A Darkness More Than Night (42 page)
“Yes, I had a bruise for almost a week. I had to stay inside. I couldn’t go to auditions or anything.”
“And you took photographs of the bruise to document its existence, correct?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But you showed the bruise to your agent and friends, did you not?”
“No.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I didn’t think it would ever come to this, where I would have to try to prove what he did. I just wanted it to go away and I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“So we only have your word for the bruise, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Just as we only have your word for the entire alleged incident, correct?”
“He tried to kill me.”
“And you testified that when you got home that evening David Storey happened at that very moment to be leaving a message on your phone machine, correct?”
“Absolutely.”
“And you picked that call up — a call from the man you say tried to kill you. Do I have that right?”
Fowkkes gestured as if grabbing a telephone. He held his hand up until she answered.
“Yes.”
“And you saved that message on that tape to document his words and what had happened to you, correct?”
“No, I taped over it. By mistake.”
“By mistake. You mean you left it in the machine and eventually taped over it?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to but I forgot and it got taped over.”
“You mean you forgot that someone tried to kill you and taped over it?”
“No, I didn’t forget that he tried to kill me. I’ll never forget that.”
“So as far as this tape goes, we only have your word for it, correct?”
“That’s right.”
There was a measure of defiance in her voice. But in a way it seemed pitiful to Bosch. It was like yelling, “Fuck You” into a jet engine. He sensed that she was about to be thrown into that jet engine and torn apart.
“Now, you testified that you are supported in part by your parents and that you have earned some monies as an actress. Is there any other source of income you haven’t told us about?”
“Well . . . , not really. My grandmother sends me money. But not too often.”
“Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“Do you take money from men on occasion, Ms. Crowe?”
There was an objection from Langwiser and the judge called the lawyers to a sidebar. Bosch watched Annabelle Crowe the whole time the lawyers whispered. He studied her face. There was still a brush stroke of defiance but it was being crowded by fear. She knew something was coming. Bosch decided that Fowkkes had something legitimate that he was going after. It was something that was going to hurt her and thereby hurt the case.
When the sidebar broke up Kretzler and Langwiser returned to their seats at the prosecution table. Kretzler leaned over to Bosch.
“We’re fucked,” he whispered. “He’s got four men that will testify they paid her for sex. Why didn’t we know about this?”
Bosch didn’t answer. She had been assigned to him for vetting. He had questioned her at length about her personal life and had run her prints for an arrest record. Her answers and the computer run were clean. If she’d never been popped for prostitution and she denied any criminal activities to Bosch, there wasn’t much else he could have done.
Back at the lectern, Fowkkes rephrased the question.
“Ms. Crowe, have you ever taken money from men in exchange for sex?”
“No, absolutely not. That is a lie.”
“Do you know a man named Andre Snow?”
“Yes, I do.”
“If he were to testify under oath that he paid you for sexual relations, would he be lying?”
“Yes, he would.”
Fowkkes named three other men and they went through the same loop of Crowe acknowledging that she knew them but denying she had ever sold them sex.
“Then have you ever taken money from these men, but not for sex?” Fowkkes asked in a false tone of exasperation.
“Yes, on occasion. But it had nothing to do with whether we had sex or not.”
“Then what did it have to do with?”
“Them wanting to help me. I considered them friends.”
“Did you ever have sex with them?”
Annabelle Crowe looked down at her hands and shook her head.
“Are you saying no, Ms. Crowe?”
“I am saying that I didn’t have sex with them every time they gave me money. They didn’t give me money every time we had sex. One thing had nothing to do with the other. You are trying to make it look like something it’s not.”
“I’m just asking questions, Ms. Crowe. As it is my job to do. As it is your job to tell this jury the truth.”
After a long pause Fowkkes said he had no further questions.
Bosch realized that he had been gripping the arms of his chair so tightly that his knuckles were white and had gone numb. He rubbed his hands together and tried to relax but he couldn’t. He knew that Fowkkes was a master, a cut-and-run artist. He was brief and to the point and as devastating as a stiletto. Bosch realized that his discomfort was not only for Annabelle Crowe’s helpless position and public humiliation. But for his own position. He knew the stiletto would be pointed at him next.
40
They settled into a booth at Nat’s after getting bottles of Rolling Rock from the bartender with the tattoo of the barbed-wire-wrapped heart. While she pulled the bottles from the cold case and opened them, the woman hadn’t said anything about McCaleb having come in the other night asking questions about the man he had now returned with. It was early and the place was empty except for groups of hard-cores at the bar and crowded into the booth all the way to the rear. Bruce Springsteen was on the jukebox singing, “There’s a darkness on the edge of town.”
McCaleb studied Bosch. He thought he looked preoccupied by something, probably the trial. The last witness had been a wash at best. Good on direct, bad on cross. The kind of witness you don’t use — if you have the choice.
“Looked like you guys got sandbagged there with your wit.”
Bosch nodded.
“My fault. I should’ve seen it coming. I looked at her and thought she was so beautiful she couldn’t possibly . . . I just believed her.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Last time I trust a face.”
“You guys still look like you’re in good shape. What else you got coming?”
Bosch smirked.
“That’s it. They were going to rest today but decided to wait until the morning so Fowkkes wouldn’t have the night to get ready. But we’ve fired all the bullets in the gun. Starting tomorrow we see what they’ve got.”
McCaleb watched Bosch take down almost half the bottle in one long pull. He decided he’d better get to the real questions while Bosch was still sharp.
