The Concrete Blonde Read online

  He drove to Woodrow Wilson Drive and then down to his small house that stood on cantilevers and looked out across the Cahuenga Pass. He had left no lights on inside because with Sylvia in his life he never knew how long he would go without being here.

  He opened the first beer as soon as the Caprice was parked at the curb in front. A car slowly went by and left him in the dark. He watched one of the beams from the spotlights at Universal City cut across the clouds over the house. Another one chased after it a few seconds later. The beer felt and tasted good going down his throat. But it felt heavy in his stomach and Bosch stopped drinking. He put the bottle back in its carton.

  But it wasn’t the beer, he knew, that was really bothering him. It was Ray Mora. Of all the people who were close enough to the case to know the details of the program, Mora was the one who jabbed at Bosch’s gut. The follower’s three victims were porno actresses. And that was Mora’s gig. He probably knew them all. The question that was now beginning to push its way into Bosch’s mind was, did he kill them all? It bothered him to even think about it, but he knew he had to. Mora was a logical starting point when Bosch considered Locke’s advice. The vice cop stood out in Bosch’s mind as someone who easily intersected both worlds: the porn trade and the Dollmaker’s. Was it just coincidence or enough to classify Mora as an actual suspect? Bosch wasn’t sure. He knew he had to proceed as cautiously with an innocent man as he would with a guilty man.

  • • •

  Inside, the place smelled musty. He went directly to the rear sliding door and opened it. He stood there for a moment listening to the hissing sound of traffic coming up from the freeway at the bottom of the pass. The sound never died. No matter what time, what day, there was always traffic down there, blood coursing through the veins of the city.

  The light on the answering machine was blinking the number three. Bosch hit rewind and lit a cigarette. The first voice was Sylvia’s: “I just want to say good-night, sweetheart. I love you and be careful.”

  Jerry Edgar was next: “Harry, it’s Edgar. Wanted to let you know, I’m off it. Irving called me at home and told me to turn everything I’ve got over to RHD in the morning. To a Lieutenant Rollenberger. Take care, buddy. And watch six.”

  Watch six, Bosch thought. Watch your back. He hadn’t heard that one since Vietnam. And he knew Edgar had never been there.

  “It’s Ray,” the last voice on the tape said. “I’ve been thinking about this concrete blonde job and have a few ideas you might be interested in. Call me in the morning and we’ll talk.”

  15

  “I want a continuance.”

  “What?”

  “You have to get the trial delayed. Tell the judge.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Bosch?”

  Bosch and Belk were sitting at the defense table, waiting for the Thursday morning court session to begin. They were speaking in loud whispers and Bosch thought that when Belk cursed, it came off as sounding too contrived, as if he were a sixth-grader trying to fit in with the eighth-graders.

  “I am talking about that witness yesterday, Wieczorek, he was right.”

  “About what?”

  “The alibi, Belk. The alibi on the eleventh victim. It’s legit. Church didn’t—”

  “Wait a minute,” Belk yelped. Then in a low whisper he said, “If you are about to confess to me that you killed the wrong guy, I don’t want to hear it, Bosch. Not now. It’s too late.”

  He turned back to his legal tablet.

  “Belk, listen goddammit, I’m not confessing anything. I got the right guy. But we missed something. Another guy. There were two killers. Church is good for nine—the nine we tied up on the makeup comparisons. The other two, and the one we found in the concrete this week, were done by somebody else. You have to stop this thing until we figure out what exactly is going on. If it comes out in court it will tip the second killer, the follower, to how close we are to him.”

  Belk threw his pen down on the pad and it bounced off the table. He didn’t get up to get it.

  “I’m going to tell you what’s going on, Bosch. We are not stopping anything. Even if I wanted to, I probably couldn’t—the judge is in her pants. All she needs to do is object and no sale, no delay. So I’m not even going to bring it up. You have to understand something, Bosch, this is a trial. This is the controlling factor of your universe right now. You don’t control it. You can’t expect the trial to recess every time you need to change your story . . .”

