Trunk Music

PART III

BILLETS HAD A weighted and worried look on her face when Bosch stepped into her office.

“Harry.”

“Lieutenant. I dropped the gun at ballistics. They’re waiting on the bullets. Whoever it was you talked to over there, they snapped to.”

“Good.”

“Where is everybody?”

“They’re both over at Archway. Kiz spent the morning at the IRS and then went over to help Jerry with the interviews with Aliso’s associates. I also borrowed a couple of people from Major Fraud to help with the books. They’re tracing down these dummy corporations. They’re going to go after the bank accounts. Search and seizure. When we freeze the money, then maybe some real live people will come out of the woodwork and claim it. My theory is that this Joey Marks was not the only one Aliso was washing money for. There’s too much involved-if Kiz’s numbers are right. Aliso was probably working for every mob combine west of Chicago.”

Bosch nodded.

“Oh, by the way,” she continued, “I told Jerry that you’d take the autopsy so he can stay at Archway. Then I want everybody back here at six to talk about what we have.”

“Okay, when’s the autopsy?”

“Three-thirty. That going to be a problem?”

“No. Can I ask you something, why’d you call Major Fraud in instead of OCID?”

“For obvious reasons. I don’t know what to do about Carbone and OCID. I don’t know whether to bring in Internal Affairs, look the other way or what.”

“Well, we can’t look the other way. They have something we need. And if you call in IAD, then forget it. That will freeze everything up down there and that will be that.”

“What do they have that we need?”

“It stands to reason that if Carbone was pulling a bug out of that office, then-”

“There’s tapes. Jesus, I forgot about that.”

They dropped into silence for a few moments. Bosch pulled the chair out across from her desk and finally sat down.

“Let me take a run at Carbone, see if I can figure out what they were doing and get the tapes,” he said. “We’ve got the leverage.”

“This may have something to do with the chief and Fitzgerald, you know.”

“Maybe.”

She was referring to the intradepartmental skirmish between Deputy Chief Leon Fitzgerald, commander of OCID for more than a decade, and the man who was supposed to be his boss, the chief of police. In the time Fitzgerald had run the OCID, he had taken on an aura akin to J. Edgar Hoover’s at the FBI, a keeper of secrets who would use them to protect his position, his division and his budget. It was believed by many that Fitzgerald had his minions investigate and keep tabs on more honest citizens, cops and elected officials of the city than the mobsters his division was charged with rooting out. And it was no secret within the department that there was an ongoing power struggle between Fitzgerald and the police chief. The chief wanted to rein in OCID and its deputy chief but Fitzgerald didn’t want to be reined in. In fact, he wanted his domain to broaden. He wanted to be police chief. The struggle was largely at a namecalling standstill. The chief could not fire Fitzgerald outright because of civil service protections; and he could not get backing to simply gut and overhaul OCID from the police commission, mayor or city council members because it was believed that Fitzgerald had thick files on all of them, including the chief. These elected and appointed officials did not know what was in those files but they had to assume that the worst things they had ever done were duly recorded. And therefore they would not back the chief’s move against Fitzgerald unless they and the chief were in a guaranteed no-lose position.

Most of this was department legend or rumor, but Bosch knew even legend and rumor usually have some basis in reality. He was reluctant to step behind this curtain and possibly into this fight, as Billets clearly was, but offered to do so because he saw no alternative. He had to know what OCID had been doing and what it was that Carbone was trying to protect by breaking into the Archway office.

“Okay,” Billets said after some long thought. “But be careful.”

“Where’s the video from Archway?”

She pointed to the safe on the floor behind her desk. It was used to secure evidence.

“It will be safe,” she said.

“It better be. It will probably be the only thing that keeps them off me.”

She nodded. She knew the score.

The OCID offices were on the third floor of Central Division in downtown. The division was located away from police headquarters at Parker Center because the work of the OCID involved many undercover operations and it would not be wise to have so many undercovers going in and out of a place as public as the so-called Glass House, Parker Center. But it was that separation that helped foster the deepening gulf between Leon Fitzgerald and the police chief.

On the drive over from Hollywood, Bosch thought about a plan and knew just how he was going to play it by the time he got to the guard shack and flipped his ID to the rookie assigned parking lot duty. He read the name off the tag above the cop’s breast pocket and drove into the lot and over toward the back doors of the station, then put the car in park and got out his phone. He called the OCID’s main number and a secretary answered.

“Yeah, this is Trindle down on the parking lot,” Bosch said. “Is Carbone there?”

“Yes, he is. If you hold a-”

“Just tell him to come down. Somebody busted into his car.”

Bosch hung up and waited. In three minutes one of the doors at the rear of the station house opened and a man hurried out. Bosch recognized him from the Archway surveillance tape. Billets had been right on. Bosch put the car in drive and followed along behind the man. Eventually, he pulled up alongside him and lowered the window.

“Carbone.”

“Yeah, what?”

He kept walking, barely giving Bosch a glance.

“Slow down. Your car’s all right.”

Carbone stopped and now looked closely at Bosch.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I made the call. I just wanted to get you out here.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Bosch. We talked the other night.”

“Oh, yeah. The Aliso caper.”

Then it dawned on him that Bosch could have just taken the elevator up to the third floor if he wanted to see him.

“What is this, Bosch? What’s going on?”

“Why don’t you get in? I want to take a little ride.”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t like the way you’re doing this.”

“Get in, Carbone. I think you better.”

Bosch said it in a tone and with an accompanying stare that invited no choice but compliance. Carbone, who was about forty with a stocky build, hesitated a moment, then walked around the front of the car. He was wearing a nice dark blue suit like most mob cops liked to wear and he filled the car with the smell of a brisk cologne. Right away Bosch didn’t like him.

They drove out of the parking lot and Bosch went north toward Broadway. There was a lot of traffic and pedestrians and they moved slowly. Bosch said nothing, waiting for Carbone.

“Okay, so what’s so important you have to kidnap me away from the station?” he finally asked.

Bosch drove another block without answering. He wanted Carbone to sweat a little.

“You’ve got problems, Carbone,” he finally said. “I just thought I should tell you. See, I want to be your friend, Carbone.”

Carbone looked at Bosch with caution.

“I know I got problems,” he said. “I’m paying two different women child support, my house still has cracks in the walls from the earthquake and the union ain’t going to get us a raise again this year. So fuckin’ what?”

