The Crossing

34

Haller was indeed wearing a white terry-cloth robe when he opened his front door. Bosch could see the words Ritz Carlton in gold over the breast pocket. Haller’s hair was unkempt and he was wearing black-framed glasses. Bosch realized for the first time that he must wear contact lenses during normal waking hours.

“What is so important that it can’t wait for the morning?” Haller asked. “I’ve got an eight-o’clock motions hearing tomorrow and I would like to get some sleep so I am fully functioning.”

“Motions on Foster?” Bosch asked.

“No, another case. Unrelated. But it doesn’t matter, I still need to—”

“Just take a look at these.”

Bosch pulled the photocopies out of his pocket, unfolded the sheets, and handed one to Haller. He refolded the other and put it back in his pocket.

“Are those the guys?” he asked.

“What guys?” Haller asked.

“The cops who pulled you over on the deuce.”

Bosch said it in a tone that implied that he was frustrated by Haller’s inability to follow Bosch’s own logic.

“Why do you care who pulled me over that night?” Haller said. “It’s not your con—”

“Just look at the pictures,” Bosch commanded. “Are those the guys?”

Haller held the photocopy at arm’s length. Bosch guessed that his glasses carried an old prescription.

“Well, one guy stayed in the car and I didn’t really see him,” Haller said. “The other... this one on the right... this guy could’ve been... yes, it’s him. This is the one that came up to the car.”

Haller flipped the page over so Bosch could see his choice. It was Ellis, the one Bosch thought had looked familiar.

“So, what’s going on, Harry?” Haller asked. “Why are we standing here in the middle of the night with this?”

“Those guys pulled you over,” Bosch said. “They also arrested James Allen several times, and I think they were using him as an informant.”

Haller nodded but showed no excitement.

“Okay,” he said. “They’re Hollywood vice cops. It’s not surprising that they would have popped Allen a few times or that they used him as an informant. And as far as my thing goes, they picked off the radio broadcast because they were in the area. That area being Hollywood, where they work.”

It sounded like a different tune from Haller. Outside the jail after he was bailed out, he was spinning tales of conspiracy and lying-in-wait to the media. Now he was giving reasons for why the conspiracy Bosch was beginning to see was perfectly explainable.

“I’ve got a witness who heard two car doors close in the alley the night Allen’s body was dumped there,” Bosch said. “And you heard Dick Sutton a few hours ago. They think it might have been two guys who went in there and killed the Nguyen brothers. The deuces are wild on this, Mick. I think we’re looking for two people.”

They were still standing in the entryway of Haller’s house. Mickey looked down at the photocopies, one in each hand.

“You drink bourbon?” he asked.

“On occasion,” Bosch said.

“Let’s sit down and work this through some Woodford Reserve.”

He stepped back and let Bosch enter the living room.

“Have a seat,” Haller said. “I’ll get a couple of glasses. You take it with ice?”

“A couple cubes is all,” Bosch said.

He took a seat on a couch that gave him a view through the picture window to the lights of the city. Haller’s house sat on the shoulder of Laurel Canyon and offered unobstructed views of the city to the west and out toward Catalina.

Haller was back soon with two glasses with amber liquid and easy on the ice. He put them down on the coffee table along with the photocopy but didn’t sit down.

“I gotta go put in my contacts,” he said. “These things give me a headache.”

He disappeared down a hallway toward the back of the house. Bosch took a sip of the Woodford and felt it burn on the way down. It was good stuff, a better bottle of bourbon than he ever kept on hand at his house for unscheduled visitors.

He took another sip and then studied the photos of the two vice cops. He wondered if they had put the GPS locator on his Cherokee. Thinking about the Cherokee in regard to the two men brought a focus, and Bosch suddenly realized where he had seen Don Ellis. It was in the parking lot behind Musso’s. Bosch had passed him when he had left the bar the night Haller would get pulled over on the DUI. It meant Haller was right. The DUI was a setup. Ellis and Long had been lying in wait for him.

