The Concrete Blonde

28

Once Bosch had cleared the rover channel, Rollenberger came up almost immediately.

“Bosch! Sheehan-Team One! What is happening there. What is-report immediately.”

After a long moment went by, Bosch answered calmly.

“This is Six. Team Leader, be advised you should proceed to the subject’s twenty.”

“His home? What-did we have shots fired?”

“Team Leader, be advised to keep the channel open. And all task force units, disregard the callout. All units are ten-seven until further notice. Unit Five, are you up?”

“Five,” Edgar responded.

“Five, could you meet me at our subject’s twenty?”

“On my way.”

“Six out.”

Bosch turned off the rover before Rollenberger could get back on the channel.

It took the lieutenant a half hour to get from the Parker Center operations post to the house on Sierra Linda. By the time he arrived, Edgar was already there and a plan was in place. Bosch opened the front door just as Rollenberger reached it. The lieutenant strode through the entrance with a face turned red with equal parts of anger and befuddlement.

“Okay, Bosch, what the hell is going on here? You had no authority to cancel the call out, to countermand my order.”

“I thought the less people that know, the better, Lieutenant. I called out Edgar. I thought that would be enough to handle it and that way not too many would-”

“Know what, Bosch? Handle what? What is going on here?”

Bosch looked at him a moment before answering, then in an even voice said, “One of the men in your command conducted an illegal search of the suspect’s residence. He was caught in the act when the suspect eluded the surveillance you were supervising. That’s what happened.”

Rollenberger reacted as if he had been slapped.

“Are you crazy, Bosch? Where’s the phone? I want-”

“You call Chief Irving and you can forget about ever running a task force again. You can forget about a lot of things.”

“Bullshit! I had nothing to do with this. You went freelancing on your own and got your fingers caught in the jar. Where’s Mora?”

“He’s upstairs in the room to the right, handcuffed to the Nautilus machine.”

Rollenberger looked around at the others standing in the living room. Sheehan, Opelt, Edgar. They all gave him deadpan looks. Bosch said, “If you knew nothing about it,Lieutenant, you’ll have to prove that. Everything said on Symplex five tonight is on the reel-to-reel down at the city com center. I said I was in the house, you were listening. You even spoke to me a few times.”

“Bosch, you were talking in codes, I didn’t-I knew nuh-”

Rollenberger suddenly sprang wildly at Bosch, his hands up and going for his neck. Bosch was ready and reacted more aggressively. He pounded both palms into the other man’s chest and slammed him back against a hallway wall. A picture two feet to his side slid off the wall and clattered to the floor.

“Bosch, you fool, the bust is ruined now,” he said while slumped against the wall. “It was all il-”

“There’s no bust. He’s the wrong man. I think. But we have to be sure. You want to help us search the place and think about how to contain this, or do you want to call out the chief and explain how badly you handled your command?”

Bosch stepped away, adding, “The phone’s in the kitchen.”

The search of the house took more than four hours. The five of them, working methodically and silently, searched every room, every drawer, every cabinet. What little evidence they gathered of Detective Ray Mora’s secret life they put on the dining room table. All the while, their host remained in the upstairs gym room, cuffed to one of the chrome bars of the weight machine. He was accorded fewer rights than a murderer would have received had he been arrested in his home. No phone call. No lawyer. No rights. This was always the case when cops investigated cops. Every cop knew the most flagrant abuses of police power occurred when cops turned on their own.

Occasionally, as they began the initial work, they would hear Mora call out. He called for Bosch most often, sometimes Rollenberger. But no one came to him until finally Sheehan and Opelt-concerned that the neighbors would hear and maybe call the police-went into the room and gagged him with a bathroom towel and black electrical tape.

The silence of the searchers was not in deference to the neighbors, however. The detectives worked quietly because of the tensions among them. Though Rollenberger was visibly angry with Bosch, most of the tension was derived from Sheehan and Opelt having blown the surveillance, which directly led to Mora’s discovery of Bosch inside his house. No one except Rollenberger was upset by Bosch’s illegal entry of the house. Bosch’s own home had been similarly violated at least twice that he knew about during times when he had been the focus of internal investigations. Just like the badge, it came with the job.

When they completed the search the dining room table was stacked with the porno magazines and store-bought tapes, the video equipment, the wig, the women’s clothing and Mora’s personal phone book. The television that had been hit by Mora’s stray shot was also there. By then Rollenberger had cooled somewhat, having apparently used the hours to consider his situation as well as to search.

