Trunk Music (40 page)

“A
million
dollars?”

That was her second mistake. To Bosch, her emphasis on
million
and her shock betrayed her knowledge that there had been far less than that in Tony Aliso’s briefcase. Bosch watched as her eyes stared blankly and all her movement was interior. He guessed — and hoped — she was now wondering where the rest of the money was.

“Yes,” he said. “See, the man who gave your husband the money, the one we first thought was a suspect, is an FBI agent who infiltrated the organization your husband worked for. That is why his alibi is so solid. Anyway, he told us that your husband was carrying a million dollars. It was all in cash and there was so much that he couldn’t fit it all into his briefcase. He had to put about half of it in his suit bag.”

He paused for a few moments. He could tell the story was playing in her internal theater. Her eyes had that faraway look in them. He remembered that look from her movie. But this time it was for real. He hadn’t even finished the interview, but she was already making plans. He could see it.

“Was the money marked by the FBI?” she asked. “I mean, could they trace it that way?”

“No, unfortunately their agent did not have it long enough to do that. There was too much of it, frankly. But the transaction did take place in an office with a hidden video camera. There is no doubt, Tony left there with a million dollars. Uh…”

Bosch paused to open his briefcase and quickly consult a page from a file.

“…actually, it was a million, seventy-six thousand. All in cash.”

Veronica’s eyes went down to the floor as she nodded. Bosch studied her but his concentration was interrupted when he thought he heard a sound from somewhere in the house. It suddenly occurred to him that maybe there was someone else there. They had never asked.

“Did you hear that?” Bosch asked.

“What?”

“I thought I heard something. Are you alone in the house?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I heard a bump or something.”

“You want me to look around?” Edgar offered.

“Oh, no,” Veronica said quickly, “…uh, it probably was just the cat.”

Bosch didn’t remember seeing any sign of a cat when he had been in the house before. He glanced at Kiz and saw her almost imperceptibly turn her head to signal she didn’t remember a cat either. He decided to let it go for the time being.

“Anyway,” he said, “that’s why we’re canvassing and that’s why we’re here. We need to ask you some questions. They might go over some of the same ground we’ve covered before but, like I said, we’re kind of starting over. It won’t take too much longer. Then you’ll be able to go to the stables.”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

“Would you mind if I have a drink of water first?”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry, I should have asked. Anybody else want something?”

“I’ll pass,” Edgar said.

“I’m fine,” Rider said.

Veronica Aliso stood up and headed toward the hallway. Bosch gave her a head start and then stood up and followed.

“You did ask,” he said to her back. “But I turned it down. I didn’t think I’d get thirsty.”

He followed her into the kitchen, where she opened a cabinet and took down a glass. Bosch looked around. It was a large kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and black granite countertops. There was a center island with a sink in it.

“Tap water’d be fine for me,” he said, taking the glass from her and filling it at the island.

He turned and leaned against the counter and drank from it. He then poured the rest out and put the glass on the counter.

“That’s all you want?”

“Yes. Just needed something to wash the dust down, I guess.”

He smiled and she didn’t.

“Well then, should we go back to the living room?” she asked.

“That’d be fine.”

He followed her out of the kitchen. Just before he entered the hallway, he turned back and his eyes swept across the gray-tiled floor. He didn’t see what he thought should be there.

Bosch spent the next fifteen minutes asking mostly questions that had been asked six days earlier and that had little bearing on the case now. He was going through the motions, the finishing touches. The trap was baited and this was his way of quietly stepping back from it. Finally, when he thought he had said and asked enough, Bosch closed the notebook in which he had been scribbling notes he’d never look at again and stood up. He thanked her for her time and Veronica Aliso walked the three detectives to the door. Bosch was the last one out, and as he stepped over the threshold she spoke to him. He somehow knew that she would. There were parts to her act that had to be played as well.

“Keep me informed, Detective Bosch. Please keep me informed.”

Bosch turned and looked back at her.

“Oh, I will. If anything happens, you’ll be the first to know.”

