The Overlook

TEN

BOSCH AND FERRAS STEPPED OUT the front door of the Mark Twain Hotel and surveyed the morning. The light was just beginning to enter the sky. The marine layer was coming in gray and thick and was deepening the shadows in the streets. It made it look like a city of ghosts and that was fine with Bosch. It matched his outlook.

“You think he’ll stay put?” Ferras asked.

Bosch shrugged.

“He’s got no place else to go,” he said.

They had just checked their witness into the hotel under the alias Stephen King. Jesse Mitford had turned into a valuable asset. He was Bosch’s ace in the hole. Though he had not been able to provide a description of the man who shot Stanley Kent and took the cesium, Mitford had been able to give the investigators a clear understanding of what had transpired at the Mulholland overlook. He would also be useful if the investigation ever led to an arrest and trial. His story could be used as the narrative of the crime. A prosecutor could use him to connect the dots for the jury and that made him valuable, whether or not he could ID the shooter.

After Bosch had consulted with Lieutenant Gandle, it was decided that they shouldn’t lose track of the young drifter. Gandle approved a hotel voucher that would keep Mitford in the Mark Twain for four days. By then things would be clearer in regard to which way the case was going to go.

Bosch and Ferras got into the Crown Victoria that Ferras had earlier checked out of the car shed and headed down Wilcox to Sunset. Bosch was behind the wheel. At the light he got out his cell phone. He hadn’t heard back from Rachel Walling, so he called the number her partner had given him. Brenner answered right away and Bosch proceeded cautiously.

“Just checking in,” he said. “We still on for the meeting at nine?”

Bosch wanted to make sure he was still part of the investigation before updating Brenner on anything.

“Uh, yes… yes, we’re still on for the meeting but it’s been pushed back.”

“Till when?”

“I think it’s ten now. We’ll let you know.”

The answer didn’t make it sound like the meeting with the locals was a done deal. He decided to press Brenner.

“Where will it be? At Tactical?”

Bosch knew from working with Walling before that the Tactical unit was off campus in a secret location. He wanted to see if Brenner would slip.

“No, in the federal building downtown. Fourteenth floor. Just ask for the TIU meeting. How helpful was the witness?”

Bosch decided to hold his cards close until he had a better idea of his standing.

“He saw the shooting from a distance. Then he saw the transfer. He said one man did it all, killed Stanley Kent and then moved the pig from the Porsche to the back of another vehicle. The other guy waited in another car and just watched.”

“You get any plates from him?”

“No, no plates. Mrs. Kent ’s car was probably the one used to make the transfer. That way there would be no cesium trace in their own car.”

“What about the suspect he did see?”

“Like I said, he couldn’t ID him. He was still wearing a ski mask. Other than that, nada.”

There was a pause before Brenner responded.

“Too bad,” he said. “What did you do with him?”

“The kid? We just dropped him off.”

“Where’s he live?”

“ Halifax, Canada.”

“Bosch, you know what I mean.”

Bosch noticed the change in tone. That and the use of his last name. He didn’t think Brenner was casually asking about Jesse Mitford’s exact location.

“He’s got no local address,” he replied. “He’s a drifter. We just dropped him off at the Denny’s on Sunset. That’s where he wanted to go. We gave him a twenty to cover breakfast.”

Bosch felt Ferras staring at him as he lied.

“Can you hold a second, Harry?” Brenner said. “I’ve got another call coming in here. It might be Washington.”

Back to first names, Bosch noted.

“Sure, Jack, but I can just go.”

“No, hold on.”

Bosch heard the line go to music and he looked over at Ferras. His partner started to speak.

“Why’d you tell him we-”

Bosch held a finger to his lips and Ferras stopped.

“Just hold it a second,” Bosch said.

Half a minute went by while Bosch waited. A saxophone version of “What a Wonderful World” started to play on the phone. Bosch had always loved the line about the dark sacred night.

The light finally changed and Bosch turned onto Sunset. Then Brenner came back on the line.

“Harry? Sorry about that. That was Washington. As you can imagine, they’re all over this thing.”

Bosch decided to draw things out into the open.

“What’s new on your end?”

“Not a lot. Homeland is sending a fleet of choppers with equipment that can track a radiation trail. They’ll start up at the overlook and try to pick up a signature specific to cesium. But the reality is it’s got to come out of the pig before they’ll pick up a signal. Meantime, we’re organizing the status meeting so that we can make sure everybody’s on the same page.”

“That’s all the big G has accomplished?”

“Well, we’re just getting organized. I told you how it would be. Alphabet soup.”

“Right. You called it pandemonium. The feds are good at that.”

“No, I’m not sure I said all of that. But there’s always a learning curve. I think after the meeting we’ll be hitting this thing on all cylinders.”

Bosch now knew for sure that things had changed. Brenner’s defensive response told him the conversation was either being taped or overheard by others.

