The Wrong Side of Goodbye

37

Vibiana Veracruz was stunned to silence when Bosch told her who he was and what he was doing. He showed her his credentials as a state-licensed private investigator. He didn’t mention Whitney Vance by name but told her that he had tracked her through her father’s lineage and believed she and her son were the only two heirs by blood to an industrial fortune. It was she who brought up Vance, having seen media stories in the past few days about the passing of the billionaire industrialist.

“Is that who we’re talking about here?” she asked. “Whitney Vance?”

“What I want to do is confirm the link genetically before we get into names,” Bosch said. “If you are open to it I would take a sample of your DNA through a saliva swab and turn it in to the lab. It should only take a few days, and if we get confirmation, you would have the opportunity to use the attorney I have working with me on this or to seek your own representation. That would be your choice.”

She shook her head as if still not comprehending and sat down on a stool she had pulled away from one of the workbenches.

“It’s just so hard to believe this,” she said.

Bosch remembered a television show from when he was a kid in which a man traveled the country and gave checks for one milliondollars from an unknown benefactor to unsuspecting recipients. He realized he felt like that man. Only Bosch was handing out billions, not millions.

“It is Vance, isn’t it?” Vibiana said. “You haven’t denied it.”

Bosch looked at her for a long moment.

“Does it make a difference who it is?” he asked.

She stood up and came toward him. She gestured at the sculpture with the soldier.

“I read about him this week,” she said. “He helped build the helicopters. His company was part of the war machine that killed his own son. My father, who I never got to know. How could I take that money?”

Bosch nodded.

“I guess it would depend on what you did with it,” he said. “My lawyer called it change-the-world money.”

She looked at him but he could tell she was seeing something else. Maybe an idea that was planted by his words.

“All right,” she said. “Swab me.”

“Okay, but you have to understand something,” Bosch said. “There will be people with power involved in the corporations that currently hold this fortune. They will not be happy to part with it and may go to great lengths to stop it. Not only will your life be changed by the money, but you and your son will have to take measures to protect yourselves until the case runs its course. You will not be able to trust anyone.”

His words clearly gave her pause, as he wanted them to.

“Gilberto,” she said, thinking out loud. Then her eyes flashed toward Bosch. “Do they know you’re here?”

“I’ve taken precautions,” he said. “And I’ll give you a card. If you see anything unusual or feel any kind of threat, you can call me at any time.”

“It’s so surreal,” she said. “When I was coming up the steps today with my coffee, I was thinking about how I didn’t have enough money for resin. I haven’t sold any of my art in seven weeks and I have an arts grant but it just covers living for me and my son. So I’m sculpting my next piece but can’t get the material I need to wrap it and finish it. And then you were just standing there. And you had this crazy story about money and inheritance.”

Bosch nodded.

“So should we do the swab now?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “What do I do?”

“You just have to open your mouth.”

“I can do that.”

Bosch took a tube out of his inside coat pocket and unscrewed the cap. He removed the swab stick and stepped closer to Vibiana. Holding the stick with two fingers he wiped the swab end up and down the inside of her cheek, turning it to get a good sample. He then sealed the stick back in its tube.

“You usually do two-just in case,” he said. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

Bosch repeated the process. It seemed so intrusive to him, his hand so close to her mouth. But Vibiana seemed unfazed by it. He put the second swab back in its tube and sealed it.

“I took a swab from your mother on Monday,” he said. “It will be part of the analysis. They will want to identify her chromosomes and separate them from your father’s and grandfather’s.”

“You went down to San Diego?” she asked.

“Yes. I went by Chicano Park and then over to her apartment. Is that where you grew up?”

“Yes. She’s still in the same place.”

“I showed her a photo. It was of you on that day you met your father. He’s not in it because he was the one who took it.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“I don’t have it with me but I’ll get it to you.”

“So she knows about this. The inheritance. What did she say?”

“She doesn’t know the details. But she told me where to find you and said it was your choice.”

Vibiana didn’t respond. She seemed to be thinking about her mother.

“I’m going to go now,” Bosch said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something.”

He handed her one of the cheap business cards he’d had printed with his name and number, then turned toward the door.

Bosch made his way back to his car, which he had left parked in a lot near the courthouse before his appointment at the D.A.’s Office. As he walked he repeatedly checked his perimeter for surveillance. He saw nothing and soon he was back to the rented Cherokee. He opened the rear hatch of the SUV and flipped up the rug liner in the back. He lifted the lid of the spare tire and tools compartment and removed the padded envelope he had put there that morning.