Bosch drove Edgar and Rider back to their car. He didn’t speak about the interview until he pulled in behind it.

“So what do you think?” he asked as he got out his cigarettes.

“I think we sunk the hook but good,” Edgar said.

“Yeah,” Rider said. “It’s going to be interesting.”

Bosch lit a cigarette.

“What about the cat?” he asked.

“What?” Edgar asked.

“The noise in the house. She said it was the cat. But in the kitchen there were no food bowls on the floor.”

“Maybe they were outside,” Edgar offered.

Bosch shook his head.

“I think people who keep cats inside feed them inside,” he said. “In the hills you’re supposed to keep ’em in. Coyotes. Anyway, I don’t like cats. I get allergic to them. I can usually tell when somebody has a cat. I don’t think she has a cat. Kiz, you didn’t see a cat in there, did you?”

“I spent all Monday morning in there and I never saw a cat.”

“You think maybe it was the guy then?” Edgar asked. “Whoever she worked this with?”

“Maybe. I think somebody was in there. Maybe her lawyer.”

“Nah, lawyers don’t hide like that. They come out and confront.”

“True.”

“Should we watch the place, see who comes out?” Edgar asked.

Bosch thought a moment.

“No,” Bosch said. “They spot us and they’ll know the money thing is just bait. Better we let it go. Better just to get out of here, go get set up. We gotta get ready.”

VII

D
URING HIS TIME
in Vietnam, Bosch’s primary assignment had been to fight the war in the tunnel networks that ranged beneath the villages in the Cu Chi province, to go into the darkness they called the black echo and to come back alive. But the tunnel work was done quickly, and between those missions he spent days in the bush, fighting and waiting under the jungle canopy. One time he and a handful of others got cut off from their unit and Bosch spent a night sitting in the elephant grass, his back pressed against the back of an Alabama boy named Donnel Fredrick, listening as a company of VC fighters moved through. They sat there and waited for Charlie to stumble onto them. There was nothing else they could do and there were too many to fight. So they waited and the minutes went by like hours. They all made it through, though Donnel was later killed in a foxhole by a direct mortar hit — friendly fire. Bosch always thought that night in the elephant grass was the closest he’d ever come to experiencing a miracle.

Bosch remembered that night sometimes when he was alone on a stakeout or in a tight spot. He thought about it now as he sat cross-legged against the base of a eucalyptus tree ten yards from the tarp the homeless man, George, had erected. Over his clothes, he wore a green plastic poncho he always kept in the trunk of his work car. The candy bars he had with him were Hershey’s chocolate with almonds, the same kind he had taken with him into the bush so long ago. And like that night in the tall grass, he had not moved for what seemed like hours. It was dark, with only a glimmer of moonlight making it down through the overhead canopy, and he was waiting. He wanted a cigarette but couldn’t afford to open a flame in the blackness. Every now and then he thought he could hear Edgar make a move or readjust himself twenty yards to his right, but he couldn’t be sure that it was his partner and not a deer or maybe a coyote passing through.

George had told him there were coyotes. When he had put the old man into the back of Kiz’s car for the ride to the hotel they were putting him up in, he had warned Bosch. But Bosch wasn’t afraid of coyotes.

The old man had not gone easily. He was sure they were there to take him back to Camarillo. And the truth was, he should have been going back there but the institution wouldn’t have him, not without a government-punched ticket. Instead he was going to be treated to a couple of nights at the Mark Twain Hotel in Hollywood. It wasn’t a bad place. Bosch had lived there for more than a year while his house was being rebuilt. The worst room there beat a tarp in the woods hands down. But Bosch knew George might not see it that way.

By eleven-thirty the traffic up on Mulholland had thinned down to a car every five minutes or so. Bosch couldn’t see them because of the incline and the thickness of the brush, but he could hear them and see the lights wash through the foliage above him as the cars made the curve. He was alert now because a car had slowly gone by twice in the last fifteen minutes, once each way. Bosch had sensed that it was the same car because the engine was over-throttled to compensate for a skip in the engine stroke.

