Angels Flight

by Michael Connelly

  She turned and moved under the covers until she was next to him. She put her head down on his chest and brought her hand up to caress the scar on his shoulder.

  ‘Harry ...’

  He waited but she didn’t say anything. She moved over on top of him then and started a gentle rocking motion with her hips.

  ‘Eleanor, we need to talk about this.’

  He felt her finger glide across his lips, telling him not to speak.

  They made love slowly, Bosch’s mind a jumble of conflicting thoughts. He loved her, more than he had ever loved anyone. He knew she loved him in some way. Having her in his life had made him feel whole. But at some point he could tell that Eleanor had realized she did not have that feeling. For her there was something missing and the realization that they were on separate planes brought Bosch down as low as he had ever felt.

  The feeling of doom had fallen upon the marriage then. During the summer he had caught a series of time-consuming investigations, including a case requiring him to make a week-long trip to New York. While he was gone she went to the poker room at Hollywood Park for the first time. It was out of the boredom of being left alone and the frustration at her lack of success in finding an acceptable job in Los Angeles. She had returned to the cards, doing what she had done when Bosch had found her, and it was at those blue felt tables that she found the thing that was missing.

  ‘Eleanor,’ he said when they were finished making love, his arms wrapped around her neck. ‘I love you. I don’t want to lose you.’

  She smothered his mouth with a long kiss and then whispered, ‘Go to sleep, darling. Go to sleep.’

  ‘Stay with me,’ he said. ‘Don’t move away until I’m asleep.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  She held him tighter and he tried for the moment to let everything go. Just for a while, he decided. He would take it all up later. But for now he would sleep.

  In a few minutes he was gone, deep into a dream in which he was riding Angels Flight up the tracks to the top of the hill. As the other car came down and passed, he looked in through the windows and saw Eleanor sitting alone. She wasn’t looking back at him.

  Bosch awoke in a little over an hour. The room was darker, as the light from outside was no longer directly on the windows. He looked around and saw Eleanor was gone from the bed. He sat up and called her name, his voice reminding him of how he had answered the phone that morning.

  ‘I’m here,’ she called from the living room.

  Bosch pulled on his clothes and left the bedroom. Eleanor was sitting on the couch, wearing the bathrobe he had bought for her at the hotel in Hawaii where they had gone after getting married in Las Vegas.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘I thought ... I don’t know.’

  ‘You were talking in your sleep. I came out here.’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘My name, a few other things that didn’t make sense. Something about a fight. Angels fighting.’

  He smiled and nodded and sat down in the chair on the other side of the coffee table.

  ‘Flight, not fight. You ever been on Angels Flight in downtown?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s two train cars. When one goes up the hill, the other goes down. They pass in the middle. I dreamed I was going up and you were in the car going down. We passed in the middle but you wouldn’t look at me ... What do you think it means, that we’re going different ways?’

  She smiled sadly.

  ‘I guess it means you’re the angel. You were going up.’

  He didn’t smile.

  ‘I have to go back in,’ he said. ‘This one’s going to take up my life for a while. I think.’

  ‘You want to talk about it? Why were you called out?’

  He ran the case down for her in about ten minutes. He always liked telling her about his cases. He knew it was a form of ego gratification, but sometimes she made a suggestion that helped or a comment that let him see something he had missed. It was many years since she had been an FBI agent. It was a part of her life that was a distant memory. But he still respected her investigative logic and skills.

  ‘Oh, Harry,’ she said when he was done telling the story. ‘Why is it always you?’

  ‘It’s not always me.’

  ‘Seems like it is. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Same as I always do. I’m going to work the case. All of us are. There’s a lot there to work with—they just have to give us the time with it. It’s not going to be a quick turn.’

  ‘I know you, they’ll throw every roadblock they can think of in front of you. It does no one any good to hook somebody up and bring them in on this. But you’ll be the one to do it. You’ll bring somebody in no matter if it makes every cop in every division despise you.’

  ‘Every case counts, Eleanor. Every person. I despise people like Elias. He was a suckerfish — making his life off bullshit cases against cops just trying to do their jobs. For the most part, at least. Every now and then he had a legitimate case, I guess. But the point is nobody should get away with what they did. Even if it’s a cop who did it. It’s not right.’

  ‘I know, Harry.’

  She looked away from him, out through the glass doors and past the deck. The sky was turning red. The lights of the city were coming on.

  ‘What’s your cigarette count?’ he asked just to be saying something.

  ‘I had a couple. You?’

  ‘Still at zero.’

  He had smelled the smoke in her hair earlier. He was glad she hadn’t lied.

  ‘What happened over at Stocks and Bonds?’

  He’d been hesitant about asking. He knew that whatever had happened during the interview had been what sent her to the poker room.

  ‘Same as the others. They’ll call if something comes up.’

  ‘I’ll go over and talk to Charlie next time I’m at the station.’