Closing up the back, he got in behind the wheel and opened the padded envelope. It contained the swab tube provided by Whitney Vance and marked W-V. It also contained two tubes collected from Gabriela Lida marked G-L. With a Sharpie marker he wrote V-V on the side of the two tubes containing the swabs he had just collected from Vibiana.

He put the extra tubes from Vibiana and her mother into his coat pocket and repackaged the envelope so it contained one swab from each of the principals. He put the envelope down on the seat next to him and called Mickey Haller.

“I have the granddaughter’s sample,” he said. “Where are you?”

“In the car,” Haller said. “The Starbucks in Chinatown, parked under the dragons.”

“I’ll be there in five. I have hers, her mother’s, and Vance’s with me. You can take the package to the lab.”

“Perfect. They opened probate today in Pasadena. So I want to get this going. Need confirmation before we make a move.”

“On my way.”

The Starbucks was at Broadway and Cesar Chavez. It took Bosch less than five minutes to shoot over and then spot the Lincoln at a red curb under the twin-dragon gateway to Chinatown. Bosch parked behind Haller’s car, put on the flashers, and got out. He walked up and got in through the door behind the driver. Haller was in the opposite seat with his laptop computer open on a fold-down desk. Bosch knew he was stealing Wi-Fi from the Starbucks.

“There he is,” the lawyer said. “Boyd, why don’t you go in and get us a couple lattes. You want anything, Harry?”

“I’m good,” Bosch said.

Haller handed a twenty-dollar bill over the seat and the driver got out of the car without a word and closed the door. Bosch and Haller were alone now. Bosch handed the package across the seat to him.

“Guard it with your life,” Bosch said.

“Oh, I will,” Haller said. “I’m going to take it in straight from here. Going with CellRight if that’s okay with you. They are close, reliable, and AABB accredited.”

“If you’re okay with them, I’m okay with them. How will this work now?”

“I get this in today, and we will probably hear yea or nay by Friday. Comparing grandparent to grandchild, we’re talking about a twenty-five percent passage of chromosomes. That’s a lot for them to work with.”

“What about the stuff from Dominick?”

“We wait on that. Let’s see what the swabs get us first.”

“Okay. And have you looked at the probate filing yet?”

“Not yet, but I’ll get it by the end of the day. I did hear that they’re saying the decedent had no blood heirs.”

“So what do we do?”

“Well, we wait for confirmation from CellRight, and if we get that, then we put our package together and seek an injunction.”

“Which does what?”

“We ask the court to stop the distribution of the estate. We say, ‘Hold on a minute, we have a valid heir and a holographic will and the means of proving authenticity.’ Then we brace ourselves for the onslaught.”

Bosch nodded.

“They’ll come after us,” Haller said. “You, me, the heir, everybody. Make no mistake, we’re all fair game. They’ll try to make us out as charlatans. You can count on that.”

“I warned Vibiana,” Bosch said. “But I don’t think she understood how relentless they might be.”

“Let’s see how the DNA comes back. If it’s what we think and she’s the heir, then we’ll circle the wagons and get her ready. We’ll probably have to move her and hide her.”

“She’s got a kid.”

“The kid too, then.”

“She needs a big space for her work.”

“Her work might need to be put on hold.”

“Okay.”

Bosch didn’t think that would go over well.

“I told her what you said about it being change-the-world money,” he said. “I think that’s what pulled her in.”

“Does every time.”

Haller bent down to look through the windows and see if hisdriver was waiting to get back behind the wheel. There was no sign of him.

“I heard in the CCB that you filed on the dungeon master,” Haller said.

“Don’t call him that,” Bosch said. “Makes it sound like a joke, and I know the woman he had down there in that place. She’s going to be dealing with the aftermath for a long time.”

“Sorry, I’m just a callous defense attorney. Did he lawyer up yet?”

“I don’t know. But I told you, you don’t want that case. Guy’s a soulless psychopath. You don’t want to get near that.”

“True.”

“This guy, he should get the death penalty, you ask me. But he didn’t kill anyone-that we know about yet.”

