Trunk Music

PART II

BOSCH FELL ASLEEP a few minutes after belting himself into a window seat on the Southwest shuttle from Burbank to Las Vegas. It was a deep, dreamless sleep and he didn’t wake until the clunk of the landing gear hitting the tarmac jolted him forward. As the plane taxied to its gate he came out of the fog and felt himself re-energized by the hour-long rest.

It was high noon and 104 degrees when he walked out of the terminal. As he headed toward the garage where his rental car was waiting, he felt his newfound energy being leached away by the heat. After finding his car in its assigned parking stall, he put the air-conditioning on high and headed toward the Mirage.

Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came here. It was the only place left. Beneath the veneer of glitz and money and energy and sex beat a dark heart. No matter how much they tried to dress her up with neon and family entertainment, she was still a whore.

But if any place could sway him from that opinion it was the Mirage. It was the symbol of the new Las Vegas, clean, opulent, legit. The windows of its tower glinted gold in the sun. And inside no money had been spared in its rich casino design. As Bosch walked through the lobby he was first mesmerized by the white tigers in a huge glassed-in environment that any zookeeper in the world would salivate over. Next, as he waited in line to check in, he eyed the huge aquarium behind the front desk. Sharks lazily turned and moved back and forth behind the glass. Just like the white tigers.

When it was Bosch’s turn to check in, the desk clerk noticed a flag on his reservation and called security. A day-shift supervisor named Hank Meyer appeared and introduced himself. He said that Bosch would have the complete cooperation of the hotel and casino.

“Tony Aliso was a good and valued customer,” he said. “We want to do what we can to help. But it’s highly unlikely that his death had anything to do with his stay here. We run the cleanest ship in the desert.”

“I know that, Hank,” Bosch said. “And I know it is a reputation you don’t want blemished. I’m not expecting to find anything inside the Mirage, but I need to go through the motions. So do you, right?”

“Right.”

“Did you know him?”

“No, I didn’t. I’ve been on day shift the entire three years I’ve been here. From what I understand, Mr. Aliso primarily gambled at night.”

Meyer was about thirty and had the clean-cut image that the Mirage, and now all of Las Vegas, wanted to present to the world. He went on to explain that the room Aliso had last stayed in at the hotel was sealed and was being held that way for Bosch’s inspection. He gave Bosch the key and asked that he return it as soon as he was finished with the room. He also said the poker pit dealers and sports book clerks who worked the night shift would be made available for interviews. All of them knew Aliso because of his regular visits.

“You have an eye in the sky over the poker tables?”

“Uh, yes, we do.”

“You have video from Thursday going into Friday? I’d like to see it if you do.”

“That won’t be a problem.”

Bosch made arrangements to meet Meyer at the second-floor security office at four. That was when the casino shifts changed and the dealers who knew Aliso would report for work. He could look at the surveillance tape from the poker pit’s overhead camera then as well.

A few minutes later, alone in his room, Bosch sat on the bed and looked around. The room was smaller than he had expected but it was very nice, by far the most comfortably appointed room he had ever seen in Las Vegas. He pulled the phone off the side table onto his lap and called the Hollywood Division to check in. Edgar picked up the line.

“It’s Bosch.”

“Well, the Michelangelo of murder, the Rodin of homicide.”

“Funny. So what’s going on over there?”

“Well, for one thing, Bullets won the battle,” Edgar said. “Nobody from RHD has come around to snatch the case.”

“That’s good. What about you? You making any progress?”

“I almost have the murder book up to speed. I have to put it aside now, though. The screenwriter is coming in at one-thirty for a sitdown. Says he doesn’t need a lawyer.”

“Okay, I’ll leave you to it. Tell the lieutenant I checked in.”

“Yeah, and by the way, she wants another confab on how things are going at six. You should call in and we’ll put you on the speaker.”

“Will do.”

Bosch sat on the bed a few moments wishing he could lie back on it and sleep. But he knew he couldn’t. He had to drive the case forward.

He got up and unpacked his overnighter, hanging his two shirts and one pair of pants in the closet. He put his extra underwear and socks on the closet shelf, then left the room and took an elevator to the top floor. The room Aliso had used was at the end of the corridor. The card key Meyer had given him worked without a problem and he stepped into a room about twice the size of his own. It was a combination bedroom and sitting room and had an oval Jacuzzi next to the windows that looked out across the expanse of the desert and the smooth cocoa-colored mountain chain to the northwest of the city. Directly below was a view of the pool and the hotel’s porpoise-habitat attraction. Looking down, he could see one of the gray fish moving beneath the shimmering water. It looked as out of place as Bosch felt in the suite he stood in.

“Dolphins in the desert,” he said out loud.

The room was plush by any standards in any city and obviously was kept for high rollers. Bosch stood by the bed for a few moments and just looked around. There was nothing that seemed out of place and the thick carpet had the uniformed waves left by a recent vacuuming. He guessed that if there had been anything of evidentiary value in the room it was gone now. But still he went through the motions. He looked under the bed and in the drawers. Behind the bureau he found a matchbook from a local Mexican restaurant called La Fuentes, but there was no telling how long it had been there.

The bathroom was tiled in pink marble floor to ceiling. The fixtures were polished brass. Bosch looked around for a moment but saw nothing of interest. He opened the glass door to the shower stall and looked in and also found nothing. But as he was closing the door his eyes caught on something on the drain. He reopened the door and looked down, then pressed his finger on the tiny speck of gold caught in the rubber sealant around the drain fitting. He raised his finger and found the tiny piece of glitter stuck to his finger. He guessed that it was a match to the pieces of glitter found in the cuffs of Tony Aliso’s pants. Now all he needed was to figure out what they were and where they had come from.

The Metro Police Department was on Stewart Street in downtown. Bosch stopped at the front desk and explained he was an out-of-town investigator wanting to make a courtesy check-in with the homicide squad. He was directed to the third-floor detective bureau, where a desk man escorted him through a deserted squad room to the commander’s office. Captain John Felton was a thick-necked, deeply tanned man of about fifty. Bosch figured he had probably given the welcome speech to at least a hundred cops from all over the country in the last month alone. Las Vegas was that kind of place. Felton asked Bosch to sit down and he gave him the standard spiel.

“Detective Bosch, welcome to Las Vegas. Lucky for you I decided to come in on the holiday to take care of some of this paperwork that haunts me. Otherwise, there’d be nobody here. Anyway, I hope you find your stay enjoyable and productive. If there is anything you need, don’t hesitate to call. I can promise you nothing, but if you request something that is within my power to provide, I will be more than happy to provide it. So, that out of the way, why don’t you tell me what brings you here?”

Bosch gave him a quick rundown on the case. Felton wrote down the name Tony Aliso and the last days he was known to have stayed in Las Vegas and where.

“I’m just trying to run down his activities on the days he was here.”

“You think he was followed from here and then taken off in L.A.?”

“I don’t think anything at the moment. We don’t have evidence of that.”

“And I hope you won’t find any. That’s not the kind of press we want to get in L.A. What else you got?”

Bosch pulled his briefcase onto his lap and opened it.

“I’ve got two sets of prints taken off the body. We-”

“The body?”

“He was wearing a treated leather jacket. We got the prints with the laser. Anyway, we ran them on AFIS, NCIC, California DOJ, the works, but got nothing. I thought maybe you’d run them through your own computer, see what happens.”

While the Automated Fingerprint Identification System used by the LAPD was a computer network of dozens of fingerprint databases across the country, it didn’t connect them all. And most big-city police departments had their own private databases. In Vegas they would be prints taken from people who applied for jobs for the city or the casinos. They were also prints taken from people on the sly, prints the department shouldn’t legally have because their owners had simply fallen under the suspicion of the department but had never been arrested. It was against this database that Bosch was hopeful Felton would check the sets from the Aliso case.

“Well, let me see what you have,” Felton said. “I can’t promise anything. We’ve probably gotta few that the national nets don’t, but it’s a long shot.”

Bosch handed over print cards Art Donovan had prepared for him.

“So you are starting at the Mirage?” the captain asked after he put the cards to the side of his desk.

“Yeah. I’ll show his picture around, go through the motions, see what I can come up with.”

“You’re telling me everything you know, right?”

“Right,” Bosch lied.

“Okay.” Felton opened a desk drawer and took out a business card and handed it over to Bosch. “That’s got my office and pager on it. Call me if anything comes up. I’ve got the pager with me at all times. Meantime, I’ll get back to you about the prints, one way or the other, by tomorrow morning.”

Bosch thanked him and left. In the lobby of the police station he called the SID office at LAPD and asked Donovan if he’d had time to check out the tiny pieces of glitter they had found in the cuffs of Tony Aliso’s pants.

“Yeah, but you aren’t going to like it,” Donovan said. “It’s just glitter. Tinted aluminum. You know, like they use in costuming and in celebrations. Your guy probably went to a party or something, they were throwing this stuff around, maybe popping it out of party favors or something, and some of it got on him. He could brush off what he could see, but he didn’t see the particles that fell into the cuffs of his pants. They stayed.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Uh, no. Not on the evidence at least.”

“Then on what?”

“Well, Harry, you know the guy from OCID that you were talking on the phone with last night while we were in the shed?”

“Carbone?”

“Yeah, Dominic Carbone. Well, he dropped by the lab today. He was asking questions about what we found last night.”

Bosch’s vision darkened. He said nothing and Donovan continued.

“He said he was here on something else and was just acting curious. But, Harry, I don’t know. It seemed more than just a passing interest, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. How much did you tell him?”

“Well, before I caught on and started wondering what was going on, I sort of let slip we pulled prints off the jacket. Sorry, Harry, but I was proud. It’s rare that we pull righteous prints off a dead guy’s jacket, and I guess I was sort of braggin’ about it.”

“It’s okay. You tell him we didn’t get anything with them?”

“Yeah, I said they came back clean. But then…then he asked for a copy of the set, said he might be able to do something with them, whatever that means.”

“What did you do?”

“What do you think, I gave him a set.”

“You what?”

“Just kidding, Harry. I told him to call you if he wanted a set.”

“Good. What else you tell him?”

“That’s it, Harry.”

“Okay, Art, it’s cool. I’ll check you later.”

“See you, Harry. Hey, where are you, anyway?”

“Vegas.”

“Really? Hey, put down a five for me on seven on the roulette wheel. Do it one time. I’ll pay you when you get back. Unless I win. Then you pay me.”

Bosch got back to his room forty-five minutes before his appointment with Hank Meyer. He used the time to shower, shave and change into one of his fresh shirts. He felt refreshed, ready to go back into the desert heat.

Meyer had arranged to have the sports book clerks and dealers who worked the poker pit on the previous Thursday and Friday evening shifts to be interviewed one at a time in his office. There were six men and three women. Eight were dealers and one was the clerk Aliso always placed his sports bets with. During any shift, the poker dealers rotated around the casino’s six poker tables every twenty minutes. This meant that all eight had dealt cards to Aliso during his last visit to Las Vegas, and by virtue of his regular trips to the casino, they readily recognized him and knew him.

With Meyer sitting by watching, Bosch quickly moved through the interviews with the poker dealers in an hour. He was able to establish that Aliso usually played the five-to-ten table. This meant each hand started with a five-dollar ante and each deal carried a minimum bet of five dollars and a maximum of ten. Three raises were allowed per deal. Since the game was seven card stud, that meant there were five deals per hand. Bosch quickly realized that if a table was full with eight players, each hand could easily result in several hundred dollars being at stake in the pot. Aliso was playing in a league far removed from the Friday night poker games Bosch had participated in with the dicks from the detective bureau.

According to the dealers, Aliso had played for about three hours on Thursday night and had come out about even. He played another two hours early Friday evening, and it was estimated that he left the tables a couple thousand short. None of them recalled Aliso ever being a big winner or loser during previous visits. He always came out a few thousand light or heavy. He seemed to know when to quit.

The dealers also noted that Aliso was always quick with the gratuity. His standard tip was ten dollars in chips for every win, a twenty-five chip on particularly big pots. It was that practice more than anything else that endeared him to their memories. He always played alone, drank gin and tonic and small-talked with the other players. In recent months, the dealers said, Aliso had been in the company of a young blond woman, barely into her twenties. She never played but would work the slots nearby and come back to Tony when she needed more money. Tony never introduced her to anybody and none of the dealers ever overheard her name. In his notebook, where Bosch jotted this down, he wrote “Layla?” after this entry.

After the dealers came Aliso’s favorite sports book clerk. She was a mousy-looking bottle-blonde named Irma Chantry. She lit a cigarette as soon as she sat down and talked in a voice that indicated she had never gone long without a smoke. She said that on both of the last two nights Aliso had been in town he had bet on the Dodgers.

“He had a system,” she said. “He always doubled up until he won.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, that first night he put a grand down on the Dodgers to win. They lost. So the next day he comes in and puts down two big ones on them again. They won. So after you take out the casino vig, he was almost a grand up for the trip. Except he never picked it up.”

“He didn’t collect?”

“Nope. But that’s not unusual. His chit was good as long as he kept it. He could come in anytime and we’d stick it in the computer. It’d happened before. He’d win but he wouldn’t collect until the next time he was in town.”

“How do you know he didn’t take it to another clerk?”

“Tony wouldn’t do that. He always cashed out with me, that way he could tip me. He always said I was his lucky charm.”

Bosch thought a moment. He knew the Dodgers had played at home Friday night and Aliso’s plane left Las Vegas at ten. Therefore, it was a pretty safe bet that Aliso had to be at McCarran International or already on his plane heading back to L.A. before the game was over. But there was no betting receipt found in his wallet or on his person. Harry considered the missing briefcase again. Would it have been in there? Could a betting slip worth four thousand dollars minus the vig be motive for his murder? It seemed unlikely, but still, it was something to pursue. He looked at Irma, who was drawing so hard on her cigarette that he could see the outline of her teeth on her cheeks.

“What if somebody else cashed the bet? With another clerk. Is there any way to tell that?”

Irma hesitated and Meyer broke in.

“There’s a good chance,” he said. “Each receipt is coded with a clerk number and time the bet was placed.”

He looked at Irma.

“Irma, you remember taking very many two-thousand-dollar bets on the Dodgers on Friday?”

“Nope, not a one, other than Tony’s.”

“We’ll get on it,” Meyer said to Bosch. “We’ll start going through the cashed receipts going back to Friday night. If Mr. Aliso’s bet was cashed, then we’ll know when it was cashed and we’ll have video of who cashed it.”

Bosch looked at Irma again. She was the only one of the casino employees he had talked to who had referred to Aliso by his first name. He wanted to ask her if there was something more than a gambling relationship between them. But he knew that it was likely that employees were forbidden by the casino to date or fraternize with the guests. He couldn’t ask her in front of Meyer and expect a straight reply. He made a mental note to track Irma down later and then excused her from the interview.

Bosch looked at his watch and saw he had forty minutes until the conference call with Billets and the others. He asked Meyer if he’d had a chance to get the surveillance tapes from the eye in the sky over the poker pit for Thursday and Friday.

“I just want to see the guy gambling,” he said. “I want to get a feel for him in life.”

“I understand and, yes, the tapes are ready for viewing. I told you we wanted to cooperate completely.”

They left the office and walked down a corridor to a tech room. The room was dimly lit and very quiet except for the thrum of an air conditioner. There were six consoles arranged in two lines where men in gray blazers sat and watched banks of six video monitors per console. On the video screens Bosch could see various overhead views of gambling tables. Each console had an electronic control board that allowed the operator to change focus or magnification of a particular camera view.

“If they wanted to,” Meyer whispered, “they could tell you what cards a player is holding at any black jack table in the house. It’s amazing.”

Meyer led Bosch to a supervisor’s office off the tech room. There was more video equipment as well as a bank of tape storage units. There was a small desk and another man in a gray blazer sat behind it. Meyer introduced him as Cal Smoltz, the supervisor.

“Cal, are we set up?”