“Those aren’t problems, man. Those are inconveniences. I’m talking about real problems. About the break-in you did the other night over at Archway.”

Carbone was silent for a long moment and Bosch wasn’t sure but he thought the man was holding his breath.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Take me back.”

“No, Carbone, see, that’s the wrong answer. I’m here to help you, not hurt you. I’m your friend. And that goes for your boss, Fitzgerald, too.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay, then I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. I called you Sunday night and asked you about my stiff named Aliso. You call me back and tell me not only is OCID taking a pass, but you never heard of the guy. But as soon as you hang up the phone, you get over to Archway, break into the guy’s office and pop the bug you people planted in his phone. That’s what I’m talking about.”

Bosch looked over at him for the first time and he saw the face of a man whose mind is racing to find a way out. Bosch knew he had him now.

“Bullshit, that’s what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you dumb fuck? Next time you decide to do a little breaking and entering, look up. Check for cameras. Rodney King Rule Number One, don’t get caught on tape.”

He waited a moment to let that sink in and then put the final nails in the coffin.

“You knocked the mug off the desk and broke it. You then dumped it outside hoping nobody would notice anything. And one last thing about the rules. If you’re going to do a B amp;E in short sleeves, then you ought to get yourself a Band-Aid or somethin’ and cover up that tattoo on your arm, know what I mean? That’s a slam-bang identifier when you got it on tape. And, Carbone, you’re on tape, lots of tape.”

Carbone wiped a hand across his face. Bosch turned on Third and they went into the tunnel that runs under Bunker Hill. In the darkness that shrouded the car, Carbone finally spoke.

“Who knows about this?”

“For the moment, just me. But don’t get any ideas. Anything happens to me and the tape will get known by a lot of people. But for the moment, I can probably contain it.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know what was going on and I want all the tapes you took off his phone.”

“Impossible. Can’t do it. I don’t have those tapes. It wasn’t even my file. I just did what…”

“What Fitz told you to do. Yeah, I know. But I don’t care about that. You go to Fitz or whoever’s file it was and get it. I’ll go with you if you want or I’ll wait out in the car. But we’re going back now to get them.”

“I can’t do it.”

What Bosch knew he meant was that he couldn’t get the tapes without going to Fitzgerald and telling him how he had so badly messed up the break-in.

“You’re going to have to, Carbone. I don’t give a shit about you. You lied to me and fucked with my case. You either get me the tapes and an explanation or this is what I do. I dub off three copies of the surveillance tape. One goes to the chief’s office in the Glass House, one goes to Jim Newton at the Times and the last goes over to Stan Chambers at Channel 5. Stan’s a good man, he’ll know what to do with it. Do you know he’s the one who got the Rodney King tape first?”

“Jesus, Bosch, you’re killing me!”

“You’ve got your choice.”

The autopsy was being conducted by a deputy coroner named Salazar. He had already started by the time Bosch got to the coroner’s office at County-USC Medical Center. They said their perfunctory hellos and Bosch, garbed in the protective paper body suit and plastic mask, leaned back against one of the stainless counters and just watched. He wasn’t expecting much from the autopsy. He had really only come for the bullets and his hope was that one of them would be usable for comparison purposes. It was well known that one reason hitters preferred to use twenty-twos on the job was that the soft bullets often became so misshapen after bouncing around in the brain case that they were worthless for ballistic comparison.

Salazar kept his long black hair in a ponytail that he then wrapped in a larger paper cap. Because he was in a wheelchair, he worked at an autopsy table that was lowered to accommodate him. This gave Bosch an unusually clear vantage point in viewing what was happening to the body.

In years past, Bosch would have maintained an ongoing banter with Salazar while the autopsy proceeded. But since his motorcycle accident, his nine-month medical leave and his return in a wheelchair, Salazar was no longer a cheerful man and rarely engaged in small talk.

Bosch watched as Salazar used a dulled scalpel to scrape a sample of the whitish material from the corners of Aliso’s eyes. He placed the material in a paper bindle and put it in a petri dish. He placed the dish on a tray that held a small stand containing the test tubes filled with blood, urine and other samples of body materials to be scanned and tested.

“Think it was tears?” Bosch asked.

“I don’t think so. Too thick. He had something in his eyes or on his skin. We’ll find out what.”

Bosch nodded and Salazar proceeded to open the skullcap and examine the brain.

“The bullets mushed this puppy,” he said.

After a few minutes he used a pair of long tweezers to pick out two bullet fragments and drop them in a dish. Bosch stepped over and looked at them and frowned. At least one of the bullets had fragmented upon impact. The pieces were probably worthless for comparison purposes.

Then Salazar pulled out a complete bullet and dropped it in the tray.

“You might be able to work with this one,” he said.

Bosch took a look. The bullet had mushroomed on impact but about half the shaft was still intact, and he could see the tiny scratches made when it was fired through the barrel of a gun. He felt a twinge of encouragement.

“This might work,” he said.

The autopsy wrapped up in about ten more minutes. Overall, Aliso had gotten fifty minutes of Salazar’s time. It was more than most. Bosch checked a clipboard that was on the counter and saw that it was the eleventh autopsy of the day for Salazar.

Salazar cleaned the bullets and put them in an evidence envelope. As he handed it to Bosch, he told the detective that he would be informed of the results of the analysis of the samples retrieved from the body as soon as it was completed. The only other thing that he thought was worth mentioning was that the bruise on Aliso’s cheek was antemortem by four or five hours. This Bosch found to be very curious. He didn’t know how it fit in. It would mean that someone had roughed Aliso up while he was in Las Vegas, yet he had been killed here in L.A. He thanked Salazar, calling him Sally as many people did, and headed out. He was in the hallway before he remembered something and went back to the door of the autopsy suite. When he stuck his head in, he saw Salazar tying the sheet around the body, making sure the toe tag hung free and could be read.

“Hey, Sally, the guy had hemorrhoids, right?”

Salazar looked back at him with a quizzical look on his face.

“Hemorrhoids? No. Why do you ask?”

“I found a tube of Preparation H in his car. In the glove box. It was half used.”

“Hmmm…well, no hemorrhoids. Not on this one.”

Bosch wanted to ask him if he was sure but knew that would be insulting. He let it go for the moment and left.

