The Crossing

18

The Haven House was an aging two-story motel with neon promises of free HBO and Wi-Fi. It was the kind of place that probably looked shabby on the day it opened in the 1940s and had only gone downhill from there. The kind that served as a last-stop shelter before the car became primary domicile. Bosch pulled into the parking lot off Santa Monica and cruised slowly. The motel was situated on what was known as a flag lot. A narrow fronting on Santa Monica led into a bigger, wider piece of property in the rear that ran behind other businesses. This afforded the rear parking lot and motel rooms significant privacy. It was no wonder that it had become a place favored by people engaged in illicit sexual transactions.

He saw a door with a 6 painted on it and parked in the spot in front of it. He realized it was the same sort of move he would make when he worked cold cases. Visit the scene of the crime long after the crime had been committed. He called it looking for ghosts. He believed every murder left a trace on the environment, no matter how old.

In this case only a few months had passed but that still made it a cold case.

Bosch got out and looked around. There were a few cars parked in the lot and it was surrounded by the windowless rear side of the businesses fronting Santa Monica on one side and an L-shaped apartment building on two others. There was a row of tall and mature cypress trees buffering the line between the parking lot and the apartment building. The fourth side was lined by wood fencing that ran along the backyard of a private residence.

Bosch thought about Lucia Soto’s report on the James Allen case. The supposition was that Allen had been murdered in room 6 and then his body was removed and dumped in the alley off El Centro. Putting aside the question of why the body was moved, Bosch now saw that it could have been accomplished without great risk. In the middle of the night the parking lot would have been deserted and unseen from the outside. He looked around for any cameras and saw none. It wasn’t the kind of place where customers wanted to be photographed.

Bosch walked back around the corner to the office at the front of the building. The office was not open to the public. The door had a shelf below a sliding window. There was a push-button bell there and Bosch used his palm to ring it three quick times. He waited and was about to hit it again when an Asian man slid the glass window open and looked at Bosch through watery eyes.

“I need a room,” Bosch said. “I want number six.”

“Check-in at three,” the man said.

That would be in four hours. Bosch looked back at the parking lot and saw a total of six cars including his own. He looked back at the man.

“I need it now. How much?”

“Check-in three, check-out twelve noon. Rules.”

“How about I check in yesterday at three, check out today at noon?”

The man studied him. Bosch didn’t look like his usual clientele.

“You cop?”

Bosch shook his head.

“No, no cop. I just want to look at room six. How much? I’ll be out by twelve. Less than an hour.”

“Forty dollar.”

“Deal.”

Bosch pulled out his cash.

“Sixty,” the man said.

Bosch looked up from his money at him and silently communicated the message that the man was fucking with the wrong guy.

“Okay, forty,” the man said.

Bosch put two twenties down on the window’s counter. The man slid out a 3 × 5 registration card but didn’t ask for any formal identification confirming the information Bosch quickly wrote on it.

The man then slid out a key attached to a diamond-shaped piece of plastic with the number 6 on it.

“One hour,” he said.

Bosch nodded and took the key.

“You betcha,” he said.

He walked back around the corner of the building and used the key to open room 6. He stepped in and closed the door behind him. He stood there, taking the whole room in. The first thing he noticed was the rectangular discoloration on the wall where the picture of Marilyn Monroe had obviously hung. It was gone now, most likely taken as evidence.

He turned his head and slowly swept the room, looking for anything unusual about it but committing its well-worn furnishings and drab curtains to memory. Anything that had belonged to James Allen was long gone. It was just a threadbare room with its aging furnishings. It was depressing to think someone had lived here. Even more so to think someone may have died here.

His phone buzzed and he saw that it was Haller.

“Yeah.”

“Where are we?”

“We? We are in a shabby-as-shit room in a hot-sheet motel in Hollywood. The place Da’Quan claims he was at when Lexi Parks was murdered.”

“And?”

“And nothing. A big fat nothing. Mighta helped if he’d scratched his initials into the bed table or put some gang graffiti on the shower curtain. You know, to show he was here.”

“I meant, ‘and what are you doing there?’”

“My job. Covering all the bases. Absorbing, thinking. Looking for ghosts.”

Bosch’s words were clipped. He didn’t like the interruption. He was in the middle of an established process. He was also annoyed with himself for what he had to say next.

“Look, I may have messed up.”

“How so?”

“I posed as a real-estate buyer and got inside the victim’s house. I wanted to look around.”

“And look for ghosts? What happened?”

“Her husband, the deputy sheriff, came by and ran my plate because he thought I was a reporter or something. Instead, he found out I was a retired cop and I was working on the case.”