“This screen here,” Smoltz said, pointing to one of the fifteen-inch monitors. “We’ll start with Thursday. I had one of the dealers come in and ID your guy. He shows up at eight-twenty on Thursday and plays until eleven.”

He started the tape. It was grainy black and white, similar to the quality of the Archway surveillance tape, but this one was filmed in real time. No jerking movements. It began with the man Bosch recognized as Aliso being led to an open chair at a table by a pit boss. The pit boss carried a rack of chips which he put down on the table in front of Aliso’s spot. Aliso nodded and exchanged smiles with the dealer, a woman Bosch had interviewed earlier, and began to play.

“How much in the rack?” Bosch asked.

“Five hundred,” Smoltz said. “I’ve already gone through this on fast speed. He never buys another rack and at the end when he cashes out, he looks like he’s just shy of a full rack. You want it on real time or fast speed?”

“Speed it up.”

Bosch watched closely as the tape sped through the hours. He saw Aliso take four gin and tonics, fold early on most of the deals, win five big pots and lose six others. It was pretty uneventful. Smoltz slowed the tape down when the time counter neared eleven, and Bosch watched as Aliso called for the pit boss, cashed out and left the frame of the camera.

“Okay,” Smoltz said. “On Friday, we have two tapes.”

“How come?” Bosch asked.

“He played at two tables. When he first showed up, there wasn’t a seat open at the five-and-dime table. We only have one because there aren’t that many customers who want to play for those stakes. So he played on a one-to-five until something came open. This tape is the one-to-five, the cheaper table.”

Another video began and Bosch watched as Aliso went through the same motions as in the other tape. This time, Bosch noticed, Aliso was wearing the leather sports jacket. He also noticed that while Aliso exchanged the routine nod and smile with the dealer, he thought he saw Aliso nod at a player across the table. It was a woman and she nodded back. But the angle of the camera was bad and Bosch could not see her face. He told Smoltz to keep it on real-time play and he watched the tape for a few minutes, waiting to see if any other acknowledgment would pass between the two players.

It appeared that no further communication was occurring between the two. But five minutes into the tape a dealer rotation occurred, and when the new dealer sat down, also a woman Bosch had interviewed an hour earlier, she acknowledged both Aliso and the woman across the table from him.

“Can you freeze it there?” Bosch asked.

Without answering, Smoltz froze the image on the screen.

“Okay,” Bosch said. “Which dealer is that?”

“That’s Amy Rohrback. You talked to her.”

“Right. Hank, could you bring her back up here?”

“Uh, sure. Can I ask why?”

“This player,” Bosch said, pointing on the screen to the woman across from Aliso. “She acknowledged Aliso when he sat down. Amy Rohrback just acknowledged her. She must be a regular. She knew Aliso and Rohrback. I might want to talk to her and your dealer might know her name.”

“Okay, I’ll go get her, but if she’s in the middle of a dealing rotation I’ll have to wait.”

“That’s fine.”

While Meyer went down to the casino, Bosch and Smoltz continued to review the tapes on fast speed. Aliso played for twenty-five minutes at the one-to-five table before the pit boss came around, picked up his rack of chips and moved him to the more expensive five-to-ten table. Smoltz put in the tape for that table and Aliso played there, losing miserably, for two more hours. Three times he bought five-hundred-dollar racks of chips and each time he quickly lost them. Finally, he put the few remaining chips he had left down as a tip for the dealer and got up and left the table.

The tape was finished and Meyer still hadn’t returned with Rohrback. Smoltz said he would spool up the tape with the mystery woman on it so it would be ready. When it was, Bosch told him to fast-forward it to see if there was ever a moment when her face was visible. Smoltz did so and after five minutes of straining to watch the quick movements of the people on the tape, Bosch saw the mystery woman look up at the camera.

“There! Back it up and slow it down.”

Smoltz did so and Bosch watched the screen as the woman took out a cigarette, lit it and leaned her head back, her face toward the ceiling camera, and exhaled. The discharged smoke blurred her image. But before it had done so, Bosch thought he had recognized her. He was frozen to silence. Smoltz backed the tape up to the moment her face was most clearly visible and froze the image on the screen. Bosch just stared silently.

Smoltz was saying something about the image being the best they could hope for when the door opened and Meyer came back in. He was alone.

“Uh, Amy had just started a deal set, so it’s going to be another ten minutes or so. I gave her the message to come back up.”

“You can call down there and tell her never mind,” Bosch said, his eyes still on the screen.

“Really? How come?”

“I know who she is.”

“Who is she?”

Bosch was silent a moment. He didn’t know if it was seeing her light the cigarette or some pang of deeper anxiety, but he dearly wanted a cigarette.

“Just somebody. I knew her a long time ago.”

Bosch sat on the bed with the phone on his lap, waiting for the conference call. But his mind was far off. He was remembering a woman he had long believed was out of his life. What had it been now, four, five years? His mind was such a rush of thoughts and emotions, he couldn’t remember for sure. It had been long enough, he realized. It should be no surprise to him that she was out of prison by now.

“Eleanor Wish,” he said out loud.

He thought of the jacaranda trees outside her townhouse in Santa Monica. He thought of them making love and the small crescent scar barely visible on her jawline. He remembered the question she had asked him so long ago, when they were making love. “Do you believe you can be alone and not be lonely?”

The phone rang. Bosch jerked out of his reverie and answered. It was Billets.

“Okay, Harry, we’re all here. Can you hear me all right?”

“It’s not good but it probably won’t get any better.”

“Right, city equipment. Okay, let’s start by everybody kind of reporting on the day’s events. Harry, you want to go first?”

“All right. There’s not a lot to tell.”

He went over the details of what he had done so far, stressing the missing betting receipt as something to watch for. He told of his review of the surveillance tapes but left out mention of his recognizing Eleanor Wish. He had decided that there was no definitive sign of a connection between her and Aliso and that for the time being he would keep it to himself. He ended his summary by telling the others of his plans to check out Dolly’s, the place Aliso had last called from his office line at Archway, and the woman named Layla who was mentioned when Bosch called there.

Next it was Edgar’s turn. He announced the flavor-of-the-month screenwriter had been cleared through alibi and Edgar’s own gut instinct that the young man might have rightfully hated Aliso but was not of the personality type that would act on that hate with a twenty-two.

Edgar said he had also interviewed the employees at the garage where Aliso had his car washed and waxed while he went to Las Vegas. Part of the service was airport pickup, and Edgar said the man who picked Aliso up said that Tony was alone, relaxed and in no hurry.

“It was a routine pickup,” Edgar said. “Aliso took his car and went home. Gave the guy a twenty-buck tip. So whoever put him down, they intercepted him on the way home. My guess is it was somewhere up there on Mulholland. Lot of deserted curves. You could stop a guy if you did it quick. Probably two people.”

“What did the valet say about luggage?” Bosch asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Edgar said. “He said that as near as he could remember, Tony had the two bags the wife described, a silver briefcase and one of those hanging bags. He hadn’t checked either one for the flight.”

Bosch nodded, though he was alone.

“What about the media?” Bosch said. “We put anything out yet?”

“It’s being handled,” Billets said. “Media relations is putting out a release first thing tomorrow. It will have a picture of the Rolls. They’ll also make the car available at the OPG for video. And I’ll be available for sound bites. I’m hoping the stations will pick it up. Anything else, Jerry?”

Edgar concluded by saying he had the murder book up to speed and that he was halfway through the list of plaintiffs from the various lawsuits against Aliso. He said he would be setting up interviews for the next day with others who had allegedly been wronged by Aliso. Lastly, he said he had called the coroner’s office and the autopsy on Aliso had not yet been scheduled.

“Okay,” Billets said. “Kiz, what do you have?”

Rider broke her report into two parts. The first was on her interview with Veronica Aliso, which she covered quickly, saying the woman had been extremely closemouthed during their morning interview in comparison to the night before when Bosch and Rider brought her the news of her husband’s death. The morning session consisted mostly of yes and no answers and a few added details. The couple had been married seventeen years. They had no children. Veronica Aliso had been in two of her husband’s films and never worked again.

“You think she talked to a lawyer about talking to us?” Bosch asked.

“She didn’t say so, but I think that’s exactly what’s going on,” Rider said. “Just getting what I got was like pulling teeth.”

“Okay, what else?” Billets said, trying to keep the discussion moving.

Rider went on to the second part of her day’s investigation, which was the focus on the financial records of Anthony Aliso. Even listening on the poor conference line connection, Bosch could tell Kiz was excited about what she had learned so far.

“Basically, this guy’s financial portfolio shows an extremely comfortable standard of living. He’s got high-five-figure sums in his personal bank accounts, zeroed-out credit cards, that house that has a seven-hundred-thousand mortgage against a value of a million one. That’s it, though, as far as what I could find. The Rolls is leased, his wife’s Lincoln is leased, and the office we know is leased.”

She paused a moment before going on.

“Incidentally, Harry, if you have the time, here’s something you might want to check out over there. Both the cars are leased to his company, TNA Productions, through a dealership over there in Vegas. You might want to check it out if there’s time. It’s called Ridealong-one word-Incorporated. The address is two thousand and two Industrial Drive, suite three-thirty.”

Bosch’s jacket, with his notebook inside it, was on a chair on the other side of the room. He wrote the name and address down on a little pad that was on the night table.

“Okay,” Rider said, “so now we go on to his business, and this is where it gets pretty interesting. I’m really only halfway through the records we pulled out of his office, but so far it looks like this guy was into a class A scam. And I’m not talking about ripping off some schmuck’s student screenplays. I think that was just his side hobby. I’m talking about him running a laundry. I think he was a front for somebody.”

She waited a beat before going on. Bosch moved to the edge of the bed, excitement tickling the back of his neck.

“We’ve got tax returns, production orders, equipment rentals, pays and owes from the making of several films-more than a dozen. All of it straight-to-video stuff. Like Veronica said, it’s just this side of porno. I looked at some of the tapes he had in his office and it was all pretty awful stuff. Not much in the way of narrative unless you count the buildup of tension waiting for the female lead to get naked.

“The only problem is that the ledgers don’t match what’s on the film and most of the big checks paid by TNA Productions went to mail drops and companies that I’m finding out don’t exist anywhere but on paper.”

“How do you mean?” Billets asked.

“I’m saying his business records show a million to a million five going into each of these so-called movies, and you look at the tapes and, I’m telling you, there can’t be more than a hundred, maybe two hundred thousand involved. My brother works in the business as an editor, and I know enough to know that the kind of money Aliso’s books show being spent on these movies is not being spent on these movies. I think that what he was doing was using these flicks to launder money, lots of money.”

“Run it down, Kiz,” Billets said. “Just how would he do it?”

“Okay, start with his source. We’ll call him Mr. X for now. Mr. X has a million bucks he shouldn’t have. Whether it’s from drugs or whatever, he needs to clean it up, legitimize it so he can put it in the bank and spend it without drawing attention. He gives it to Tony Aliso-invests it in Tony’s production company. Aliso then makes a cheap movie with it, spending less than a tenth of it.

“But when it comes to keeping the books, he makes it look like he’s used all of the money for production costs. He’s got checks going out almost weekly to various production companies, prop companies, movie equipment companies. All the checks are in the eight-to nine-thousand range, just under the government reporting limit.”

Bosch listened carefully as she spoke. He had his eyes closed and concentrated. He admired Rider’s ability to cull all of this out of the records.

“Okay, then at the end of production, Tony probably dubs a few thousand copies of the flick, sells them or tries to sell them to independent video stores and distributors-because the chains wouldn’t touch this crap-and that’s that, end of show. But what he has done is turned around and given back to Mr. X, his original investor, about eighty cents on the dollar in the form of payments to these dummy companies. It’s a shell game. Whoever is behind these companies is being paid with his own money for services not rendered. But now the money’s legit. It’s clean and he can walk into any bank in America and deposit it, pay taxes on it, then spend it. Meantime, Tony Aliso takes a nice production fee for his end of it and goes on to the next flick. It looks like he was handling two or three of these productions a year and clearing half a million in fees himself.”

They were all silent for a few moments before Rider spoke again.

“There’s only one problem,” Rider said.

“He’s got the IRS on him,” Bosch said.

“Riiiiiight,” she responded, and he could visualize the smile on her face. “It’s a nice scam but it was about to go down the toilet. The IRS was going to take a look at Tony’s books later this month, and there is a good chance that if I could come up with this in just one day, the feds would pick up on it in an hour.”

“That would make Tony a danger to Mr. X,” Edgar said.

“Especially if he was going to cooperate with the audit,” Rider added.

Someone on the other end of the line whistled, but Bosch couldn’t tell who it was. He guessed it was Edgar.

“So what’s next, find Mr. X?” Bosch asked.

“For starters,” Rider replied. “I’m working up a request I’ll fax to the state department of corporations tomorrow morning. It’s got all the dummy companies on it. Maybe, whoever he is, he was foolish enough to put a real name or address on the incorporation forms. I’m also working on another search warrant. I have the canceled checks from Tony’s company. I want the records of the accounts the checks were deposited to, maybe find out where the money went after Tony cleaned it up.”

“What about the IRS?” Bosch asked. “Have you talked to them?”

“They’re closed for the holiday. But according to the notice Aliso got in the mail, there is a criminal prefix on the audit number. That makes me think this wasn’t a random audit. They were tipped somehow. There’s an agent assigned to it and I’ll be on the phone to him first thing in the morning.”

“You know,” Edgar said, “this whole thing about OCID taking a pass is beginning to stink. Whether Tony was hooked up with the Eye-talians or not, this shit is as organized as organized crime can get. And I’d bet my last button that they’d heard somewhere along the line, whether it was from the IRS or not, about our guy here.”

“I think you’re right,” Billets said.

“I forgot to mention something,” Bosch threw in. “Today I was talking with Art Donovan. He said the guy I talked to at OCID last night, a supe named Carbone, well he just happens to show up over at SID today and starts asking Art about the case. Art says the guy’s acting like he’s not interested, but he’s very interested, you know what I mean?”

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

“So what do we do?” Edgar asked.

Bosch closed his eyes again and waited. Whatever Billets said would determine the course of the case as well as affect his regard for her. Bosch knew what her predecessor would have done. He would have made sure the case was dumped on OCID.

“We don’t do anything,” Billets finally said. “It’s our case, we work it. But be careful. If OCID is sniffing around after taking a pass, then there is something going on here we don’t know about yet.”

Another silence passed and Bosch opened his eyes. He was liking Billets better all the time.

“Okay,” Billets said. “I think we should be focusing on Tony’s company as a priority. I want to shift most of our attention there. Harry, can you wrap up Vegas quickly and get back here?”

“Unless I find something, I should be out of here before lunch tomorrow. But remember this, last night Mrs. Aliso told us that Tony always told her he came to Vegas to see investors. Maybe our Mr. X is right here.”

“Could be,” Billets said. “Okay then, again, people, it’s been good work. Let’s stay on it.”

They said their good-byes and Bosch put the phone back on the side table. He felt invigorated by the advances of the investigation. He just sat there a moment and reveled in the feeling of the adrenaline jazzing through his body. It had been a long time coming. He squeezed his hands into fists and banged them together.

Bosch stepped out of the elevator and began moving through the casino. It was quieter than most casinos he had been in-there wasn’t any yelling or whooping from the craps table, no begging of the dice to come up seven. The people who gambled here were different, Bosch thought. They came with money and they’d leave with money no matter how much they lost. The smell of desperation wasn’t here. This was the casino for the well-heeled and thick-walleted.

He passed by a crowded roulette wheel and remembered Donovan’s bet. He squeezed between two smoking Asian women, put down a five and asked for a chip but was told it was a twenty-five-dollar-minimum table. One of the Asians pointed with her cigarette across the casino to another roulette table.

“They’ll take your five over there,” she said with distaste.

Bosch thanked her and headed over to the cheap table. He put a five chip down on the seven and watched the wheel turn, the little metal ball bouncing over the numbers. It did nothing for him. He knew that true-blue gamblers said it wasn’t the winning and losing, it was the anticipation. Whether it was the next card, the fall of the dice or the number the little ball stopped on, it was those few seconds of waiting and hoping and wishing that charged them, that addicted them. But it did nothing for Bosch.