Details fueled any investigation. They were important and not to be misplaced or forgotten. As he headed toward the glass exit doors of the coroner’s office, Bosch found himself bothered by the detail of the tube of Preparation H found in the glove box of the Silver Cloud. If Tony Aliso hadn’t suffered from hemorrhoids, then whom did the tube belong to and why was it in his car? He could dismiss it as probably being unimportant, but that wasn’t his way. Everything had its place in an investigation, Bosch believed. Everything.

His deep concentration on this problem caused Bosch to go through the glass doors and down the stairs to the parking lot before he saw Carbone standing there smoking a cigarette and waiting. When Bosch had dropped him off earlier, the OCID detective had begged for a couple of hours to get the tapes together. Bosch had agreed but hadn’t told him that he was heading to an autopsy. So he now assumed that Carbone had called the bureau in Hollywood and been told by Billets or someone else that he was at the coroner’s office. Bosch wouldn’t check this with Carbone because he didn’t want to show any kind of concern that the OCID detective had so easily found him.

“Bosch.”

“Yeah.”

“Somebody wants to talk.”

“Who? When? I want the tapes, Carbone.”

“Cool your jets for a couple minutes. Over here in the car.”

He led Bosch to the second parking row, where there was a car with its engine running and its dark-tinted windows all the way up.

“Hop in the back,” Carbone said.

Bosch nonchalantly walked to the door, still showing no concern. He opened it and ducked in. Leon Fitzgerald was sitting in the back. He was a tall man-more than six and a half feet-and his knees were pressed hard against the back of the driver’s seat. He wore a beautiful suit of blue silk and held the stub of a cigar between his fingers. He was almost sixty and his hair was a jet-black dye job. His eyes, behind steel-rimmed glasses, were pale gray. His skin was pasty white. He was a night man.

“Chief,” Bosch said, nodding.

He had never met Fitzgerald before but had seen him often enough at cop funerals and on television news reports. He was the embodiment of the OCID. No one else from the secretive division ever went on camera.

“Detective Bosch,” Fitzgerald said. “I know of you. Know of your exploits. Over the years you have been suggested to me more than once as a candidate for our unit.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

Carbone had come around and gotten in the driver’s seat. He started moving the car slowly through the lot.

“Because like I said, I know of you,” Fitzgerald was saying. “And I know you would not leave homicide. Homicide is your calling. Am I correct?”

“Pretty much.”

“Which brings us to the current homicide case you are pursuing. Dom?”

With one hand, Carbone passed a shoebox over the seat. Fitzgerald took it and put it on Bosch’s lap. Bosch opened it and found it full of audiocassette tapes with dates written on tape stuck to the cases.

“From Aliso’s phone?” he asked.

“Obviously.”

“How long were you on it?”

“We’d only been listening for nine days. It hadn’t been productive, but the tapes are yours.”

“And what do you want in return, Chief?”

“What do I want?”

Fitzgerald looked out the window, down at the railroad switching yard in the valley below the parking lot.

“What do I want?” he asked again. “I want the killer, of course. But I also want you to be careful. The department’s been through a lot these past few years. No need to hang our dirty laundry in public once again.”

“You want me to bury Carbone’s extracurricular activities.”

Neither Fitzgerald nor Carbone said anything but they didn’t have to. Everybody in the car knew that Carbone did what he did on orders. Probably orders from Fitzgerald himself.

“Then you’ve got to answer some questions.”

“Of course.”

“Why was there a bug on Tony Aliso’s phone?”

“Same reason there’s a bug on anyone’s phone. We heard things about the man and set about finding out if they were true.”

“What did you hear?”

“That he was dirty, that he was a scumbag, that he was a launderer for the mob in three states. We opened a file. We had just begun when he was killed.”

“Then when I called, why did you pass on it?”

Fitzgerald took a long pull on his cigar and the car filled with its smell.

“There’s a complicated answer to that question, Detective. Suffice it to say that we thought it best if we remained uninvolved.”

“The tap was illegal, wasn’t it?”

“It is extremely difficult under state law to gather the required information needed for a wiretap. The feds, they can get it done on a whim. We can’t and we don’t want to work with the feds all the time.”

“It still doesn’t explain why you passed. You could’ve taken the case from us and then controlled it, buried it, done whatever you wanted with it. No one would have known about illegal wiretaps or anything else.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps it was a wrong choice.”

Bosch realized they had underestimated himself and his crew. Fitzgerald had believed the break-in would go unnoticed and therefore his unit’s involvement would not be discovered. Bosch understood the tremendous leverage he held over Fitzgerald. Word about the illegal wiretap would be all the police chief would need to rid himself of Fitzgerald.

“So what else do you have on Aliso?” he asked. “I want everything. If I hear at any point you held something back, then your little-black-bag job is going to get known. You know what I mean? It will get known.”

Fitzgerald turned from the window and looked at him.

“I know exactly what you mean. But you are making a mistake if you are going to smugly sit there and believe you have all the high cards in this game.”

“Then put whatever cards you have on the table.”

“Detective, I am about to fully cooperate with you, but know this. If you seek to hurt me or anyone in my division with the information you get here, I will hurt you more. For example, there’s this matter of your keeping company last night with a convicted felon.”

He let that hang in the air with his cigar smoke. Bosch was stunned and angry but managed to swallow down his urge to throttle Fitzgerald.

“There is a department prohibition against any officer knowingly associating with criminals. I’m sure you know that, Detective, and understand the need for such a safeguard. If this were to become known about you, then your job could be in jeopardy. Then where would you and your mission be?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He looked straight ahead, over the seat and out the front window. Fitzgerald leaned over so that he was almost whispering in his ear.

“This is what we know about you in just one hour,” he said. “What if we spend a day? A week? And it’s not just you, my friend. You can tell your lieutenant that there is a glass ceiling in the department for lesbians, especially if something like that should get out. Now her girlfriend, she could go further, her being black. But the lieutenant, she’d have to get used to Hollywood, you ask me.”

He leaned back to his spot and returned his voice to normal modulation.

“Do we have an understanding here, Detective Bosch?”

Bosch turned and finally looked at him.

“We have an understanding.”

