Harry Bosch Novels, The: Volume 2 Page 10

  People sometimes say to me, “What’s the big deal, Arno? These are victimless crimes. If a man wants to place a bet or sleep with a woman for money, what’s wrong with that? Where’s the victim?” Well, my friends, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with that and who the victim is. We’re the victim. All of us. When we allow this kind of activity to occur, when we simply look the other way, then it weakens us all. Every one of us.

  I look at it this way. These so-called little crimes are each like a broken window in an abandoned house. Doesn’t seem like a big problem, right? Wrong. If nobody fixes that window, pretty soon kids come along and think nobody cares. So they throw a few rocks and break a few more windows. Next, the burglar drives down the street and sees the house and thinks nobody around there cares. So he sets up shop and starts breaking into houses while the owners are at work.

  Next thing you know, another miscreant comes along and steals cars right off the street. And so on and so on. The residents start to see their own neighborhood with different eyes then. They think, Nobody cares anymore, so why should I? They wait an extra month before cutting the grass. They don’t tell the boys hanging on the corner to put the cigarettes out and go back to school. It’s gradual decay, my friends. It happens all across this great country of ours. It sneaks in like weeds in our yard. Well, when I’m district attorney the weeds are coming out by the roots.

  The story ended by reporting that Conklin had chosen a young “firebrand” from his office to manage his campaign. He said that Gordon Mittel would resign from the DA’s office and begin work immediately. Bosch reread the story and immediately became transfixed by something that hadn’t registered during his first read. It was in the second paragraph.

  For the well-known and not-press-shy Conklin, it will be his first run for public office. The 35-year-old bachelor and Hancock Park resident said he has planned the run for a long time and has the backing of retiring DA John Charles Stock, who also appeared at the press conference.

  Bosch turned the pages of his notebook back to the list of names he had written before and wrote “Hancock Park” after Conklin’s name. It wasn’t much but it was a little piece of verification of Katherine Register’s story. And it was enough to get Bosch’s juices going. It made him feel that at least he had a line in the water.

  “Fucking hypocrite,” he whispered to himself.

  He drew a circle around Conklin’s name in the notebook. He absentmindedly kept circling it as he tried to decide what he should do next.

  Marjorie Lowe’s last known destination was a party in Hancock Park. According to Katherine Register, she was more specifically going to meet Conklin. After she was dead, Conklin had called the detectives on the case to make an appointment but any record of the interview, if any occurred, was missing. Bosch knew it was all a general correlation of facts but it served to deepen and solidify the suspicion he had felt from the night he had first looked through the murder book. Something was not right about the case. Something didn’t fit. And the more he thought about it, the more he believed Conklin was the wrong piece.

  He reached into his jacket, which was on the chairback behind him, and took out his small phone book. He took it into the kitchen, where he dialed the home line of Deputy District Attorney Roger Goff.

  Goff was a friend who shared Bosch’s affection for the tenor saxophone. They’d spent many days in court sitting side by side during trials and many nights in jazz bars side by side on stools. Goff was an old-line prosecutor who had been with the office nearly thirty years. He had no political aspirations inside or outside of the office. He just liked his job. He was a rarity because he never tired of it. A thousand deputies had come in, burned out, and gone on to corporate America during Goff’s watch, but he stayed. He now labored in the criminal courts building with prosecutors and public defenders twenty years his junior. But he was still good at it and, more important, still had the fire in his voice when he stood before a jury and called down the outrage of God and society against those in the defendant’s chair. His mixture of tenacity and plain fairness had made him a legend in downtown legal and law enforcement circles. And he was one of the few prosecutors Bosch had unconditional respect for.

  “Roger, Harry Bosch.”

  “Hey, goddamnit, how you doing?”

  “I’m fine. What are you up to?”

  “Watching the tube like everybody else. What’re you doing?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking, you remember Gloria Jeffries?”

  “Glo— shit, of course I do. Let’s see. She’s . . . yeah, she’s the one with the husband got quadded in the motorcycle accident, right?”

  Recalling the case, it sounded as if he were reading it off one of his yellow tablets.

  “She got tired of caring for him. So one morning he’s in bed and she sits on his face until she smothers him. It was about to go by as a natural but a suspicious detective named Harry Bosch wouldn’t let it go. He came up with a witness who Gloria had told everything to. The clincher, the thing that got the jury, was that she told the wit that when she smothered him, it was the first orgasm the poor devil had ever been able to give her. How is that for a memory?”

  “Damn, you’re good.”

  “So what about her?”

  “She’s raising up at Frontera. Getting ready to. I was wondering if you’d have time to write a letter.”

  “Fuck, already? What was that, three, four years ago?”

  “Almost five. I hear she’s got the book now and goes to the board next month. I’ll write a letter but it’d be good if there was one from the prosecutor, too.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I got a standard in my computer. All I do is change the name and the crime, throw in a few of the gruesome details. The basic line is that the crime was too heinous for parole to be considered at this time. It’s a good letter. I’ll send it out tomorrow. It usually works charms.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  “You know, they gotta stop giving the book to those women. They all get religion when they’re coming up. You ever go to one of those hearings?”