  “You finished?”

  “Yes, I’m finished.”

  “Belk, I understand everything you just said. But we have to protect the investigation. There is another guy out there killing people. And if Chandler puts me or Edgar up there and starts asking questions, the killer is going to read about it and know everything we’ve got. We’ll never get him then. You want that?”

  “Bosch, my duty is to win this case. If in doing that, it compromises your—”

  “Yeah, but don’t you want to know the truth, Belk? I think we’re close. Delay it until next week and by then we’ll have it together. We’ll be able to come in here and blow Money Chandler out of the water.”

  Bosch leaned back, away from him. He was tired of fighting him.

  “Bosch, how long you been a cop?” Belk asked without looking at him. “Twenty years?”

  That was close. But Bosch didn’t answer. He knew what was coming.

  “And you’re going to sit there and talk to me about truth? When was the last time you saw a truthful police report? When was the last time that you put down the unadulterated truth in a search warrant application? Don’t tell me about truth. You want truth, go see a priest or something. I don’t know where to go, but don’t come in here. After twenty on the job you should know, the truth has got nothing to do with what goes on in here. Neither does justice. Just words in a law book I read in my previous life.”

  Belk turned away and took another pen out of his shirt pocket.

  “Okay, Belk, you’re the man. But I’m going to tell you how it’s going to look when it comes out. It’s going to come out in bits and pieces and it will look bad. That’s Chandler’s specialty. It will look like I hit the wrong guy.”

  Belk was ignoring him, writing on his yellow pad.

  “You fool, she is going to stick it into us so deep it’s going to come out the other side. You keep writing her off as having the judge’s hand on her ass, but we both know that’s how you deal with the fact that you couldn’t carry her lunch. For the last time, get a delay.”

  Belk stood up and walked around the table to pick up the fallen pen. After straightening up, he adjusted his tie and his cuffs and sat back down. He leaned over his pad and without looking at Bosch said, “You’re just afraid of her, aren’t you, Bosch? Don’t want to be on the stand with the cunt asking questions. Questions that might expose you for what you are: a cop who likes killing people.”

  Now he turned and looked at Bosch.

  “Well, it’s too late. Your time has come and there is no backing away. No delays. Show time.”

  Harry stood up and bent over the fat man.

  “Fuck you, Belk. I’m going outside.”

  “That’s nice,” Belk said. “You know, you guys are all the same. You blow some guy away and then come in here and think that just because you wear that badge that you have some kind of a divine right to do whatever you want. That badge is the biggest power trip going.”

  Bosch went out to the bank of phones and called Edgar. He picked up on the homicide table after one ring.

  “I got your message last night.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s all there is. I’m gone. RHD came up this morning and took my file. Saw them snoopin’ around your spot, too, but they didn’t take anything.”

  “Who came?”

  “Sheehan and Opelt. You know ’em?”

  “Yeah, they’re okay. You coming over here on the subpoena?”

  “Yeah, I gotta be there by ten.”

>   Bosch saw the door to courtroom 4 open and the deputy marshal leaned out and signaled to him.

  “I gotta go.”

  Back in the courtroom, Chandler was at the lectern and the judge was speaking. The jury was not in the box yet.

  “What about the other subpoenas?” the judge asked.

  “Your Honor, my office is in the process of notifying those people this morning, releasing them.”

  “Very well, then. Mr. Belk, ready to proceed?”

  As Bosch came through the gate Belk passed him on the way to the lectern without even looking at him.

  “Your Honor, since this is unexpected, I would ask for a half-hour recess so I can consult with my client. We would be ready to proceed after that.”

  “Very well, we’re going to do exactly that. Recess for a half hour. I’ll see all parties back here then. And Mr. Bosch? I expect you to be in your place there, the next time I come out ready to begin. I don’t like sending marshals up and down the halls when the defendant knows where he ought to be and when he ought to be there.”

  Bosch said nothing.