“It’s still a few hours till the meeting,” Brenner said. “What’s your next move, Harry?”

Bosch hesitated but not for long.

“My next move is to go back up to the house and talk to Mrs. Kent again. I have some follow-up. Then we’ll go over to the south tower at Cedars. Kent ’s office is there and we need to see it and to talk to his partner.”

There was no response. Bosch was coming up on the Denny’s on Sunset. He pulled into the lot and parked. Through the windows he could see that the twenty-four-hour restaurant was largely deserted.

“You still there, Jack?”

“Uh, yeah, Harry, I’m here. I should tell you that it probably won’t be necessary, you going back to the house and then by Kent ’s office.”

Bosch shook his head. I knew it, he thought.

“You’ve already scooped everybody up, haven’t you?”

“Wasn’t my call. Anyway, from what I hear, the office was clean and we have Kent ’s partner in here being questioned right now. We brought Mrs. Kent in as kind of a precautionary thing. We’re still talking to her, too.”

“Not your call? Then whose call was it, Rachel’s?”

“I’m not going to get into that, Harry.”

Bosch killed the car’s engine and thought about how to respond.

“Well, then maybe my partner and I should head downtown to TIU,” he finally said. “This is still a homicide investigation. And last I heard, I was still working it.”

There was a long thread of silence before Brenner responded.

“Look, Detective, the case is taking on larger dimensions. You have been invited to the status meeting. You and your partner. And at that time you will be updated on what Mr. Kelber has had to say and a few other things. If Mr. Kelber is still here with us I will do my best to get you in to speak with him. And with Mrs. Kent, too. But to be clear, the priority here is not the homicide. The priority is not finding out who killed Stanley Kent. The priority is finding the cesium and we’re now almost ten hours behind.”

Bosch nodded.

“I have a feeling that if you find the killer you find the cesium,” he said.

“That may be so,” Brenner responded. “But the experience is that this material is moved very quickly. Hand to hand. It takes an investigation with a lot of velocity. That’s what we’re engaged in now. Building velocity. We don’t want to be slowed down.”

“By the local yokels.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure. I’ll see you at ten, Agent Brenner.”

Bosch closed his phone and started to get out. As he and Ferras crossed the lot to the restaurant’s doors, his partner barraged him with questions.

“Why did you lie to him about the wit, Harry? What’s going on? What are we doing here?”

Bosch held his hands up in a calming motion.

“Hold on, Ignacio. Just hold on. Let’s sit down and have some coffee and maybe something to eat and I’ll tell you what is going on.”

They almost had their pick of the place. Bosch went to a booth in a corner that would allow them a clear view of the front door. The waitress came over quickly. She was an old battle-ax with her steel-gray hair in a tight bun. Working graveyard at a Denny’s in Hollywood had leached the life out of her eyes.

“Harry, it’s been a long time,” she said.

“Hey, Peggy. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve had to chase a case through the night.”

“Well, welcome back. What can I get you and your much younger partner?”

Bosch ignored the dig. He ordered coffee, toast and eggs-over medium well. Ferras ordered an egg-white omelet and a latte. When the waitress smirked and told him that neither could be accomplished he settled for scrambled eggs and regular coffee. As soon as the waitress left them alone Bosch answered Ferras’s questions.

“We’re being cut out,” he said. “That’s what’s going on here.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

“Because they’ve already scooped up our victim’s wife and partner and I can guaran-damn-tee you they are not going to let us talk to them.”

“Harry, did they say that? Did they tell you that we couldn’t talk to them? There’s a lot at stake here and I think you’re being a little paranoid. You’re jumping to-”

“Am I? Well, wait and see, partner. Watch and learn.”

“We’re still going to the meeting at nine, aren’t we?”

“Supposedly. Except now it’s at ten. And it will probably be a dog and pony show just for us. They’re not going to tell us anything. They’re going to sweet-talk us and brush us aside. ‘Thanks a lot, fellas, we’ll take it from here.’ Well, fuck that. This is a homicide and nobody, not even the FBI, brushes me off a case.”

“Have a little faith, Harry.”

“I have faith in myself. That’s it. I’ve been on this road before. I know where it goes. On the one hand, who cares? Let them run with the case. But on the other hand, I care. I can’t trust them to do it right. They want the cesium. I want the bastards who terrorized Stanley Kent for two hours and then forced him down on his knees and put two slugs in the back of his head.”

“This is national security, Harry. This is different. There’s a greater good here. You know, the good of the order.”

It sounded to Bosch like Ferras was quoting from an academy textbook or the code of some sort of secret society. He didn’t care. He had his own code.

“The good of the order starts with that guy lying dead on the overlook. If we forget about him, then we can forget about everything else.”

Nervous about debating his partner, Ferras had picked up the salt shaker and was manipulating it in his hand, spilling salt on the table.

“Nobody’s forgetting, Harry. It’s about priorities. I am sure that when things shake out during the meeting, they will share any information relating to the homicide.”