  “A couple.”

  “Yeah, sit through a half a day of them if you have the time and aren’t feeling particularly suicidal sometime. They sent me out to Frontera once when one of the Manson girls was up. See, with the big ones like that they send a body out instead of a letter. So, I went out and I sat through about ten of these things waiting for my girl to come up. And let me tell you, everybody’s quoting Corinthians, they’re quoting Revelations, Matthew, Paul, John three-sixteen, John this, John that. And it works! It goddamn works. These old guys on the board eat that shit up. Plus I guess they’re all sitting up there getting thick in their pants having all these women groveling in front of them. Anyway, you got me started, Harry. It’s your fault, not mine.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay. So what else is new? Haven’t seen you in the building. You got anything coming my way?”

  It was the question Bosch had been waiting for Goff to get to so he could nonchalantly steer the conversation toward Arno Conklin.

  “Ah, nothing much. It’s been slow. But, hey, let me ask you, did you know Arno Conklin?”

  “Arno Conklin? Sure, I knew him. He hired me. What are you asking about him for?”

  “Nothing. I was going through some old files, making room in one of the cabinets, and I came across some old newspapers. They were pushed into the back. There were some stories about him and I thought of you, thought it was about when you started.”

  “Yeah, Arno, tried to be a good man. A little high and mighty for my taste, but I think he was a decent man overall. Especially considering he was both a politician and a lawyer.”

  Goff laughed at his own line but Bosch was silent. Goff had used the past tense. Bosch felt a heavy presence push into his chest and he only realized then how strong the desire to avenge could be.

  “He’s dead?”

  He closed his eyes. He hoped Goff wouldn’t dete
ct the urgency he had let slip into his voice.

  “Oh, no, he’s not dead. I meant, you know, when I knew him. He was a good man then.”

  “He’s still practicing law somewhere?”

  “Oh, no. He’s an old man. Retired. Once a year they wheel him out at the annual prosecutors banquet. He personally hands out the Arno Conklin Award.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Some piece of wood with a brass plate on it that goes to the administrative prosecutor of the year, if you can believe that. That’s the guy’s legacy, an annual award to a so-called prosecutor who doesn’t set foot inside a courtroom all year. It always goes to one of the division heads. I don’t know how they decide which one. Prob’ly whoever got his or her nose farthest up the DA’s ass that year.”

  Bosch laughed. The line wasn’t that funny but he was also feeling the relief of learning that Conklin was still alive.

  “It’s not funny, Bosch. It’s fucking sad. Administrative prosecutor, whoever heard of such a thing? An oxymoron. Like Andrew and his screenplays. He deals with these studio people called, get this, creative executives. There’s your classic contradiction. Well, there you go, Bosch, you got me going again.”

  Bosch knew Andrew was Goff’s roommate but he had never met him.

  “Sorry, Roger. Anyway, what do you mean, they wheel him out?”

  “Arno? Well, I mean they wheel him out. He’s in a chair. I told you, he’s an old man. Last I heard he was in some full-care retirement home. One of the classy ones in Park La Brea. I keep saying I’m going to see him one day, thank him for hiring me way back when. Who knows, maybe I could put in a word for that award or something.”

  “Funny guy. You know, I heard that Gordon Mittel used to be his frontman.”

  “Oh, yeah, he was the bulldog outside the door. Ran his campaigns. That’s how Mittel got started. Now that’s one mean— I’m glad he got out of criminal law and into politics, he’d be a motherfucker to come up against in court.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard,” Bosch said.

  “Whatever you’ve heard, you can double it.”

  “You know him?”

  “Not now and not then. I just knew to keep clear. He was already out of the office by the time I came in. But there were stories. Supposedly in those early days, when Arno was the heir apparent and everybody knew it, there was a lot of maneuvering. You know, to get next to him. There was one guy, Sinclair I think his name was, that was set to run Arno’s campaign. Then one night the cleaning lady found some porno shots under his blotter. There was an internal investigation and the photos proved to be stolen from another prosecutor’s case files. Sinclair was dumped. He always claimed he was set up by Mittel.”

  “Think he was?”

  “Yes. It was Mittel’s style . . . but who knows.”

  Bosch sensed that he had said and asked enough to pass it off as conversation and gossip. Anything further and Goff might get suspicious about the call.

  “So what’s the deal?” he asked. “You zipped up for the night or you want to go by the Catalina? I heard Redman’s in town to do Leno. I’d bet you the cover charge that he and Branford drop by to sit in on the late set.”

  “Sounds tempting, Harry, but Andrew’s making a late dinner now and I think we’re just going to stay at home tonight. He’s counting on it. You mind?”

  “Not at all. Anyway, I’m trying not to bend the elbow so much lately. I need to give it a rest.”

  “Now that, sir, is quite admirable. I think you deserve a piece of wood with a brass plate on it.”

  “Or a shot of whiskey.”

  After hanging up Bosch sat back down at the desk and wrote notes on the highlights of the conversation with Goff into his notebook. Next he pulled the stack of clips on Mittel in front of him. These were more recent clips than those on Conklin because Mittel had not made a name for himself until much later. Conklin had been his first step up the ladder.