  “Sorry, Your Honor,” Belk said for him.

  They stood as the judge left the bench and Belk said, “Let’s go down the hall to one of the lawyer-client conference rooms.”

  “What happened?”

  “Let’s go down the hall.”

  As he was going through the courtroom door, Bremmer was coming in, holding his notebook and pen.

  “Hey, what’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” Bosch said. “Half-hour recess.”

  “Harry, I have to talk to you.”

  “Later.”

  “It’s important.”

  At the end of the hall near the lavatories there were several small attorney conference rooms, all about the size of the interrogation rooms at the Hollywood station. Bosch and Belk went into one and took chairs on either side of a gray table.

  “What happened?” Bosch asked.

  “Your heroine rested.”

  “Chandler rested without calling me?”

  This seemed to make no sense to Bosch.

  “What’s she doing?” he asked.

  “She’s being extremely shrewd. It’s a very smart move.”

  “Why?”

  “Look at the case. She is in very good shape. If it ended today and went to the jury, who would win? She would. See, she knows you have to get on the stand and defend what you did. Like I told you the other day, we win or lose with you. You either take the ball and ram it down her throat or you fumble it. She knows that and if she was to call you, she would ask the questions first, then I would come in with the fungoes—the easy ones that you’d hit out of the park.

  “Now she’s reversing that. My choice is to not call you and lose the case, or to call you and essentially give her the best shot at you. Very shrewd.”

  “So what are we going to do?”

  “Call you.”

  “What about the delay?”

  “What delay?”

  Bosch nodded. There was no changing it. There would be no delay. He realized he had handled it badly. He had approached Belk the wrong way. He should have tried to make Belk believe it had been his own idea to go for a delay. Then it would have worked. Instead, Bosch was beginning to feel the jitters—that uneasy feeling that came with approaching the unknown. He felt the way he did before he climbed down into a VC tunnel for the first time in Vietnam. It was fear, he knew, blossoming like a black rose in the pit of his chest.

  “We’ve got twenty-five minutes,” Belk said. “Let’s forget about delays and try to work out how we want your testimony to go. I am going to lead you down the path. The jury will follow. But remember, you have to take it slow or you will lose them. Okay?”

  “We got twenty minutes,” Bosch corrected him. “I need to go out for a smoke before I sit up there on the stand.”

  Belk pressed on as if he hadn’t heard.

  “Remember, Bosch, there could be millions of dollars at stake here. It may not be your money but it may be your career.”

  “What career?”

  • • •

  Bremmer was hanging around the door to the conference room when Bosch came out twenty minutes later.

  “Get it all?” Harry asked.

  He walked by him and headed toward the escalator. Bremmer followed.

  “No, man, I wasn’t listening. I’m just waiting for you. Listen, what’s going on with the new case? Edgar won’t tell me shit. Did you get an ID or what?”

  “Yeah, we ID’d her.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Not my case, man. I can’t give it out. Besides, I give it to you and you’ll run to Money Chandler with it, right?”

  Bremmer stopped walking beside him.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  Then he scurried up to Bosch’s side and whispered.

  “Listen, Harry, you’re one of my main sources. I wouldn’t screw you like that. If she’s getting inside shit, look for somebody else.”

  Bosch felt bad about accusing the reporter. He’d had no evidence.

  “You sure? I’m mistaken about this, right?”

  “Absolutely. You’re too valuable to me. I wouldn’t do it.”

  “Okay, then.”

  That was as close as he’d come to an apology.

  “So what can you tell me about the ID?”

  “Nothing. It’s still not my case. Try RHD.”

  “RHD has it? They took it from Edgar?”

  Bosch got on the escalator and looked back at him. He nodded as he went down. Bremmer didn’t follow.

  • • •

  Money Chandler was already on the steps smoking when Bosch came out. He lit a cigarette and looked back at her.

  “Surprise, surprise,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Resting.”

