The Concrete Blonde hb-3 Read online

  “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 video-tape 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 cal
led 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.

  “Good going,” Belk whispered to him. “Late for your own trial.”

  Bosch ignored him and watched as Chandler began asking Irving general questions about his background and years on the force. They were preliminary questions; Bosch knew he couldn’t have missed much.

  “Look,” Belk whispered next. “If you don’t care about this, at least pretend you do for the jury’s sake. I know we are only talking about taxpayers’ money here, but act like it’s going to be your own money they will be deciding to give.”

  “I got tied up. It won’t happen again. You know, I’m trying to figure out this case. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, since you’ve already decided.”

  He leaned back in his chair to get away from Belk. He was reminded that he had not eaten lunch by a sharp signal of resentment from his stomach. He tried to concentrate on the testimony.

  “As assistant chief, what does your command include?” Chandler asked Irving.

  “I am presently the commanding officer of all detective services.”

  “At the time of the Dollmaker investigation, you were one rank below. A deputy chief, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “As such you were in charge of the Internal Affairs Division, correct?”

  “Yes. IAD and Operations Bureau, which basically means I was in charge of managing and allocating the department’s personnel.”

  “What is the mission of the IAD, as it is known?”

  “To police the police. We investigate all citizen complaints, all interior complaints of misconduct.”

  “Do you investigate police shootings?”

  “Not per se. There is an Officer Involved Shooting team that handles the initial investigation. After that, if there is an allegation of misconduct or any impropriety, it is forwarded to IAD for follow-up.”

  “Yes, and what do you recall of the IAD investigation of the shooting of Norman Church by Detective Harry Bosch?”

  “I recall all of it.”

  “Why was it referred to IAD?”

  “The shooting team determined that Detective Bosch had not followed procedures. The shooting itself was within departmental policy but some of his actions prior to the gunfire were not.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Yes. Basically, he went there alone. He went to this man’s apartment without backup, placing himself in danger. It ended in the shooting.”

  “It’s called cowboying it, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve heard the phrase. I don’t use it.”

  “But does it fit?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You wouldn’t know. Chief, would you know if Mr. Church would be alive today if Detective Bosch had not created this situation by playing cow-”

  “Objection!” Belk shrieked.

  But before he could walk to the lectern to argue, Judge Keyes sustained the objection and told Chandler to avoid speculative questions.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” she said pleasantly. “Chief, basically what you have testified to is that Detective Bosch set in motion a series of events that ultimately ended with an unarmed man being killed, am I right?”

  “That is incorrect. The investigation found no substantive indication or evidence that Detective Bosch deliberately set this scenario in motion. It was spur of the moment. He was checking out a lead. When it looked good, he should have called for backup. But he didn’t. He went in. He identified himself and Mr. Church made the furtive move. And here we are. That is not to say that the outcome would have been different had there been a backup. I mean, anybody who would disobey an order from a police officer holding a gun would probably do it with two officers holding guns.”

  Chandler successfully had the last sentence of the answer struck from the record.

  “To come to the conclusion that Detective Bosch did not intentionally set the situation into motion, did your investigators study all facets of the shooting?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “How about Detective Bosch, was he studied?”

  “Unquestionably. He was rigorously questioned about his actions.”

  “And about his motives?”

  “His motives?”

  “Chief, did you or any of your investigators know that Detective Bosch’s mother was slain in Hollywood about thirty years ago by a killer who was never arrested? That prior to that, she had a record for multiple arrests for loitering?”

  Bosch felt his skin go hot, as if klieg lights had been turned on him, and that everyone in the courtroom was staring at him. He was sure they were. But he looked only at Irving, who stared silently ahead, a palsied look on his face, the capillaries on either side of his nose flaring. When Irving didn’t answer, Chandler prompted him.

  “Did you know, Chief? It is referenced in Detective Bosch’s personnel file. When he applied to the force, he had to say if he had ever been the victim of a crime. He lost his mother, he wrote.”

  Finally, Irving said, “No, I did not know.”

  “I believe that loitering was a euphemism for prostitution in the 1950s, when Los Angeles was engaged in a denial of crime problems such as rampant prostitution on Hollywood Boulevard, is that correct?”

  “I don’t recall that.”

  Chandler asked to approach the witness and handed Irving a thin stack of papers. She gave him nearly a minute to read through them. He furrowed his brow as he read and Bosch could not see his eyes. The muscles of his cheeks bunched together below his temples.

  “What is that, Chief Irving?” Chandler asked.

  “It is what we call a due diligence report detailing the investigation of a homicide. It is dated November 3, 1962.”

  “What is a due diligence report?”

  “Every unsolved case is looked at annually-we call it due diligence-until such time that we feel the prognosis for bringing the case to a successful conclusion is hopeless.”

  “What is the victim’s name and circumstances of her death?”

  “Marjorie Phillips Lowe. She was raped and strangled, October 31, 1961. Her body was found in an alley behind Hollywood Boulevard between Vista and Gower.”

  “What is the investigator’s conclusion, Chief Irving?”

  “It says that at this time, which was a year after the crime, there are no workable leads and prognosis for successful conclusion of the case is deemed hopeless.”

  “Thank you. Now, one more thing, is there a box on the cover form listing next of kin?”

  “Yes, it identifies the next of kin as Hieronymus Bosch. Next to that in brackets it says ‘Harry.’ A box marked
‘son’ has been checked off.”

  Chandler referred to her yellow pad for a few moments to let this information soak into the jury. It was so quiet Bosch could actually hear Chandler’s pen scratching on the pad as she made a notation.

  “Now,” she said, “Chief Irving, would knowing about Detective Bosch’s mother have caused you to take a closer look at this shooting?”

  After a long moment of silence, he said, “I can’t say.”

  “He shot a man suspected of doing almost the exact same thing that had happened to his mother-his mother’s slaying being unsolved. Are you saying you don’t know if that would have been germane to your investigation?”

  “I, yes... I don’t know at this time.”

  Bosch wanted to put his head down on the table. He had noticed that even Belk had stopped scribbling notes and was just watching the interchange between Irving and Chandler. Bosch tried to shake off the anger he felt and concentrate on how Chandler had obtained the information. He realized she had probably gotten the P-file in a discovery motion. But the details of the crime and his mother’s background would not be in it. She had most likely procured the due diligence report from the archives warehouse on a Freedom of Information petition.

  He realized he had missed several questions to Irving. He began watching and listening again. He wished he had a lawyer like Money Chandler.

  “Chief, did you or any IAD detectives go to the scene of the shooting?”

  “No, we did not.”

  “So your information about what happened came from members of the shooting team, who in turn got their information from the shooter, Detective Bosch, correct?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “You have no personal knowledge of the evidentiary layout: the toupee under the pillow, the cosmetics beneath the sink in the bathroom?”

  “Correct. I was not there.”

  “Do you believe all of that was there as I just stated?”