The Wrong Side of Goodbye

2

The Vance estate was on San Rafael near the Annandale Golf Club. It was a neighborhood of old money. Homes and estates that had been passed down through generations and guarded behind stone walls and black iron fences. It was a far cry from the Hollywood Hills, where the new money went and the rich left their trash cans out on the street all week. There were no For Sale signs here. You had to know somebody, maybe even share their blood, to buy in.

Bosch parked against the curb about a hundred yards from the gate that guarded the entrance to the Vance estate. Atop it were spikes ornately disguised as flowers. For a few moments he studied the curve of the driveway beyond the gate as it wound and rose into the cleft of two rolling green hills and then disappeared. There was no sign of any structure, not even a garage. All of that would be well back from the street, buffered by geography, iron, and security. But Bosch knew that Whitney Vance, eighty-five years old, was up there somewhere beyond those money-colored hills, waiting for him with something on his mind. Something that required a man from the other side of the spiked gate.

Bosch was twenty minutes early for the appointment and decided to use the time to review several stories he had found on the Internet and downloaded to his laptop that morning.

The general contours of Whitney Vance’s life were known to Bosch as they were most likely known to most Californians. But he still found the details fascinating and even admirable in that Vance was the rare recipient of a rich inheritance who had turned it into something even bigger. He was the fourth-generation Pasadena scion of a mining family that extended all the way back to the California gold rush. Prospecting was what drew Vance’s great-grandfather west but not what the family fortune was founded on. Frustrated by the hunt for gold, the great-grandfather established the state’s first strip-mining operation, extracting multi-tons of iron ore out of the earth in San Bernardino County. Vance’s grandfather followed up with a second strip mine farther south, in Imperial County, and his father parlayed that success into a steel mill and fabrication plant that helped support the dawning aviation industry. At the time, the face of that industry belonged to Howard Hughes, and he counted Nelson Vance as first a contractor and then a partner in many different aviation endeavors. Hughes would become godfather to Nelson Vance’s only child.

Whitney Vance was born in 1931 and as a young man apparently set out to blaze a unique path for himself. He initially went off to the University of Southern California to study filmmaking but he eventually dropped out and came back to the family fold, transferring to the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, the school “Uncle Howard” had attended. It was Hughes who urged young Whitney to study aeronautical engineering at Caltech.

As with the elders of his family, when it was his turn Vance pushed the family business in new and increasingly successful directions, always with a connection to the family’s original product: steel. He won numerous government contracts to manufacture aircraft parts and founded Advance Engineering, which held the patents on many of them. Couplings that were used for the safefueling of aircraft were perfected in the family steel mill and were still used today at every airport in the world. Ferrite extracted from the iron ore at Vance mining operations was used in the earliest efforts to build aircraft that avoided radar detection. These processes were meticulously patented and protected by Vance and they guaranteed his company’s participation in the decades-long development of stealth technologies. Vance and his company were part of the so-called military-industrial complex, and the Vietnam War saw their value grow exponentially. Every mission in or out of that country over the entire length of the war involved equipment from Advance Engineering. Bosch remembered seeing the company logo-an A with an arrow through the middle of it-imprinted on the steel walls of every helicopter he had ever flown on in Vietnam.

Bosch was startled by a sharp rap on the window beside him. He looked up to see a uniformed Pasadena patrol officer, and in the rearview he saw the black-and-white parked behind him. He had become so engrossed in his reading that he had not even heard the cop car come up on him.

He had to turn on the Cherokee’s engine to lower the window. Bosch knew what this was about. A twenty-two-year-old vehicle in need of paint parked outside the estate of a family that helped build the state of California constituted a suspicious activity. It didn’t matter that the car was freshly cleaned or that he was wearing a crisp suit and tie rescued from a plastic storage bag. It had taken less than fifteen minutes for the police to respond to his intrusion into the neighborhood.

“I know how this looks, Officer,” he began. “But I have an appointment across the street in about five minutes and I was just-”

“That’s wonderful,” the cop said. “Do you mind stepping out of the car?”

Bosch looked at him for a moment. He saw the nameplate above his breast pocket said Cooper.

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked.

“No, sir, I’m not,” Cooper said. “Please step out of the car.”

Bosch took a deep breath, opened the door, and did as he was told. He raised his hands to shoulder height and said, “I’m a police officer.”

Cooper immediately tensed, as Bosch knew he would.

“I’m unarmed,” Bosch said quickly. “My weapon’s in the glove box.”

At that moment he was thankful for the edict typed on the check stub telling him to come to the Vance appointment unarmed.