The ball stopped on five and Donovan owed Bosch five. Bosch turned and started looking for the poker pit. He saw a sign and headed that way. It was early, not yet eight, and there were several chairs open at the tables. He checked the faces and did not see Eleanor Wish, though he wasn’t really expecting to. Bosch recognized many of the dealers he had interviewed earlier, including Amy Rohrback. He was tempted to take one of the empty chairs at her table and ask how she had recognized Eleanor Wish but figured it wouldn’t be cool to question her while she worked.

While he considered what to do, the pit boss stepped up to him and asked if he was waiting to play. Bosch recognized him as the one from the video who had led Tony Aliso to his place at the tables.

“No, I’m just watching,” Bosch said. “You got a minute while it’s slow?”

“A minute for what?”

“I’m the cop who’s been interviewing your people.”

“Oh, yeah. Little Hank told me about that.”

He introduced himself as Frank King and Bosch shook his hand.

“Sorry, I couldn’t come up. But I don’t work on rotation. I had to be here. This is about Tony A., right?”

“Yeah, you knew him, right?”

“Sure, we all knew him. Good guy. Too bad about what happened.”

“How do you know what happened?”

Bosch had specifically not told any of the dealers about Aliso’s demise during the interviews.

“Little Hank,” King said. “He said he got shot up or something in L.A. What do you want, I mean you live in L.A. you take your chances.”

“I guess. How long have you known him?”

“We go back years, me and Tony. I used to be at the Flamingo before the Mirage opened. Tony stayed there back then. He’s been coming out here a long time.”

“You ever socialize with him? Outside the casino?”

“Once or twice. But that was usually by accident. I’d be some place and Tony’d just happen to come in or something. We’d have a drink, be cordial, but that was about it. I mean, he was a guest of the hotel and I’m an employee. We weren’t buddies, if you know what I mean.”

“I get it. What places did you run into him?”

“Oh, Jesus, I don’t know. You’re talking-hold on a sec.”

King cashed out a player who was leaving Amy Rohrback’s table. Bosch had no idea how much the man had started with, but he was leaving with forty dollars and a frown. King sent him away with a better-luck-next-time salute and then came back to Bosch.

“Like I was saying, I saw him in a couple bars. You’re talking a long time ago. One was the round bar at the Stardust. One of my buddies was the barkeep and I used to drop by there after work time to time. I saw Tony there and he sent over a drink. This was probably three years ago, at least. I don’t know what good it does you.”

“Was he alone?”

“No, he was with some broad. Young piece of fluff. Nobody I recognized.”

“All right, what about the other time, when was that?”

“That was maybe last year sometime. I was with a bachelor party-it was for Marty, who runs the craps here-and we all went to get straightened out at Dolly’s. It’s a strip club on the north side. And Tony was in there, too. He was by hisself and he came over and had a drink. In fact, he bought the whole table a drink. Must’ve been eight of us. He was a nice guy. That was it.”

Bosch nodded. So Aliso had been a regular at Dolly’s going back at least a year. Bosch was planning to go there, to get a line on the woman named Layla. She was probably a dancer, Bosch guessed, and Layla was more than probably not her real name.

“You seen him more recently with anybody?”

“You mean a broad?”

“Yeah, some of the dealers said there was a blonde recently.”

“Yeah, I think I saw him a couple, three times with the blonde. He was giving her the dough to play the machines while he played cards. I don’t know who it was, if that’s what you mean.”

Bosch nodded.

“That it?” King asked.

“One more thing. Eleanor Wish, you know her? She was playing the cheap table on Friday night. Tony played for a while at the same table. It looked like they knew each other.”

“I know a player named Eleanor. I never knew her last name. She the looker, brown hair, brown eyes, still in nice shape despite, as they say, the encroachment of time?”

King smiled at his clever use of words. Bosch didn’t.

“That sounds like her. She a regular?”

“Yeah, I see her in here maybe once a week, maybe less. She’s a local, as far as I know. The local players run a circuit. Not all the casinos have live poker, see. It doesn’t earn a lot for the house. We have it as a courtesy to our customers, but we hope they play a little poker and a lot of black jack. Anyway, the locals run a circuit so they don’t play against the same faces all the time. So they maybe play here one night, over to Harrah’s the next, then it’s the Flamingo, then maybe they work the downtown casinos a few nights. You know, like that.”

“You mean she’s a pro?”

“No, I mean she’s a local and she plays a lot. Whether she’s got a day job or lives off poker I don’t know. I don’t think I ever cashed her out for more than two bills. That’s not a lot. The other thing is I heard she tips the dealers too well. The pros don’t do that.”

Bosch asked King to list all the casinos in the city that he knew offered live poker, then thanked him.

“You know, I doubt you’re going to find anything other than Tony knowin’ her to say hello to, that’s all.”

“Why’s that?”

“Too old. She’s a nice lookin’ gal, but she was too old for Tony. He liked ’em young.”

Bosch nodded and let him go. He then wandered through the casino in a quandary. He didn’t know what to do about Eleanor Wish. He was intrigued by what she was doing and King’s explanation about her being a once-a-week regular seemed to make her recognition of Aliso innocent enough. But while she most likely had nothing to do with the case, Bosch felt the desire to talk to her. To tell her he was sorry for the way things had turned out, for the way he had made them turn out.

He saw a bank of pay phones near the front desk and used one to call information. He asked for a listing for Eleanor Wish and got a recording saying the phone number was unlisted at the customer’s request. Bosch thought a moment and then dug through the pocket of his jacket. He found the card that Felton, the Metro detectives captain, had given him and paged him. He waited with his hand on the phone so no one else could use it for four minutes before it rang.

“Felton?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Bosch. From earlier today?”

“Right. L.A. I still haven’t gotten the prints back. I’m expecting to hear something first thing.”

“No, I’m not calling about that. I was wondering if you or any of your people have enough juice with the phone company to get me a listing, number and address.”

“It’s unlisted?”

Bosch felt like telling him that he wouldn’t be calling if the account was listed but let it go.

“Yeah, unlisted.”

“Who is it?”

“A local. Somebody who was playing poker with Tony Aliso on Friday night.”

“So?”

“So, Captain, they knew each other and I want to talk to her. If you can’t help me, fine. I’ll find her some other way. I was calling because you told me to call if I needed something. This is what I need. Can you do it or not?”

There was silence for a few moments before Felton came back.

“Okay, give it to me. I’ll see what I can get. Where you going to be?”

“I’m mobile. Can I ring you back?”

Felton gave him his home number and told him to call back in a half hour.

Bosch used the time to walk across the Strip to Harrah’s to check out the poker room. Eleanor Wish wasn’t there. He then went back out onto the Strip and headed down to the Flamingo. He took his jacket off because it was still very warm out. It would be dark soon and he hoped it would cool off then.

In the Flamingo casino he found her. She was playing at a one-to-four table with five men. The seat on her left was open but Bosch didn’t take it. Instead, he hung back with the crowd around a roulette table and watched her.

Eleanor Wish’s face showed total concentration on the cards as she played. Bosch watched as the men she was playing against stole looks at her, and it gave Bosch a weird thrill to know they secretly coveted her. In the ten minutes he watched, she won one hand-he was too far away to see what she won with-and bailed out early on five others. It looked as though she was well ahead. She had a full rack in front of her and six stacks of chips on the blue felt.

After he watched her win a second hand-this time a massive pot-and the dealer began to push the pile of blue chips to her spot, Bosch looked around for a pay phone. He called Felton at home and got Wish’s home phone and address. The captain told him that the address, on Sands Avenue, was not far off the strip in an area of apartment buildings mostly inhabited by casino employees. Bosch didn’t tell him that he had already found her. Instead, he thanked him and hung up.

When Bosch got back to the poker room she was gone. The five men were still there, but there was a new dealer and no Eleanor Wish. Her chips were gone. She had cashed out and he had lost her. Bosch cursed to himself.

“You looking for someone?”

Bosch turned around. It was Eleanor. There was no smile on her face, just a slight look of irritation or maybe defiance. His eyes fell to the small white scar on her jawline.

“I, uh…Eleanor…yeah, I was looking for you.”

“You were always so obvious. I picked you out one minute after you were there. I would’ve gotten up then but I was bringing that guy from Kansas along. He thought he knew when I was bluffing. He didn’t know shit. Just like you.”

Bosch was tongue-tied. This was not how he had envisioned this happening and he didn’t know how to proceed.

“Look, Eleanor, I, uh, just wanted to see how you were doing. I don’t know, I just…”

“Right. So you just flew out to Vegas to look me up? What’s going on, Bosch?”

Bosch looked around. They were standing in a crowded section of the casino. Players passing on both sides of them, the cacophony of the slot machine din and whoops of success and failure created a blur of sight and sound around him.

“I’ll tell you. Do you want to get a drink or something, maybe something to eat?”

“One drink.”

“You know a place that’s quiet?”

“Not here. Follow me.”

They left through the front doors of the casino and walked out into the dry heat of the night. The sun was all the way down now and it was neon that lit the sky.

“There’s a bar in Caesar’s that’s quiet. It doesn’t have any machines.”

She led him across the street and onto the people mover that delivered them to the front door of Caesar’s Palace. They walked past the front desk and into a circular bar where there were only three other customers. Eleanor had been right. It was an oasis with no poker or slot machines. Just the bar. He ordered a beer and she ordered scotch and water. She lit a cigarette.

“You didn’t used to smoke before,” he said. “In fact, I remember you were-”

“That was a long time ago. Why are you here?”

“I’m on a case.”

During the walk over he’d had time to compose himself and put his thoughts in order.

“What case and what does it have to do with me?”

“It’s got nothing to do with you, but you knew the guy. You played poker with him on Friday at the Mirage.”

Curiosity and confusion creased her brow. Bosch remembered how she used to do that and remembered how attractive he’d found it. He wanted to reach over and touch her but he didn’t. He had to remind himself that she was different now.

“Anthony Aliso,” he said.

He watched the surprise play on her face and believed instantly that it was real. He wasn’t a poker player from Kansas who couldn’t read a bluff. He had known this woman and believed from the look on her face she clearly did not know Aliso was dead until he told her.

“Tony A…,” she said and then let it trail off.

“Did you know him well or just to play against?”

She had a distant look in her dark eyes.

“Just when I’d see him there. At the Mirage. I’ve been playing there on Fridays. A lot of fresh money and faces come in. I’d see him there a couple times a month. For a while I thought he was a local, too.”

“How’d you find out he wasn’t?”

“He told me. We had a drink together a couple months ago. There were no seats at the tables. We put our names in and told Frank, he’s the night man, to come get us at the bar when there was an opening. So we had a drink and that’s when he told me he was from L.A. He said he was in the movie business.”

“That’s it, nothing else?”

“Well, yeah, he said other things. We talked. Nothing that stands out, though. We were passing the time until one of our names came up.”

“You didn’t see him again outside of playing?”

“No, and what’s it to you? Are you saying I’m a suspect because I had a drink with the guy?”

“No, I’m not saying that, Eleanor. Not at all.”

Bosch got out his own cigarettes and lit one. The waitress in a white-and-gold toga brought their drinks, and they settled into a silence for a long moment. Bosch had lost his momentum. He was back to not knowing what to say.

“Looked like you were doing pretty good tonight,” he tried.

“Better than most nights. I got my quota and I got out.”

“Quota?”

“Whenever I get two hundred up I cash out. I’m not greedy and I know luck doesn’t last for long on any given night. I never lose more than a hundred, and if I’m lucky enough to get two hundred ahead, then I’m done for the night. I got there early tonight.”

“How’d you-”

He stopped himself. He knew the answer.

“How’d I learn to play poker well enough to live off it? You spend three and a half years inside and you learn to smoke and play poker and other things.”

She looked directly at him as if daring him to say anything about it. After another long moment she broke away and got out another cigarette. Bosch lit it for her.

“So there’s no day job? Just the poker?”

“That’s right. I’ve been doing this almost a year now. Kind of hard to find a straight job, Bosch. You tell ’em you’re a former FBI agent and their eyes light up. Then you tell them you just got out of federal prison and they go dead.”

“I’m sorry, Eleanor.”

“Don’t be. I’m not complaining. I make more than enough to get by, every now and then I meet interesting people like your guy Tony A., and there’s no state income tax here. What do I have to complain about, except maybe that it gets to be over a hundred degrees in the shade about ninety times a year too many?”

The bitterness was not lost on him.

“I mean I’m sorry about everything. I know it doesn’t do you any good now, but I wish I had it to do all over again. I’ve learned things since then, and I would’ve played it all differently. That’s all I wanted to tell you. I saw you on the surveillance tape playing with Tony Aliso and I wanted to find you to tell you that. That’s all I wanted.”

She stubbed her half-finished smoke out in the glass ashtray and took a strong pull on her glass of scotch.

“I guess I should be going, then,” she said.

She stood up.

“Do you need a ride anywhere?”

“No, I actually have a car, thank you.”

She started out of the bar in the direction of the front doors but after a few yards stopped and came back to the table.

“You’re right, you know.”

“About what?”

“About it not doing me any good now.”

With that she left. Bosch watched her push through the revolving doors and disappear into the night.

Following the directions he had written down when he spoke with Rhonda over the phone in Tony Aliso’s office, Bosch found Dolly’s on Madison in North Las Vegas. It was strictly an upper-crust club: twenty-dollar cover, two-drink minimum and you were escorted to your seat by a large man in a tuxedo with a starched collar that cut into his neck like a garrote. The dancers were upper-crust, too. Young and beautiful, they probably were just shy of having enough coordination and talent to work the big room shows on the Strip.

Bosch was led by the tuxedo to a table the size of a dinner plate about eight feet from the main stage, which was empty at the moment.

“A new dancer will be on stage in a couple minutes,” the man in the tuxedo told Bosch. “Enjoy the show.”

Bosch didn’t know if he was supposed to tip the guy for seating him at such a close-up location as well as putting up with the tuxedo, but he let it go and the man didn’t hang around with his hand out. Bosch had barely gotten his cigarettes out when a waitress in a red silk negligee, high heels and black fishnet stockings floated over and reminded him of the two-drink minimum. Bosch ordered beer.

While he waited for his two beers, Bosch took a look around. Business seemed slow, it being the Monday night tail-end of a holiday weekend. There were maybe twenty men in the place. Most of them were sitting by themselves and not looking at each other while they waited for the next nude woman to entertain them.

There were full-length mirrors on the side and rear walls. A bar ran along the left side of the room, and cut into the wall in the back was an arched entrance above which a red neon sign that glowed in the darkness announced PRIVATE DANCERS. The front wall was largely taken up by a shimmering curtain and the stage. A runway projected from the stage through the center of the room. The runway was the focus of several bright lights attached to a metal gridwork on the ceiling. Their brightness made the runway almost glow in contrast to the dark and smoky atmosphere of the seating area.

A disk jockey in a sound booth at the left side of the stage announced the next dancer would be Randy. An old Eddie Money song, “Two Tickets to Paradise,” started blaring over the sound system as a tall brunette wearing blue jeans cut off to expose the lower half of her bottom and a neon pink bikini top charged through the shimmering curtain and started moving to the beat of the music.

Bosch was immediately mesmerized. The woman was beautiful and the first thought he had was to question why she was doing this. He had always believed that beauty helped women get away from many of the hardships of life. This woman, this girl, was beautiful and yet here she was. Maybe that was the real draw for these men, he thought. Not the glimpse of a naked woman, but the knowledge of submission, the thrill of knowing another one had been broken. Bosch began to think he had been wrong about beautiful women.

The waitress put down two beers on the little table and told Bosch he owed fifteen dollars. He almost asked her to repeat the price but then figured it came with the territory. He handed her a twenty, and when she started digging through the stack of bills on her tray for his change he waved it off.

