moment that that is how we operate. That it is the status quo. That I condone it. Agent Milton is gone. He’s out. I knew that the moment I saw the recording. I’m not promising you he will be prosecuted, but he won’t be carrying a badge for very long. Not an FBI badge. I’ll see to that.”

I nodded.

“Right, you’ll see to that.”

I said it with high-octane sarcasm and I could see it put some color in his cheeks. The color of anger.

“You called the meeting, Bosch. What do you want?”

There it was. The question I was waiting for.

“You know what I want. I want you people off my back. I want my files and my notes back. I want Lawton Cross’s file back. I want a copy of the LAPD murder book-which I know you must have-and I want access to Aziz and what you have on him.”

“What we have on him is classified. It’s a national security matter. We can’t -”

“Declassify it. I want to know how strong the connection is to my movie heist. I want to know what you have on his whereabouts on two nights. All that federal intelligence has got to be good for something and I want it. And then I want to talk to him.”

“Who? Aziz? That’s not going to happen.”

I leaned across the table.

“Yes, it is. Because the alternative to that is that everybody who has a TV or America Online is going to see what your boy Milton did to a helpless man in a wheelchair. Make that a highly decorated retired cop who had the use of his limbs and fucking life taken from him while in the line of duty. You think the Rodney King tape did some damage to the LAPD? You wait and see what happens with this one. I guarantee you that Milton and you and your whole little ninth-floor BAM squad will be cut loose by the bureau and the attorney general and everybody else faster than you can say civil rights indictment. You understand, Special Agent Peoples?”

I gave him a moment to respond but he didn’t. His eyes were fixed and staring out through the window to Wilshire.

“And if you think for one minute I won’t pull the trigger on this, then you haven’t done your homework on me.”

This time I waited him out and eventually his eyes came back through the window and to me. The waitress came and put down our coffees and told me my sundae was on the way. Neither Peoples nor I said thank you.

“Believe me,” Peoples said, “I know you will pull the trigger. You are that kind of guy, Bosch. I know your kind. You will put yourself and your own interests ahead of the greater good.”

“Don’t give me that ‘greater good’ bullshit. This isn’t about that. You give me what I want and you get rid of Milton, then you get to cruise along like nothing ever happened. The recording is never seen. How’s that for greater good?”

Peoples leaned forward to sip his coffee. As he had done in the cube on the ninth floor he burned his mouth and grimaced. He pushed the cup and saucer away on the table and then slid to the edge of the booth before looking back at me.

“I’ll be in touch.”

“Twenty-four hours. I hear from you by this time tomorrow night or all bets are off. I go public with it.”

He stood up and remained next to the booth looking at me and still holding a napkin. He nodded his agreement.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. “If you’re here, who used your credit card tonight to buy dinner at Commander’s Palace in Vegas?”

I smiled. They had been tracking me.

“A friend. Is that a nice place, Commander’s Palace?”

He nodded.

“One of the best. I’ve been there. The shrimp in the gumbo is as soft as marshmallow.”

“That’s great, I guess.”

“Expensive too. Your friend put over a hundred bucks on your AmEx. Dinner for two it looked like.”

He tossed his napkin onto the table.

“I’ll be in touch.”

A moment after he was gone the waitress brought my sundae. I asked her for the check and she said she’d bring it right away.

I poked a spoon into the fudge and ice cream but I didn’t taste it. I sat there thinking about what Peoples had just said. I wasn’t sure if there was an implied threat in his telling me he knew somebody was using my credit card. Maybe he even knew who. But the thing I thought about the most was what he had said about it being dinner for two at Commander’s Palace. That “we” thing again. Just as with Eleanor, I couldn’t let it go.