The Wrong Side of Goodbye

by Michael Connelly

  3

  After intriguing Bosch with his request Vance used a shaky left hand to flip over the piece of paper on his desk and told Bosch he would have to sign it before they discussed anything further.

  “It is a nondisclosure form,” he explained. “My lawyer said it is ironclad. Your signature guarantees that you will not reveal the contents of our discussion or your subsequent investigation to anyone but me. Not even an employee of mine, not even someone who says they have come to you on my behalf. Only me, Mr. Bosch. If you sign this document, you answer only to me. You report any findings of your investigation only to me. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand,” Bosch said. “I have no problem signing it.”

  “Very good, then. I have a pen here.”

  Vance pushed the document across the desk, then drew a pen from an ornate gold holder on his desk. It was a fountain pen that felt heavy in Bosch’s hand because it was thick and made of what he presumed was real gold. It reminded Bosch of the pen Vance used in the photo to sign the book for Larry King.

  He quickly scanned the document and then signed it. He put the pen down on top of it and pushed both back across the desk to Vance. The old man placed the document in the desk drawer and closed it. He held the pen up for Bosch to study.

  “This pen was made with gold my great-grandfather prospected in the Sierra Nevada goldfields in 1852,” he said. “That was before the competition up there forced him to head south. Before he realized that there was more to be made from iron than from gold.”

  He turned the pen in his hand.

  “It was passed on from generation to generation,” he said. “I’ve had it since I left home for college.”

  Vance studied the pen as if seeing it for the first time. Bosch said nothing. He wondered if Vance suffered from any sort of diminished mental capacity and if the old man’s desire to have him find somebody who may never have existed was some sort of indication of a failing mind.

  “Mr. Vance?” he asked.

  Vance put the pen back into its holder and looked at Bosch.

  “I have no one to give it to,” he said. “No one to give any of this to.”

  It was true. The biographical data Bosch had looked up said Vance was never married and childless. Several of the summaries he had read suggested obliquely that he was homosexual but there was never confirmation of this. Other biographical extracts suggested that he was simply too driven by his work to keep up a steady relationship, let alone establish a family. There were a few brief romances reported, primarily with Hollywood starlets of the moment—possibly dates for the cameras to put off speculation about homosexuality. But for the past forty years or more, Bosch could find nothing.

  “Do you have children, Mr. Bosch?” Vance asked.

  “A daughter,” Bosch answered.

  “Where?”

  “In school. Chapman University, down in Orange County.”

  “Good school. Is she a film student?”

  “Psychology.”

  Vance leaned back in his chair and looked off into the past.

  “I wanted to study film when I was a young man,” he said. “The dreams of youth…”

  He didn’t finish his thought. Bosch realized he would have to give the money back. This was all some kind of derangement, and there was no job. He could not take payment from this man even if it was only an infinitesimal drop from Vance’s bucket. Bosch didn’t take money from damaged people, no matter how rich they were.

  Vance broke away from his stare into the abyss of memory and looked at Bosch. He nodded, seeming to know Harry’s thoughts, then gripped the armrest of his chair with his left hand and leaned forward.

  “I guess I need to tell you what this is about,” he said.

  Bosch nodded.

  “That would be good, yes.”

  Vance nodded back and offered the lopsided smile again. He looked down for a moment and then back up at Bosch, his eyes deeply set and shiny behind rimless glasses.

  “A long time ago I made a mistake,” he said. “I never corrected it, I never looked back. I now want to find out if I had a child. A child I could give my gold pen to.”

  Bosch stared at him for a long moment, hoping he might continue. But when he did he seemed to have picked up another string of memory.

  “When I was eighteen years old I wanted nothing to do with my father’s business,” Vance said. “I was more interested in being the next Orson Welles. I wanted to make films, not airplane parts. I was full of myself, as young men often are at that age.”

  Bosch thought of himself at eighteen. His desire to blaze his own path had led him into the tunnels of Vietnam.

  “I insisted on film school,” Vance said. “I enrolled at USC in 1949.”

  Bosch nodded. He knew from his prior reading that Vance had spent only a year at USC before changing paths, transferring to Caltech and furthering the family dynasty. There had been no explanation found in his Internet search. Bosch now believed he was going to find out why.

  “I met a girl,” Vance said. “A Mexican girl. And soon afterward, she became pregnant. It was the second worst thing that ever happened to me. The first was telling my father.”

  Vance grew quiet, his eyes down on the desk in front of him. It wasn’t difficult to fill in the blanks but Bosch needed to hear as much of the story from Vance as he could.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “He sent people,” Vance said. “People to persuade her not to have the child. People who would drive her to Mexico to take care of it.”

  “Did she go?”

  “If she did, it was not with my father’s people. She disappeared from my life and I never saw her again. And I was too much of a coward to go find her. I had given my father all he needed to control me: the potential embarrassment and disgrace. Even prosecution because of her age. I did what I was told. I transferred to Caltech and that was the end of it.”

