The Concrete Blonde (15 page)

“You say you read a book about the Dollmaker case and then discovered this tape's date matched one of the killings, is that right?”

“That's right.”

“Did you look into finding alibis for the other ten murders?”

“No, I didn't.”

“So. Mr. Wieczorek, you have nothing to offer in terms of defending your longtime friend against these other cases a task force of numerous officers connected to him?”

“The tape put the lie to all of 'em. Your task—”

“You're not answering the question.”

“Yes I am, you show the lie on one of the cases, it puts a lie to the whole shooting match, you ask me.”

“We're not asking you, Mr. Wieczorek. Now, uh, you said you never saw Norman Church wear a hairpiece, correct?”

“That's what I said, yes.”

“Did you know he kept that apartment, using a false name?”

“No, I did not.”

“There was a lot you didn't know about your friend, wasn't there?”

“I suppose.”

“Do you suppose it is possible that just as he had that apartment without you knowing, that he occasionally wore a hairpiece without you knowing?”

“I suppose.”

“Now, if Mr. Church was the killer police claim him to be, and used disguises as police said the killer did, wouldn't it be—”

“Objection,” Chandler said.

“—expected that there would be something such—”

“Objection!”

“—as a toupee in the apartment?”

Judge Keyes sustained Chandler's objection to Belk's question as seeking a speculative answer, and chastised Belk for continuing the question after the objection was lodged. Belk took the berating and said he had no further questions. He sat down, sweat lines gliding out of his hairline and running down his temples.

“Best you could do,” Bosch whispered.

Belk ignored it, took out a handkerchief and wiped his face.

After accepting the videotape as evidence, the judge broke for lunch. After the jury was out of the courtroom a handful of reporters quickly moved up to Chandler. Bosch watched this and knew it was the final arbiter of how things were going. The media always gravitated to the winners, the perceived winners, the eventual winners. It's always easier to ask them questions.

“Better start thinking of something, Bosch,” Belk said. “We could have settled this six months ago for fifty grand. Way things are going, that would have been nothing.”

Bosch turned and looked at him. They were at the railing behind the defense table.

“You believe it, don't you? The whole thing. I killed him, then we planted everything that connected him to it.”

“Doesn't matter what I believe, Bosch.”

“Fuck you, Belk.”

“Like I said, you better start thinking of something.”

He pushed his wide girth through the gate and headed out of the courtroom. Bremmer and another reporter approached him but he waved them away. Bosch followed him out a few moments later and also brushed the reporters off. But Bremmer kept stride with him as he took the hallway to the escalator.

“Listen, man, my ass is on the line here, too. I wrote a book about the guy and if it was the wrong guy, I want to know.”

Bosch stopped and Bremmer almost bumped into him. He looked closely at the reporter. He was about thirty-five, overweight, with brown, thinning hair. Like many men, he made up for this by growing a thick beard, which only served to make him look older. Bosch noticed that the reporter's sweat had stained the underarms of his shirt. But body odor wasn't his problem; cigarette breath was.

“Look, you think it's the wrong guy, then write another book and get another hundred thousand advance. What do you care if it's the wrong guy or not?”

“I have a reputation in this town, Harry.”

“So did I. What are you going to write tomorrow?”

“I have to write what's going down in there.”

“And you're also testifying? Is that ethical, Bremmer?”

“I'm not testifying. She released me from the subpoena yesterday. I just had to sign a stipulation.”

“To what?”

“That said that to the best of my knowledge the book I wrote contained true and accurate information. The source of that information was almost wholly from police sources and police and other public records.”

“Speaking of sources, who told you about the note for yesterday's story?”

“Harry, I can't reveal that. Look at how many times I've kept you confidential as a source. You know I can never reveal sources.”

“Yeah, I know that. I also know somebody is setting me up.”

Bosch stepped onto the escalator and went down.

10

Administrative Vice is located on the third floor of the Central Division station in downtown. Bosch got there in ten minutes and found Ray Mora behind his desk in the squad room, with the telephone held to his ear. Open on his desk was a magazine with color photographs of a couple engaged in sex. The girl in the photos looked very young. Mora was glancing at the photos and turning the pages while listening to the caller. He nodded to Bosch and pointed to a seat in front of his desk.