“That’s not a mess-up. That’s a full-fledged fuckup. You know if the guy makes a complaint, it goes on me with the judge, right?”

“I know. I messed up — I fucked up. I just wanted to see—”

“You sure did. But nothing we can do about it now. What’s next? Why are you at the motel?”

“Same reason.”

“Ghosts. Really?”

“When I investigate a murder, I want to be where that murder took place, or where it may have taken place.”

There was a pause before Haller responded.

“Then I guess I’ll leave you to it,” he said.

“Talk to you later,” Bosch said.

Bosch clicked off the call and continued to stare at the room until he finally stepped toward the bed.

Thirty minutes later he left the room with no more than he had when he entered. If anything had remained to prove Da’Quan Foster was there the night of the Lexi Parks murder, it had been swept up by the LAPD forensics team. As he walked to his car he wondered if something more than forensics had been left behind that could help Foster. James Allen was a prostitute, after all. And many prostitutes kept records. In these digital times a prostitute’s little black book would more likely be his little black cell phone. After her conversation with Ali Karim, Soto had mentioned nothing about the recovery of a cell phone either from the body or from room six.

Bosch diverted and walked back to the office window. He rang the bell again and the same man slid the window open. Bosch put the room key down on the counter.

“I’m out,” he said. “You don’t even have to make the bed.”

“Okay, very fine, thank you,” the man said.

He started to slide the window closed but Bosch blocked it with his hand.

“Hold on a second,” he said. “The man who had that room back in March got murdered, you remember that?”

“Nobody get murder here.”

“Not here. Or maybe not here. His body was found down the street in an alley. But he had room six here, and the police came to investigate. James Allen. You remember now?”

“No, not here.”

“Yes, here. Look, I’m just trying to figure out what happened to all his belongings. His property. The police took things, I know that. Did they take everything?”

“No, his friends come. They take clothes and things.”

“Friends? Did you get any names?”

“No, no names here.”

“Do they do what he did? Do they stay here?”

“Sometimes they stay.”

“Any of them here now?”

“No, not now. Nobody here.”

Bosch pulled out his notebook and wrote his name and number down. He tore the page out and handed it through the window.

“If any of his friends come back, you call me and I’ll pay you.”

“How much you pay?”

“Fifty bucks.”

“You pay now.”

“No, I’ll pay when you tell me they’re here.”

Bosch rapped his knuckles on the shelf under the window and turned back toward the parking lot. He walked around the corner of the building and got in his car. Before starting the engine, he called Haller, who answered right away.

“We need to talk.”

“That’s funny, because I called you about a half hour ago and it was pretty clear you didn’t want to talk to me.”

“That was then. We need to talk about next moves. This is your show and I don’t want to do something that hurts things down the line in court.”

“You mean like get caught sneaking into the victim’s house?”

“I told you that was a mistake. It won’t happen again. That’s why I’m calling.”

“Did you find something?”

“No, nothing. I still need to check the street, but so far nothing. I’m talking about other things. The next move — whether you make it in court or I make it out here.”

“Sounds mysterious. Where are you? I can come now.”

“On Santa Monica near Gower. I need to work the street here a little bit.”

“I’ll head that way. You in the Cherokee? The one you claim is a classic?”

“I am, and it is.”

Bosch disconnected and started the car. He drove to the motel’s parking lot exit on Santa Monica and paused there while he looked right and then left at the small businesses that lined the four-lane boulevard. They were a mixture of industrial and commercial businesses. Several of the big studios were nearby — he could see Paramount’s water tower rising behind the shops fronting Santa Monica. This meant that there were also all manner of feeder companies in the neighborhood that lived off the scraps of the behemoths — prop houses, costume shops, camera equipment renters — interspersed with a routine variety of fast-food dreck. There was a do-it-yourself car wash and across the street and down a half block was the entrance to Hollywood Forever — the onetime cemetery to the stars.

Bosch nodded. The cemetery was his best lead. He knew Rudolph Valentino was buried there as well as many other long-ago Hollywood greats and pioneers, like Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Cecil B. DeMille, and John Huston. Many years back Bosch had worked a suicide at Hollywood Forever. The victim was a woman who had laid herself out on top of Tyrone Power’s crypt and then cut her wrists. Before she died she managed to write her name in blood beneath his name on the memorial stone. Bosch did the math on the dead woman and determined she was not even born until five years after Power died. The case seemed to underline what many in homicide work knew; you can’t explain crazy.

Bosch knew that in any town in the country the local cemetery was a draw for a certain class of odd people. In Hollywood, that draw was amped exponentially because there were graves with famous names carved on them. That meant there would be security. And that meant cameras. The woman who killed herself on Tyrone Power’s crypt had done it under a camera. The problem was, no one was watching, and she bled out.