  Vance nodded, as though confirming something for himself.

  “It was a different time then…for me and for her.”

  Vance looked up now and held Bosch’s eyes for a long moment before continuing.

  “But now I want to know. It’s when you reach the end of things that you want to go back…”

  A few heartbeats went by before he spoke again.

  “Can you help me, Mr. Bosch?” he asked.

  Bosch nodded. He believed the pain in Vance’s eyes was real.

  “It was a long time ago but I can try,” Bosch said. “Do you mind if I ask a few questions and take some notes?”

  “Take your notes,” Vance said. “But I warn you again that everything about this must remain completely confidential. Lives could be in danger. Every move you make, you must look over your shoulder. I have no doubt that efforts will be made to find out why I wanted to see you and what you are doing for me. I have a cover story for that, which we can get to later. For now, ask your questions.”

  Lives could be in danger. Those words ricocheted inside his chest as Bosch took a small notebook from the inside pocket of his suit coat. He pulled out a pen. It was made of plastic, not gold. He’d bought it at a drugstore.

  “You just said lives could be in danger. Whose lives? Why?”

  “Don’t be naive, Mr. Bosch. I am sure you conducted a modicum of research before coming to see me. I have no heirs—at least known heirs. When I die, control of Advance Engineering will go to a board of directors who will continue to line their pockets with millions while fulfilling government contracts. A valid heir could change all of that. Billions could be at stake. You don’t think people and entities would kill for that?”

  “It’s been my experience that people will kill for any reason and no reason at all,” Bosch said. “If I find you have heirs, are you sure you want to possibly make them targets?”

  “I would give them the choice,” Vance said. “I believe I owe them that. And I would protect them as well as is possible.”

  “What was her name?
The girl you got pregnant.”

  “Vibiana Duarte.”

  Bosch wrote it down on his pad.

  “You know her birthdate by any chance?”

  “I can’t remember it.”

  “She was a student at USC?”

  “No, I met her at the EVK. She worked there.”

  “EVK?”

  “The student cafeteria was called Everybody’s Kitchen. EVK for short.”

  Bosch immediately knew this eliminated the prospect of tracing Vibiana Duarte through student records, which were usually very helpful, since most schools kept close track of their alums. It meant the search for the woman would be more difficult and even more of a long shot.

  “You said she was Mexican,” he said. “You mean Latina? Was she a U.S. citizen?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she was. My father—”

  He didn’t finish.

  “Your father what?” Bosch asked.

  “I don’t know if it was the truth but my father said that was her plan,” Vance said. “To get pregnant so I would have to marry her and she would become a citizen. But my father said a lot of things to me that weren’t true and he believed a lot of things that were…out of step. So I don’t know.”

  Bosch thought about what he had read about Nelson Vance and eugenics. He pressed on.

  “By any chance, do you have a photograph of Vibiana?” he asked.

  “No,” Vance said. “You don’t know how many times I’ve wished for a photograph. That I could just look at her one more time.”

  “Where did she live?”

  “By the school. Just a few blocks away. She walked to work.”

  “Do you remember the address? The street, maybe?”

  “No, I don’t remember. It was so long ago and I spent so many years trying to block it out. But the truth is, I never really loved anybody again after that.”

  It was the first time Vance mentioned love or gave an indication of how deep the relationship had been. It had been Bosch’s experience that when you looked back at a life, you used a magnifying glass. Everything was bigger, amplified. A college tryst could become the love of a lifetime in memory. Still, Vance’s pain seemed real so many decades after the events he was describing. Bosch believed him.

  “How long were you together with her before all of this happened?” he asked.

  “Eight months between the first and last times I ever saw her,” Vance said. “Eight months.”

  “Do you remember when she told you she was pregnant? I mean, what month or time of year?”

  “It was after the start of the summer session. I had enrolled just because I knew I would see her. So late June 1950. Maybe early July.”

  “And you say you met her eight months before that?”

  “I had started in September the year before. I noticed her right away working at the EVK. I didn’t get the courage to talk to her for a couple months.”

  The old man looked down at the desk.

  “What else do you remember?” Bosch prompted. “Did you ever meet her family? Do you remember any names?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Vance said. “She told me her father was very strict and they were Catholic, and I was not. You know, we were like Romeo and Juliet. I never met her family and she never met mine.”

  Bosch seized on the one piece of information in Vance’s answer that might advance the investigation.

  “Do you know what church she went to?”

  Vance looked up, his eyes sharp.

  “She told me she was named after the church where she was baptized. St. Vibiana’s.”

  Bosch nodded. The original St. Vibiana’s was in downtown, just a block from the LAPD headquarters, where he used to work. More than a hundred years old, it was badly damaged in the 1994 earthquake. A new church was built nearby and the old structure was donated to the city and preserved. Bosch wasn’t sure but he believed it was an event hall and library now. But the connection to Vibiana Duarte was a good one. Catholic churches kept records of births and baptisms. He felt this bit of good information countered the bad news that Vibiana had not been a USC student. It was also a strong indication that she might have been a U.S. citizen, whether or not her parents were. If she was a citizen, she would be easier to track through public records.