Bosch grew frustrated. He was trying to teach the kid something but the kid wasn’t listening.

“Let me tell you something about sharing with the feds,” Bosch said. “When it comes to sharing information, the FBI eats like an elephant and shits like a mouse. I mean, don’t you get it? There will be no meeting. They put that out there so we would stay in line until nine and now ten, all the while thinking we’re still part of the team. But then we’ll show up there and they’ll delay it again and then they’ll delay it again until they finally trot out with some organizational chart that’s supposed to make us feel like we’re part of everything when the reality is we’re part of nothing and they’ve run out the back door.”

Ferras nodded as though he was taking the advice to heart. But then he spoke from somewhere else.

“I still don’t think we should have lied to them about the witness. He might be very valuable to them. Something he told us might fit with something they know about already. What’s the harm in telling them where he is? Maybe they take a shot at him and get something we didn’t. Who knows?”

Bosch emphatically shook his head.

“No fucking way. Not yet. The wit is ours and we don’t give him up. We trade him for access and information or we keep him for ourselves.”

The waitress brought their plates and looked from the salt spilled on the table to Ferras and then Bosch.

“I know he’s young, Harry, but can’t you teach him some manners?”

“I’m trying, Peggy. But these young people don’t want to learn.”

“I hear you.”

She left the table and Bosch immediately dug into his food, holding a fork in one hand and a piece of toast in the other. He was starved and had a feeling they’d be on the move soon. When they would next have time for a meal was anybody’s guess.

He was halfway through his eggs when he saw four men in dark suits walk in with unmistakable federal purpose in their strides. Wordlessly, they split into twos and started walking through the restaurant.

There were less than a dozen diners in the place, most of them strippers and their boyfriend pimps heading home from four o’clock clubs, Hollywood night crawlers fueling the engine before putting it to sleep. Bosch calmly continued to eat and watched the men in suits stop at each table, show credentials and ask for IDs. Ferras was too busy splashing hot sauce on his eggs to notice what was happening. Bosch got his attention and nodded toward the agents.

Most of the people scattered among the tables were too tired or buzzed to do anything but comply with the demands to show identification. One young woman with a Z shaved into the side of her head started giving one pair of agents some lip but she was a woman and they were looking for a man, so they ignored her and waited patiently for her boyfriend with the matching Z to show some ID.

Finally, a pair of agents came to the table in the corner. Their creds identified them as FBI agents Ronald Lundy and John Parkyn. They ignored Bosch because he was too old and asked Ferras for his ID.

“Who are you looking for?” Bosch asked.

“That’s government business, sir. We just need to check some IDs.”

Ferras opened his badge wallet. On one side it had his photo and police ID and on the other side his detective’s badge. It seemed to freeze the two agents.

“It’s funny,” Bosch said. “If you’re looking at IDs that means you have a name. But I never gave Agent Brenner the witness’s name. Makes me wonder. You guys over there in Tactical Intelligence don’t happen to have a bug in our computer or maybe our squad room, do you?”

Lundy, the one obviously in charge of the pickup detail, looked squarely at Bosch. His eyes were as gray as gravel.

“And you are?” he asked.

“You want to see my ID, too? I haven’t passed for a twenty-year-old in a long time, but I’ll take it as a compliment.”

He pulled out his badge wallet and handed it to Lundy unopened. The agent opened it and examined the contents very closely. He took his time.

“Hieronymus Bosch,” he said, reading the name on the ID. “Wasn’t there some sick creep of a painter named that? Or have I got it confused with one of the bottom-feeders I’ve read about in the overnights.”

Bosch smiled back at him.

“Some people consider the painter a master of the Renaissance period,” he said.

Lundy dropped the badge wallet on Bosch’s plate. Bosch hadn’t finished his eggs yet but luckily the yolks were overcooked.

“I don’t know what the game is here, Bosch. Where’s Jesse Mitford?”

Bosch picked up his badge wallet and used his napkin to clean egg debris off it. He took his time, put the wallet away and then he looked back up at Lundy.

“Who’s Jesse Mitford?”

Lundy leaned down and put both hands on the table.

“You know damn well who he is and we need to take him in.”

Bosch nodded as though he understood the situation perfectly.

“We can talk about Mitford and everything else at the meeting at ten. Right after I interview Kent ’s partner and his wife.”

Lundy smiled in a way that carried no friendliness or humor.

“You know something, pal? You’re going to need a Renaissance period yourself when this is all over.”

Bosch smiled again.

“See you at the meeting, Agent Lundy. In the meantime, we’re eating. Can you go bother somebody else?”

Bosch picked up his knife and started spreading strawberry jam from a little plastic container on his last piece of toast.

Lundy straightened up and pointed at Bosch’s chest.

“You better be careful, Bosch.”

With that he turned and headed toward the door. He signaled to the other team of agents and pointed toward the exit. Bosch watched them go.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” he said.