“Let me see some ID,” Cooper demanded.

Bosch carefully reached into an inside pocket in his suit coat and pulled his badge case. Cooper studied the detective’s badge and then the ID.

“This says you’re a reserve officer,” he said.

“Yep,” Bosch said. “Part-timer.”

“About fifteen miles off your reservation, aren’t you? What are you doing here, Detective Bosch?”

He handed the badge case back and Bosch put it away.

“Well, I was trying to tell you,” he said. “I have an appointment- which you are going to make me late for-with Mr. Vance, who I’m guessing you know lives right over there.”

Bosch pointed toward the black gate.

“Is this appointment police business?” Cooper asked.

“It’s actually none of your business,” Bosch replied.

They held each other’s cold stares for a long moment, neither man blinking. Finally Bosch spoke.

“Mr. Vance is waiting for me,” he said. “Guy like that, he’ll probably ask why I’m late and he’ll probably do something about it. You got a first name, Cooper?”

Cooper blinked.

“Yeah, it’s fuck you,” he said. “Have a nice day.”

He turned and started back toward the patrol car.

“Thank you, Officer,” Bosch called after him.

Bosch got back into his car and immediately pulled away from the curb. If the old car still had had the juice to leave rubber, he would have done so. But the most he could show Cooper, who remained parked at the curb, was a plume of blue smoke from the ancient exhaust pipe.

He pulled into the entrance channel at the gate to the Vance estate and drove up to a camera and communication box. Almost immediately he was greeted by a voice.

“Yes?”

It was male, young, and tiredly arrogant. Bosch leaned out the window and spoke loudly even though he knew he probably didn’t have to.

“Harry Bosch to see Mr. Vance. I have an appointment.”

After a moment the gate in front of him started to roll open.

“Follow the driveway to the parking apron by the security post,” the voice said. “Mr. Sloan will meet you there at the metal detector. Leave all weapons and recording devices in the glove compartment of your vehicle.”

“Got it,” Bosch said.

“Drive up,” the voice said.

The gate was all the way open now and Bosch drove through. He followed the cobblestone driveway through a finely manicured set of emerald hills until he came to a second fence line and a guard shack. The double-fencing security measures here were similar to those employed at most prisons Bosch had visited-of course, with the opposite intention of keeping people out instead of in.

The second gate rolled open and a uniformed guard stepped out of a booth to signal Bosch through and to direct him to the parkingapron. As he passed, Bosch waved a hand and noticed the Trident Security patch on the shoulder of the guard’s navy blue uniform.

After parking, Bosch was instructed to place his keys, phone, watch, and belt in a plastic tub and then to walk through an airport-style metal detector while two more Trident men watched. They returned everything but the phone, which they explained would be placed in the glove box of his car.

“Anybody else get the irony here?” he asked as he put his belt back through the loops of his pants. “You know, the family made their money on metal-now you have to go through a metal detector to get inside the house.”

Neither of the guards said anything.

“Okay, I guess it’s just me, then,” Bosch said.

Once he buckled his belt he was passed off to the next level of security, a man in a suit with the requisite earbud and wrist mic and the dead-eyed Secret Service stare to go with them. His head was shaved just so he could complete the tough-guy look. He did not say his name but Bosch assumed he was the Sloan mentioned on the intercom earlier. He escorted Bosch wordlessly through the delivery entrance of a massive gray-stone mansion that Bosch guessed would rival anything the Du Ponts or Vanderbilts had to offer. According to Wikipedia, he was calling on six billion dollars. Bosch had no doubt as he entered that this would be the closest to American royalty he would ever get.

He was led to a room paneled in dark wood with dozens of framed 8 x 10 photographs hung in four rows across one wall. There were a couple of couches and a bar at the end of the room. The escort in the suit pointed Bosch to one of the couches.

“Sir, have a seat, and Mr. Vance’s secretary will come for you when he is ready to see you.”

Bosch took a seat on the couch facing the wall of photos.

“Would you like some water?” the suit asked.

“No, I’m fine,” Bosch said.

The suit took a position next to the door they had entered through and clasped one wrist with the other hand in a posture that said he was alert and ready for anything.

Bosch used the waiting time to study the photographs. They offered a record of Whitney Vance’s life and the people he had met over the course of it. The first photo depicted Howard Hughes and a young teenager he assumed was Vance. They were leaning against the unpainted metal skin of a plane. From there the photos appeared to run left to right in chronological order. They depicted Vance with numerous well-known figures of industry, politics, and the media. Bosch couldn’t put a name to every person Vance posed with but from Lyndon Johnson to Larry King he knew who most of them were. In all the photos, Vance displayed the same half smile, the corner of his mouth on the left side curled up, as if to communicate to the camera lens that it wasn’t his idea to pose for a picture. The face grew older photo to photo, the eyelids more hooded, but the smile was always the same.