After dropping the bullets retrieved from Tony Aliso’s head at the ballistics lab in Boyle Heights, Bosch made it back to the Hollywood Division just as the investigators were gathering in Billets’s office for the six o’clock meeting. Bosch was introduced to Russell and Kuhlken, the two fraud investigators, and everybody sat down. Also sitting in was a deputy district attorney. Matthew Gregson was from Special Prosecutions, a unit that handled organized crime cases as well as the prosecution of police officers and other delicate matters. Bosch had never met him.

Bosch gave his report first and concisely brought the others up to date on the occurrences in Las Vegas as well as the autopsy and his swing by the department’s gun shop. He said he’d been promised that the ballistics comparison would be done by ten the following morning. But Bosch made no mention of his meetings with Carbone and Fitzgerald. Not because of the threat Fitzgerald had made-or so Bosch told himself. But because the information he had gleaned from those meetings was best not discussed with such a large group in general and a prosecutor in particular. Apparently, feeling the same way, Billets asked him no questions in this regard.

When Bosch was finished, Rider went next. She said she had talked to the IRS auditor assigned to the TNA Productions case and gotten very little information.

“Basically, they have a whistle-blowing program,” she said. “You blow the whistle on a tax scofflaw and you get a share of whatever taxes the IRS finds it’s been cheated out of. That’s how this started. Only problem is, according to Hirschfield, he’s the IRS guy, this tip came in anonymously. Whoever blew the whistle didn’t want a share. He said they got a three-page letter outlining Tony Aliso’s money-washing scam. He would not show it to me because he claimed, anonymous or not, the guidelines of the program call for strict confidence and the specific language of the letter could lead to identification of the author. He-”

“That’s bullshit,” Gregson said.

“Probably,” Rider said. “But there was nothing I could do about it.”

“Afterwards, give me the guy’s name and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Sure. Anyway, they got this letter, did some preliminary looking at TNA’s corporate filings over the years and decided the letter had merit. They sent the audit letter to Tony on August 1 and were going to do him at the end of this month. That was it with him-oh, the one thing he would tell me about the letter was that it was mailed from Las Vegas. It was on the postmark.”

Bosch almost nodded involuntarily because that last bit of information fit with something Fitzgerald had told him.

“Okay, now for Tony Aliso’s associates. Jerry and I spent the better part of the day interviewing the core group of people he used when making this trash he called film. He basically raided the local film schools, low-rent acting schools and strip bars for the so-called artistic talent for these shoots, but there were five men that he repeatedly worked with to get them off the ground. We took them all one by one and it appears they were not privy to financing of the movies or the books Tony kept. We think they were in the dark. Jerry?”

“That’s right,” Edgar said. “I personally think Tony picked these guys because they were stupid and didn’t ask questions about that sort of stuff. He just sent them out, you know, over to USC or UCLA to grab some kid who’d want to direct or write one of these things. They’d go over to the Star Strip on La Cienega and talk girls into taking the bimbo parts. On and on, you know how it goes. Our conclusion is that this little money washing scam was Tony’s. Only he and his customers knew.”

“Which leads us to you guys,” Billets said, looking at Russell and Kuhlken. “You got anything to tell us, yet?”

Kuhlken said they were still waist-deep in the financial records but they had so far traced money from TNA Productions to dummy corporations in California, Nevada and Arizona. The money went into the corporation bank accounts and was then invested in other, seemingly legitimate, corporations. He said when the trail was fully documented they would be in a position to use the IRS and federal statutes to seize the money as the illegal funds of a racketeering enterprise. Unfortunately, Russell said, the documentation period was long and difficult. It would be another week before they could move.

“Keep at it and take the time you need,” Billets said, then she looked at Gregson. “So then, how are we doing? What should we be doing?”

Gregson thought a moment.

“I think we are doing fine. First thing tomorrow I’ll call Vegas and find out who’s handling the extradition hearing. I’m thinking that I possibly should go out there to babysit that. I’m not that comfortable at the moment with all of us here and Goshen over there with them. If we are lucky enough to pull a match out of ballistics, I think you and I, Harry, should go over there and not leave until we have Goshen with us.”

Bosch nodded his agreement.

“After hearing all of these reports, I really have just one question,” Gregson continued. “Why isn’t there someone from OCID sitting in this room right now?”

Billets looked at Bosch and almost imperceptibly nodded. The question was being passed to him.

“Initially,” Bosch said, “OCID was informed of the murder and the victim’s ID and they passed. They said they didn’t know Tony Aliso. As recently as two hours ago I had a conversation with Leon Fitzgerald and told him what it looked like we had. He offered whatever expertise his people had but felt we were too far along now to have fresh people come in. He wished us best of luck with it.”

Gregson stared at him a long moment and then nodded. The prosecutor was in his mid-forties with short-cropped hair already completely gray. Bosch had never worked with him but he’d heard the name. Gregson had been around-long enough to know there was more to what Bosch had said. But he had also been around long enough to let it go for the time being. Billets didn’t give him a lot of time to make something of it anyway.

“Okay, so why don’t we brainstorm a little bit before we call it a night?” she said. “What do we think happened to this man? We’re gathering a lot of information, a lot of evidence, but do we know what happened to him?”

She looked at the faces gathered in the room. Finally, Rider spoke up.

“My guess is that the IRS audit brought it all about,” she said. “He got the notice in the mail and he made a fatal mistake. He told this guy in Vegas, Joey Marks, that the government was going to look at his books and his cheap movies and the scam was likely going to come out. Joey Marks responded the way you expect these guys to respond. He whacked him. He had his man Goshen follow Tony back home from Vegas so it would happen far away from him and Goshen puts him in the trunk.”

The others nodded their heads in agreement. This included Bosch. The information he’d received from Fitzgerald fit with this scenario as well.

“It was a good plan,” Edgar said. “Only mistake was the fingerprints Artie Donovan got off the jacket. That was pure luck and if we didn’t have that, we probably wouldn’t have any of this. That was the only mistake.”

“Maybe not,” Bosch said. “The prints on the jacket just hurried things along, but Metro in Vegas was already working a tip from an informant who overheard Lucky Goshen talking about hitting somebody and putting them in a trunk. It would’ve gotten back to us. Eventually.”

“Well, I’d rather be already on it than waiting for eventually,” Billets said. “Any alternative theories we should also be chasing? Are we clear on the wife, the angry screenwriter, his other associates?”

“Nothing that sticks out,” Rider said. “There definitely was no love lost between the victim and the wife but she seems clean so far. I pulled the gatehouse log up there with a warrant and her car never left Hidden Highlands on Friday night. She seems clean.”