  Stocks and Bonds was a storefront bail bond agency across from the Hollywood station on Wilcox. Bosch had heard they were looking for a skip tracer, preferably female because a good portion of the bail jumpers out of Hollywood station were prostitutes and a female tracer stood a better chance of running them down. He had gone over and talked to the owner, Charlie Scott, about it and he had agreed to consider Eleanor for the job. Bosch was honest about her background, both good and bad. Former FBI agent on the plus side, convicted felon being the minus. Scott said he didn’t believe the criminal record would be a problem — the position did not require a state private investigator’s license, which Eleanor could not qualify for with a record. The problem was that he liked his tracers to be armed — especially a woman — when they went looking for bail jumpers. Bosch didn’t share the concern. He knew that most skip tracers were unlicensed to carry weapons but did so anyway. The true art of the craft, though, was never to get close enough to your quarry to make having or not having a weapon a question. The best tracers located their quarry from a safe distance and then called the cops in to make the pickup.

  ‘Don’t talk to him, Harry. I think he was just trying to do you a favor but reality hit him between when he told you to send me in and when I arrived. Just let it go.’

  ‘But you’d be good at that.’

  ‘That’s beside the point.’

  Bosch stood up.

  ‘I’ve got to get ready.’

  He went into the bedroom and stripped off his clothes, took another shower and then dressed in a fresh suit. Eleanor was in the same position on the couch when he came back out to the living room.

  ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ he said, not looking at her. ‘We’ve got a lot to do. Plus the bureau’s coming in tomorrow.’

  ‘The bureau?’

  ‘Civil rights. The chief made the call.’

  ‘He thinks it will keep things calm down south.’

  ‘He hopes.’

  ‘Do you have a name of who is coming over?’

  ‘Not really. There was an assistant SAC at the press conference today.�
��

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Gilbert Spencer. But I doubt he’ll be involved anymore.’

  Eleanor shook her head.

  ‘He’s after my time. He probably just came for the show.’

  ‘Yeah. He’s supposed to send a team over tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Good luck.’

  He looked at her and nodded.

  ‘I don’t have the number yet. If you need me just use the pager.’

  ‘Okay, Harry.’

  He stood there for a few moments before finally asking her what he wanted to ask all along.

  ‘Are you going to go back?’

  She looked back out through the doors.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Eleanor ...’

  ‘Harry, you have your addiction. I have mine.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘You know that feeling you get when you pull up on a new case? That little thrill you get when you’re back in the hunt? You know what I’m talking about. Well, I don’t have that anymore. And the closest thing I’ve found to it is when I pick those five cards up off the felt and see what I’ve got. It is hard to explain and even harder to understand, but I feel like I’m alive again then, Harry. We’re all junkies. It’s just different drugs. I wish I had yours, but I don’t.’

  Bosch just stared at her a moment. He wasn’t sure he could say anything without his voice betraying him. He moved to the door, looking back at her once he had it open. He moved through it but then stepped back.

  ‘You break my heart, Eleanor. I always hoped that I could make you feel alive again.’

  Eleanor closed her eyes. She looked as though she might cry.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Harry,’ she whispered. ‘I should never have said that.’

  Bosch stepped silently through the door and closed it behind him.

  17

  Bosch was still feeling emotionally bruised when he got to Howard Elias’s office a half hour later. The door was locked and he knocked. He was about to use the keys to open it when he saw movement behind the glazed glass. Carla Entrenkin opened the door and allowed him in. He could tell by the way she appraised him that she noticed he was wearing a different suit.

  ‘I got to take a little break,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll be working a good part of the night. Where’s Miss Langwiser?’

  ‘We finished and I sent her home. I said I would wait for you. It’s only been a few minutes.’

  She led him back to Elias’s office and took the seat behind the huge desk. Bosch could see Anthony Quinn through the window though it was getting dark out. He also saw that there were six file cartons on the floor in front of the desk.

  ‘Sorry you were waiting,’ he said. ‘I thought you were going to page me when you were done.’

  ‘I was about to. I was just sitting here thinking ...’

  Bosch looked at the boxes.

  ‘This is the rest?’

  ‘That’s it. Those six are more closed cases. These back here are current cases.’

  She rolled her chair back and pointed to the floor behind the desk. Bosch stepped over and looked down. There were two more full boxes.

  ‘This is mostly Michael Harris stuff. Most of it is the police file and depo transcripts. There are also files on lawsuits that haven’t proceeded past the initial claims. And there is a file containing general threats and crank mail—I mean unrelated specifically to the Harris case. Mostly just anonymous stuff from racist cowards.’

  ‘Okay. What are you not giving me?’

  ‘I’m holding back only one file. It was his working file. It contains notes on strategy in the Harris case. I don’t think you should have that. I believe it goes directly to attorney-client privilege.’

  ‘Strategy?’