There were two photos of Vance with Larry King, the longtime interviewer of celebrities and newsmakers on CNN. In the first, Vance and King were seated across from each other in the studio recognizable as King’s set for more than two decades. There was a book standing upright on the desk between them. In the second photo Vance was using a gold pen to autograph the book for King. Bosch got up and went to the wall to look more closely at the photos. He put on his glasses and leaned in close to the first photo so he could read the title of the book Vance was promoting on the show.

STEALTH: The Making of the Disappearing Plane By Whitney P. Vance

The title jogged loose a memory and Bosch recalled something about Whitney Vance writing a family history that the critics trashed more for what was left out than for what it contained. His father, Nelson Vance, had been a ruthless businessman and controversial political figure in his day. He was said but never proven to be a member of a cabal of wealthy industrialists who were supporters of eugenics-the so-called science of improving the human race through controlled breeding that would eliminate undesirable attributes. After the Nazis employed a similar perverted doctrine to carry out genocide in World War II, people like Nelson Vance hid their beliefs and affiliations.

His son’s book amounted to little more than a vanity project full of hero worship, with little mention of the negatives. Whitney Vance had become such a recluse in his later life that the book became a reason to bring him out into public light and ask him about the things omitted.

“Mr. Bosch?”

Bosch turned from the photos to a woman standing by the entrance to a hallway on the other side of the room. She looked to be almost seventy years old and had her gray hair in a no-nonsense bun on top of her head.

“I’m Mr. Vance’s secretary, Ida,” she said. “He will see you now.”

Bosch followed her into the hallway. They walked for a distance that seemed like a city block before going up a short set of stairs to another hallway, this one traversing a wing of the mansion built on a higher slope of the hill.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Ida said.

“It’s okay,” Bosch said. “I enjoyed checking out the photos.”

“A lot of history there.”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Vance is looking forward to seeing you.”

“Great. I’ve never met a billionaire before.”

His graceless remark ended the conversation. It was as though his mention of money was entirely crass and uncouth in a mansion built as a monument to money.

Finally they arrived at a set of double doors and Ida ushered Bosch into Whitney Vance’s home office.

The man Bosch had come to see was sitting behind a desk, his back to an empty fireplace big enough to take shelter in during a tornado. With a thin hand so white it looked like he was wearing a Latex glove, he motioned for Bosch to come forward.

Bosch stepped up to the desk, and Vance pointed to the lone leather chair in front of it. He made no offer to shake Bosch’s hand. As he sat, Bosch noticed that Vance was in a wheelchair with electric controls extending from the left armrest. He saw the desk was clear of work product except for a single white piece of paper that was either blank or had its contents facedown on the polished dark wood.

“Mr. Vance,” Bosch said. “How are you?”

“I’m old-that’s how I am,” Vance said. “I have fought like hell to defeat time but some things can’t be beat. It is hard for a man in my position to accept, but I am resigned, Mr. Bosch.”

He gestured with that bony white hand again, taking in all of the room with a sweep.

“All of this will soon be meaningless,” he said.

Bosch glanced around in case there was something Vance wanted him to see. There was a sitting area to the right with a long white couch and matching chairs. There was an office bar that a host could slip behind if necessary. There were paintings on two walls that were merely splashes of color.

Bosch looked back at Vance, and the old man offered the lopsided smile Bosch had seen in the photos in the waiting room,the upward curve on only the left side. Vance couldn’t complete a full smile. According to the photos Bosch had seen, he never could.

Bosch didn’t quite know how to respond to the old man’s words about death and meaninglessness. Instead, he just pressed on with an introduction he had thought about repeatedly since meeting with Creighton.

“Well, Mr. Vance, I was told you wanted to see me, and you have paid me quite a bit of money to be here. It may not be a lot to you, but it is to me. What can I do for you, sir?”

Vance cut the smile and nodded.

“A man who gets right to the point,” he said. “I like that.”

He reached to his chair’s controls and moved closer to the desk.

“I read about you in the newspaper,” he said. “Last year, I believe. The case with that doctor and the shoot-out. You seemed to me like a man who stands his ground, Mr. Bosch. They put a lot of pressure on you but you stood up to it. I like that. I need that. There’s not a lot of it around anymore.”

“What do you want me to do?” Bosch asked again.

“I want you to find someone for me,” Vance said. “Someone who might never have existed.”