When the traffic momentarily cleared, Bosch turned left out of the parking lot and drove down to Hollywood Forever. The cemetery was surrounded by an eight-foot stone wall interrupted only by entrance and exit lanes. As Bosch pulled in he readily saw cameras affixed to the walls and focused on the auto lanes. Bosch couldn’t tell by his cursory glance whether they were in position to also record activities a half block down Santa Monica Boulevard. But he recognized that the cameras were placed in obviously public positions, thereby acting as a deterrent as well as a recording device. He was interested in them but he was also interested in the cameras nobody could see.

Once past the wall, he saw a parking area and a complex that included the cemetery office as well as a chapel and a casket-and-stone showroom. It was a full-service operation. Beyond this, the cemetery lay spread out and was sectioned by various driving lanes and other, smaller parking areas. Rising above the back wall Bosch could see the giant stages of Paramount Studios and the water tower. He saw cameras on the tower.

There were a number of cars parked in various sections of the cemetery and pedestrians moving among the stones. It was a busy day. Bosch could also see a Hollywood tour van moving slowly next to one of the larger monuments. It was garishly painted with the roof cut off for open-air viewing from the six rows of seats behind the driver. The van was packed with tourists. Bosch lowered his window and could hear the tour guide’s amplified voice echoing off the mausoleums and carrying across the rows of stones.

“Mickey Rooney is the latest Hollywood great to join the others here at Hollywood Forever, the resting place of the stars...”

Bosch put his window back up and got out of the car. On the way into the office he called Haller and told him where he would be.

The man in charge of security at Hollywood Forever was named Oscar Gascon. He was ex-LAPD but had retired so long ago that there was no point in trading names to see who knew whom. Bosch was just happy to make the ex-cop connection and hoped it would give him an edge. He got right to the point.

“I’m working a case, trying to establish an alibi of someone accused of a crime.”

“What, here?”

“No, actually down the street at the Haven House.”

“That dump? They should tear that place down.”

“I wouldn’t argue with that.”

“So then how does HoFo fit in?”

It took Bosch a moment to translate HoFo into Hollywood Forever. They were in Gascon’s tiny office, sitting on either side of a small table that passed for his desk. There was a stack of pamphlets displaying headstones and statues and Bosch got the idea that Gascon wasn’t only security director at the place. He was also in sales.

“Well, it doesn’t really fit in, but I am interested in your cameras,” Bosch said. “I’m wondering if any of them capture the front of Haven House down the street.”

Gascon whistled as if Bosch had just asked for the moon and stars in a box with a ribbon on it.

“What date are we talking about?” he asked.

“February ninth,” Bosch said. “Do you keep video going back that long?”

Gascon nodded and tapped the screen of an ancient computer on a second table to his side.

“Yeah, we’re backed up on the cloud,” he said. “Insurance makes us keep everything a year. But I don’t know. That’s a whole block away. I doubt anything would be in focus that far off.”

He stopped there and waited. Bosch knew what he was doing. Harry picked up one of the pamphlets and glanced at it.

“You sell these, too?” he asked.

“Yeah, on the side,” Gascon said.

“What do you get for one of these — as a salesman?”

“Depends on the stone. I made a grand on the Johnny Ramone statue. That had to be designed and special ordered.”

Bosch put the pamphlet back down.

“Tell you what,” he said. “My employer is on his way here to meet me. He would be willing to buy a stone if there is something on the cameras we can use.”

The men studied each other. Gascon looked very interested in the prospect of making money.

“Do you have access to the camera on the Paramount tower?” Bosch asked. “It looked like it was pointed over here.”

“Yeah, that’s ours,” Gascon said. “We needed an overview perspective. We have a joint agreement with them. They have access to it, too.”

Bosch nodded.

“So, should we take a look?” he asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Gascon said. “Why not? Nothing’s going on around here. I mean, it’s pretty dead.”

Bosch said nothing.

“Get it?” Gascon asked.

Bosch nodded. He was sure Gascon used that line whenever he could.

“Yeah, I get it,” he said.

Gascon turned to the computer and went to work. As he was typing commands, Bosch adopted a gossipy, casual tone when he asked his next question.

“Did you know there was a murder over there at the Haven House in March?”

“Maybe there was,” Gascon said. “The cops that came in here said they weren’t sure where it went down but that the guy that got himself killed was living there. They said he was a dragon.”

It was old LAPD slang for drag queen. That was the catchall for the whole slew of different classifications running the gamut from transvestite to transgender. It even often used to go on reports, something that nowadays would draw protest. Gascon’s mention of it made Bosch remember that official police reports often abbreviated the term “drag queen” to DQ. He now wondered if that was known to Da’Quan Foster and a reason for his nickname.