“All right,” he said as the other four convened around the table and surveyed its contents. “What have we got? Number one, are we confident Mora is not our man?”

Rollenberger looked around the room and his eyes stopped on Bosch.

“What do you think, Bosch?”

“You heard my story. He denied it and what was on the last tape before he made me erase it doesn’t fit with the Follower. Looked completely consensual, though the boy and girl with him were obviously underage. He isn’t the Follower.”

“Then what is he?”

“Somebody with problems. I think he got bent by staying too long in vice and started making his own flicks.”

“Was he selling them?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. No evidence of that here. He didn’t go very far in hiding himself in the tape I saw. I think it was just his own stuff. He wasn’t in it for money. It was something deeper.”

No one said anything, so Bosch continued.

“My guess is that he made our tail sometime after we set up on him and began getting rid of the evidence. Tonight he was probably playing around with the tail, trying to figure what we were on him for. He got rid of most of the evidence, but if you put somebody on that phone book, my bet is you’ll put it together. Some of those listings with only a first name. You track them and you’ll probably find some of the kids he used in his videos.”

Sheehan made a move to pick up the phone book.

“Leave it,” Rollenberger said. “If anybody continues this it will be Internal Affairs.”

“How they going to do that?” Bosch asked.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s all fruit of the poison tree. The search, everything. All of it’s illegal. We can’t move against Mora.”

“And we can’t let him carry a badge, either,” Rollenberger said testily. “The man should be in jail.”

The following silence was broken by the sound of Mora’s hoarse but loud voice from upstairs. He had somehow slipped the gag.

“Bosch! Bosch! I wanna deal, Bosch. I’ll give-” he began coughing “-I’ll give him to you, Bosch. You hear me! You hear me!”

Sheehan headed toward the stairs, which began in the alcove outside the dining room. He said, “This time I’ll make it so tight the fuck will strangle.”

“Wait a minute,” Rollenberger ordered.

Sheehan stopped at the archway leading to the alcove.

“What’s he saying?” Rollenberger said. “Who will he give?”

He looked at Bosch, who shrugged his shoulders. They waited, Rollenberger looking up at the ceiling, but Mora was silent.

Bosch stepped over to the table and picked up the phone book. He said, “I think I’ve got an idea.”

The odor of Mora’s sweat filled the room. He sat on the floor, his hands cuffed behind him and to the work-out machine. The towel that had been wrapped around his mouth and taped had slipped down to his neck so that it looked like a cervical collar. The front of it was damp with spittle and Bosch guessed that Mora had loosened it by working his jaw up and down.

“Bosch, unhook me.”

“Not yet.”

Rollenberger stepped forward.

“Detective Mora, you have problems. You’ve-”

“You’ve got problems. You’re the one. All of this is illegal. How you going to explain this? Know what I’m going to do? I’m going to hire that bitch Money Chandler and sue the department for a million dollars. Yeah, I’ll-”

“Can’t spend a million dollars in jail, Ray,” Bosch said.

He held up Mora’s phone book so that the vice cop could see it.

“This gets dropped off at Internal Affairs and they’ll make a case. All those names and numbers, there’s gotta be somebody that would talk about you. Somebody underage probably. Think we’re giving you a hard time? Wait until IAD takes over. They’ll make a case, Ray. And they’ll make it without tonight’s search. That will just be your word against ours.”

Bosch saw a quick movement in Mora’s eyes and he knew he had struck bone. Mora was afraid of the names in the book.

“So,” Bosch said, “what deal did you have in mind, Ray?”

Mora looked away from the book, first to Rollenberger and then to Bosch and then back to Rollenberger.

“You can make a deal?”

“I have to hear it first,” Rollenberger said.

“Okay, this is the deal. I walk and I give you the Follower. I know who it is.”

Bosch was immediately skeptical but said nothing. Rollenberger looked at him and Bosch shook his head once.

“I know,” Mora said. “The Peeping Tom I told you about. That was no bullshit. I got the ID today. It fits. I know who it is.”

Now Bosch took him more seriously. He folded his arms in front of his body, threw a quick glance at Rollenberger.

“Who?” Rollenberger said.

“What’s the deal first?”