  ‘Basically, it’s a trial map. Howard liked to chart his trials. He once told me he was like a football coach who designs the plays and what order he will call them in before the game even starts. Howard always knew exactly where he wanted to go during trial. The trial map showed his strategy, what witness came when, when each piece of evidence was to be introduced, things like that. He had the first few questions for every one of his witnesses already written. And he also had his opening statement outlined and in the file.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I can’t give it to you. It was the heart of his case and I think whoever the attorney is who inherits the case will want to follow the map. It was a brilliant plan. Therefore, the LAPD shouldn’t have it.’

  ‘You think he was going to win?’

  ‘Definitely. I take it you don’t?’

  Bosch sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Despite having taken the nap, he was still tired and feeling it.

  ‘I don’t know the particulars of the case,’ he said. ‘All I know is Frankie Sheehan. Harris accused him of some of that stuff — you know, with the plastic bag. And I know that’s not Frankie.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I can’t, I guess. But we go back. Sheehan and I were partners one time. It was a long time ago but you still know people. I know him. I can’t see him doing these things. I can’t see him letting anybody else do it, either.’

  ‘People change.’

  Bosch nodded.

  ‘They do. But usually not at the core.’

  ‘The core?’

  ‘Let me tell you a story. One time Frankie and I brought this kid in. A carjacker. His deal was that first he’d steal a car, any shit can off the street, then he’d go out driving and looking for something nice, something he could take to a chop shop and get a decent amount of bread for. When he saw what he wanted he’d come up behind and at a stop light he’d hit the back end. You know, like a little fender bender, not enough to do much damage. Then the owner of the Mercedes or the Porsche or whatever it was would get out to check. The jacker would get out and just jump into the target car and take off. The owner and the stolen shit can were left behind.’

  ‘I remember when carjacking was the big fad.’

  ‘Yeah, some fad. This guy’d been doing this about three months and making a good amount of money at it. Then one time he hits the back of a Jaguar XJ6 too hard. The little old lady who was driving wasn’t wearing her seat belt. She weighs about ninety pounds and she is thrown into the steering wheel. Hits it hard. No air bag. It crushes one lung and sends a rib through the other. She’s sittin’ there fillin’ up with blood and dying when this kid comes up, opens the door and just yanks her out of the car. He leaves her lying on the street and drives off with the Jag.’

  ‘I remember that case. What was that, ten years ago? The media went nuts on it.’

  ‘Yeah. Carjack homicide, one of the first ones. And that’s where me and Frankie came in. It was a hot case and we were under pressure. We finally got a line on the kid through a chop shop that Burglary-Auto Theft took down in the Valley. This kid lived over in Venice and when we went to pick him up he saw us coming. Fired a three fifty-seven through the front door after Frankie knocked. Missed him by an inch. Frankie had longer hair back then. The bullet actually went through his hair. The kid went through the back door and we chased him through the neighborhood, calling for backup on our handhelds as we ran. The radio calls brought the media out—helicopters, reporters, everything.’

  ‘You got him, right? I remember.’

  ‘We chased him almost all the way through Oak-wood. We finally got him in an abandoned house, a shooting gallery. The hypes went scattering and he stayed inside. We knew he had the gun and he had already taken a shot at us. We could’ve gone in there and blown his shit away and there wouldn’t have been a question. But Frankie went in first and talked the kid out. It was just him and me and the kid in there. Nobody would’ve known or questioned what had happened. But Frankie, he didn’t think like that. He told the kid he knew the lady in the Jag was an accident, that he didn’t mean to kill anybody. He told him he still had a chance at life. Fifteen minutes earlier the kid tried to ki
ll Frankie, now Frankie was trying to save the kid’s life.’

  Bosch stopped for a moment, remembering the moments in the abandoned house.

  ‘The kid finally stepped out of a closet, holding his hands up. He still had the gun in his hand. It would have been so easy ... and so right. But it was Frankie’s call. He was the one who almost took the bullet. But he just went over and took the gun from the kid and cuffed him. End of story.’

  Entrenkin considered the story for a long moment before responding.

  ‘So what you are saying is that because he spared one black man that he could have easily gotten away with killing, then he would not have tried to suffocate another black man nearly a decade later.’

  Bosch shook his head and frowned.

  ‘No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that that was just one of the times I saw Frank Sheehan’s core. It was when I knew what he was made of. And that’s why I know the Harris thing is bullshit. He would never have planted evidence on the guy, he would never have pulled a bag over his head.’

  He waited for her to say something but she didn’t.

  ‘And I never said anything about the carjacker being black. That had nothing to do with it. That’s just something you bring to the story yourself.’

  ‘I think it was an obvious part that you left out. Maybe if it had been a white boy in that abandoned house you would never even have thought about what you could have gotten away with.’

  Bosch stared at her a long moment.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, it’s not worth arguing about. You left something else out of the story, didn’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A few years later your buddy Sheehan did use his gun. And he put a bunch of bullets into a black man named Wilbert Dobbs. I remember that case, too.’

  ‘That was a different story and a righteous shoot. Dobbs was a murderer who drew down on Sheehan. He was cleared by the department, the DA, everybody.’

  ‘But not a jury of his peers. That was one of Howard’s cases. He sued your friend and he won.’