Lost Light (2003) Page 4

  Soon the song ended and Kiz turned to me.

  “Who was that?”

  “Art Pepper, Lee Konitz.”

  “White guys?”

  I nodded.

  “Damn. That was good.”

  I nodded again.

  “So what’s under the tablecloth, Harry?”

  I shrugged.

  “First time you’ve come around in eight months, I suppose you know.”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me guess. Alexander Taylor’s tight with the chief or the mayor or both and he called to check me out.”

  She nodded. I had gotten it right.

  “And the chief knew you and I were close at one time, so . . .”

  At one time. She seemed to stumble while saying that part.

  “Anyhow, he sent me out to tell you that you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  She sat down on the chair opposite the couch and looked out across the deck. I could tell she wasn’t interested in what was out there. She just didn’t want to look at me.

  “So this is what you gave up homicide for, to run errands for the chief.”

  She looked sharply at me and I saw the injury in her eyes. But I didn’t regret what I said. I was just as angry with her as she was with me.

  “It’s easy for you to say that, Harry. You’ve already been through the war.”

  “The war never ends, Kiz.”

  I almost smiled at the coincidence of the song that was now playing while Rider was delivering her message. The piece was “High Jingo,” with Pepper still accompanying Konitz. Pepper would be dead six months after laying down the track. The coincidence was that when I was young in the department, “high jingo” was a way old-guard detectives would describe a case that had taken on unusual interest from the sixth floor or carried other unseen political or bureaucratic dangers. When a case had high jingo on it, you had to be careful. You were in murky water. You had to watch your back because nobody else was watching it for you.

  I got up and went to the window. The sun was reflecting off a billion particles that hung in the air. It was orange and pink and looked beautiful. It didn’t seem like it could be poison.

  “So what’s the word from the chief—lay off it, Bosch? You’re a citizen now. Leave it to the professionals?”

  “More or less.”

  “The case is gathering dust, Kiz. Why does he care that I’m poking around when nobody in his own department does? Is he afraid I’ll embarrass him or something by closing it?”

  “Who says it’s gathering dust?”

  I turned around and looked at her.

  “Come on, don’t give me the due diligence dance. I know how that goes. A signature every six months on the log, ‘Uh yup, nothing new here.’ I mean, don’t you care about this, Kiz? You knew Angella Benton. Don’t you want to see this thing cleared?”

  “Of course I do. Don’t think for one moment that I want anything less. But things are happening, Harry. I was sent out here as a courtesy to you. Don’t get involved. You might wander into something you shouldn’t. You might hurt rather than help.”

  I sat back down and looked at her for a long moment as I tried to read between the lines. I wasn’t convinced.

  “If it is actively being worked, who is working it?”

  She shook her head.

  “I can’t tell you that. I can only tell you to leave it alone.”

  “Look, Kiz, this is me. Whatever anger you have because I pulled the pin shouldn’t stop you —”

  “From what? Doing what I am supposed to do? Following orders? Harry, you no longer have a badge. People with badges are actively working on this. Actively. You understand? Leave it at that.”

  Before I could speak she fired another round at me.

  “And don’t trouble yourself about me, okay? I have no anger toward you anymore, Harry. You left me high and dry but that was a long time ago. Yeah, I had anger but it’s a long time gone. I didn’t even want to be the one who came here today but he made me come. He thought I could convince you.”

  He being the chief, I assumed. I sat silently for a moment, waiting to see if there was more. But that was all she had. I spoke quietly then, almost as if I was putting a confession through the screen to a priest.

  “And what if I can’t leave it alone? What if for reasons that have nothing to do with this case I need to work this? Reasons for myself. What happens then?”

  She shook her head in annoyance.

  “Then you are going to get hurt. These people, they don’t fuck around. Find some other case or some other way to work out your demons.”

  “What people?”

  Rider stood up.

  “Kiz, what people?”

  “I’ve told you enough, Harry. Message delivered. Good luck.”

  She headed toward the hallway and the door. I got up and followed, my mind churning through what I knew.

  “Who is working the case?” I asked. “Tell me.”

  She glanced back at me but kept moving toward the door.

  “Tell me, Kiz. Who?”

  She stopped suddenly and turned to me. I saw anger and challenge in her eyes.

  “For old time’s sake, Harry? Is that what you want to say?”

  I stepped back. Her anger was a force field around her body that was pushing me back. I held my hands out wide in surrender and didn’t say anything. She waited a moment and then turned back to the door.