“So they came in to look at video, too?” Bosch asked.

“Yeah, they were here,” Gascon said. “But just like you’re gonna find out, there’s not much to see of that place on our cameras.”

Bosch waited for Haller in the parking lot. He wanted to talk to him before they went back in and talked to Gascon and played the video again.

When the Lincoln finally pulled in Bosch saw that Haller was in the backseat. He got out with his briefcase.

“You’ve got a driver now,” Bosch said.

“Had to,” Haller said. “Got my license suspended because of that little stunt the cops pulled on me the other night. Why are we meeting at a cemetery?”

Bosch pointed across the expanse of the cemetery to the back wall. The Paramount Studios water tower was the highest profile structure behind the wall.

“Cameras,” he said. “They’ve got a reciprocal security agreement with Paramount here. You watch my back, I’ll watch yours. There is a camera up on that tower. Takes in the whole cemetery and then some.”

They headed toward the office door.

“This guy, you’re going to have to buy a headstone,” Bosch whispered.

Haller stopped in his tracks.

“What?”

“To get him to cooperate. I don’t have a badge anymore, you know. He sells gravestones on the side and I told him if he cooperated, you’d buy a stone.”

“First of all, why would I want a headstone? Whose name do I put on it? And secondly, and most importantly, we can’t be paying potential witnesses. You know how that will look in court?”

“He doesn’t matter. His video is what matters.”

“But I might need him to introduce it in court. To authenticate it. You see? And I don’t want the prosecutor asking him how much we paid him. It looks bad to a jury.”

“Look, if you don’t want a headstone, don’t buy a headstone, but this guy needs to be compensated for his cooperation. What he’s got is important. It changes things.”

Five minutes later Bosch and Haller were standing behind a seated Gascon as he manipulated the video playback from the Paramount water tank camera.

On the screen was the entire cemetery. It was a macro security image. The confines of the picture extended out to Santa Monica Boulevard. At the very top left corner was the Santa Monica entrance to the Haven House motel. The frame cut off the view of the actual motel and its rear parking lot. But it did show vehicular ingress and egress from that entrance. A code along the bottom frame showed the time as 9:44 p.m. on February 9, 2015.

“Okay, what am I looking at?” Haller asked.

Bosch pointed out the particulars.

“This is Santa Monica Boulevard and this is the entrance to Haven House — where DQ says he was on the night of the ninth.”

“Okay.”

“The Haven House is on a flag lot. You know what that is?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so this is the only ingress and egress point. You go in and drive by the office and the parking is in the back by the rooms. Very private.”

“Got it.”

“Okay, now watch this van. Go ahead, Oscar.”

Gascon started the video moving. Bosch reached over his shoulder to point out the white van moving in a westerly direction on Santa Monica. It was crossing in front of the cemetery. He added commentary.

“The reports you gave me said the Sheriff’s impounded and searched Foster’s nineteen ninety-three white Ford Econoline, turning up no evidence in the case. That on the screen is a white Ford Econoline. I can tell by the lights. I don’t know the year at this point but it’s no spring chicken. It turns into Haven House at nine forty-five p.m. February ninth.”

“Okay, this is good.”

“Oscar, jump it.”

Gascon put the playback on fast-forward and they watched traffic on Santa Monica speed by and the minutes on the time counter move like seconds until Gascon slowed things down at the 11:40 mark.

“Now watch,” Bosch said.

At 11:43 the van came back into the picture, waiting to turn left out of the motel lot. Eventually traffic opened up and the van exited the motel lot and proceeded east on Santa Monica, back the way it had come.

“If your client was coming up from his studio, he would take the one-ten to the one-oh-one and then exit on Santa Monica,” Bosch said. “He’d drive west to the motel, then he’d drive east on his way back.”

“Does the Sheriff’s Department have this?” Haller asked.

“Not yet,” Bosch said.

“We need to confirm that it’s Foster’s van,” Haller said.

“Oscar, can you make a copy of this? Mickey, you will need to have someone enhance it and work on that.”

“I’ve got a person.”

“What about me?” Oscar asked without taking his eyes off the screen.

“What about you, Oscar?” Haller said. “Mr. Bosch spoke too quickly. I don’t want to buy a headstone. Don’t have much use for one. But I’ve got a thumb drive on my keychain and if you can put the video on it, I will pay for your time. And I will pay well.”

Bosch nodded. That was the best way to do it.

“Sure, I think that should work,” Gascon said.

Haller looked at Bosch as he pulled his keys.

“I’ll wait outside while you two talk business,” Bosch said.