She clutched his shoulder and bent down to his ear, making sure that she was at an angle that afforded him a look at her full cleavage.

“Thank you, darlin’. I ’preciate that. Let me know if you need anything else.”

“There is one thing. Is Layla here tonight?”

“No, she’s not here.”

Bosch nodded. And the waitress straightened up.

“How about Rhonda then?” Bosch asked.

“That’s Randy up there.”

She pointed to the stage and Bosch shook his head and signaled her to come closer.

“No, Rhonda, like help, help me Rhonda. She working tonight? She was here last night.”

“Oh, that Rhonda. Yeah, she’s around. You just missed her set. She’s probably in the back changing.”

Bosch reached into his pocket for his money and put a five on her bar tray.

“Will you go back and tell her the friend of Tony’s she talked to last night wants to buy her a drink?”

“Sure”

She squeezed his shoulder again and went off. Bosch’s attention was drawn to the stage, where Randy’s first song had just ended. The next song was “Lawyers, Guns and Money” by Warren Zevon. Bosch hadn’t heard it in a while and he remembered how it had been an anthem among the uniforms back when he had worked patrol.

The dancer named Randy soon slipped out of her outfit and was nude except for a garter stretched tightly around her left thigh. Many of the men got up and met her as she danced her way slowly down the runway. They slid dollar bills under the garter. And when a man put a five under the strap, Randy bent down over him, using his shoulder to steady herself, and did an extra wiggle and kissed his ear.

Bosch watched this and was thinking that he now had a pretty good idea how Tony Aliso ended up with the small handprint on his shoulder, when a petite blond woman slid into the seat next to him.

“Hi. I’m Rhonda. You missed my show!”

“I heard that. I’m sorry.”

“Well, I go back on in a half hour and do it all over again. I hope you’ll stay. Yvonne said you wanted to buy me a drink?”

As if on cue Bosch saw the waitress heading their way. Bosch leaned over to Rhonda.

“Listen, Rhonda, I’d rather take care of you than give my money to the bar. So do me a favor and don’t go exorbitant on me.”

“Exorbitant…?”

She crinkled her face up in a question.

“Don’t go ordering champagne.”

“Oh, I gotcha.”

She ordered a martini and Yvonne floated back into the darkness.

“So, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Harry.”

“And you’re a friend of Tony’s from L.A. You make movies, too?”

“No, not really.”

“How do you know Tony?”

“I just met him recently. Listen, I’m trying to find Layla to get a message to her. Yvonne tells me she’s not on tonight. You know where I can find her?”

Bosch noticed her stiffen. She knew something wasn’t right.

“First of all, Layla doesn’t work here anymore. I didn’t know that when I talked to you last night, but she’s gone and won’t be back. And secondly, if you’re a friend of Tony’s, then how come you’re asking me how to find her?”

She wasn’t as dumb as Bosch had thought. He decided to go direct.

“Because Tony got himself killed, so I can’t ask him. I want to find Layla to tell her and maybe warn her.”

“What?” she shrieked.

Her voice cut through the loud music like a bullet through a slice of bread. Everybody in the place, including the naked Randy on the stage, looked in their direction. Bosch had no doubt that everyone in the place must think he had just propositioned her, offering an insulting fee for an equally insulting act.

“Keep it down, Randy,” he quickly said.

“It’s Rhonda.”

“Rhonda then.”

“What happened to him? He was just here.”

“Somebody shot him in L.A. when he got back. Now, do you know where Layla is or not? You tell me and I’ll take care of you.”

“Well, what are you? Are you really his friend or not?”

“In a way I’m his only friend right now. I’m a cop. My name’s Harry Bosch and I’m trying to find out who did it.”

Her face took on a look that seemed even more horrified than when he told her Aliso was dead. Sometimes telling people you were a cop did that.

“Save your money,” she said. “I can’t talk to you.”

She got up then and moved quickly away toward the door next to the stage. Bosch threw her name out after her but it was crushed by the sound of the music. He casually took a look around and noticed behind him that the tuxedo man was eyeing him through the darkness. Bosch decided he wasn’t going to stick around for Rhonda’s second show. He took one more gulp of beer-he hadn’t even touched his second glass-and got up.

As he neared the exit the tuxedo leaned back and knocked on the mirror behind him. It was then that Bosch realized there was a door cut into the glass. It opened and the tuxedo stepped to the side to block Bosch’s exit.

“Sir, could you step into the office, please?”

“What for?”

“Just step in. The manager would like a word with you.”

Bosch hesitated but through the door he could see a lighted office where a man in a suit sat behind a desk. He stepped in and the tuxedo came in behind him and shut the door.

Bosch looked at the man behind the desk. Blond and beefy. Bosch wouldn’t know whom to bet on if a fight broke out between the tuxedoed bouncer and the so-called manager. They were both brutes.

“I just got off the phone with Randy in the dressing room, she says you were asking about Tony Aliso.”

“It was Rhonda.”

“Rhonda, whatever, never-the-fuck-mind. She said you said he was dead.”

He spoke with a midwestern accent. Sounded like southside Chicago, Bosch guessed.

“Was and still is.”

The blond nodded to the tuxedo and his arm came up in a split second and hit Bosch with a backhand in the mouth. Bosch went back against the wall, banging the back of his head. Before his mind cleared, the tuxedo twirled him around until he was face-against-the-wall and leaned his weight against him. He felt the man’s hands begin patting him down.

“Enough of the wiseass act,” the blond said. “What are you doing talking to the girls about Tony?”

Before Bosch could say anything the hands running over his body found his gun.

“He’s strapped,” the tuxedo said.

Bosch felt the gun being jerked out of his shoulder holster. He also tasted blood in his mouth and felt rage building in his throat. The hands then found his wallet and his cuffs. Tuxedo threw them on the desk in front of the blond and held Bosch pinned against the wall with one hand. By straining to turn his head Bosch could watch the blond open the wallet.

“He’s a cop, let him go.”

The hand came off his neck and Bosch gruffly pulled away from the tuxedo.

“An L.A. cop,” the blond said. “Hieronymus Bosch. Like that painter, huh? He did some weird stuff.”

Bosch just looked at him and he handed the gun and cuffs and wallet back.

“Why’d you have him hit me?”

“That was a mistake. See, most cops what come in here, they announce themselves, they tell us their business and we help ’em if we can. You were sneaking around, Anonymous Hieronymus. We have a business to protect here.”

He opened a drawer and pulled out a box of tissues and proffered it to Bosch.

“Your lip’s bleeding.”

Bosch took the whole box.

“So this is true what she says you told her. Tony’s dead.”

“That’s what I said. How well did you know him?”

“See, that’s good. You assume I knew him and put that assumption in your question. That’s good.”

“So then answer it.”

“He was a regular in here. He was always trying to pick off girls. Told ’em he’d put ’em in the movies. Same old stuff. But, hell, they keep falling for it. Last two years he cost me three of my best girls. They’re in L.A. now. He left ’em high and dry once he got them there and did what he wanted with ’em. They never learn.”

“Why’d you let him keep coming in if he was picking off your girls?”

“He spent a lot of bread in here. Besides, there’s no shortage of quiff here in Vegas. No shortage at all.”

Bosch headed in another direction.

“What about Friday? Was he here?”

“No, I don’t-yes, yes he was. He stopped by for a short while. I saw him out there.”

With his hand he indicated a panel of video monitors showing every angle of the club and front entrance. It was equally as impressive as the setup Hank Meyer had shown Bosch at the Mirage.

“You remember seeing him, Gussie?” the blond asked the tuxedo.

“Yeah, he was here.”

“There you go. He was here.”

“No problems? He just came and went?”

“Right, no problems.”

“Then why’d you fire Layla?”

The blond pinched his lips tight for a moment.

“Now I get it,” he said. “You’re one of those guys what likes to weave a web with words, get somebody caught in it.”

“Maybe.”

“Well, nobody’s caught anywhere. Layla was Tony’s latest fuck, that’s true, but she’s gone now. She won’t be back.”

“Yeah, and what happened to her?”

“Like you heard, I fired her. Saturday night.”

“For what?”

“For any number of infractions of the rules. But it doesn’t really matter because it’s none of your business, now is it?”

“What did you say your name is?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then how ’bout if I just call you asshole, how would that be?”

“People ’round here call me Lucky. Can we get on with this, please?”

“Sure, we can get on with it. Just tell me what happened to Layla.”

“Sure, sure. But I thought you were here to talk about Tony, least that’s what Randy said.”

“Rhonda.”

“Rhonda, right.”

Bosch was losing his patience but managed to just stare at him and wait him out.

“Layla, right. Well, Saturday night she got into a beef with one of the other girls. It got a little nasty and I had to make a choice. Modesty is one of my best girls, best producers. She gave me an ultimatum: either Layla goes or she goes. I had to let Layla go. Modesty, man, she sells ten, twelve splits of champagne a night to those suckers out there. I had to back her over Layla. I mean, Layla’s good and she’s a looker but she ain’t no Modesty. Modesty’s our top girl.”

Bosch just nodded. So far his story jibed with the phone message Layla had left for Aliso. By drawing it out of the blond man, Bosch was getting a sense of how much he could be believed.

“What was the trouble between Layla and the other girl about?” he asked.

“I don’t know and don’t really care. Just your typical catfight. They didn’t like each other since day one. See, Bosch, every club has its top girl. And here, it’s Modesty. Layla was trying to move in on that and Modesty didn’t want to be moved in on. But I have to say, Layla was trouble since she came here. None of the girls liked her act. She stole songs from the other girls, wouldn’t stop with the pussy dust even when I told her, we just had a lot of trouble with her. I’m glad she’s gone. I gotta business to run here. I can’t be babysitting a bunch of spoiled cunts.”

“Pussy dust?”

“Yeah, you know, she put that sparkly stuff on her snatch, made it sparkle in the dark and twinkle in the lights. Only problem is those sparkles come off and get on the suckers. She does a lap dance on you and you end up with a crotch that glitters. Then you go home and the wife figures it out and raises holy hell. I lose customers. I can’t have that shit, Bosch. If it hadn’t been Modesty, it would have been something else. I got rid of Layla when I got the chance.”

Bosch thought about the story for a few moments.

“Okay,” he said. “Just give me her address and I’ll be on my way.”

“I would but I can’t.”

“Don’t start that shit now. I thought we were having a conversation. Let me see your payroll records. There’s got to be an address.”

The man called Lucky smiled and shook his head.

“Payroll? We don’t pay these broads a dime. They ought to pay us. Comin’ in here, it’s a license to make money.”

“You must have a phone number or an address. You want your man Gussie here to go down to Metro on an assaulting-a-police-officer clip?”

“We don’t have her address, Bosch, what can I tell you? Or her phone number.”

He held his hands out, palms up.

“I mean, I don’t have addresses on any of the girls. I set a schedule and they come in and they dance. They don’t show, they aren’t allowed back. See, it’s nice and simple, streamlined, that way. It’s the way we do it. And as far as the assault thing goes with Gussie, if you want to do that dance we’ll do it. But remember you’re the guy what came in here by hisself, never said who you were or what you wanted to nobody, had four beers in less than an hour and insulted one of the dancers before we asked you to leave. We can have affidavits to that effect in an hour.”

He raised his arms again, this time in a hands-off manner as if to say it was Bosch’s call. Bosch had no doubt that Yvonne and Rhonda would tell the story they were told to tell. He decided to cut his losses. He smiled glibly.

“Have a good night,” he said and turned to the door.

“You, too, Officer,” Lucky said to his back. “Come back when you have time and can enjoy the show.”

The door opened by some unseen electronic means apparently controlled from the desk. Gussie allowed Bosch to leave first. He then followed behind as Bosch went through the main door to the valet stand. Bosch gave a Mexican man with a face like a crumpled paper lunch bag his parking stub. He and Gussie then waited in silence for the car to be brought up.

“No hard feelings, right?” Gussie finally said as the car was approaching. “I didn’t know you was a cop.”

Bosch turned to face him.

“No, you just thought I was a customer.”

“Yeah, right. And I had to do what the boss told me to do.”

He put his hand out. In his peripheral vision Bosch could see his car still coming. He took Gussie’s hand and in a sharp move pulled the big man toward him at the same time he raised his knee and drove it into his groin. Gussie let out an oomph and doubled over. Bosch let go of his hand and quickly jerked the tail of the man’s jacket up over his head, pinning his arms in the tangle. Finally, he brought his knee up into the jacket and felt it connect solidly with Gussie’s face. The big man fell backward onto the hood of a black Corvette parked near the door just as the valet jumped out of Bosch’s rental car and came scrambling around to defend his boss. The man was older and smaller than Bosch. This one wouldn’t even be close and Bosch wasn’t interested in any innocent bystanders. He held his finger up to stop the man.

“Don’t,” he said.

The man considered his situation while Gussie groaned through his tuxedo jacket. Finally, the valet raised his hands and stepped back, allowing Bosch a path to the car door.

“At least somebody around here makes the right choices,” Bosch said as he slid in.

He looked through the windshield and saw Gussie’s body slide down the slope of the Corvette’s hood and fall to the pavement. The valet ran to his side.

As Bosch pulled out onto Madison, he checked the rearview mirror. The valet was pulling the jacket back over Gussie’s head. Bosch could see blood on the bouncer’s white shirt.

Bosch was too keyed up to go back to the hotel to sleep. He also had a bad mix of emotions weighing on him. Seeing the naked woman dancing still bothered him. He didn’t even know her but thought he had invaded some private world of hers. He also felt angry at himself for lashing out at the brute, Gussie. But most of all, what bothered him was that he had played the whole scene wrong. He had gone to the strip club to try to get a line on Layla and he got nothing. At best, all he had come up with was the probable explanation for what the specks of glitter found in the cuffs of Tony Aliso’s pants and the shower drain were and where they came from. It wasn’t enough. He had to go back to L.A. in the morning and he had nothing.

When he got to a traffic light at the beginning of the Strip, he lit a cigarette, then took out his notebook and opened it to the page on which he had written down the address Felton had given him earlier in the night.

At Sands Boulevard he turned east and within a mile he came to the apartment complex where Eleanor Wish lived. It was a sprawling development with numbered buildings. It took him a while until he found hers and then figured out which unit was hers. He sat in his car and smoked and watched her lighted windows for a while. He wasn’t sure what he was doing or what he wanted.

Five years earlier Eleanor Wish had done the worst and the best to him. She had betrayed him, put him in danger and she had also saved his life. She had made love to him. And then it all went bad. Still, he had often thought about her, the old what-might-have-been blues. She had a hold on him through time. She had been cold to him this night but he thought for sure the hold went both ways. She was his reflection, he had always been sure of that.

He got out of the car, dropped his dead cigarette and went to her door. She answered his knock quickly, almost as if she was expecting him. Or someone.

“How’d you find me? Did you follow me?”

“No. I made a call, that’s all.”

“What happened to your lip?”

“It’s nothing. Are you going to ask me in?”

She backed up to allow him to enter. It was a small place with spare furnishings. It looked as though she was adding things over time, as she could afford them. He first noticed the print of Hopper’s Nighthawks on the wall over the couch. It was a painting that always struck a chord with him. He had once had the same print on his own wall. It had been a gift from her five years before. A good-bye gift.

He looked from the painting to her. Their eyes met and he knew everything she had said earlier had been a front. He stepped closer to her and touched her, put his hand on her neck and ran a thumb along her cheek. He looked closely at her face. It was resolute, determined.

“This time it’s been a long time for me,” she whispered.

And he remembered that he had told her the same on the night they’d first made love. That was a lifetime ago, Bosch thought. What am I doing now? Can you pick up after so long and so many changes?

He pulled her close and they held each other and kissed for a long moment and then she wordlessly led him to the bedroom, where she quickly unbuttoned her blouse and dropped her jeans to the floor. She pressed herself to him again and they kissed while she worked her hands up his shirt, opening it and pressing her skin to his. Her hair smelled of smoke from the tables, but there was an underlying scent of perfume that reminded him of a night five years before. He remembered the jacaranda trees outside her window and how they put a violet snow on the ground.