And now it was back for a third time. Bosch listened intently as he heard the familiar engine, and this time there was the added sound of tires turning on gravel. The car was pulling off the road. In a few moments the engine stopped and the following silence was punctuated only by the sound of a car door being opened and then closed. Bosch slowly got up on his haunches, as painful as it was on his knees, and got ready. He looked into the darkness to his right, toward Edgar’s position, and saw nothing. He then looked up the incline, toward the edge, and waited.

In a few moments he could see the beam of a flashlight cut through the brush. The light was pointed downward and was moving in a back-and-forth sweeping pattern as its holder slowly descended the hill toward the tarp. Under his poncho Bosch held his gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other, his thumb paused on the switch and ready to turn it on.

The movement of the light stopped. Bosch guessed that its holder had found the spot where the suit bag should have been. After a moment of seeming hesitation the beam was lifted and it swept through the woods, flicking across Bosch for a fraction of a second. But it didn’t come back to him. Instead, it held on the blue tarp as Bosch guessed it probably would. The light began advancing, its holder stumbling once as he or she went toward George’s home. A few moments later, Bosch saw the beam moving behind the blue plastic. He felt another charge of adrenaline begin to course through his body. Again, his mind flashed on Vietnam. This time it was the tunnels that he thought of. Coming upon an enemy in the darkness. The fear and thrill of it. It was only after he had left that place safely that he acknowledged to himself there had been a thrill to it. And in looking to replace that thrill, he had joined the cops.

Bosch slowly raised himself, hoping his knees wouldn’t crack, as he watched the light. They had placed the suit bag in underneath the shelter after stuffing it first with crumpled newspaper. Bosch began to move as quietly as he could in behind the tarp. He was coming from the left. According to the plan, Edgar would be coming from the right, but it was still too dark for Bosch to see him.

Bosch was ten feet away now and could hear the excited breathing of the person under the tarp. Then there was the sound of a zipper being pulled open followed by the sharp cut-off of breath.

“Shit!”

Bosch moved in after hearing the curse. He realized he recognized the man’s voice just as he came around the open side of the tarp and raised both his weapon and his flashlight from beneath his poncho.

“
Freeze! Police!
” Bosch yelled at the same moment he put on his light. “All right, come out of there, Powers.”

Almost immediately Edgar’s light came on from Bosch’s right.

“What the…?” Edgar started to say.

Crouched there in the crossing beams of light was Officer Ray Powers. In full uniform, the big patrol cop held a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. A look of utter surprise played across his face. His mouth dropped open.

“Bosch,” he said. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“That’s our line, Powers,” Edgar said angrily. “Don’t you know what the fuck you just did? You walked right into a — what are
you
doing here, man?”

Powers lowered his gun and slid it back into its holster.

“I was — there was a report. Somebody must’ve seen you guys sneaking in here. They said they saw two men sneaking around.”

Bosch stepped back from the tarp, keeping his gun raised.

“Come out of there, Powers,” he said.

Powers did as he was commanded. Bosch put the beam from his light right in the man’s face.

“What about this report? Who called it in?”

“Just some guy driving by up on the road. Must’ve seen you going in here. Can you get the light out of my face?”

Bosch didn’t move the focus of the light an inch.

“Then what?” he asked. “Who’d he call?”

Bosch knew that after Rider had dropped them off, her job was to park on a nearby street and keep her scanner on. If there had been such a radio call, she would have heard it and called off the patrol response, telling the dispatcher it was a surveillance operation.

“He didn’t call it in. I was cruising by and he waved me down.”

“You mean he claimed he just saw two guys going into the woods?”

“Uh, no. No, he waved me down earlier. I just didn’t get a chance to check it out until now.”

Bosch and Edgar had gone into the woods at two-thirty. It was full daylight then and Powers hadn’t even been on duty yet. And the only car that had been in the area at the time was Rider’s. Bosch knew Powers was lying, and it was all beginning to fall into place. His finding the body, his fingerprint on the trunk, the pepper spray on the victim, the reason the bindings were taken off the wrists. It was already there, in the details.