Out his window Bosch saw the driver standing in front of the coffee shop. He was holding two coffee cups and waiting to be called back to the Lincoln. He appeared to Bosch to be looking across the street at something. He then made a slight nod.

“Did he just…”

Bosch turned and peered out the back window of the Lincoln to try to see what the driver was looking at.

“What?” Haller said.

“Your driver,” Bosch said. “How long have you had him?”

“Who, Boyd? About two months now.”

“He one of your reformation projects?”

Bosch now leaned forward to look past Haller and out his window. Haller had a history of taking on his clients as drivers in order to help them pay off their legal fees-to him.

“I’ve helped him through a couple of scrapes,” Haller said. “What’s going on?”

“Did you mention CellRight in his presence?” Bosch asked in response. “Does he know where you’re taking the samples?”

Bosch had put two and two together. He had forgotten that morning to check his house and the street out front for cameras, but he remembered Creighton mentioning Haller during the confrontation in the lobby of the police station. If they knew about Haller, then they might also have him under surveillance. There could be a plan to intercept the DNA samples either before they reached CellRight or once they had been turned in.

“Uh, no, I haven’t told him where we’re going,” Haller said. “I haven’t spoken about it in the car. What’s going on?”

“You are probably under surveillance,” Bosch said. “And he might be in on it. I just saw him nod to somebody.”

“Fucking A. Then his ass is grass. I’ll-”

“Hold on a second. Let’s think about this. Do you-”

“Wait.”

Haller put his hand up to stop Bosch from speaking. He then moved his laptop and folded up the desk. He got up and leaned over the seat toward the steering wheel. Bosch heard the air compression thump of the car’s trunk opening.

Haller got out of the car and went to the trunk. Soon Bosch heard it slammed shut and Haller got back into the car with a briefcase. He opened the case and then opened a secret compartment inside it. There was an electronic device secreted in the space and he turned on a switch, then put the case down on the seat between them.

“It’s an RF jammer,” he said. “I take this baby in with me to every client meeting I have in the jail – you never know who’s listening. If anybody’s listening to us now, they’re getting an earful of white noise.”

Bosch was impressed.

“I just bought one of those,” he said. “But it wasn’t in a fancy briefcase.”

“Took it as a partial fee payment from a former client. A cartel courier. He wasn’t going to need it where he was going. So what’s your plan?”

“Do you know of another place to take the swabs?”

Haller nodded.

“California Coding up in Burbank,” he said. “It was down to them or CellRight and CellRight agreed to the push.”

“Give me back the package,” Bosch said. “I’ll take the tubes to CellRight. You take a phony package to California Coding. Make them think that’s where we’re doing the analysis.”

Bosch took the extra tubes containing swabs from Vibiana and Gabriela out of his coat pocket. He didn’t have an extra from Whitney Vance, so, to sell the misdirection in case the tubes fell into the wrong hands, he used the Sharpie to change the initials marked on the tubes. He turned V-V into W-V and G-L to the randomly chosen G-E. He then signaled for the padded envelope. He removed the tubes containing swabs from Vance, Lida, and Veracruz and put them into his coat pocket. He then put the two altered tubes into the envelope and handed it back.

“You take that to California Coding and ask for a blind comparison,” he said. “Don’t let on to your driver or anybody else you think you’re being followed. I’ll go to CellRight.”

“Got it. I still want to kick his ass. Look at him over there.”

Bosch checked the driver again. He was no longer looking across the street.

“There will be time for that later. And I’ll help.”

Haller was writing something on a legal pad. He finished, tore the page off the pad, and handed it to Bosch.

“That’s CellRight and my contact there,” Haller said. “He’s expecting the package.”

Bosch recognized the address. CellRight was out near CalState L.A., where the LAPD lab was located. He could get there in ten minutes but would take thirty to make sure he wasn’t followed.

He opened his door and turned to look back at Haller.

“Keep that cartel briefcase close,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” Haller said. “I will.”

Bosch nodded.

“After I drop this I’m going up to see Ida Townes Forsythe,” he said.

“Good,” Haller said. “We want her on our side.”

Bosch got out just as Boyd came around to the driver’s door. Bosch said nothing to him. He went back to his own car and sat behind the wheel and watched the intersection as Haller’s Lincoln pulled onto Cesar Chavez and headed west. There was a lot of traffic moving through the intersection, but Bosch saw no vehicle that he thought was suspicious or that might be tailing the Lincoln.