They made love with an intensity that Bosch had forgotten that he had. It was a bruising, huffing physical act devoid of love, invigorated and driven solely, it seemed, by lust and maybe a memory. When he was done she pulled him toward her, into her, in rhythmic thrusts until she, too, reached her moment and subsided. Then, with the clarity of thought that always comes after, they became embarrassed about their nakedness, about how they had coupled with the ferocity of animals and now looked at each other as human beings.

“I forgot to ask,” she said. “You’re not married now, are you?”

She giggled. He reached to the floor to where his jacket had been thrown and pulled out the cigarettes.

“No,” he said. “I’m alone.”

“I should’ve known. Harry Bosch, the loner. I should’ve known.”

She was smiling at him in the darkness. He saw it when the match flared. He lit the cigarette and then offered it to her. She shook her head no.

“How many women have there been since me? Tell me.”

“I don’t know, just a few. There was one, we were together about a year. That was the most serious one.”

“What happened to her?”

“She went to Italy.”

“For good?”

“Who knows?”

“Well, if you don’t know, then she isn’t coming back. At least to you.”

“Yeah, I know. That one’s been over a while.”

He was silent for a moment and then she asked him who else there had been.

“There was a painter I met in Florida on a case. That didn’t last long. After that, there’s you again.”

“What happened to the painter?”

Bosch shook his head as if to dismiss the inquiry. He didn’t really enjoy reviewing his ill-fated romantic record.

“Distance, I guess,” he said. “It just didn’t work. I couldn’t leave L.A., she couldn’t leave where she was.”

She moved closer to him and kissed him on the chin. He knew he needed a shave.

“What about you, Eleanor? Are you alone?”

“Yes… The last man to make love to me was a cop. He was gentle but very strong. I don’t mean in a physical way. In a life way. It was a long time ago. At the time we both needed healing. We gave it to each other…”

They looked at each other in the darkness for a long moment and then she came closer. Just before their mouths met she whispered, “A lot of time gone past.”

He thought about those words as she kissed him and then pushed him back on the pillows. She straddled him and started a gentle rocking motion with her hips. Her hair hung down around his face until he was in a perfect darkness. He ran his hands along her warm skin from her hips to her shoulders and then underneath to touch her breasts. He could feel her wetness on him but it was too soon for him.

“What’s the matter, Harry?” she whispered. “You want to rest a while?”

“I don’t know.”

He kept thinking of those words. A lot of time gone past. Maybe too much time. She kept rocking.

“I don’t know what I want,” he said. “What do you want, Eleanor?”

“All I want is the moment. We’ve fucked everything else up, it’s all we’ve got left.”

After a while he was ready and they made love again. She was very silent, her movements steady and gentle. She stayed on top of him, her face above him, breathing in short rhythmic clips. Near the end, when he was just trying to hang on, waiting for her, he felt a teardrop hit his cheek. He reached up and smeared the tears on her face with his thumbs.

“It’s all right, Eleanor, it’s all right.”

She put one of her hands on his face, feeling it in the dark as if she were a blind woman. In a short while they met at the moment when nothing in the world can intrude. Not words or even memories. It was just them together. They had the moment.

He slept on and off in her bed until nearly dawn. She slept soundly with her head on his shoulder but when he was lucky enough to doze off, it never lasted long. For the most part he lay there staring into the gray darkness, smelling their sweat and sex, wondering what road he was on now.

At six he extricated himself from her unconscious embrace and got dressed. When he was ready he kissed her awake and told her he must go.

“I go back to L.A. today but I want to come back to you as soon as I can.”

She nodded sleepily.

“Okay, Bosch, I’ll be waiting.”

It was finally cool outside. He lit his first smoke of the day as he walked to his car. When he pulled onto Sands to head up to the Strip, he saw the sun was throwing a golden light on the mountains west of town.

The Strip was still lit by a million neon lights, though the crowds on the sidewalk had greatly decreased by this hour. Still, Bosch was awed by the spectacle of light. In every imaginable color and configuration, it was a megawatt funnel of enticement to greed that burned twenty-four hours a day. Bosch felt the same attraction that all the other grinders felt tug at them. Las Vegas was like one of the hookers on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Even happily married men at least glanced their way, if only for a second, just to get an idea what was out there, maybe give them something to think about. Las Vegas was like that. There was a visceral attraction here. The bold promise of money and sex. But the first was a broken promise, a mirage, and the second was fraught with danger, expense, physical and mental risk. It was where the real gambling took place in this town.

When he got to his room, he noticed the message light was blinking. He called the operator and was told that someone named Captain Felton had called at one and then again at two and then someone named Layla at four. There were no messages or numbers left by either of the callers. Bosch put the phone down and frowned. He figured it was too early to call Felton. But it was the call from Layla that most interested him. If it had been the real Layla who had called, then how did she know where to reach him?

He decided that it had probably been through Rhonda. The night before when he had called from Tony Aliso’s office in Hollywood, he had asked Rhonda for directions from the Mirage. She could have passed that on to Layla. He wondered why she had called. Maybe she hadn’t heard about Tony until Rhonda had told her.

Still, he decided to put Layla on a back burner for the moment. With the financial probe Kizmin Rider had opened up in L.A., the focus of the case seemed to be shifting. It was important for them to talk to Layla but his priority was to get back to L.A. He picked the phone back up and called Southwest and booked a 10:30 flight to L.A. He figured that would give him time to check in with Felton, then check out the dealership where Rider said Tony Aliso had leased his cars and still make it back to the Hollywood Division by lunchtime.

Bosch stripped off his clothes and took a long hot shower, washing the sweat of the night away. When he was done he wrapped a towel around himself and used another to wipe the fog off the mirror so he could shave. He noticed that his lower lip had swollen on one side to the size of a marble and his mustache did little to hide it. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. He wondered as he got the bottle of Visine drops out of his shaving bag if Eleanor had found a single thing about him attractive.

When he stepped back into the room to get dressed, he was greeted by a man he had never seen before sitting in the chair by the window. He was holding a newspaper, which he put down when he noticed Bosch step into the room clad only in the towel.

“It’s Bosch, right?”

Bosch looked to the bureau and saw his gun was still sitting there. It was closer to the man in the chair but Bosch thought he might be able to get to it first.

“Easy now,” the man said. “We’re in this together. I’m a cop. With Metro. Felton sent me.”

“What the fuck you doing in my room?”

“I came up, got no answer. I could hear the shower. I had a friend from downstairs slip me in. I didn’t want to wait around in the hall. Go ahead, get dressed. Then I’ll tell you what we got.”

“Let me see some ID.”

The man got up and approached Bosch, pulling a wallet from his inside coat pocket and putting a bored look on his face. He opened the wallet, flashing the badge and ID card.

“Iverson. From Metro. Captain Felton sent me.”

“What’s so important that Felton had to send somebody to break into my room?”

“Look, I didn’t break in, okay? We’ve been calling all night and got no answer. We first of all wanted to make sure you were all right. And, secondly, the captain wants you to be in on the arrest, so he sent me over to try to find you. We gotta get going. Why don’t you get dressed?”

“What arrest?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you if you’d get dressed and we could get going. You hit the jackpot with those prints you flew in here with.”

Bosch looked at him for a moment and then went to the closet to grab a pair of pants and some underwear. He then went into the bathroom to put them on. When he came back out, he said one word to Iverson.

“Talk.”

Bosch quickly finished dressing as Iverson began.

“You know the name Joey Marks?”

Bosch thought a moment and then said it sounded familiar but he couldn’t place it.

“Joseph Marconi. They call him Joey Marks. Used to, before he tried to put on legitimate airs. Now, it’s Joseph Marconi. Anyway, he got the name Joey Marks ’cause that’s what he did, he left marks on anybody who crossed him, got in his way.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s the Outfit’s guy in Vegas. You know what the Outfit is, right?”

“The Chicago Mafia family. They control or have the say, at least, on everything west of the Mississippi. That includes Vegas and L.A.”

“Hey, you took some geography, didn’t you? I probably won’t have to school you too much then on what’s what out here. You already’ve got a score card.”

“You’re saying the prints on my vic’s jacket came from Joey Marks?”

“In your dreams. But they did come back to one of his top guys and, Bosch, that’s like manna from heaven. We’re taking this guy down today, pulling him right the fuck out of bed. We’re going to turn him, Bosch, make him our boy and through him we’ll finally get Joey Marks. He’s been a thorn in our side going on near a decade now.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“No, I don’t think-oh, yeah, of course you and the LAPD have our undivided thanks for this.”

“No, you’re forgetting it’s my case. It’s not your case. What the fuck you people think you’re doing taking this guy down without even talking to me?”

“We tried to call. I told you that.”

Iverson sounded hurt.

“So? You don’t get me and you just go ahead with the plan?”

Iverson didn’t answer. Bosch finished tying his shoes and stood up ready to go.

“Let’s go. Take me to Felton. I can’t believe you guys.”

On the elevator down Iverson said that while Bosch’s exception to the plan was noted, it was too late to stop anything. They were heading out to a command post in the desert and from there they would move in on the suspect’s house, which was out near the mountains.

“Where’s Felton?”

“He’s out there at the CP.”

“Good.”

Iverson was silent during most of the ride out, which was good because it allowed Bosch to think about this latest development. He realized suddenly that Tony Aliso might have been washing money for Joey Marks. Marks was Rider’s Mr. X, he guessed. But something went wrong. The IRS audit was endangering the scheme and thereby endangering Joey Marks. Marks had responded by eliminating the washer.

The story felt good to Bosch, but there were still things that didn’t jibe. The break-in at Aliso’s office two days after he was dead. Why did whoever that was wait until then, and why didn’t they take all the financial records? The records-if connections between the dummy corporations and Joey Marks could be made-might be just as dangerous to Marks as Aliso was. Bosch found himself wondering if the hitter and the B amp;E man were the same person. It didn’t seem so.

“What’s this guy’s name, the one the prints matched?”

“Luke Goshen. We only had his prints on file because he had to give ’em to get the entertainment license for one of Joey’s strip clubs. The license is in Goshen’s name. It keeps Joey out of it. Nice and clean. Only not anymore. The prints tie Goshen to a murder and that means Joey isn’t far behind.”

“Wait a minute, what’s the name of the club?”

“Dolly’s. It’s in-”

“North Las Vegas. Son of a bitch.”

“What, I say something?”

“This Goshen guy, do they call him Lucky?”

“Probably not after today. His luck’s about to run out. Sounds like you know of him.”

“I met the prick last night.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“At Dolly’s. The last phone call from Aliso’s office in L.A. was to Dolly’s. I found out he was coming out here and spending time with one of the dancers at that place. I went to check it out last night and fucked up. Goshen had one of his guys give me this.”

Bosch touched the bump on his lip.

“I was wondering where you got that. Which one give you that?”

“Gussie.”

“Fucking Big John Flanagan. We’ll be bringing his lard ass in today, too.”

“John Flanagan? How they get Gussie out of that?”

“It’s on account he’s the best-dressed bouncer in the county. You know, the tuxedo. He gets all gussied up to go to work. That’s how he got that one. I hope you didn’t let him get away with puttin’ that knot on your lip.”

“We had a little discussion in the parking lot before I left.”

Iverson laughed.

“I like you, Bosch. You’re a tough nut.”

“I’m not sure I like you yet, Iverson. I’m still not happy about you people trying to take over my case.”

“It’ll work out for all of us. You’re going to clear your case and we’re going to take a couple of major douche bags out of the picture. City fathers are going to be smiling all around.”

“We’ll see.”

“There’s one other thing,” Iverson said. “We were already working a tip on Lucky when you showed up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We got a tip. It was anonymous. Came in Sunday to the bureau. Guy won’t give his name but says he was in a strip club the night before and hears a couple of big guys talking about a hit. He heard one call the other Lucky.”

“What else?”

“Just something about the guy being put in the trunk and then getting capped.”

“Felton know this when I talked to him yesterday?”

“No, it hadn’t filtered up to him. It came up last night after he found out the prints you brought matched Goshen. One of the guys in the bureau had taken the tip and was going to check it out. Put out a flier on it. It would’ve eventually gotten over there to L.A. and you woulda come calling. You’re just here sooner rather than later.”

They had completely left the urban sprawl of the city and the chocolate-brown mountain chain rose in front of them. There were sporadic patches of neighborhoods. Homes that were built way out and were waiting for the city to catch up. Bosch had been out this way once before on an investigation, going to a retired cop’s house. It had reminded him of no-man’s-land then and it still did now.

“Tell me about Joey Marks,” Bosch said. “You said he’s trying to go legitimate?”

“No, I said he’s trying to give the appearance of legitimacy. That’s two different things. Guy like that, he’ll never be legitimate. He can clean up his act, but he’s always going to be a grease spot on the road.”

“What’s he into? If you believe the media, the mob was run out of town to make way for all the All-American family.”

“Yeah, I know the tune. It’s true, though. Vegas has changed in ten years. When I first made it to the bureau, you could practically take your pick of the casinos and go to work. They all had connections. If it wasn’t the front office, then it was the suppliers, the unions, whatever. Now it’s cleaned up. It’s gone from sin city to fuckin’ Disneyland. We got more water slides than whorehouses now. I think I liked it the old way. Had more of an edge, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“Anyway, the important thing is we ninety-nine percent have the mob out of the casinos. That’s the good thing. But there’s still a lot of what we call ancillary action around. That’s where Joey fits in. He runs a string of high-rent strip bars, mostly in North Vegas because nudity and alcohol are allowed there and the money is in alcohol. Very hard to watch, that money. We figure he’s siphoning a couple mil a year off the top on the clubs alone. We’ve had the IRS go after his books but he does too good a job.

“Let’s see, we think he also has a piece of some of the brothels up north. Then he’s got the usual, your standard loan-sharking and fencing operations. He runs a book and has the street tax on almost anything that moves in town. You know, the escort services, peep shows, all of that. He’s the king. He can’t go in any of the casinos ’cause he’s in the commission’s black book but it doesn’t matter. He’s the king.”

“How does he have a betting book in a town where you can walk into any casino and bet on any game, any race, anywhere?”

“You gotta have money to do that. Not with Joey. He’ll take your bet. And if you are unlucky enough to lose, then you better come up with the money quick or you’re one sorry motherfucker. Remember how he got his name. Well, suffice it to say his employees carry on the tradition. See, that’s how he gets his hooks into people. He gets them to owe him and then they have to give him a piece of what they have, whether it’s a company that makes paint in Dayton or something else.”

“Maybe a guy who makes cheap movies in L.A.”

“Yeah, like that. That’s how it works. They open up to him or they get two broken knees or worse. People still disappear in Vegas, Bosch. It might look like it’s all volcanoes and pyramids and pirate ships on the outside, but on the inside it’s still dark enough for people to disappear in.”

Bosch reached over and turned the air up a notch. The sun was already all the way up and the desert was beginning to bake.

“This is nothing,” Iverson said. “Wait till about noon. If we’re out here then, forget about it. We’ll be over one-ten easy.”

“What about Joey’s air of legitimacy?”

“Yeah, well, like I said, he’s got holdings all over the country. Pieces of the legitimate world he got through these various scams. He also reinvests. He cleans up all the cash he’s pulling out of his various enterprises and then puts it into legit stuff, even charities. He’s got car dealerships, a country club on the east side, a goddamn wing of a hospital named after one of his kids who died in a swimming pool. His picture gets in the paper at ribbon cuttings, Bosch. I tell you, we’ve either got to fucking take the guy down or give him the key to the city and I don’t know which would be more appropriate.”

Iverson shook his head.

After a few minutes of silence they were there. Iverson pulled into a county fire station and drove around back, where there were several more detective cars and several men standing around them holding paper cups of coffee. One of them was Captain Felton.

Bosch had forgotten to take a bulletproof vest with him from Los Angeles and had to borrow one from Iverson. He was also given a plastic raid jacket that said LVPD in bright yellow letters across the chest when it was zipped closed.

