The Wrong Side of Goodbye

18

Bosch called Whitney Vance’s private number on his way to San Fernando and got the straight-to-message beep again. He once again asked Vance to call him back. After disconnecting he wondered what Vance’s status was as a client. If he was no longer communicating with Bosch, was Bosch still working for him? Harry was well into the case and his time was paid for. Either way he wasn’t stopping what he had started.

He next took a shot in the dark and called directory assistance for Tallahassee, Florida. He asked for a listing for Halley B. Lewis and was told there was only one listing under that name and it was for a law office. Bosch asked to be connected, and soon the call was answered by a secretary who put Bosch on hold when he identified himself and said he wanted to talk to Mr. Lewis about Dominick Santanello from the Field Medical School at Camp Pendleton. At least a minute went by and Bosch used the time to formulate what he would say to the man, should he get on the line, without violating his confidential agreement with Vance.

“This is Halley Lewis,” a voice finally said. “What is this about?”

“Mr. Lewis, I am an investigator out in Los Angeles,” Bosch said. “Thank you for taking my call. I am working on an investigation involving the late Dominick Santanello. I-”

“I’ll say he’s late. Nick died almost fifty years ago.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“What could you possibly be investigating about him?”

Bosch dropped into his prepared response.

“It is a confidential investigation, but I can tell you it involves trying to determine if Dominick left behind an heir.”

There was a moment of silence before Lewis responded.

“An heir? He was about nineteen when he got killed in Vietnam.”

“Correct, sir. He was a month short of his twentieth birthday. It doesn’t mean he couldn’t have fathered a child.”

“And that’s what you are trying to find out?”

“Yes. I’m interested in the period he was in San Diego County for basic training through his training at Balboa and Pendleton. I’m working with NCIS on this and their investigator told me that you were in the same units with Nick until he received orders to Vietnam.”

“That’s true. Why is the NCIS involved in something like this?”

“I made contact to get Nick’s military records archive and we were able to determine that you were one of three men who was in all three training stops with Nick. You’re the only one still alive.”

“I know. You don’t have to tell me.”

Bosch had taken Victory Boulevard into North Hollywood and now turned north on the 170. The fortress of the San Gabriel Mountains crossed his entire windshield.

“So why would you think I might know anything about whether Nick had a kid or not?” Lewis asked.

“Because you two were tight,” Bosch said.

“How would you know that? Just because we were in the same training units doesn’t-”

“He took that swim test for you. He put on your shirt and got counted as you.”

There was a long silence before Lewis asked Bosch how he knew that story.

“I saw the photo,” Bosch said. “His sister told me the story.”

“I haven’t thought about that in a long time,” Lewis said. “But to answer your question, I don’t know if Nick had an heir. If he fathered a child he didn’t tell me.”

“If he fathered a child she would have been born after you all received orders at the end of Field Medical School. Nick would have been in Vietnam.”

“And I in Subic Bay. You said ‘she.’”

“I saw a photo he took. It showed a woman and a baby girl on the beach by the del Coronado. The mother was Latina. Do you remember him with a woman back then?”

“I remember a woman, yes. She was older and she put the hex on him.”

“The hex?”

“He fell under her spell. That was toward the end, when we were at Pendleton. He met her in a bar in Oceanside. They came up there looking for guys like him.”

“What do you mean, ‘like him’?”

“Hispanic, Mexican. There was all this Chicano Pride stuff going on down there at that time. It was like they recruited the Mexican guys off the base. Nick was brown but his parents were white. I knew that because I met them at the graduation. But he told me he was adopted and he knew that his real mother was Mexican. These people tapped into that, I guess. His true identity, you know?”

“And this woman you mentioned was part of that?”

“Yes. I remember we tried to talk sense into him, me and Stanley. But he said he was in love. It wasn’t the Mexican thing. It was her.”

“You remember her name?”

“No, not really. It was so long ago.”

Bosch tried to keep his disappointment out of his voice.

“What did she look like?”

“Dark hair, pretty. She was older but not too old. Twenty-five, maybe thirty. He said she was an artist.”

Bosch knew that if he kept Lewis thinking back to that time, more details might come to him.

“Where did they meet?”

“Must’ve been the Surfrider-we hung there a lot. Or one of those bars near the base.”

“And he’d go to see her on weekend leave?”

“Yeah. There was this place down in San Diego where he would go to see her when he got liberty. It was in the barrio and under a freeway or a bridge and they called it Chicano Way or something like that. It was so long ago it’s hard to remember. But he told me about it. They were trying to make it like a park and they painted graffiti on the freeway. He started calling those people his new familia. He used the Spanish and that was funny because he didn’t even speak Spanish. He had never learned.”

It was all interesting information and Bosch could see where it fit with other parts of the story he already had. He was thinking of what to ask next when the true payoff to the shot-in-the-dark call to Tallahassee came.

“Gabriela,” Lewis said. “It just came to me.”

“That was her name?” Bosch said.

He had failed to keep the excitement out of his voice.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure now,” Lewis said. “Gabriela.”

“Remember a last name?” Bosch tried.

Lewis laughed.

“Man, I can’t believe I pulled her first name up out of the muck.”

“It’s very helpful.”

Bosch started shutting the conversation down. He gave Lewis his phone number and asked him to call if he remembered anything else about Gabriela or Santanello’s time in San Diego.

“So you returned to Tallahassee after you served,” Bosch said, just to move the conversation toward a close.

“Yes, I came right back,” Lewis said. “Had enough of California, Vietnam, all of it. I’ve been here ever since.”

“What kind of law do you practice?”

“Oh, just about any kind of law you need. In a town like Tallahassee it pays to diversify. I like to say the one thing I won’t do is defend FSU football players. I’m a Gator and can’t cross that line.”

Bosch guessed he was speaking to some sort of state rivalry but it was beyond him. His knowledge of sports had only recently stretched past the Dodgers to a cursory interest in the return of the L.A. Rams.

“Can I ask you something?” Lewis said. “Who wants to know if Nick left an heir?”

“You can ask, Mr. Lewis, but that’s the one question I can’t answer.”

“Nick had nothing and his family didn’t have much more. This has got to do with his adoption, right?”

Bosch was silent. Lewis had nailed it.

“I know, you can’t answer,” Lewis said. “I’m a lawyer. I guess I have to respect that.”

Bosch decided to get off the line before Lewis put anything else together and asked another question.

“Thank you, Mr. Lewis, and thank you for your help.”

Bosch disconnected and decided to continue to San Fernando even though he had already found Lewis. He would check in on matters relating to the Screen Cutter and do some Internet work toconfirm the information Lewis had provided. But he knew without a doubt that he would eventually be heading south to San Diego on the case.

A few minutes later he turned onto First Street in San Fernando and saw the three television trucks parked in front of the police station.