Rollenberger stepped to the window and parted the curtains. He was turning it over to Bosch, who took a step forward and squatted like a baseball catcher in front of Mora.

“This is the deal. It is offered only this one time. Take it or let the chips fall where they may. You give the name to me and your badge to Lieutenant Rollenberger. You resign immediately from the department. You agree not to sue the department or any of us individually. In exchange, you walk.”

“How do I know you’ll-”

“You don’t. And how do we know that you’ll keep your end? I hang on to the phone book, Ray. You try to fuck us and it goes to IAD. Do we have a deal?”

Mora stared at him without speaking a long moment. Finally, Bosch got up and turned to the door. Rollenberger headed that way, too, and said, “Unhook him, Bosch. Take him to Parker and book him on assault on a police officer, unlawful sex with a minor, pandering, anything you can think-”

“We gotta deal,” Mora blurted. “But I’ve got no insurance.”

Bosch turned back to look at him.

“That’s right, you don’t. The name?”

Mora looked from Bosch to Rollenberger.

“Unhook me.”

“The name, Mora,” Rollenberger said. “This is it.”

“It’s Locke. The fucking shrink. You assholes, you put the finger on me and the whole time he’s the one pushing the buttons.”

Bosch was jolted but in that same moment he began immediately to see how it could be. Locke knew the Dollmaker’s program, he fit the Follower’s profile.

“He was the Tom?”

“Yeah, it was him. Got’m ID’d by a producer today. He went around saying he was writin’ a book so he could get close to the girls. Then he killed them, Bosch. The whole time he’s been playing doctor with you, Bosch, he’s been out there… killing.”

Rollenberger turned to Bosch and said, “What do you think?”

Bosch left the room without answering. He went down the stairs and trotted out the door to his car. Locke’s book was on the back seat where Bosch had left it the day he bought it. As he headed back into the house with it he noticed that the first etchings of dawn’s light were in the sky.

On Mora’s dining room table, Bosch opened the book and began leafing through it until he came to a page marked Author’s Note. In the second paragraph, Locke wrote, “The material for this book was gathered over the course of three years from interviews with countless adult film performers, many of whom requested that they remain anonymous or be identified only by their stage names. The author wishes to thank them and the film producers who granted him access to the sets and production offices at which these interviews were conducted.”

The mystery man. Bosch realized Mora could be right that Locke was the man whom the video performer Gallery had reported as a suspect when she called the original task force tip number four years earlier. Bosch next flipped to the index of the book and ran his fingers down the names. Velvet Box was listed. So were Holly Lere and Magna Cum Loudly.

Bosch quickly reviewed in his mind Locke’s involvement in the case. He would definitely fit as a suspect for the same reasons Mora had fit. He had had a foot in both camps, as Locke himself had described it. He had access to all information about the Dollmaker deaths and, at the same time, was conducting research for a book on the psychology of female performers in the pornography industry.

Bosch became excited, but more so he was angry. Mora had been right. Locke had punched his buttons, to the point that he had helped set the cops on the path to the wrong man. If Locke was the Follower, he had played Bosch perfectly.

Rollenberger dispatched Sheehan and Opelt to Locke’s house to put him under immediate surveillance. “This time don’t fuck it up,” he said as he recovered some of his command presence.

Next he announced there would be a meeting of the task force at noon Sunday, little more than six hours away. He said they would then discuss seeking a search warrant for Locke’s home and office and decide what moves to make. As he headed to the door, Rollenberger looked at Bosch and said, “Go cut him loose. Then, Bosch, you better go get some sleep. You’re going to need it.”

“What about you? How’re you going to handle Irving on this?”

Rollenberger was looking down at the gold detective’s shield he held in his hand. It was Mora’s. He closed his hand over it and put it in his sport coat pocket. Then he looked at Bosch.

“That’s my business, isn’t it, Bosch? Don’t worry about it.”

After the others had left, Bosch and Edgar went up the stairs to the gym room. Mora was silent and refused to look at them as they removed the handcuffs. They said nothing and left him there, the towel still around his neck like a noose, staring at his fractured image in the wall mirror.

Bosch lit a cigarette and looked at his watch when he got to his car. It was 6:20 and he was too wired to go home to sleep. He got in the car and pulled the rover from his pocket.

“Frankie, you up?”

“Yo,” Sheehan responded.

“Anything?”