They were standing around Felton’s Taurus, going over the plan and waiting for the uniform backup. Execution of the warrant was going to be done by Vegas rules, the captain said. That meant at least one uniform team had to be there when they kicked the door.

By this time Bosch had already had his “friendly” exchange with Felton. The two had gone into the fire station to get Bosch some coffee, and Bosch had given the police captain an earful for the way he had handled the discovery that the prints Bosch had brought with him belonged to Lucky Luke Goshen. Felton feigned contrition and told Bosch he’d be involved in calling the shots from that moment on. Bosch had to back down after that. He’d gotten what he wanted, at least in the captain’s words. Now he just had to watch that Felton walked the talk.

Besides Felton and Bosch, there were four others standing around the car. They were all from Metro’s Organized Crime Unit. It was Iverson and his partner, Cicarelli, and then another pair, Baxter and Parmelee. The OCU was part of Felton’s domain in the department, but it was Baxter who was running the show. He was a black man who was balding, with gray hair lightly powdered around the sides of his head. He was heavily muscled and had a countenance that said I want no hassles. He seemed to Bosch to be a man accustomed to both the violent and violence. There was a difference.

Luke Goshen’s home was known to them. From their banter Bosch figured that they had watched the place before. It was about a mile further west from the station, and Baxter had already made a drive-by and determined that Goshen’s black Corvette was in the carport.

“What about a warrant?” Bosch asked.

He could just envision the whole thing getting kicked out of court because of a warrantless entry into the suspect’s house.

“The prints were more than enough for a warrant to search the premises and arrest your man,” Felton said. “We took it to a judge first thing this morning. We also had our own information, which I think Iverson told you about.”

“Look, his prints were on the guy but it doesn’t mean he did it. It doesn’t make a case. We’re acting too quickly here. My guy was put down in L.A. I’ve got nothing putting Luke Goshen there. And your own information? That’s a joke. You’ve got an anonymous call, that’s it. It doesn’t mean shit.”

They all looked at Bosch as if he had just belched at the debutante ball.

“Harry, let’s get another cup,” Felton said.

“I’m fine.”

“Let’s get one anyway.”

He put his arm on Bosch’s shoulder and led him back toward the station. Inside at the kitchen counter, where there was a coffee urn, Felton poured himself another cup before speaking.

“Look, Harry, you gotta go with this. This is a major opportunity for us and for you.”

“I know that. I just don’t want to blow it. Can’t we hold off on this until we’re sure of what we’ve got? It’s my case, Captain, and you’re still running the show.”

“I thought we had that all straightened out.”

“I thought we did, too, but I might as well be pissing in the wind.”

“Look, Detective, we’re going to go up the road and take this guy down, search his place and put him in a little room. I guarantee that if he isn’t your man, he’s going to give him to you. And he’s going to give us Joey Marks along the way. Now, come on, get with the program and get happy.”

He cuffed Bosch on the shoulder and headed back out to the lot. Bosch followed in a few moments. He knew that he was whining over nothing. You find somebody’s prints on a body, you bring him in. That’s a given. You sweat the details later. But Bosch didn’t like being a bystander. That was the real rub and he knew it. He wanted to run the show. Only out here in the desert, he was a fish out of water, flopping on the sand. He knew he should call Billets, but it was too late for her to do anything and he didn’t like the idea of telling her he had let this one get away from him.

The patrol car with the two uniforms was there when Bosch stepped out of the fire station and back into the oven.

“All right,” Felton said. “We’re all here. Mount up and let’s go get this fucker.”

They were there in five minutes. Goshen lived in a house that rose out of the scrubland on Desert View Avenue. It was a large house but not one that looked particularly ostentatious. The one thing that looked out of the ordinary was the concrete-block wall and gate that surrounded the half-acre property. The house was in the middle of nowhere but its owner needed to put a security wall around it.

They all stopped their cars on the shoulder of the road and got out. Baxter had come prepared. From the trunk of his Caprice he pulled out two stepladders that they would use to scale the wall next to the driveway gate. Iverson was the first to go over. When he got to the top of the wall, he put the other ladder in place on the other side but hesitated before climbing down into the front yard.

“Anybody see any dogs?”

“No dogs,” Baxter said. “I checked this morning.”

Iverson went down and the others followed him over. While he waited for his turn, Bosch looked around and could just see the neon demarcation of the Strip several miles to the east. Above this the sun was a neon red ball. The air had gone from warm to hot and was as dry and rough as sandpaper. Bosch thought of the cherry-flavored Chap Stick in his pocket that he had bought at the hotel gift shop. But he didn’t want to use it in front of the local boys.

After Bosch had scaled the wall and was approaching the house behind the others, he looked at his watch. It was now almost nine but the house seemed dead. No movement, no sound, no lights, nothing. Curtains were closed across every window.

“You sure he’s here?” Bosch whispered to Baxter.

“He’s here,” Baxter replied without lowering his voice. “I jumped the wall about six and touched the hood of the Vette. It was warm. He hadn’t been home long. He’s in there asleep, I guarantee it. Nine o’clock to this guy is like four in the morning for normal people.”

Bosch looked over at the Corvette. He remembered it from the night before. As he looked around further, he realized the confines within the walls of the compound were carpeted in lush, green grass. It must have cost a fortune to plant and another one to keep it watered. The property sat in the desert like a towel on the beach. Bosch was drawn from his wonder by the sound of Iverson hitting the front door with his foot.

With weapons drawn, Bosch and the others followed Iverson into the dark opening to the house. They went in screaming the usual identifiers-Police! and Don’t Move!-and quickly moved down a hallway to the left. Bosch followed the sharp slashes of light from their flashlights. Almost immediately he heard female screams and then a light came on in a room at the end of the hall.

By the time he got in there, he saw Iverson kneeling on a king-size bed, holding his Smith amp; Wesson short barrel six inches from the face of Luke Goshen. The big man Bosch had encountered the night before was wrapped in the bed’s black silk sheets and looked as calm about the situation as Magic Johnson used to look while shooting free throws with the game on the line. He even took the time to glance up at the ceiling to view the reflection of the scene in the mirror.

It was the women who weren’t calm. Two of them, both nude, stood on either side of the bed, oblivious to their nakedness but fully in the latter stages of fright. Finally, Baxter quieted them with a loud shout of “Shut up!”

It took a few moments for the silence to sink in. Nobody moved. Bosch never took his eyes off Goshen. He was the only danger in the room. He sensed that the other cops, who had branched off to search the house, had now moved into the room behind him along with the two uniform cops.

“On your face, Luke,” Iverson finally ordered. “You girls get some clothes on. Now!”

One of the women said, “You can’t just-”

“Shut up!” Iverson cut her off. “Or you go in to town like that. Your choice.”

“I’m not go-”

“Randy!” Goshen boomed with a voice as deep as a barrel. “Shut the fuck up and get dressed. They’re not taking you anywhere. You, too, Harm.”

All the men but Goshen instinctively looked at the woman he had called Harm. She looked like she weighed about ninety pounds. She had soft blond hair, breasts she could hide in a child’s tea cups and a gold hoop piercing one of the folds of her vagina. There was a look of fright etched on her face that had completely crowded out any hint of beauty.

“Harmony,” she whispered, understanding their dilemma.

“Well, get dressed, Harmony,” Felton said. “Both of you. Turn to the wall and get dressed.”

“Just get ’em their clothes and get ’em out of here,” Iverson said.

Harmony was stepping into a pair of jeans when she stopped and looked at the men giving conflicting orders.

“Well, which is it?” Randy asked in an irritated voice. “You people got your shit together or what?”

Bosch recognized her as the woman who had been dancing in Dolly’s the night before.

“Get ’em out of here!” Iverson yelled. “Now.”

The uniforms moved in to usher the naked women out.

“We’re going,” Randy yelped. “Don’t touch me.”

Iverson yanked the sheets off Goshen and began cuffing his hands behind his back. Goshen’s blond hair ran in a thin and tightly braided ponytail down his back. Bosch hadn’t noticed that the night before.

“Whatsa matter, Iverson?” he said, his face against the mattress. “You got a problem with a little poon hangin’ around? You a little punk or something?”

“Goshen, do yourself a favor, shut your fuckin’ hole.”

Goshen laughed off the threat. He was a deeply tanned man who seemed even larger than Bosch recalled from the night before. He was completely buffed, his arms the size of hams. For a short moment, Bosch thought he understood Goshen’s desire to sleep with two women. And why they willingly went with him in twos.

Goshen faked a yawn to make sure everyone knew he wasn’t the least bit threatened by what was happening. He wore only black bikini underwear that matched the sheets. There were tattoos on his back. A one percent sign on the left shoulder blade, a Harley Davidson insignia on the right. On the upper left arm there was another tattoo. The number eighty-eight.

“What’s this, your IQ?” Iverson said as he sharply slapped the arm.

“Fuck you, Iverson, and the phony fuckin’ warrant you rode in on.”

Bosch knew what the tattoo meant. He had seen it enough in L.A. The eighth letter of the alphabet was H. Eight-eight meant HH, short for Heil Hitler. It meant Goshen had spent some time with white supremacists. But most of the assholes Bosch came across with similar tattoos had gotten them in prison. It was amazing to him that Goshen apparently had no criminal record and had spent no time in stir. If he had, his name would have come up when the prints from Tony Aliso’s jacket had been run through the AFIS computer. He put thoughts of this contradiction aside when Goshen managed to turn his head so that he was looking at Bosch.

“You,” he said. “You’re the one they should be arresting. After what you did to Gussie.”

Bosch bent over the bed to reply.

“This ain’t about last night. This is about Tony Aliso.”

Iverson roughly turned Goshen over on the bed.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Goshen asked angrily. “I’m clean on that, man. What are you-”

He tried to pull himself up into a sitting position but Iverson pushed him back down hard.

“Just sit tight,” Iverson said. “We’ll hear your sorry side of things. But we’re going to have a look around first.”

He took the warrant out of his pocket and dropped it on Goshen’s chest.

“There’s your warrant.”

“I can’t read it.”

“Not my fault you didn’t stay in school.”

“Just hold it up for me.”

Iverson ignored him and looked at the others.

“Okay, let’s split up and see what we’ve got here. Harry, you take this room, okay, keep our friend here company?”

“Right.”

Iverson then addressed the two uniforms.

“I want one of you guys in here. Just stand out of the way and keep your eyes on douche bag here.”

One of the uniforms nodded and the others left the room. Bosch and Goshen looked at each other.

“I can’t read this thing,” Goshen said.

“I know,” Bosch said. “You said that.”

“This is bullshit. It’s just a roust. You couldn’t possibly have anything on me because I didn’t do it.”

“Then who’d you have do it? Gussie?”

“No, man, nobody. There’s no way you’ll be able to pin this on me. No fucking way. I want my lawyer.”

“As soon as you’re booked.”

“Booked for what?”

“For murder, Lucky.”

Goshen continued his denials and demands for a lawyer while Bosch ignored him and started looking around the room, checking the drawers of the dresser. He glanced back at Goshen every few seconds. It was like walking around a lion’s cage. He knew he was safe but that didn’t stop him from checking. He could tell Goshen was watching him in the mirror over the bed. When the big man finally quieted, Bosch waited a few moments and then started asking questions. He did it casually while he continued the search, as if he didn’t really care about the answers.

“So where were you Friday night?”

“Fuckin’ your mother.”

“She’s dead.”

“I know it. It wasn’t all that good.”

Bosch stopped what he was doing and looked at him. Goshen wanted him to hit him. He wanted the violence. It was the playing field he understood.

“Where were you, Goshen? Friday night.”

“Talk to my lawyer.”

“We will. But you can talk, too.”

“I was working the club. I have a fucking job, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. When did you work till?”

“I don’t know. Four. I go home after that.”

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Where were you, in that office?”

“That’s right.”

“Anybody see you? You ever come out before four?”

“I don’t know. Talk to my lawyer.”

“Don’t worry. We will.”

Bosch went back to the search and opened the closet door. It was a walk-in but it was only a third lined with clothes. Goshen lived light.

“Fuckin’ A it’s right,” Goshen called from the bed. “You go check. Check it out.”

The first thing Bosch did was to turn over the two pairs of shoes and the Nikes that were lined on the floor. He studied the sole patterns and none of them appeared even remotely like the pattern found on the bumper of the Rolls and Tony Aliso’s hip. He glanced back out at Goshen to make sure the big man wasn’t moving. He wasn’t. Bosch next reached to the shelf above the clothes rod. He took a box down and found it full of photos. They were eight by ten publicity shots of dancers. They weren’t nudes. Each young woman was posed provocatively in a skimpy costume. Each one’s name was printed in the white border below the photo, accompanied by the name and number of Models A Million, which Bosch guessed was a local agency that provided dancers to clubs. He looked through the box until he found a photo with the name Layla on it.

He studied the photo of the woman he had been looking for the previous night. She had long flowing brown hair with blond highlights, a full figure, dark eyes and bee sting lips. In the photo they were parted just enough to show a hint of white teeth. She was a beautiful woman and there was something familiar about her but he couldn’t place it. He decided that maybe the familiarity was the sexual malice that all the women in the photos and those whom he had seen the night before in the club seemed to convey.

Bosch took the box out of the closet and dropped it on the bureau. He held the picture of Layla out of it.

“What’s with the pictures, Lucky?”

“They’re all the girls I’ve been with. How ’bout you, cop? You had that many? I bet the ugliest one in there is better than the best one you’ve ever had.”

“So what do you want to do, compare pricks, too? I’m glad you’ve had your fill of women, Lucky, ’cause there aren’t going to be any more. I mean, sure, you’ll be able to fuck or be fucked. It just won’t be with women is all I’m saying.”

Goshen was quiet while he contemplated this. Bosch put the photo of Layla on the bureau next to the box.

“Look, Bosch, just tell me what you guys’ve got and I’ll tell you what I know so we can get this straightened out. You’re wrong on this. I didn’t do anything, so let’s get this over with, stop wasting each other’s time.”

Bosch didn’t answer. He went back into the closet and hiked up on his toes to see if there was anything else on the shelf. There was. A small cloth folded like a handkerchief. He took it down and unfolded it. It was soiled with oil. He smelled it and recognized it.

Bosch came out of the closet, tossed the rag so it hit Goshen in the face and fell onto the bed.

“What’s this?”

“I don’t know. What is it?”

“It’s a rag with gun oil on it. Where’s the gun?”

“I don’t have a gun and that isn’t mine, either. Never saw it before.”

“Okay.”

“What do you mean, okay? I never fuckin’ saw it before.”

“I mean, okay, Goshen. That’s all. Don’t get nervous.”

“It’s hard with you people sticking your nose up my ass.”

Bosch bent over the night table. He opened the top drawer, found an empty cigarette box, a set of pearl earrings and an unopened box of condoms. Bosch threw the box at Goshen. It bounced off his huge chest and fell to the floor.

“You know, Goshen, just buying them ain’t safe sex. You gotta put ’em on.”

He opened the bottom drawer. It was empty.

“How long you lived here, Goshen?”

“Moved in right after I kicked your sister out on her ass. Put her on the street. Last I seen, she was selling it over on Fremont outside the Cortez.”

Bosch straightened up and looked at him. Goshen was smiling. He wanted to provoke something. He wanted to control things, even handcuffed on the bed. Even if it cost him some blood.

“My mother, now my sister, who’s next, my wife?”

“Yeah, I got something planned for her. I’ll-”

“Shut up, would you? It’s not working, understand? You’re not getting to me. You can’t get to me. So save your strength.”

“Everybody can be gotten to, Bosch. Remember that.”

Bosch looked at him and then stepped into the master bathroom. It was a large room with a separate shower and tub, almost in the same configuration as the room Tony Aliso had used at the Mirage. The toilet was in a small closet-size room behind a door with a slatted grill. Bosch started there. He quickly lifted the top of the water tank and found nothing unusual. Before putting the porcelain top back in place he leaned over the toilet and looked down the wall behind the tank. What he saw made him immediately call for the uniform in the bedroom.