When Haller came back, the glasses and the bathrobe were gone. He was in blue jeans and a maroon Chapman T-shirt. He took the chair across the table from Bosch with no view of the city. He took a healthy pull from his glass of fine bourbon and followed it with his best impression of Jack Nicholson drinking whiskey and flapping an arm like a chicken wing in Easy Rider. He then settled back in his chair and looked at Bosch.

“So,” he said. “What do we do?”

“A couple things first,” Bosch said. “Tomorrow morning, after your driver drops you at court? Have your driver or somebody you trust get your car checked for a GPS tag. There’s one on my car and I think these two guys put it there.”

He pointed toward the photocopy on the coffee table.

“It was already on my to-do list,” Haller said.

“Well, get it done,” Bosch said. “And if something’s found under there, don’t remove it. Don’t let them know we’re onto them. We can possibly use this to our advantage. I rented a car tonight. I’ll use that for when I don’t want them to know where I’m going.”

“Okay,” Haller said. “First thing.”

“I also want to talk to your investigator.”

“Cisco? Why?”

Bosch reached down, grabbed his glass, and took a large gulp. It burned all his breathing passages and brought tears to his eyes.

“Easy, boy,” Haller said. “This is sipping bourbon.”

“Right,” Bosch said. “Look, you need to see the big picture here. Your man, Cisco, was working on this case and he gets sent into oncoming traffic and taken out. You’re on the case and you get pulled over on a setup DUI. The Nguyen brothers get whacked for reasons we don’t yet know — less than an hour after I talk to them. We can believe it’s all coincidence or we can look at it in its entirety and see a bigger picture. I want to ask Cisco what he was working on the day somebody knocked him out of the game.”

Haller nodded.

“He has physical therapy every morning at the Veterans in Westwood.”

“Good,” Bosch said. “I’ll see him there.”

“What else?”

Pointing to Ellis and Long, Bosch said, “One of us should talk to DQ and see if he’s ever had any interaction with these two guys. Just to be sure.”

“I can do it,” Haller said. “I need to see him about some pretrial stuff and get his measurements for a trial suit. Hope I got something that fits in my client closet.”

He pointed to the photocopy on the table.

“Can I take that, show it to him?” he asked.

“I’ve got another,” Bosch said.

Bosch remembered something.

“When you see him, ask him if he remembers James Allen’s phone number. Cops never found Allen’s phone. If I can get the number we might be able to pull records that will show the two of them in contact.”

“And bolster the alibi. Good one. What about you?”

“I still think the watch is the key to all of this. I need to get to the original buyer.”

“The guy in Beverly Hills?”

“Yeah. I went by his house tonight. Nice spread. He’s got money. I need to corner him and see where the connections are.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Thanks.”

They sat there for the next few minutes without talking. They sipped bourbon and worked their own thoughts. Finally, it was Haller who spoke.

“This is good stuff,” he said.

Bosch looked at his glass and rolled the ice around the bottom of it.

“Better than I got at home,” he said.

“Well, don’t get me wrong, the bourbon is good, but I’m talking about everything you’ve pulled together these last few days. There’s a lot here. A lot I can work with. We’re going to be able to mount an actual alternate-theory defense. This stuff goes beyond reasonable doubt.”

Bosch finished the remaining bourbon in his glass. He realized that he and Haller would always have a fundamental difference in how they looked at evidence and the other nuances of an investigation. Haller had to put things in the context of trial and how it might be used to knock down the prosecution’s case. Bosch only had to look at the evidence as a bridge to the truth. This is why he knew he had not really crossed to the dark side. He could never work a case from Haller’s angle.

“I don’t really care about alternate theories or reasonable doubt,” he said. “To me it’s a simple equation. If your client didn’t do it, then I’m going to find out who did. That’s the person or persons I want.”

Haller nodded and raised his glass to Bosch. He then finished off his drink.

“That works for me,” he said.