“What about the letter to the IRS?” Gregson asked. “Who sent it? Obviously, someone with pretty good knowledge of what this man was doing, but who would that be?”

“This could all be part of a power play within the Joey Marks group,” Bosch said. “Like I said before, something about the look on Goshen’s face when he saw that gun and his claims later that it was a plant…I don’t know, maybe somebody tipped the IRS knowing it would get Tony whacked and that they could then possibly lay it off on Goshen. With Goshen gone, this person moves up.”

“You’re saying Goshen didn’t do it?” Gregson asked, his eyebrows arched.

“No. I think Goshen is probably good for it. But I don’t think he was counting on that gun showing up behind the toilet. It doesn’t make sense, anyway, to keep it around. So say he whacks out Tony Aliso on orders from Joey Marks. He gives the gun to somebody in his crew to get rid of. Only that person goes and plants it at the house-this is the same person who sent the letter to the IRS in the first place to get the whole thing going. Now we come along and wrap Goshen up in a bow. The guy who stashed the gun and sent the letter, he’s in a position to move up.”

Bosch looked at their faces as they tried to follow the logic.

“Maybe Goshen isn’t the intended target,” Rider said.

Everyone looked at her.

“Maybe there’s one more play. Maybe it’s someone who wants Goshen and Joey Marks out of the way so he can move in.”

“How will they get Marks now?” Edgar asked.

“Through Goshen,” she said.

“If those ballistics come back a match,” Bosch said, “then you can stick a fork in Goshen because he’ll be done. He’ll be looking at the needle or life without possibility. Or a reduced sentence if he gives us something.”

“Joey Marks,” Gregson and Edgar said at the same time.

“So who is the letter writer?” Billets asked.

“Who knows?” Bosch answered. “I don’t know enough about the organization over there. But there’s a lawyer who was mentioned by the cops there. A guy who handles everything for Marks. He’d know about Aliso’s scam. He could pull this off. There’s probably a handful of people close to Marks capable of doing it.”

They all were silent for a long moment, each one thinking the story through and seeing that it could work. It was a natural conclusion to the meeting and Billets stood up to end it.

“Let’s keep up the good work,” she said. “Matthew, thanks for coming out. You’ll be the first one I call when we get the ballistics in the morning.”

Everyone else started standing up.

“Kiz and Jerry, flip a coin,” Billets said. “One of you will have to go to Vegas to work the extradition escort with Harry. It’s regulations. Oh, and Harry, could you wait a minute? There’s something I need to discuss with you about another case.”

After the others left, Billets told Bosch to close the door. He did so and then sat down in one of the chairs in front of her desk.

“So what happened?” she asked. “Did you really talk to Fitzgerald?”

“Well, I guess it was more that he talked to me, but, yeah, I met with him and Carbone.”

“What’s the deal?”

“Basically, the deal is that they didn’t know Tony Aliso from a hole in the ground until they, too, got a letter, probably the same one that went to the IRS. I’ve got a copy of it. It has details. It was from somebody with knowledge, just like Kiz said. The letter OCID got also was postmarked in Las Vegas and it was addressed specifically to Fitzgerald.”

“So their response was to bug his office phone.”

“Right, illegal bug. They had just started-I have nine days’ worth of tapes to listen to-when I call up and say Tony got whacked. They panicked. You know his situation with the chief. If it came out that first of all they illegally put the bug on Tony and second of all might have somehow been the cause of his death because Joey Marks found out, then the chief would pretty much have all he’d need to move Fitzgerald out and reestablish controls on OCID.”

“So Fitzgerald sends Carbone in to get the bug and they play dumb about Tony.”

“Right. Carbone didn’t see the camera or we wouldn’t know any of this.”

“That prick. When this is over, the first thing I’m going to do is give it all to the chief.”

“Uh…”

Bosch wasn’t sure how to say it.

“What is it?”

“Fitzgerald could see that coming. I cut a deal with him.”

“What?”

“I cut a deal. He gave me everything, the tapes, the letter. But their activities go no further than you and me. The chief never knows.”

“Harry, how could you? You had no-”

“He’s got something on me, Lieutenant. He’s got something on you, too…and Kiz.”

A long silence followed and Bosch watched the anger flush her cheeks.

“That arrogant bastard,” she said.

Bosch told her what it was Fitzgerald had come up with. Since Bosch now was privy to her secret, he thought it was only fair that he tell her about Eleanor. Billets just nodded. She was clearly thinking more about her own secret and the consequences of Fitzgerald having knowledge of it.

“Do you think he actually put people on me? A tail?”

“Who knows? He’s the kind of guy who sees opportunities and acts on them. He keeps information like money in a bank. In case of a rainy day. This was a rainy day for him and he pulled it out. I made the deal. Let’s forget about it and move on with the case.”

She was silent a moment and Bosch watched her for any sign of embarrassment. There was none. She looked directly at Bosch, her eyes searching him for any sign of judgment. There was none. She nodded.

“What else did they do after the letter came?”

“Not much. They put Aliso on a loose surveillance. I have the logs. But they weren’t watching him Friday night. They knew he’d gone to Las Vegas, so they were planning to pick him up again after the holiday if he was back. They were really just getting started when it all went down.”

She nodded again. Her mind wasn’t on the subject. Bosch stood up.

“I’ll listen to the tapes tonight. There’s about seven hours but Fitzgerald said it’s mostly Aliso talking to his girlfriend in Vegas. Nothing much else. But I’ll listen anyway. You need anything else, Lieutenant?”

“No. Let’s talk in the morning. I want to know about the ballistics as soon as you know.”

“You got it.”

Bosch headed to the door but she stopped him.

“It’s weird, isn’t it, when sometimes you can’t tell the good guys from the bad.”

He looked back at her.

“Yeah, it’s weird.”

The house still smelled of fresh paint when Bosch finally got home. He looked at the wall he had started to paint three days before and it seemed long ago. He didn’t know when he’d finish now. The house had been a ground-up rebuilding job after the earthquake. He’d only been back a few weeks after more than a year of living in a residence hotel near the station. The earthquake, too, seemed long ago. Things happened fast in this city. Everything but the moment seemed like ancient history.