“So tell me about Rudy Tafero.”
Bosch shook his shoulders in a gesture of ambivalence.
“What about him?”
“I don’t know. How well do you know him? How well
did
you know him?”
did
you know him?”
“Well, I knew him when he was on
our
team. He worked Hollywood detectives about five years while I was there. Then he pulled the pin, got his twenty-year pension and moved across the street. Started working on getting people we put in the bucket out of the bucket.”
our
team. He worked Hollywood detectives about five years while I was there. Then he pulled the pin, got his twenty-year pension and moved across the street. Started working on getting people we put in the bucket out of the bucket.”
“When you were both on the same team, both in Hollywood, were you close?”
“I don’t know what close means. We weren’t friends, we weren’t drinking buddies, he worked burglaries and I worked homicides. What are you asking so much about him for? What’s he got to do with —”
He stopped and looked at McCaleb, the wheels obviously turning inside. Rod Stewart was now singing “Twisting the Night Away.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bosch finally asked. “You’re looking at —”
“Let me just ask some questions,” McCaleb interjected. “Then you can ask yours.”
Bosch drained his bottle and held it up until the bartender noticed.
“No table service, guys,” she called over. “Sorry.”
“Fuck that,” Bosch said.
He slid out of the booth and went to the bar. He came back with four more Rocks, though McCaleb had barely begun to drink his first one.
“Ask away,” Bosch said.
“Why weren’t you two close?”
Bosch put both elbows on the table and held a fresh bottle with both hands. He looked out of the booth and then at McCaleb.
“Five, ten years ago there were two groups in the bureau. And to a large extent it was this way in the department, too. It was like the saints and the sinners — two distinct groups.”
“The born agains and the born againsts?”
“Something like that.”
McCaleb remembered. It had become well known in local law enforcement circles a decade earlier that a group within the LAPD known as the “born agains” had members in key positions and was holding sway over promotions and choice assignments. The group’s numbers — several hundred officers of all ranks — were members of a church in the San Fernando Valley where the department’s deputy chief in charge of operations was a lay preacher. Ambitious officers joined the church in droves, in hopes of impressing the deputy chief and enhancing their career prospects. How much spirituality was involved was in question. But when the deputy chief delivered his sermon every Sunday at the
11
o’clock service, the church would be packed to standing room only with off-duty cops casting their eyes fervently on the pulpit. McCaleb had once heard a story about a car alarm going off in the parking lot during an
11
o’clock service. The hapless hype rummaging through the vehicle’s glove compartment soon found himself surrounded by a hundred guns pointed by off-duty cops.
11
o’clock service, the church would be packed to standing room only with off-duty cops casting their eyes fervently on the pulpit. McCaleb had once heard a story about a car alarm going off in the parking lot during an
11
o’clock service. The hapless hype rummaging through the vehicle’s glove compartment soon found himself surrounded by a hundred guns pointed by off-duty cops.
“I take it you were on the sinners’ team, Harry.”
Bosch smiled and nodded.
“Of course.”
“And Tafero was on the saints’.”
“Yeah. And so was our lieutenant at the time. A paper pusher named Harvey Pounds. He and Tafero had their little church thing going and so they were tight. I think anybody who was tight with Pounds, whether because of church or not, wasn’t somebody I was going to gravitate toward, if you know what I mean. And they weren’t going to gravitate toward me.”
McCaleb nodded. He knew more than he was letting on.
“Pounds was the guy who messed up the Gunn case,” he said. “The one you pushed through the window.”
“He’s the one.”
Bosch dropped his head and shook it in self-disgust.
“Was Tafero there that day?”
“Tafero? I don’t know, probably.”
“Well, wasn’t there an IAD investigation with witness reports?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t look at it. I mean, I pushed the guy through a window in front of the squad. I wasn’t going to deny it.”
“And later — what, a month or so? — Pounds ends up dead in the tunnel up in the hills.”
“Griffith Park, yeah.”
“And it’s still open . . .”
Bosch nodded.
“Technically.”
“You said that before. What does that mean?”
“It means it’s open but nobody’s working it. The LAPD has a special classification for cases like it, cases they don’t want to touch. It’s what is called closed by circumstances other than arrest.”
“And you know those circumstances?”
Bosch finished his second bottle, slid it to the side and pulled a fresh bottle in front of him.
“You’re not drinking,” he said.
“You’re doing enough for both of us. Do you know those circumstances?”
Bosch leaned forward.
“Listen, I’m going to tell you something very few people know about, okay?”
McCaleb nodded. He knew better than to ask a question now. He would just let Bosch tell it.
“Because of that window thing I went on suspension. When I got tired of walking around my house staring at the walls, I started investigating an old case. A cold case. A murder case. I went freelancing on it and I ended up following a blind trail to some very powerful people. But at the time I had no badge, no real standing. So a few times, when I made some calls, I used Pounds’s name. You know, I was trying to hide what I was doing.”
“If the department found out you were working a case while on suspension things would’ve gotten worse for you.”
“Exactly. So I used his name when I made what I thought were some routine, innocuous calls. But then one night somebody called Pounds up and told him that they had something for him, some urgent information. He went to the meet. By himself. Then they found him later in that tunnel. He’d been beaten pretty bad. Like they had tortured him. Only he couldn’t answer their questions because he was the wrong guy. I was the one who had used his name. I was the one they wanted.”
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