“Yes, sir?” the cop said.

He looked like he wasn’t yet twenty-five. His black skin had almost a bluish tint to it. He kept his hands on his equipment belt in a relaxed mode, his right just a few inches from his gun. It was the standard pose. Bosch saw that the nameplate above his breast pocket said Fontenot.

“Fontenot, take a look down here behind the tank.”

The cop did as he was asked without even taking his hands off his belt.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I think it’s a gun. Why don’t you step back and let me pull it out.”

Bosch flattened his hand and reached it down into the two-inch space between the wall and the tank. His fingers closed on a plastic bag attached to the back of the tank with gray duct tape. He managed to pull it free and get the bag out. He held it up for Fontenot to see. The bag contained a blue metal pistol equipped with a three-inch screw-on silencer.

“A twenty-two?” Fontenot asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Bosch said. “Go get Felton and Iverson, would you?”

“Right away.”

Bosch followed Fontenot out of the bathroom. He was holding the bag containing the gun the way a fisherman holds a fish by its tail. When he stepped into the bedroom he couldn’t help but smile at Goshen, whose eyes noticeably widened.

“That ain’t mine,” Goshen immediately protested. “That’s a plant, you fuck! I don’t be-Get me my goddamned lawyer, you son of a bitch!”

Bosch let the words go by but studied the look. He saw something flash in Goshen’s eyes. It was there for only a second and then he covered up. It wasn’t fear. He didn’t think that was something Goshen would let slip into his eyes. Bosch believed he had seen something else. But what? He looked at Goshen and waited a moment for the look to return. Was it confusion? Disappointment? Goshen’s eyes showed nothing now. But Bosch believed he knew the look. What he had seen had been surprise.

Iverson, Baxter and Felton then filed into the room. They saw the gun and Iverson yelped in triumph.

“Sayonara, bay-bee!”

His glee showed on his face. Bosch explained how and where he had found the weapon.

“These fuckhead gangsters,” Iverson said, looking at Goshen. “Think the cops never saw The Godfather? Who’d you put it there for, Goshen? Michael Corleone?”

“I said get me my fucking lawyer!” Goshen yelled.

“You’ll get your lawyer,” Iverson said. “Now get up, you piece of shit. You gotta get dressed for the ride in.”

Bosch held him at gunpoint while Iverson took one of the cuffs off. Then they both pointed guns at him while he got dressed in black jeans, boots and T-shirt-the shirt manufactured for a much smaller man.

“You guys are always tough in numbers,” Goshen said as he went about putting the clothes on. “You ever come up against me alone, then it’s going to be wet ass time.”

“Come on, Goshen, we don’t have all day,” Iverson said.

When he was done, they cuffed him and stuffed him into the back of Iverson’s car. Iverson locked the gun in the trunk, then they went back inside the house. In a short meeting inside the front hallway it was decided that Baxter and two of the other detectives would stay behind to finish the search of the house.

“What about the women?” Bosch asked.

“The uniforms will watch them until these boys are done,” Iverson said.

“Yeah, but as soon as they leave they’ll be on the phone. We’ll have Goshen’s lawyer down our throat before we even get started.”

“I’ll take care of that. Goshen’s got one car here, right? Where’s the keys?”

“Kitchen counter,” one of the other detectives said.

“Okay,” Iverson said. “We’re out of here.”

Bosch followed him through the kitchen, watching him pocket the keys that were on the counter, and then out into the carport by the Corvette. There was a little workroom here with tools hanging on a peg board. Iverson selected a shovel and then stepped out of the carport and around to the back yard.

Bosch followed and watched as Iverson found the spot where the telephone line came in from a pole at the street and connected to the house. He swung the shovel up and with one strike disconnected the line.

“Amazing how strong the wind can get out here in the open desert,” he said.

He looked around behind the house.

“Those girls have no car and no phone,” he said. “Nearest house is a half mile, city’s about five. My guess is they’ll stay put a while. That’ll give us time. All we need.”

Iverson took a baseball swing with the shovel and launched it out over the property wall and into the scrub brush. He started walking toward the front of the house and his car.

“What do you think?” Bosch asked.

“I think the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Goshen’s ours, Harry. Yours.”

“No. I mean about the gun.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t know…It seems too easy.”

“Nobody said criminals gotta be smart. Goshen’s not smart. He’s just been lucky. But not anymore.”

Bosch nodded but he still didn’t like it. It wasn’t really a question of being smart or not. Criminals followed routines, instincts. This didn’t make sense.

“I saw something in his eyes when he saw the gun. Like he was just as surprised to see it as we were.”

“Maybe. Maybe he’s just a good actor. And maybe it’s not even the right gun. You’ll have to take it back with you to run tests. Find out if it’s the gun, Harry, then worry about if it’s too easy.”

Bosch nodded. He took out a cigarette and lit it.

“I don’t know. I feel like I’m missing something.”

“Look, Harry, you want to make a case or not?”

“I want a case.”

“Then let’s take him in and put him in a room, see what he has to say.”

They were at the car. Bosch realized he had left the photo of Layla inside. He told Iverson to start the car and he’d be right back. When he came back with the photo and got in, he checked Goshen in the back and saw a trickle of blood running down from the corner of his mouth. Bosch looked at Iverson, who was smiling.

“I don’t know, he must’ve bumped his face getting in. Either that or he did it on purpose to make it look like I did it.”

Goshen said nothing and Bosch just turned around. Iverson pulled the car out onto the road and they headed back toward the city. The temperature was climbing rapidly and Bosch could already feel the sweat sticking his shirt to his back. The air conditioner labored to overcome the heat that had built up in the car while they were inside the house. The air was as dry as old bones. Bosch finally took out the Chap Stick and rolled it across his sore lips. He didn’t care what Iverson or Goshen thought about it.

They took Goshen up to the detective bureau in a back elevator in which Goshen audibly farted. Then Bosch and Iverson walked him down a hallway off the squad room and into an interview room barely larger than a rest-room stall. They handcuffed him to a steel ring bolted to the center of the table and locked him in. Then they left him there. As Iverson closed the door, Goshen called after him that he wanted to make his phone call.

Bosch noticed that the squad room was almost deserted as they walked back toward Felton’s office.

“Somebody die?” Bosch asked. “Where is everybody?”

“They’re out picking up the others.”

“What others?”

“The captain wanted to bring in your pal, Gussie, throw a scare at him. They’re bringing in the girl, too.”

“Layla? They found her?”

“No, not her. The one you had us run last night. The one that played with your victim at the Mirage. Turns out she’s got a jacket.”

Bosch reached over and yanked Iverson’s arm to stop him.

“Eleanor Wish? You’re bringing in Eleanor Wish?”

He didn’t wait for Iverson’s reply. He broke away from the man and charged into Felton’s office. The captain was on the phone and Bosch paced anxiously in front of the desk waiting for him to hang up. Felton pointed at the door but Bosch shook his head. He could see Felton’s eyes start to smolder as he told whoever was on the other end of the line he had to go.

“I can’t talk right now,” he said. “You don’t have to worry, it’s under control. I’ll talk to you.”

He hung up and looked at Bosch.

“What is it now?”

“Call your people. Tell them to leave Eleanor Wish alone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She had nothing to do with this. I checked her out last night.”

Felton leaned forward and clasped his hands together as he thought.

“When you say you checked her out, what does that mean?”

“I interviewed her. She had a passing acquaintance with the victim, that’s it. She’s clean.”

“Do you know who she is, Bosch? I mean, do you know her history?”

“She was an FBI agent assigned to the L.A. bank robbery squad. She went to prison five years ago on a conspiracy charge stemming from a series of burglaries involving bank safe deposit vaults. It doesn’t matter, Captain, she’s clean on this.”

“I think it might be good to sweat her a little bit and take another go at her with one of my guys. Just to be sure.”

“I’m already sure. Look, I-”

Bosch looked back at the office door and saw Iverson hanging around, trying to listen in. Bosch walked over and closed the door, then pulled a chair away from the wall and sat right in front of Felton’s desk and leaned across to him.

“Look, Captain, I knew Eleanor Wish in L.A. I worked that case with the bank vaults. I…we were more than just partners on it. Then it all turned to shit and she went away. I hadn’t seen her in five years until I saw her on the surveillance tape at the Mirage. That’s why I called you last night. I wanted to talk to her but not because of the case. She’s clean. She did her time and she’s clean. Now call your people.”

Felton was quiet. Bosch could see the wheels turning.

“I’ve been up most of the night working on this. I called your room a half dozen times to bring you in on it but you weren’t there. I don’t suppose you want to tell me where you were?”

“No, I don’t.”

Felton thought some more and then shook his head.

“I can’t do it. I can’t cut her loose yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because there is something about her you apparently don’t know.”

Bosch closed his eyes for a moment like a boy expecting to get slapped by an angry mother but steadying himself to take it.

“What don’t I know?”

“She might’ve only had a passing acquaintance with your victim, but she’s got more than that with Joey Marks and his group.”

It was worse than he expected.

“What are you talking about?”

“I put her name up for discussion with some of my people last night after you called. We’ve got her in a file. On numerous occasions she has been seen in the company of a man named Terrence Quillen who works for Goshen who works for Marks. Numerous times, Detective Bosch. In fact, I’ve got a team out looking for Quillen now. See what he has to say.”

“In the company of, what does that mean?”

“Looked like strictly business, according to the reports.”

Bosch felt like he’d been punched. This was impossible. He had spent the night with the woman. The sense of betrayal was building in him but a deeper gut sense told him she was true, that this was all some huge mix-up.

There was a knock on the door and Iverson poked his head in.

“FYI, the others are back, boss. They’re puttin’ them in the interview rooms.”

“Okay.”

“You need anything?”

“No, we’re fine. Close the door.”

After Iverson left, Bosch looked at the captain.

“Is she arrested?”

“No, we asked her to come in voluntarily.”

“Let me talk to her first.”

“I don’t think that would be wise.”

“I don’t care if it’s wise. Let me go talk to her. If she’ll tell anybody, she’ll tell me.”

Felton thought a moment and then finally nodded his head.

“Okay, go ahead. You get fifteen minutes.”

Bosch should have thanked him but didn’t. He just got up quickly and went to the door.

“Detective Bosch?” Felton said.

Harry looked back from the door.

“I’ll do what I can for you on this. But this cuts us in in a big way, you understand that?”

Bosch stepped out without answering. Felton had no finesse. It was understood without being said that Bosch was now beholden to him. But Felton had to say it anyway.

In the hallway, Bosch passed the first interview room, where they had placed Goshen, and opened the door to the second. Sitting there handcuffed to the table was Gussie Flanagan. His nose was misshapen and looked like a new potato. He had cotton jammed into the nostrils. He looked at Bosch with bloodshot eyes and recognition showed on his face. Bosch backed out and closed the door without saying a word.

Eleanor Wish was behind door number three. She was disheveled, obviously dragged from sleep by the Metro cops. But her eyes had the alert and wild quality of a cornered animal and that cut Bosch to the bone.

“Harry! What are they doing?”

He closed the door and moved quickly into the tiny room, touching her shoulder in a consoling manner and taking the seat across from her.

“Eleanor, I’m sorry.”

“What? What did you do?”

“Yesterday when I saw you on the tape at the Mirage I asked Felton, he’s the captain here, to get me your number and address because you were unlisted. He did. But then without my knowledge he ran your name and pulled up your package. Then on his own he had his people get you this morning. It’s all part of this Tony Aliso thing.”

“I told you. I didn’t know him. I had one drink with him once. Just because I happened by chance to be at the same table with him they bring me in?”

She shook her head and looked away, the distress written on her face. This was the way it would always be, she now knew. The criminal record she carried would guarantee it.

“I’ve got to ask you something. I want to get this cleared up and get you out of here.”

“What?”

“Tell me about this man Terrence Quillen.”

He saw the shock in her eyes.

“Quillen? What does he-is he the suspect?”

“Eleanor, you know how this works. I can’t tell you things. You tell me. Just answer the question. Do you know Terrence Quillen?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know him?”

“He came up to me about six months ago when I was leaving the Flamingo. I had been out here four or five months. I was settling in, playing six nights a week by then. He came up to me and in his words told me what’s what. He somehow knew about me. Who I was, that I’d just gotten out. He said there was a street tax. He said I had to pay it, that all the locals paid it, and that if I didn’t there’d be trouble. He said that if I did pay it, he’d watch out for me. Be there if I ever got in a jam. You know how it goes, extortion plain and simple.”

She broke then and started to cry. It took all of Bosch’s will not to get up and try to hold her and comfort her in some way.

“I was alone,” she said. “Scared. I paid. I pay him every week. What was I supposed to do. I had nothing and nowhere to go.”

“Fuck it,” Bosch said under his breath.

He got up and squeezed around the end of the table and grabbed hold of her. He pulled her to his chest and kissed the top of her head.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” he whispered. “I promise you that, Eleanor.”

He held her there in silence for a few moments, listening to her quiet crying, until the door opened and Iverson stood there. He had a toothpick in his mouth.

“Get the fuck out of here, Iverson.”

The detective slowly closed the door.

“I’m sorry,” Eleanor said. “I’m getting you in trouble.”

“No, you’re not. It’s all on me. Everything is on me.”

A few minutes later he walked back into Felton’s office. The captain looked up at him wordlessly.

“She was paying off Quillen to leave her alone. Two hundred a week. That was all it was. The street tax. She doesn’t know anything about anything. She happened by chance to be at the same table as Aliso for about an hour Friday. She’s clean. Now kick her loose. Tell your people.”

Felton leaned back and started tapping his lower lip with the end of a pen. He was showing Bosch his deep-thinking pose.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Okay, this is the deal. You let her go and I make a call to my people.”

“And what’ll you tell ’em?”

“I’ll tell them I’ve gotten excellent cooperation from Metro out here and that we ought to run this as a joint operation. I’ll say we’re going to put the squeeze on Goshen here and go for the two-for-one sale. We’re going to go for Goshen and Joey Marks because Marks was the one who would’ve ultimately pushed the button on Tony Aliso. I’ll say it’s highly recommended that Metro take the lead out here because they know the turf and they know Marks. Do we have a deal?”

Felton tapped out another code message on his lip, then reached over and turned the phone on his desk so Bosch could have access to it.

“Make the call now,” he said. “After you talk to your CO, put me on the line. I want to talk to him.”

“It’s a her.”

“Whatever.”

A half hour later Bosch was driving a borrowed unmarked Metro car with Eleanor Wish sitting crumpled in the passenger seat. The call to Lieutenant Billets had gone over well enough for Felton to keep his end of the deal. Eleanor was kicked loose, though the damage was pretty much done. She had been able to eke out a new start and a new existence, but the underpinnings of confidence and pride and security had all been kicked out from beneath her. It was all because of Bosch and he knew it. He drove in silence, unable to even fathom what to say or how to make it better. And it cut him deeply because he truly wanted to. Before the previous night he had not seen her in five years, but she had never been far from his deepest thoughts, even when he had been with other women. There had always been a voice back there that whispered to him that Eleanor Wish was the one. She was the match.

“They’re always going to come for me,” she said in a small voice.

“What?”

“You remember that Bogart movie where the cop says, ‘Round up the usual suspects,’ and they go out and do it? Well, that’s me now. They are going to mean me. I guess I never realized that until now. I’m one of the usual suspects. I guess I should thank you for slapping me in the face with reality.”

Bosch said nothing. He didn’t know how to respond because her words were true.

In a few minutes they were at her apartment and Bosch walked her in and sat her on the couch.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“When you get a chance, look around and make sure they didn’t take anything.”

“I didn’t have anything to take.”

Bosch looked at the Nighthawks print on the wall above her. It was a painting of a lonely coffee shop on a dark night. A man and a woman sitting together, another man by himself. Bosch used to think he was the man alone. Now he stared at the couple and wondered.

“Eleanor,” he said. “I have to go back. I’ll come back here as soon as I can.”