He got out the number Felton had given him for Eleanor Wish and called it but there was no answer, not even a machine picking up. He hung up and wondered if she had gotten the note he left for her. His hope was that they would somehow be together after this case was over. But if it came to that, he realized, he wasn’t sure how he’d deal with the department’s prohibition against associating with a convicted felon.

His thoughts about this spun into the question of how Fitzgerald had found out about her and the night they had spent together in her apartment. It seemed to him it was likely that Fitzgerald would maintain contacts with Metro, and he guessed that maybe Felton or Iverson had informed the deputy chief about Eleanor Wish.

Bosch made two sandwiches of lunch meat from the refrigerator and then took them, two bottles of beer and the box of tapes Fitzgerald had given him over to the chair next to his stereo. As he ate, he arranged the tapes in chronological order and then started playing them. There was a photocopy of a log and pen register with entries showing what time of day Aliso either received or made the calls and what number he had called.

More than half the calls were between Aliso and Layla, either placed to the club-Bosch could tell because of the background music and noise-or a number he assumed was her apartment. She never identified herself on any of the calls, but on the occasions Tony called her at the club he asked for her by her stage name, Layla. Other than that, he never used her name. Most of their conversations were about the minutia of daily life. He called her most often at home in the midafternoon. In one call to her home, Layla was angry at Aliso for waking her up. He complained that it was already noon and she reminded him that she had worked until four at the club. Like a chastened boy, he apologized and offered to call back. He did, at two.

In addition to the conversations with Layla there were calls to other women involving the timing of a scene that needed to be reshot for one of Tony’s movies and various other film-related business calls. There were two calls placed by Aliso to his home but both of his conversations with his wife were quick and to the point. One time he said he was coming home and the other time he said he was going to be held up and wouldn’t be home for dinner.

When Bosch was done it was after midnight and he had counted only one of the conversations as being of even marginal interest. It was a call placed to the dressing room at the club on the Tuesday before Aliso was murdered. In the midst of their rather boring, innocuous conversation, Layla asked him when he was coming out next.

“Comin’ out Thursday, baby,” Aliso replied. “Why, you miss me already?”

“No-I mean, yeah, sure, I miss you and all, Tone. But Lucky was asking if you were coming. That’s why I asked.”

Layla had a soft, little-girl voice that seemed unpracticed or fake.

“Well, tell him I’ll be in Thursday night. You working then?”

“Yeah, I’m working.”

Bosch turned off the stereo and thought about the one call that mattered. It meant Goshen knew, through Layla, that Aliso was coming out. It wasn’t much, but it could probably be used by a prosecutor as part of an argument for premeditation. The problem was that it was tainted evidence. In legal terms, it did not exist.

He looked at his watch. It was late but he decided to call. He took the number off the log where Layla’s number had been recorded by a pen register which read the tones that sounded when a number was punched into a phone. After four rings it was answered by a woman with a slow voice laced with practiced sexual intent.

“Layla?”

“No, this is Pandora.”

Bosch almost laughed but he was too tired.

aging

“Where’s Layla?”

“She isn’t here.”

“This is a friend of hers. Harry. She tried to call me the other night. You know where she is or where I could reach her?”

“No. She hasn’t been around for a couple days. I don’t know where she is. Is this about Tony?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, she’s pretty upset. I guess if she wants to talk to you, she’ll call you again. You in town?”

“Not right now. Where d’you guys live?”

“Uh, I don’t think I’m going to tell you that.”

“Pandora, is Layla scared of something?”

“Of course she is. Her old man gets killed. She thinks people might think she knows something, but she doesn’t. She’s just scared.”

Bosch gave Pandora his home number and told her to have Layla call if she checked in.

After he hung up he looked at his watch and took out the little phone book he kept in his jacket. He called Billets’s number and a man answered. Her husband. Bosch apologized for the late call, asked for the lieutenant and wondered while he waited what the husband knew about his wife and Kizmin Rider. When Billets picked up, Bosch told her about his review of the tapes and how little value they had.

“The one call establishes Goshen’s knowledge of Aliso’s trip to Vegas, as well as his interest in it. But that’s about it. I think it’s kind of marginal and we’ll be okay without it. When we find Layla, we should be able to get the same information from her. Legally.”

“Well, that makes me feel better.”

Bosch heard her exhale. Her unspoken worry had obviously been that if the tapes contained any vital information, they would have to have been brought forward to prosecutors, thereby alienating Fitzgerald and ending her own career.

“Sorry for the late call,” Bosch said, “but I thought you might want to know as soon as I knew.”

“Thanks, Harry. I’ll see you in the morning.”

After he hung up he tried Eleanor Wish’s line once more and again there was no answer. Now the slight worry he’d had in his chest bloomed into a full-fledged concern. He wished he was still in Vegas so he could go to her apartment to see if she was there and just not answering or if it was something worse.

Bosch got himself another beer from the refrigerator and went out to the back deck. The new deck was larger than its predecessor and offered a deeper view into the Pass. It was dark and peaceful out. The usual hiss of the Hollywood Freeway far below was easily tuned out. He watched the spotlights from Universal Studios cut across the starless sky and finished his beer, wondering where she was.

On Wednesday morning, Bosch got to the station at eight and typed out reports detailing his moves and investigation in Las Vegas. He made copies and put them in the lieutenant’s mailbox and then clipped the originals into the already inch-thick murder book that Edgar had started. He filed no report on his conversations with Carbone and Fitzgerald or his review of the tapes OCID had made off Aliso’s office phone. His work was only interrupted by frequent walks to the watch office for coffee.

He had completed these chores by ten o’clock but waited another five minutes before calling the department’s gun shop. He knew from experience that he should not call before the time the report on the bullet comparisons was to be finished. He threw in the extra five minutes just to make sure. It was a long five minutes.

As he called, Edgar and Rider gravitated toward his spot at the homicide table so that they could immediately get the comparison results. It was a make-or-break point in the investigation and they all knew it. Bosch asked for Lester Poole, the gun tech assigned the case. They had worked together before. Poole was a gnomish man whose whole life revolved around guns, though as a civilian employee of the department he did not carry one himself. But there was no one more expert at the gun shop than he. He was a curious man in that he would not acknowledge anyone who called him Les. He insisted on being called Lester or even just Poole, never the diminutive of Lester. Once he confided to Bosch that this was because he feared that if he became known as Les Poole, it would only be a matter of time before some smartass cops started calling him Cess Poole. It was his intention never to let that happen.