“Well, that was all I was checking,” Mora said into the phone. “Just trying to put a line in the water. Ask around and let me know what you come up with.”

Then there was more listening. Bosch looked at the vice cop. He was about Harry's size, with deep bronze skin and brown eyes. His straight brown hair was trimmed short and he had no facial hair. Like most vice cops, he affected a casual appearance. Blue jeans and black polo shirt, open at the neck. If Bosch could see under the desk he knew he'd find cowboy boots. Bosch could see a gold medallion hanging high on his chest. Imprinted on it was a dove, its wings open, the symbol of the Holy Spirit.

“You think you can get me the shoot location?”

Silence. Mora finished with the magazine, wrote something on the front cover and picked up another and began paging through it.

Bosch noticed the Adult Film Performers Guild calendar taped to the side of a vertical file on his desk. There was a photo of a porn star named Delta Bush lounging nude above the days of the week. She had become well known in recent years because she was linked romantically in the gossip tabs to a mainline movie star. On the desk below the calendar was a religious statue Bosch identified as the Infant of Prague.

He knew this because one of his foster mothers had given him a similar statue when he was a boy and was being sent back to McClaren. He hadn't been what the fosters had in mind. Giving him the statue and saying good-bye, the woman had explained to him that the infant was known as the Little King, the saint who took special care to hear the prayers of children. Bosch wondered if Mora knew that story, or if the statue was there as some kind of joke.

“All I'm saying is try,” Mora said into the phone. “Get me the shoot. Then you'll be in line for the snitch fund … Yeah, yeah. Later.”

He hung up.

“Hey, Harry, whereyat?”

“Edgar's been here, huh?”

“Just left a little while ago. He talk to you?”

“No.”

Mora noticed Bosch looking at the spread on the page he had the magazine open to. It was two women kneeling in front of a man. He put a yellow Post-it on the page and closed it.

“Lord, I gotta look through all this shit. Got a tip that this publisher is using underage models. You know how I check?”

Bosch shook his head.

“It's not the face or the tits, It's ankles, Harry.”

“Ankles.”

“Yeah, ankles. Something about them. They are just smoother on younger chicks. I can usually tell, over or under eighteen, by the ankles. Then, of course, I go out and confirm with birth certificates, DLs, etc. It's crazy but it works.”

“Good for you. What did you tell Edgar?”

The phone rang. Mora picked up, said his name and listened a few moments.

“I can't talk now. I have to get back to you. Whereyat?”

He hung up after making a note.

“Sorry. I gave Edgar the ID. Maggie Cum Loudly. I had prints, photos, the whole thing. I got some stills of her in action, if you want to see.”

He pushed his chair back toward a file cabinet but Bosch told him never mind with the stills.

“Whatever. Anyway, Edgar has it all. Took prints to the coroner's I think, to confirm the ID. Chick's name was Rebecca Kaminski. Becky Kaminski. Be twenty-three if she were alive today. Formerly of Chicago before she came on out to sin city for fame and fortune. What a waste, huh? She was a fine young piece, God bless her.”

Bosch felt uncomfortable with Mora. But this was not new. When they had worked the task force together, Harry had never had the feeling that the killings meant much to the vice detective. Didn't make much of a dent. Mora was just putting in his time, lending his help where it was needed. He definitely was good in his area of expertise, but it didn't seem to matter to him whether the Dollmaker was stopped or not.

Mora had a strange way of mingling gutter talk and Jesus talk. At first Bosch had thought he was simply playing the born-again line that was popular in the department a few years earlier, but he was never sure. He once saw Mora cross himself and say a silent prayer at one of the Dollmaker murder scenes. Because of the uneasiness Bosch felt, he had had little contact with Mora since the Norman Church shooting and the breakup of the task force. Mora went back to Ad-Vice and Bosch was shipped to Hollywood. Occasionally the two would see each other in the courthouse or at the Seven or the Red Wind. But even at the bars, they were usually with different groups and sat apart, taking turns sending beers back and forth.