“Just got here. No life showing. Don’t know whether he’s here or not. Garage door is down.”

“Okay, then.”

Bosch thought of an idea. He picked up Locke’s book and took the cover off it. He folded it and put it in his pocket, then he started the car.

After stopping for coffee at a Winchell’s, Bosch got to the Sybil Brand Institute by seven. Because of the early hour, he had to get the watch commander’s approval to interview Georgia Stern.

He could see she was sick as soon as she was brought into the interview room. She sat hunched over with her arms folded in front of her, as if she were carrying a bag of groceries that had broken and was guarding against losing anything.

“Remember me?” he asked.

“Man, you gotta get me out.”

“Can’t do that. But I can get them to take you into the clinic. You can get methadone in your orange juice.”

“I wanna get out.”

“I’ll get you in the clinic.”

She dropped her head in defeat. She started a slight rocking motion, back and forth. She seemed pitiful to Bosch. But he knew he had to let it go. There were more important things, and she couldn’t be saved.

“You remember me?” he asked again. “From the other night?”

She nodded.

“We showed you pictures? I’ve got another.”

He put the dust jacket from the book on the table. She looked at Locke’s photo for a long while.

“Well?”

“What? I seen him. He talked to me once.”

“About what?”

“Making movies. He was-I think he’s an interviewer.”

“Interviewer?”

“I mean like a writer. He said it was for a book. I told him don’t use any of my names but I never checked.”

“Georgia, think back. Hard. This is very important. Could he also be the one who attacked you?”

“You mean the Dollmaker? The Dollmaker’s dead.”

“I know that. I think it was someone else who attacked you. Look at the photo. Was it him?”

She looked at the photo and shook her head.

“I don’t know. They told me it was the Dollmaker, so I forgot what he looked like after he was killed.”

Bosch leaned back in his chair. It was useless.

“You still going to get me in the clinic?” she asked timidly after seeing his change in mood.

“Yeah. You want for me to tell them you’ve got the virus?”

“What virus?”

“AIDS.”

“What for?”

“To get you whatever medicine you need.”

“I don’t have AIDS.”

“Look, I know the last time Van Nuys Vice put the bust on you you had AZT in your purse.”

“That’s for protection. I got that from a friend-a-mine who’s sick. He gave me the bottle and I put cornstarch in it.”

“Protection?”

“I don’t want to work for no pimp. Some asshole comes up and says he’s now your man, I show ’em the shit and say I got the virus, you know, and he splits. They don’t want girls with AIDS. Bad for their business.”

She smiled slyly and Bosch changed his mind about her. She might be saved after all. She had the instincts of a survivor.

The Hollywood Station detective bureau was completely deserted, which was not unusual for nine on a Sunday morning. After stealing a cup of coffee from the watch office while the sergeant was busy at the wall map, Bosch went to the homicide table and called Sylvia but got no answer. He wondered if she was gardening out back and hadn’t heard the phone or had gone out, maybe to get the Sunday paper to read the story about Beatrice Fontenot.

Bosch leaned back in his chair. He didn’t know what his next move was. He used the rover to check with Sheehan and once again was told that there had been no movement at Locke’s house.

“Think we should go up and knock?” Sheehan asked.

He wasn’t expecting an answer and Bosch didn’t give one. But he started thinking about it. It gave him another idea. He decided he would go to Locke’s house to finesse him. To run the story about Mora by him and see how Locke reacted and if he would say the vice cop was probably the Follower.

He threw the empty coffee cup in the trash can and looked over at his slot in the memo and mail box on the wall. He saw he had something in there. He got up and took three pink phone message forms and a white envelope back to his desk. He looked at the messages and one by one dismissed them as unimportant and put them on his message spike to be considered later. Two were from TV reporters and one was from a prosecutor asking about evidence in one of his other cases. All the calls had come in Friday.

Then he looked at the envelope and felt a chill, like a cold steel ball rolling down the back of his neck. It had only his name on the outside but the distinctive printing style could mean it was from nobody else. He dropped the envelope on the table, opened his drawer and dug around in the notebooks, pens and paper clips until he found a pair of rubber gloves. Then he carefully opened the Follower’s message.

As he left the station, he ran through the watch commander’s office, almost knocked down the startled duty sergeant and yelled: “Get hold of Detective Jerry Edgar! Tell’m to come up on the rover. He’ll know what I mean.”