“Lester, it’s Harry,” Bosch said when the tech picked up. “You’re the man this morning. What have you got for me?”

“I’ve got good and bad news for you, Harry.”

“Give me the bad first.”

“Just finished with your case. Haven’t written the report yet but this is what I can tell you. The gun has been wiped clean of prints and is not traceable. Your doer used acid on the serial and I couldn’t bring it up with any of my magic tricks. So that’s that.”

“And the good?”

“I can tell you that you’ve got yourself a match between the weapon and the bullets extracted from your victim. It’s a definite match.”

Bosch looked up at Edgar and Rider and gave the thumbs-up sign. They exchanged a high five and then Bosch watched as Rider gave Lieutenant Billets the thumbs-up through the glass of her office. Bosch then saw Billets pick up her phone. Bosch presumed she was calling Gregson at the DA’s office.

Poole told Bosch that the report would be finished by noon and shipped through intradepartmental courier. Bosch thanked him and hung up. He stood up smiling and then walked with Edgar and Rider into the lieutenant’s office. Billets spent another minute on the phone and Bosch could tell she was talking to Gregson. She then hung up.

“That’s a very happy man there,” she said.

“He should be,” Edgar said.

“All right, so now what?” Billets asked.

“We go over there and drag that desert dirtbag’s ass back here,” Edgar said.

“Yes, that’s what Gregson said. He’s going to go over to babysit the hearing. It’s tomorrow morning, right?”

“Supposed to be,” Bosch said. “I’m thinking of heading over there today. There are a couple loose ends I want to square away, maybe take another shot at finding the girlfriend, and then I want to make the arrangements so we can get out of there with him as soon as the judge says go.”

“Fine,” Billets said. Then to Edgar and Rider, she asked, “Did you two decide who is going with Harry?”

“Me,” Edgar said. “Kiz is more plugged in on the financial stuff. I’ll go with Harry to get this sucker.”

“Okay, fine. Anything else?”

Bosch told them about the gun being untraceable, but this didn’t seem to dent the euphoria engendered by the ballistics match. The case was looking more and more like a slam dunk.

They left the office after a few more self-congratulatory statements and Bosch went back to his phone. He dialed Felton’s office at Metro. The captain picked up right away.

“Felton, it’s Bosch in L.A.”

“Bosch, what’s up?”

“Thought you might want to know. The gun checks out. It fired the bullets that killed Tony Aliso.”

Felton whistled into the phone.

“Damn, that’s nice and neat. Lucky ain’t going to feel so lucky when he hears about that.”

“Well, I’m coming out in a little while to tell him.”

“Good. When you going to be here?”

“Haven’t set it up yet. What about the extradition hearing? We still on for tomorrow morning?”

“Absolutely, as far as I know. I’ll have somebody double-check to make sure. His lawyer might be trying to make waves but that won’t work. This added piece of evidence will help, too.”

Bosch told him that Gregson would be coming out in the morning to aid the local prosecutor if needed.

“That’s probably a wasted trip but he’s welcome just the same.”

“I’ll tell him. Listen, if you’ve got a spare body, there’s still one loose end bugging me.”

“What?”

“Tony’s girlfriend. She was a dancer at Dolly’s till she got fired by Lucky on Saturday. I still want to talk to her. She goes by the name Layla. That’s all I have. That and her phone number.”

He gave Felton the number and the captain said he’d have somebody check into it.

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, one other thing. You know Deputy Chief Fitzgerald out here, don’t you?”

“Sure do. We’ve worked cases together.”

“You talked to him lately?”

“Uh, no…no. Not in-it’s been a while.”

Bosch thought he was lying but decided to let it go. He needed the man’s cooperation for at least another twenty-four hours.

“Why do you ask, Bosch?”

“No reason. Just thought I’d ask. He’s been advising us from this end, that’s all.”

“Good to hear that. He’s a very capable individual.”

“Capable. Yeah, that he is.”

Bosch hung up and then immediately set about making travel arrangements for himself and Edgar. He booked two rooms at the Mirage. They were above the department’s maximum allowance for hotel rooms but he was sure Billets would approve the vouchers. Besides, Layla had called him once at the Mirage. She might try again.

Last, he reserved round-trip tickets for himself and Edgar out of Burbank. On the Thursday afternoon return he reserved one more seat for Goshen.

Their flight out left at three-thirty and got them into Las Vegas an hour later. He figured that would give them plenty of time to do what they had to do.

Nash was in the gatehouse and came out to greet Bosch with a smile. Harry introduced Edgar.

“Looks like you guys’ve got yourself a real whodunit, eh?”

“Looks that way,” Bosch said. “You got any theories?”

“Not a one. I gave your girl the gate log, she tell you that?”

“She’s not my girl, Nash. She’s a detective. Pretty good one, too.”

“I know. I didn’t mean nothing.”

“So, is Mrs. Aliso home today?”

“Let’s take a look.”

Nash slid the door of the gatehouse back open, went inside and picked up a clipboard. He scanned it quickly and flipped back to the prior page. After scanning it he put the clipboard down and came back out.

“She should be there,” he said. “Hasn’t been out in two days.”

Bosch nodded his thanks.

“I gotta call her, you know,” Nash said. “Rules.”

“No problem.”

Nash raised the gate and Bosch drove through.

Veronica Aliso was waiting at the open door of her house when they got there. She was wearing tight gray leggings beneath a long loose T-shirt with a copy of a Matisse painting on it. She had on a lot of makeup again. Bosch introduced Edgar and she led them to the living room. They declined an offer for something to drink.

“Well, then, what can I do for you men?”

Bosch opened his notebook and tore out a page he had already written on. He handed her the page.

“That’s the number of the coroner’s office and the case number,” he said. “The autopsy was completed yesterday and the body can be released to you now. If you are already working with a funeral home, just give that case number to them and they’ll take care of it.”

She looked at the page for a long moment.

“Thank you,” she finally said. “You came all the way up here to give me this?”

“No. We also have some news. We’ve arrested a man for your husband’s murder.”

Her eyes widened.

“Who? Did he say why he did this?”

“His name is Luke Goshen. He’s from Las Vegas. Have you ever heard of him?”

Confusion spread across her face.

“No, who is he?”