“Harry, she was definitely among the living until at least two years ago. That flick you came across,
Tails from the Crypt,
it was made two years ago. Means Church definitely didn't do her… . Probably whoever sent the note did. I don't know if that is good or bad news for you.”

“I don't either.”

Church had a rock-solid alibi for the Kaminski killing; he was dead. With that added to the apparent alibi Wieczorek's videotape provided Church for the eleventh killing, Bosch's sense of paranoia was turning to panic. For four years there had been no doubt for him about what he had done.

“So how's the trial going, anyway?” Mora asked.

“Don't ask. Can I use your phone?”

Bosch dialed Edgar's pager number and then punched in Mora's phone number. After he hung up to wait for the call back, he didn't know what else to say.

“The trial's a trial. You still supposed to testify?”

“I guess. I'm on for tomorrow. I don't know what she wants from me. I wasn't even there the night you took that bastard down.”

“Well, you were on the task force with me. That's good enough to drag you into it.”

“Well, we'll—”

The phone rang and Mora picked it up. He then passed it to Bosch.

“Whereyat, Harry?”

“I'm here with Mora. He filled me in. Anything on the prints?”

“Not yet. I missed my man at SID. Musta gone to lunch. So I left the prints there. Should have a confirmation later today. But I'm not waiting on it.”

“Where are you now?”

“Missing Persons. Trying to see if this girl ever got reported missing, now that I have a name to go with the body.”

“You gonna be there a while?”

“Just started. We're looking through hard copies. They only went to computer eighteen months ago.”

“I'll be over.”

“You got your trial, man.”

“I have some time.”

Bosch felt that he had to keep moving, to keep thinking. It was the only way to keep from examining the horror building in his mind, the possibility he had taken down the wrong man. He drove back to Parker Center and took the stairs down to the first subterranean level. Missing Persons was a small office inside the Fugitives section. Edgar was sitting on a desk, looking through a stack of white forms. Bosch recognized these as cases that were not even investigated after the reports had been made. They would have been in files if there had been any follow-up.

“Nothing so far, Harry,” Edgar said. He then introduced Bosch to Detective Morgan Randolph, who was sitting at a nearby desk. Randolph gave Bosch a stack of reports and he spent the next fifteen minutes looking through the pages, each one an individual story of someone's pain that had fallen on the deaf ears of the department.

“Harry, on the description, look for a tattoo above the ass,” Edgar said.

“How do you know?”

“Mora had some photos of Magna Cum Loudly. In action, as Mora says. And there's a tattoo—it's Yosemite Sam, you know, the cartoon?—to the left of the dimple over the left side of her ass.”

“Well, did you find that on the body?”

“Didn't notice it ’cause of the severe skin discoloration. But I didn't really look at the backside, either.”

“What's going on with that? I thought you said the cut was going to be done yesterday.”

“Yeah, that's what they said, but I called over and they're still backed up from the weekend. They haven't even prepped it yet. I called Sakai a little while ago and he's going to take a look in the freezer after lunch. Check on the tattoo.”

Bosch looked back at his stack. The recurrent theme was the young ages of the missing people. L.A. was a drain which drew a steady stream of the nation's runaways. But there were many who disappeared from here as well.

Bosch finished his stack without seeing the name Rebecca Kaminski, her alias, or anyone that matched her description. He looked at his watch and knew he had to get back to court. He took another stack off Randolph's desk anyway and began to wade through it. As he searched, he listened to the banter between Edgar and Randolph. It was clear that they had known each other before this day's meeting. Edgar called him Morg. Bosch figured they might've known each other from the Black Peace Officers Association.

He found nothing in the second stack.

“I gotta go. I'm gonna be late.”

“Okay, man. I'll let you know what we find.”

“And the prints, too, okay?”

“You got it.”

Court was already in session when Bosch got to courtroom 4. He quietly opened the gate, went through and took his seat next to Belk. The judge eyed him disdainfully but said nothing. Bosch looked up to see Assistant Chief Irvin Irving in the witness seat. Money Chandler was at the lectern.