Trunk Music (20 page)

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.