“He’s a mobster, Mrs. Aliso. And your husband knew him pretty well, I’m afraid. We’re going to Las Vegas now to get him. If all goes well, we will be coming back with him tomorrow. Then the case will proceed through the courts. There will be a preliminary hearing in municipal court, and then if Goshen is bound over for trial as we assume he will be, there will be a trial in Los Angeles Superior Court. It is likely you will have to testify briefly during the trial. Testify for the prosecution.”

She nodded, her eyes far off.

“Why did he do it?”

“We’re not sure yet. We’re working on that. We do know that your husband was involved in business dealings with this man’s, uh, employer. A man named Joseph Marconi. Do you recall if your husband ever mentioned Goshen or Joseph Marconi?”

“No.”

“What about the names Lucky or Joey Marks?”

She shook her head in the negative.

“What business dealings?” she asked.

“He was cleaning money for them. Washing it through his film business. You sure you did not know anything about this?”

“Of course not. Do I need my lawyer? You know he already told me not to talk to you people.”

Bosch gave an easy smile and held his hands up.

“No, Mrs. Aliso, you don’t need your lawyer. We’re just trying to get to the facts of the case. If you knew something about your husband’s business dealings, it might help us build a case against this man Goshen and possibly his employer. You see, right now we’ve got this Goshen character pretty well tied up for this. We’re not sweating that. We’ve got ballistics, fingerprints, hard evidence. But he wouldn’t have done what he did if Joey Marks didn’t tell him to. Joey Marks is who we’d really like to get. And the more information I have about your husband and his business, the better the chance we have of getting to Joey Marks. So if there is anything you can help us with, now is the time to tell us.”

He was silent and waited. She looked down at the now folded piece of paper in her hand. She finally nodded to herself and looked at him.

“I know nothing about his business,” she said. “But there was a call last week. It came here on Wednesday night. He took it in the office and closed the door but…I went to the door and listened. I could hear his side of it.”

“What did he say?”

“He called the caller Lucky. I know that. He did a lot of listening and then he said he’d be out there by the end of the week. He then said he’d see the caller at the club. And that was it.”

Bosch nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

“I didn’t think it was important. I…you see, I thought he was talking to a woman. The name Lucky, I thought it was a woman’s name.”

“Was that why you were listening through the door?”

She averted her eyes and nodded her head.

“Mrs. Aliso, have you ever hired a private investigator to follow your husband?”

“No. I thought about it but I didn’t.”

“But you suspected he was having an affair?”

“Affairs, Detective. I not only suspected, I knew. A wife can tell.”

“Okay, Mrs. Aliso. Do you remember anything else about the telephone conversation? Anything else that was said?”

“No. Just what I told you.”

“It might help us with the court case, as far as questions of premeditation go, if we could isolate this call. Are you sure it was Wednesday?”

“Yes, because he left the next day.”

“What time did the call come in?”

“It was late. We were watching the news on Channel 4. So it was after eleven and before eleven-thirty. I don’t think I can narrow it down any further.”

“Okay, Mrs. Aliso, that’s good.”

Bosch looked over at Edgar and raised his eyebrows. Edgar just nodded. He was ready to go. They stood up and Veronica Aliso led them to the door.

“Oh,” Bosch said before he got to the door. “There was a question that came up about your husband. Do you know, did he have a regular doctor that he went to?”

“Yes, on occasion. Why?”

“Well, I wanted to check to see if he suffered from hemorrhoids.”

She looked like she was about to laugh.

“Hemorrhoids? I don’t think so. I think Tony would’ve complained loud and often if he did.”

“Really?”

Bosch was standing in the doorway now.

“Yes, really. Besides, you just told me that the autopsy was completed, wouldn’t that doctor be able to tell you the answer to that question?”

Bosch nodded. She had him there.

“I guess so, Mrs. Aliso. The only reason I ask is that we found a tube of Preparation H in his car. I was wondering why it was there if, you know, he didn’t need it.”

She smiled this time.

“Oh, that’s an old performer’s trick.”

“A performer’s trick?”

“You know, actresses, models, dancers. They use that stuff.”

Bosch looked at her, waiting for more. She didn’t say anything.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why do they use it?”

“Under their eyes, Detective Bosch. You know, shrinks the swelling? Well, you put it under your eyes and the bags from all that hard living get shrunk, too. Probably half the people who buy that stuff in this town use it under their eyes, not what it’s supposed to be used for. My husband…he was a vain man. If he was going to Las Vegas to be with some young girl, I think he would have done this. It was just like him.”

Bosch nodded. He thought of the unidentified substance under Tony Aliso’s eyes. You learn something new every day, he thought. He would have to call Salazar.

“How do you think he would have known about that?” he asked.

She was about to answer but hesitated, then she just hiked her shoulders.

“It’s a not-so-secret Hollywood secret,” she said. “He could’ve learned it anywhere.”

Including from you, Bosch thought but didn’t say. He just nodded and stepped through the door.

“Oh, one last thing,” he said before she closed it. “This arrest is probably going to hit the media today or tomorrow. We’ll try to contain it as much as possible. But in this town, nothing’s ever sacred or secret for long. You should be prepared for that.”

“Thank you, Detective.”

“You might want to think about a small funeral. Something inside. Tell the director not to give information out over the phone. Funerals always make good video.”

She nodded and closed the door.

On the way out of Hidden Highlands, Bosch lit a cigarette and Edgar didn’t object.

“She’s a cold piece of work,” Edgar said.

“That she is,” Bosch answered. “What do you think of the phone call from Lucky?”

“It’s just one more piece. We got Lucky by the balls. As far as he’s concerned, it’s over.”

Bosch took Mulholland along the crest of the mountains until it wound down to the Hollywood Freeway. They passed without comment the fire road down which Tony Aliso had been found. At the freeway, Bosch turned south so he could pick up the IO in downtown and head east.

“Harry, what’s up?” Edgar asked. “I thought we were leavin’ outta Burbank.”

“We’re not flying. We’re driving.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I only reserved the flights in case somebody checked. When we get to Vegas, we let on that we flew in and that we’re flying out right after the hearing with Goshen. Nobody has to know we’re driving. You okay with that?”

“Yeah, sure, fine. I get it. Precautions, settin’ a smoke screen in case somebody checks. I can dig it. You never know with the mobsters, do you?”

“Or with the cops.”