  “Good-bye, Harry.”

  She opened the door and stepped out, then pulled it closed behind her.

  “Good-bye, Kiz.”

  But she was already gone. For a long time I stood there thinking about what she had said and not said. There had been a message within a message but I couldn’t yet read it. The water was too murky.

  “High jingo, baby,” I said to myself as I locked the door.

  6

  The drive out to Woodland Hills took almost an hour. It used to be in this place that if you waited, picked your spots and went against the grain of traffic, you could get somewhere in a decent amount of time. Not anymore. It seemed to me that the freeways, no matter what time and what location, were always a nightmare. There was never any respite. And having done little long-distance driving in the past months, being re-immersed in the routine was an annoying and frustrating exercise. When I’d finally hit my limit, I got off the 101 at the Topanga Canyon exit and worked my way on surface streets the rest of the way. I was careful not to try to make up for lost time by speeding through the mostly residential districts. In my inside coat pocket was a flask. If I got pulled over, it could be a problem.

  In fifteen minutes I got to the house on Melba Avenue. I pulled my car in behind the van and got out. I walked up the wooden ramp that started next to the van’s side door and had been built over the front steps of the house.

  At the door I was met by Danielle Cross, who beckoned me in silently.

  “How’s he doing today, Danny?”

  “Same as always.”

  “Yeah.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t imagine what her view of the world was, how it had changed from one set of hopes and anticipations to something completely different overnight. I knew she couldn’t be much older than her husband. Early forties. But it was impossible to tell. She had old eyes and a mouth that seemed permanently tight and turned down at the corners.

  I knew my way and she let me go. Through the living room and down the hallway to the last room on the left. I walked in and saw Lawton Cross in his chair—the one bought along with the van after the fund-raiser run by the police union. He was watching CNN on a television mounted on a bracket hanging from the ceiling in the corner. Another report on the Mideast situation.

  His eyes moved toward me but his face didn’t. A strap crossed above his eyebrows and held his head to the cushion behind it. A network of tubes connected his right arm to a bag of clear fluid that hung from a utility tree attached to the back of his ch
air. His skin was sallow, he weighed no more than 125 pounds, his collarbones jutted out like shards of broken pottery. His lips were dry and cracked, his hair was an uncombed nest. I had been shocked by his appearance when I’d come by after his call to me. I tried not to show it again.

  “Hey, Law, how are you doing?”

  It was a question I hated to ask but felt I owed it to him to ask.

  “About what you’d expect, Harry.”

  “Yeah.”

  His voice was a harsh whisper, like a college football coach’s who has spent forty years screaming from the sidelines.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry to come back so soon but there were a few other things.”

  “Did you go see the producer?”

  “Yeah, I started with him yesterday. He gave me twenty minutes.”

  There was a low hissing sound in the room that I had noticed when I came by earlier in the week. I think it was the ventilator, pumping air through the network of clear tubes that ran under Cross’s shirt and out of his collar and up either side of his face before plugging into his nose.

  “Anything?”

  “He gave me some names. Everybody from Eidolon Productions who supposedly knew about the money. I haven’t had a chance to run them down yet.”

  “Did you ever ask him what Eidolon means?”

  “No, I never thought to ask. What is it, like a family name or something?”

  “No, it means phantom. That’s one of the things that’s come back to me. Just sort of popped into my head while I’ve been thinking about the case. I asked him once. He said it came from a poem. Something about a phantom sitting on a throne in the dark. I guess he figures that’s him.”

  “Strange.”

  “Yeah. Hey, Harry, you can turn off the monitor. So we don’t have to bother Danny.”

  He had asked me to do the same thing on the first visit. I moved around his chair to a nearby bureau. On the top of it was a small plastic device with a small green light glowing on its face. It was an audio monitor manufactured for parents to listen in on their sleeping babies. It helped Cross call to his wife when he needed to change the channel or wanted anything else. I switched it off so we could speak privately and came back around to the front of the chair.

  “Good,” Cross said. “Why don’t you close the door now.”

  I did as instructed. I knew what this was leading to.

  “Did you bring me something this time?” Cross said. “Like I asked?”

  “Uh, yeah, I did.”

  “Good. Let’s start with that. Go into the bathroom behind you and see if she left my bottle in there.”