  “If the pregnancy was carried to full term, when would the child have been born?” he asked.

  It was a delicate question but Bosch needed to narrow the timing down if he was going to wade into records.

  “I think that she was at least two months pregnant when she told me,” Vance said. “So I would say January of the following year would be the birth. Maybe February.”

  Bosch wrote it down.

  “How old was she when you knew her?” he asked.

  “She was sixteen when we met,” Vance said. “I was eighteen.”

  It was another reason for the reaction of Vance’s father. Vibiana was underage. Getting a sixteen-year-old pregnant in 1950 could have gotten Whitney into minor but embarrassing legal trouble.

  “Was she in high school?” Bosch asked.

  He knew the area around USC. The high school would have been Manual Arts—another shot at traceable records.

  “She had dropped out to work,” Vance said. “The family needed the money.”

  “Did she ever say what her father did for a living?” Bosch asked.

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Okay, going back to her birthday, you don’t remember the date but do you remember ever celebrating it with her during those eight months?”

  Vance thought a moment and then shook his head.

  “No, I can’t remember a birthday occurring,” he said.

  “And if I have this right, you were together from late October till June and maybe early July, so her birthday would have likely been somewhere in July to late October. Roughly.”

  Vance nodded. Narrowing it to four months might help at some point when Bosch was going through records. Attaching a birth date to the name Vibiana Duarte would be a key starting point. He wrote the spread of months down and the likely birth year: 1933. He then looked up at Vance.

  “Do you think your father paid her or her family off?” he asked. “So they would keep quiet and just go away?”

  “If he did, he never told me that,” Vance said. “I was the one who went away. An act of cowardice I have always regretted.”

  “Have you ever looked for her before now? Ever paid anybody else to?”

  “No, sadly, I have not. I can’t say if anyone else has.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that it is quite possible such a search was conducted as a preemptive move in preparation for my death.”

  Bosch thought about that for a long moment. He then looked at the few notes he had written. He felt he had enough to start.

  “You said you had a cover story for me?”

  “Yes, James Franklin Aldridge. Write it down.”

  “Who is he?”

  “My first roommate at USC. He was dismissed from school in the first semester.”

  “For academics?”

  “No, for something else. Your cover is that I asked you to find my college roommate because I want to make amends for something we both did but he took the blame for. This way, if you are looking at records from that time, it will seem plausible.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “It might work. Is it a true story?”

  “It is.”

  “I should probably know what it is you both did.”

  “You don’t need to know that to find him.”

  Bosch waited a moment but that was all Vance had to say on the subject. Harry wrote the name down after checking the spelling of Aldridge with Vance and then closed his notebook.

  “Last question. The odds are Vibiana Duarte is dead by now. But what if she had the child and I find living heirs? What do you want me to do? Do I make contact?”

  “No, absolutely not. You make no contact until you report to m
e. I’ll need thorough confirmation before any approach will be made.”

  “DNA confirmation?”

  Vance nodded and studied Bosch for a long moment before once more going to the desk drawer. He removed a padded white envelope with nothing written on it. He slid it across the desk to Bosch.

  “I am trusting you, Mr. Bosch. I have now given you all you need to trick an old man if you want. I trust you won’t.”

  Bosch picked up the envelope. It wasn’t sealed. He looked into it and saw a clear glass test tube containing a swab used to collect saliva. It was Vance’s DNA sample.

  “This is where you could be tricking me, Mr. Vance.”

  “How so?”

  “It would have been better if I had swabbed you, collected this myself.”

  “You have my word.”

  “And you have mine.”

  Vance nodded and there did not seem to be anything else to say.

  “I think I have what I need to start.”

  “Then I have a final question for you, Mr. Bosch.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m curious because it wasn’t mentioned in the newspaper stories I read about you. But you appear to be the right age. What was your status during the Vietnam War?”

  Bosch paused a moment before answering.

  “I was over there,” he finally said. “Two tours. I probably flew more times on the helicopters you helped build than you ever did.”

  Vance nodded.

  “Probably so,” he said.

  Bosch stood up.

  “How do I reach you if I have more questions or want to report what I find out?”

  “Of course.”

  Vance opened the desk drawer and removed a business card. He handed it to Bosch with a shaking hand. There was a phone number printed on it, nothing else.

  “Call that number and you will get to me. If it’s not me, then something is wrong. Don’t trust anyone else you speak to.”

  Bosch looked from the number on the card to Vance, sitting in his wheelchair, his papier-mâché skin and wispy hair looking as frail as dried leaves. He wondered if his caution was paranoia or if there was a real danger to the information he would be seeking.

  “Are you in danger, Mr. Vance?” he asked.

  “A man in my position is always in danger,” Vance said.