  Most of the stories were just mentions of Mittel as being in attendance at various galas in Beverly Hills or as host of various campaign or charity dinners. From the start he was a money man, a man politicians and charities went to when they wanted to cast their nets into the rich enclaves of the Westside. He worked both sides, Republican, Democrat, it didn’t seem to matter. His profile grew, though, when he started working for candidates on a larger scale. The current governor was a client. So, too, were a handful of congressmen and senators from other western states.

  A profile written several years earlier— and apparently without his cooperation— ran under the headline THE PRESIDENT’S MAIN MONEY MAN. It said Mittel had been tapped to round up California contributors for the president’s reelection war chest. It said the state was one of the cornerstones of the national campaign’s funding plan.

  The story also noted the irony that Mittel was a recluse in the high-profile world of politics. He was a backstage man who abhorred the spotlight. So much so that he had repeatedly turned down patronage jobs from those he’d helped elect.

  Instead, Mittel elected to stay in Los Angeles, where he was the founding partner of a powerful financial district law firm, Mittel, Anderson, Jennings & Rountree. Still, it seemed to Bosch that what this Yale-educated lawyer did had little to do with law as Bosch knew it. He doubted Mittel had been inside a courtroom in years. That made Harry think of the Conklin award and he smiled. Too bad Mittel had quit the DA’s office. He might’ve been in line for it someday.

  There was a photo that ran with the profile. It showed Mittel at the bottom of the steps of Air Force One greeting the then president at LAX. Though the article had been published years earlier, Bosch was nevertheless startled by how young Mittel was in the photo. He looked at the story again and checked the man’s age. Doing the arithmetic, he realized that currently Mittel was barely sixty years old.

  Bosch pushed the newspaper clips aside and got up. For a long time he stood at the sliding glass door to the deck and stared at the lights across the pass. He began to consider what he knew about circumstances thirty-three years old. Conklin, according to Katherine Register, knew Marjorie Lowe. It was clear from the murder book that he had somehow reached into the investigation of her death for reasons unknown. His reach was then apparently covered up for reasons unknown. This had occurred only three months before he announced his candidacy for district attorney and less than a year before a key figure in the investigation, Johnny Fox, died while in his political employ.

  Bosch thought that it was obvious that Fox would have been known to Mittel, the campaign manager. Therefore, he further concluded, whatever it was that Conklin did or knew, it was likely that Mittel, his frontman and the architect of his political run, had knowledge of it as well.

  Bosch went back to the table and turned to the list of names in his notebook. Now he picked up the pen and circled Mittel’s name as well. He felt like having another beer but he settled for a cigarette.

  Chapter 14

  In the morning Bosch called the LAPD personnel office and asked them to check whether Eno and McKittrick were still current. He doubted they were still around but knew he had to make the check. It would be embarrassing if he went through a search for them only to find one or both still on the payroll. The clerk checked the roll and told him no such officers were currently on the force.

  He decided he would have to put on his Harvey Pounds pose after that. He dialed the DMV in Sacramento, gave the lieutenant’s name and asked for Ms. Sharp again. By the tone she inflected in the single word “Hello” after picking up the phone, Bosch had no doubt that she remembered him.

  “Is this Ms. Sharp?”

  “That’s who you asked for, isn’t it?”

  “I did, indeed.”

  “Then it’s Ms. Sharp. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I wanted to mend our fences, so to speak. I have a few more names I need driver’s license addresses for and I thought that directly working with you would expedite the matter and perhaps repair our working relation
ship.”

  “Honey, we don’t have a working relationship. Hold the line, please.”

  She punched the button before he could say anything. The line was dead for so long that he began to believe his scam to burn Pounds wasn’t worth it. Finally, a different clerk picked up and said Ms. Sharp had instructed her to help. Bosch gave her Pounds’s serial number and then the names Gordon Mittel, Arno Conklin, Claude Eno and Jake McKittrick. He said he needed the home addresses on their licenses.

  He was put on hold again. During the time he waited he held the phone to his ear with his shoulder and fried an egg over easy in a pan on the stove. He made a sandwich out of it with two slices of white toast and cold salsa from a jar he kept in the refrigerator. He ate the dripping sandwich while leaning over the sink. He had just wiped his mouth and poured himself a second cup of coffee when the clerk finally picked back up.

  “Sorry it took so long.”

  “No problem.”

  He then remembered he was Pounds and wished he hadn’t said that.

  The clerk explained that she had no addresses or license information on Eno or McKittrick, then gave him addresses for Conklin and Mittel. Goff had been right. Conklin lived in Park La Brea. Mittel lived above Hollywood on Hercules Drive in a development called Mount Olympus.

  Bosch was too preoccupied at that point to continue the Pounds charade. He thanked the clerk without further confrontation and hung up. He thought about what his next move should be. Eno and McKittrick were either dead or out of state. He knew he could get their addresses through the department’s personnel office but that might take all day. He picked up the phone again and called Robbery-Homicide, asking for Detective Leroy Ruben. Ruben had put nearly forty years in on the department, half of it in RHD. He might know something about Eno and McKittrick. He might also know Bosch was on stress leave.