  In the bathroom the counter surrounding the sink was crowded with all manner of medicines and small medical equipment. Sitting on a soap dish was a plastic bottle with an open top. It looked like something normally found on a touring bike but a little different. The neck was wider and it was slightly curved. Probably to make the drinking angle a little more comfortable, I thought. I quickly took the flask out of my jacket and then poured a couple ounces of Bushmills into the bottle. When I took it out to the bedroom Cross’s eyes widened in horror.

  “No, not that! That’s a piss bottle! It goes under the chair.”

  “Ah, shit! Sorry.”

  I turned around and went back to the bathroom, pouring the booze out into the sink just as Cross yelled, “No, don’t!”

  I looked back out at him.

  “I would’ve taken it.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve got more.”

  After the piss bottle was rinsed and returned to the soap dish I went back out to the bedroom.

  “Law, there’s no drinking bottle in there. What do you want me to do?”

  “Goddamn, she probably took it. She knows what I’m up to. You have the flask?”

  “Yeah, right here.”

  I tapped it from the outside of my sport coat.

  “Bring it out. Let me have a taste.”

  I pulled the flask out and opened it. I brought the mouth to his and let him take a swallow. He coughed loudly and some of it spilled down his cheek and neck.

  “Ah, Jesus!” he gasped.

  “What?”

  “Jesus . . .”

  “What? Law, you all right? I’ll get Danny.”

  I made a move toward the door but he stopped me.

  “No, no. I’m fine. I’m fine. I just . . . it’s been a long time, is all. Give me another.”

  “Law, we’ve got to talk.”

  “I know that. Just give me another taste.”

  I held the flask to his mouth again and poured in a good jolt. He took it down well this time and closed his eyes.

  “Black Bush . . . Jesus, is that good.”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “Fuck the meds,” he said. “Give me Bushmills anytime, Harry. Any fucking time.”

  He was a man who couldn’t move but I could still see the whiskey work into his eyes and soften them.

  “She won’t give me anything,” he said. “Doctor’s orders. Only time I get a nip is when one of you guys comes by and visits. And that ain’t often. Who wants to come and see this sorry sight . . .

  “You gotta keep coming, Harry. I don’t care about the case, clear it, don’t clear it, but keep comin’ to see me.”

  His eyes moved to the flask.

  “And bring your friend there. Always bring a friend.”

  It was beginning to dawn on me. Cross had held back on me. I had come to him the day before I went to Taylor. Cross had been the place to start. But he had held back in order to bring me back—with a flask. Maybe the whole thing, his call to reawaken the case in me had all been about one thing. The flask.

  I held the wallet-size container up.

  “You held back on me, Law, so I’d bring you this.”

  “No. I was going to have Danny call you. There was something I forgot.”

  “Yeah, well, I already know it. I go talk to Taylor and the next thing I know I get a visit from the sixth floor telling me to lay off, it’s being worked. By people who don’t fuck around.”

  Cross’s eyes were darting back and forth in his frozen face.

  “No,” he said.

  “Who came to see you before me, Law?”

  “No one. Nobody’s come about the case.”

  “Who did you call before you called me?”

  “Nobody, Harry, I promise.”

  I must have raised my voice because the door to the bedroom suddenly opened and Cross’s wife stood there.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything is fine, Danny,” her husband said. “Leave us alone.”

  She stood in the doorway for a moment and I saw her eyes go to the flask in my hand. For a moment, I thought about taking a drink from it myself, so she might think it was there for me. But in her eyes I could see she knew exactly what was going on. She didn’t move for a long moment and then her eyes came up to mine and held for a moment. She then took a step back and closed the door. I looked back at Cross.

  “If she didn’t know she knows now.”

  “I don’t care. What time is it, Harry? I can’t see the screen too good.”

  I looked up at the corner of the television screen where CNN always carried the time.

  “It’s eleven-eighteen. Who came out to see you, Law? I want to know who is working the case.”

  “I’m telling you, Harry, nobody came. As far as I knew, the case was deader than these goddamn legs of mine.”

  “Then what was it you didn’t tell me when I was here before?”

  His eyes went to the flask and he didn’t have to ask. I held it to his chapped and peeling lips and he drank deeply from it. He closed his eyes.

  “Ah, God . . . ,” he said. “I’ve got . . .”

  His eyes opened and they jumped on me like wolves taking down a deer.

  “She’s keeping me alive,” he whispered desperately. “You think this is what I want? Sitting in my own shit half the time? She’s getting a f
ull ride while I’m alive—full pay and medical. If I’m gone she gets the widow’s pension. And I wasn’t in that long, Harry. Fourteen years. It’s about half of what she gets with me alive.”