  “Only a surprise to Bulk,” she said. “Any other lawyer would have seen it coming. I almost feel sorry for you, Bosch. Almost, but not quite. In a civil rights case, the chances of a win are always a long shot. But going up against the city attorney’s office always kind of levels the playing field. These guys like Bulk, they couldn’t make it on the outside. . . . If he had to win in order to eat, your lawyer would be a thin man. He needs that steady paycheck from the city coming in, win or lose.”

  What she said, of course, was correct. But it was old news. Bosch smiled. He didn’t know how to act. A part of himself liked her. She was wrong about him, but somehow he liked her. Maybe it was her tenacity, because her anger—though misdirected—was so pure.

  Maybe it was because she wasn’t afraid to talk to him outside of court. He had seen how Belk studiously avoided coming in contact with Church’s family. Before getting up during recesses, he would sit at the defendant’s table until he was sure they were all safely down the hall and on the escalator. But Chandler didn’t play that kind of game. She was an up-front player.

  Bosch guessed that this was what it was like when two boxers touched gloves before the bell. He changed the subject.

  “I talked to Tommy Faraday out here the other day. He’s Tommy Faraway now. I asked him what happened but he didn’t say. He just said justice happened, whatever that means.”

  She blew a long stream of blue smoke out but didn’t say anything for a while. Bosch looked at his watch. They had three minutes.

  “You remember the Galton case?” she said. “It was a civil rights case, an excessive force.”

  Bosch thought about it. The name was familiar but it was difficult to place in the blend of excessive force cases he had heard or known about over the years.

  “It was a dog case, right?”

  “Yes. André Galton. This was before Rodney King, back when the wide majority of people in this city did not believe that their police engaged in horrible abuses as a matter of routine. Galton was black and driving with an expired tag through the hills of Studio City when a cop decided to pull him over.

  �
�He had done nothing wrong, wasn’t wanted, just had the tag one month overdue. But he ran. Great mystery of life, he ran. He got all the way up to Mulholland and ditched the car at one of those pull-offs where people look out at the view. Then he jumped out and climbed down the incline. There was nowhere to go down there but he wouldn’t come back up and the cops wouldn’t go down—too dangerous, they claimed at the trial.”

  Bosch remembered the story now but he let her tell it. Her indignation was so pure and stripped of lawyerly pose that he just wanted to hear her tell it.

  “So they sent a dog down,” she said. “Galton lost both testicles and had permanent nerve damage to the right leg. He could walk but he had to kind of drag it behind him. . . .”

  “Enter Tommy Faraday,” Bosch prompted.

  “Yeah, he took the case. It was dead bang. Galton had done nothing wrong but to run. The response of the police certainly did not meet the offense. Any jury would see this. And the city attorney’s office knew this. In fact, I think it was Bulk’s case. They offered half a million to settle and Faraday passed. He thought he’d get a minimum three times that in trial, so he passed.

  “And like I said, this was in the old days. Civil rights lawyers call it BK, that’s short for Before King. A jury listened to four days of evidence and found for the cops in thirty minutes. Galton got nothing but a dead leg and a dead dick out of the whole thing. He came out here afterward and went to that hedge right there. He had hidden a gun—wrapped it in plastic and buried it there. He came over to the statue here and put the gun in his mouth. Faraday was coming through the door just then and saw it happen. Blood all over the statue, everywhere.”

  Bosch didn’t say anything. He remembered the case very clearly now. He looked up at the City Hall tower and watched the gulls circling above it. He always wondered what drew them there. It was miles from the ocean but there were always seabirds on top of City Hall. Chandler kept talking.

  “Two things I’ve always been curious about,” she said. “One, why did Galton run? And, two, why did he hide the gun? And I think the answers are both the same. He had no faith in justice, in the system. No hope. He had done nothing wrong but he ran because he was a black man in a white neighborhood and he had heard the stories all his life about what white cops do to black men in that position. His lawyer told him he had a dead-bang case, but he brought a gun to the courthouse because he had heard all his life about what jurors decide when it’s a black man’s word against the cops.”