“Okay, Harry, thanks for getting me out.”

“You going to be okay?”

“Sure.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Back at Metro, Iverson was waiting for Bosch before they took their first shot at Goshen. Felton had acceded to leaving Goshen for Bosch. It was still his case.

In the hallway outside the interview room, Iverson tapped Bosch on the arm to stop him before going in.

“Listen, Bosch, I just want to say I don’t know what you got going on with that woman and I guess it’s nobody’s business anymore since the captain let her go, but since we’re going to be working together on Lucky here, I thought I’d clear the air. I didn’t appreciate the way you spoke to me, telling me to get the fuck out and all.”

Bosch looked at him a minute. The detective still had a toothpick in his mouth and Bosch wondered if it was the same one from before.

“You know, Iverson, I don’t even know your first name.”

“It’s John, but people call me Ivy.”

“Well, Iverson, I didn’t appreciate the way you were sneaking around the captain’s office or the interview room. In L.A. we’ve got a name for cops who sneak around and eavesdrop and are assholes on general principle. We call ’ em squints. And I don’t really care if you’re offended by me or not. You’re a squint. And you make any trouble for me from here on out and I’ll go right to Felton and make trouble for you. I’ll tell him about finding you in my room today. And if that’s not enough, I’ll tell ’im that I won six hundred bucks on the wheel in the casino last night but the money disappeared off the bureau after you were there. Now, you want to do this interview or not?”

Iverson grabbed Bosch by the collar and shoved him against the wall.

“Don’t you fuck with me, Bosch.”

“Don’t you fuck with me, Ivy.”

A smile slowly cracked across Iverson’s face and he released his grip and stepped back. Bosch straightened his tie and shirt.

“Then let’s do it, cowboy,” Iverson said.

When they squeezed into the interview room, Goshen was waiting for them with his eyes closed, his legs up on the table and his hands laced behind his head. Bosch watched Iverson look down at the torn metal where the cuff ring had been attached to the table. Red flares of anger burst on his cheeks.

“Okay, asshole, get up,” Iverson ordered.

Goshen stood up and brought his cuffed hands up. Iverson got out his keys and took the cuff off one wrist.

“Let’s try this again. Sit down.”

When Goshen was back down, Iverson cuffed his wrists behind his back, looping the chain through one of the steel slats of the chair back. Iverson then kicked out a chair and sat to the side of the gangster. Bosch sat across from him.

“Okay, Houdini, you also’ve got destroying public property on your list now,” Iverson said.

“Wow, that’s bold, Iverson. Really bold. That’s like the time you came into the club and took Cinda into the fantasy booth. I think you called it interrogation. She called it something else. What’s this going to be?”

Iverson’s face now glowed with anger. Goshen puffed his chest up proudly and smirked at the detective’s embarrassment.

Bosch shoved the table into Goshen’s midsection and the big man doubled over it as his breath burst out. Bosch was up quickly and around the table. As he went, he pulled his keychain from his pocket. Then, using his elbow to keep Goshen’s chest down on the table, he flicked open the blade of his pocket knife and sawed off the big man’s ponytail. He went back to his seat and when Goshen lifted up, threw the six-inch length of hair on the table in front of him.

“Ponytails went out of style at least three years ago, Goshen. You probably didn’t hear about it.”

Iverson burst out in uproarious laughter. Goshen looked at Bosch with pale blue eyes that seemed as soulless as buttons on a machine. He didn’t say a word. He was showing Bosch he could take it. He was stand-up. But Bosch knew even he couldn’t stand up forever. Nobody can.

“You’ve got a problem, Lucky,” Iverson said. “Big problems. You-”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. I don’t want to talk to you, Iverson. I don’t want you to talk to me. You’re a runt. I’ve got no respect for you. Understand? Anybody talks, let him talk.”

Goshen nodded to Bosch. There was a silence during which Bosch looked from him to Iverson and then back.

“Go get a cup,” Bosch said, without looking at Iverson. “We’ll be fine in here.”

“No, you-”

“Go get a cup.”

“You sure?”

Iverson looked as if he were being kicked out of the college fraternity because the boys didn’t think he fit in.

“Yeah, I’m sure. You got a rights form on you?”

Iverson got up. He took a folded piece of paper out of his coat pocket and tossed it on the table.

“I’ll be right outside the door.”

When Goshen and Bosch were alone they studied each other for a moment before Bosch spoke.

“You want a smoke?”

“Don’t play the good guy with me. Just tell me what’s what.”

Bosch shrugged off the rebuke and got up. He moved behind Goshen and took his keys out again. This time he unlocked one of the cuffs. Goshen brought his hands up and began rubbing the wrists to get circulation going. He noticed the length of hair on the table and slapped it onto the floor.

“Let me tell you something, Mr. L.A. I’ve been to a place where it doesn’t matter what they do to you, where nothing can hurt you. I’ve been there and back.”

“Everybody’s been to Disneyland, so what?”

“I’m not talking about fuckin’ Disneyland, asshole. I spent three years in the penta down in Chihuahua. They didn’t break me then, you aren’t going to do it now.”

“Let me tell you something then. In my life I’ve killed a lot of people. Just wanted you to know that up front. Time comes again, there won’t be any hesitation. None. This isn’t about good guy cops and bad guy cops, Goshen. That’s the movies. The movies where the bad guys have ponytails, I guess. But this is real life. You are nothing to me but meat. And I’m gonna put you down. That’s a given. It’s just up to you how hard and how far you want to go down.”

Goshen thought a moment.

“All right, so now we know each other. Talk to me. And I’ll take that smoke now.”

Bosch put his cigarettes and matches on the table. Goshen got one out and lit it. Bosch waited until he was done.

“I gotta advise you first. You know the routine.”

Bosch opened the piece of paper Iverson had left and read Goshen his rights. He then had the man sign his name on it.

“This is being taped, isn’t it?”

“Not yet.”

“Okay then, what’ve you got?”

“Your fingerprints were on Tony Aliso’s body. The gun we found behind the toilet will be going back to L.A. today. The prints are good to have, real good. But if the bullets they pick out of Tony’s gourd match that gun, then it’s all over. I don’t care what kind of alibi you line up or what your explanation will be or if your lawyer’s Johnny fucking Cochran, you won’t just be meat, you’ll be one hundred percent grade A dead meat.”

“That gun ain’t mine. It’s a plant, goddamn it. You know it and I know it. And it’s not going to fly, Bosch.”

Bosch looked at him a moment and felt his face getting hot.

“You’re saying I put that there?”

“I’m saying I watched the O.J. show. Cops out here are no different. I’m saying I don’t know if it was you or Iverson or whoever, but that gun’s a fuckin’ plant, goddammit. That’s what I’m saying.”

Bosch traced a finger along the top of the table, waiting for the anger to dissipate to the point where he could control his voice.

“You hang on to that bullshit story, Goshen, and you’ll go far with it. You’ll go about ten years and then they’ll strap you down and stick a needle in your arm. At least it’s not the gas chamber anymore. They make it easy on you guys now.”

Bosch leaned back but there wasn’t a lot of room. The back of the chair hit the wall. He took out the Chap Stick and reapplied it.

“We own you now, Goshen. All you have left is one small window of opportunity. Call it a little piece of destiny still in your grasp.”

“And what window’s that?”

“You know what window, you know what I’m talking about. Guy like you doesn’t move an inch without the okay. Give us the guy you worked the hit with and the guy who told you to put Tony in the trunk. You don’t make a deal and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.”

Goshen let out his breath and shook his head.

“Look, I did not do this. I did not!”

Bosch didn’t expect him to say anything different. It wasn’t that easy. He had to wear him down. He leaned across the table conspiratorially.

“Listen, I’m going to tell you something so that you know that I’m not bullshitting you. Maybe save some time, so you can decide where to go from here.”

“Go ahead, but it’s not going to change anything.”

“Anthony Aliso was wearing a black leather jacket Friday night. Remember that? One with the two-inch lapels. It-”

“You’re wasting your-”

“You grabbed him there, Goshen. Just like this.”

Bosch reached across the table and demonstrated, using both hands to grab an imaginary set of lapels on a jacket Goshen wasn’t wearing.

“Remember that? Tell me I’m wasting my time now. Remember, Goshen? You did it, you grabbed him like that. Now who is bullshitting who?”

Goshen shook his head but Bosch knew he had scored. The pale blues were looking inward at the memory.

“Kind’ve a freaky thing. Processed leather like that holds the amino acids from the prints. That’s what the tech tells me. We got some nice ones. Enough to take to the DA or the grand jury. Enough for me to come out here. Enough for us to come right into your fucking house and hook you up.”

He hesitated a moment until Goshen was looking at him.

“And now this gun turns up in your house. I guess we’ll just have to wait on the ballistics if you don’t want to talk anymore. But I’ve got a hunch about it. I like my chances.”

Goshen slammed two open palms down on the steel table. It made a sound like a shot and echo.

“This is a setup. You people put-”

Iverson burst through the door, his gun out and aimed at Goshen. He jerked the weapon up like a TV cop.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “Lucky here is just a little mad, is all. Give us a few more minutes.”

Iverson went back out without a word.

“Nice play, but that’s all it was,” Goshen said. “Where’s my phone call?”

Bosch leaned back across the table.

“You can make the call now. But you make the call and it’s over right here. Because that won’t be your lawyer. That will be Joey’s lawyer. He’ll be here to represent you, but we both know the one he’ll be watching out for is Joey Marks.”

Bosch stood up.

“I guess then we’ll just have to settle for you. We’ll go the distance on you.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have me, you prick. Fingerprints? You need more than that. That gun’s a plant and everybody’s going to know it.”

“Yeah, you keep saying it. I’ll know what I need to know from ballistics by tomorrow morning.”

It was hard for Bosch to tell if that had registered because Goshen didn’t give it much time to.

“I’ve got a fuckin’ alibi! You can’t pin this on me, man!”

“Yeah? What’s your fuckin’ alibi? How do you even know when he got hit?”

“You asked me about Friday night, right? That’s the night.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Goshen sat silent and motionless for a half minute. Bosch could see the eyes going to work. Goshen knew he had crossed one line with what he had said. Bosch guessed he was considering how far he should cross. Bosch pulled the chair out and sat back down.

“I got an alibi, so I’m in the clear.”

“You’re not in the clear till we say you are. What’s your story?”

“No. I’m gonna tell my lawyer what it is.”

“You’re hurting yourself, Goshen. You’ve got nothing to lose telling me.”

“Except my freedom, right?”

“I could go out, verify your story. Maybe then I’d start listening to your story about the gun being planted.”

“Yeah, right, that’s like puttin’ the inmates in charge of the prison. Talk to my lawyer, Bosch. Now get me a fucking phone.”

Bosch stood up and signaled for him to put his arms behind his back. He did so and Bosch cuffed him again, then left the room.

After Bosch filled them in on how Goshen had won round one, Felton told Iverson to take a phone into the interview room and allow the suspect to call his lawyer.

“I guess we’ll let him stew,” Felton said when he and Bosch were alone. “See how he likes his first taste of incarceration.”

“He told me he did three years down in Mexico.”

“He tells that to a lot of people he’s trying to impress. Like the tattoos. When we were backgrounding him after he showed up a couple years ago, we never found anything about a Mexican prison and as far as we know, he’s never ridden a Harley, let alone with any motorcycle gang. I think a night in county might soften him up. Maybe by round two we’ll have the ballistics back.”

Bosch said he had to use a phone to call his CO to check on what the plan was for the gun.

“Just pick an empty desk out there,” Felton said. “Make yourself at home. Listen, I’ll tell you how this most likely will go and you can tell your Lieutenant Billets. The lawyer he calls is most likely going to be Mickey Torrino. He’s Joey Marks’s top guy. He’s going to object to extradition and meantime try to get bail. Any bail will do. All they want to do is get him out of our hands and into their hands and then they can make their decision.”

“What decision?”

“Whether or not to whack him. If Joey thinks Lucky might flip, he’ll just take him out to the desert somewhere and we’ll never see him again. Nobody will.”

Bosch nodded.

“So you go make your call and I’ll call over to the prosecutor’s office, see if we can’t get an X hearing scheduled. I think the sooner the better. If you can get Lucky to L.A., he’s going to be even more likely to start thinking about cutting a deal. That is, if we don’t break him first.”

“It’d be nice to have the ballistics before the extradition hearing. If we get a ballistics match, it will seal it. But things don’t move so quickly in L.A., if you know what I mean. I doubt there’s even been an autopsy.”

“Well, make your call and then we’ll reconnoiter.”

Bosch used an empty desk next to Iverson’s to make his call. He got Billets at her desk and he could tell she was eating. He quickly updated her on his failed effort to scam Goshen into talking and the plans to have the prosecutor’s office in Las Vegas handle the extradition hearing.

“What do you want to do about the gun?” he asked when he was done.

“I want it back here as soon as possible. Edgar talked somebody over at the coroner’s office into doing the cut this afternoon. We should have the bullets by tonight. If we have the gun, we can take the whole thing over to ballistics tomorrow morning. Today’s Tuesday. I doubt there’d be an extradition hearing before Thursday. We’d have an answer from ballistics by then.”

“Okay, I’ll grab a plane.”

“Good.”

Bosch sensed something off about her tone. She was preoccupied by something other than ballistics and what she was eating.

“Lieutenant,” he said. “What’s up? Is there something I don’t know about?”

She hesitated a moment and Bosch waited her out.

“Actually, something’s come up.”

Bosch’s face flashed warm. He guessed that Felton had screwed him and told Billets about the Eleanor Wish situation.

“What is it?”

“I’ve made an ID on the guy who was in Tony Aliso’s office.”

“That’s great,” Bosch said, relieved but confused by her somber tone. “Who?”

“No, it’s not great. It was Dominic Carbone from OCID.”

Bosch was stunned into silence for a long moment.

“Carbone? What the…?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got some feelers out. I’d like you back here until we figure out what to do with this. Goshen will keep until the extradition hearing. He’s not going to be talking to anyone but his lawyer. If you can get back, I’d like us all to get together and hash this around. I haven’t talked to Kiz and Jerry yet today. They’re still working the financial trail.”

“How’d you make the ID on Carbone?”

“Pure luck. Things were kind of slow after I talked to you and the captain out there this morning. I took a drive downtown and stopped by Central. I’ve got a friend, she’s a lieutenant, too, up in OC. Lucinda Barnes, you know her?”

“No.”

“Anyway, I went up to see her. I wanted to kind of feel around, maybe get an idea why they took the pass on this one. And, lo and behold, we’re sitting there talking and this guy walks through the squad and I think I recognize him but I’m not sure from where. I ask who he is and she tells me that’s Carbone. And that’s when I remembered. He’s the guy on the tape. He had his suit jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. I even saw the tattoo. It’s him.”

“You tell all this to your friend?”

“Hell no. I just acted natural and got the hell out of there. I tell you, Harry, I don’t like this inside stuff. I don’t know what to do.”

“We’ll figure something. Look, I’m going to go. I’ll be there as soon as I can. What you might want to do in the meantime, Lieutenant, is try to use some juice with ballistics. Tell them we’ll be coming in with a code three in the morning.”

Billets said she would do what she could on that.

After making arrangements to fly back to L.A., Bosch barely had time to take a cab back to the Mirage and check out and still make it by Eleanor’s apartment to say good-bye. But his knock on her door went unanswered. He didn’t know what kind of car she had, so it was impossible for him to check the lot to make sure she was gone. He went back to his rental and sat inside and waited as long as he could, until he was at risk of missing his flight. He then scribbled a message on a page from his notebook saying he would call her and went back to the door. He folded the page up tight and stuck it in the crack of the door jamb so that it would fall and be noticed the next time she opened the door.

He wanted to wait around longer and talk to her in person but he couldn’t. Twenty minutes later he was leaving the security office of the airport. The gun from Goshen’s house was wrapped in an evidence bag and safely in his briefcase. Five minutes later he was aboard a jet headed for the city of angels.