Chasing Darkness

by Robert Crais

  “I’m trying to drum up votes so I can run for office. I need the money to hire Leverage Associates. Would you recommend their work?”

  Bastilla said, “Take it easy, Cole.”

  “C’mon, Marx, I’m asking if they’re any good. I know you work with them. Did they tell you to close the case on Byrd so you could make a big splash on the news?”

  Marx turned bright red.

  “You arrogant prick.”

  “Do the Repkos know you interfered with their daughter’s investigation to protect your handlers?”

  Bastilla said, “Cole, get back in the car.”

  I should have gotten back into the car, but I was angry and looking for a reason to knock Marx on his ass.

  The driveway and the front of the house were crawling with police. Neighbors in the surrounding houses had come out to see what was going on, and a reporter from the Times had shown up. Marx took one step back, then looked around until he spotted Crimmens in the driveway.

  “Detective, get over here.”

  Crimmens trotted over.

  “This man is a suspect in the murder of Angel Tomaso. Place him under arrest and take him to your station for questioning.”

  I said, “Fuck you, Marx.”

  Crimmens broke into a ragged smile, but Bastilla took Marx by the upper arm.

  “Chief, a word, please.”

  Marx pulled away and stalked over to Munson, and Bastilla went after him. Crimmens stepped into my face and stood with his nose less than two inches away, still with the ragged grin.

  “Resist. I’m begging you. Resist.”

  “I know what you told the Repkos, Crimmens. When this is over, we’re going to talk.”

  Crimmens laughed as he spun me around. He whispered in my ear as he clipped on the cuffs.

  “This is better than sex. I’m getting off right now, Cole.”

  They put me back in the patrol car. Crimmens left to find his partner while Giardi and Silbermann logged my possessions into a plastic bag.

  Silbermann said, “I knew you did it.”

  Bastilla spoke with Marx and Munson privately by their command car, then Bastilla called over Giardi. They spoke for a few minutes, then Munson drove away. Marx got into his command car and Bastilla came back to me.

  She said, “Just take it easy.”

  “This is bullshit. You people don’t have a goddamned thing.”

  She made a shushing gesture.

  “I’m handling it, Cole. Take a breath.”

  “Talk to Casik.”

  When Crimmens and his partner came back, Bastilla changed their orders.

  “Question him here. Don’t take him in.”

  “The chief said take him in.”

  “The chief changed his mind. Question him, then canvass this neighborhood and do your goddamned job. You have a murder to solve.”

  She stalked back to the command car, got in beside Marx, then they drove away, too.

  I grinned at Crimmens.

  “Is it still good for you?”

  They kept me in the backseat of Giardi’s car for almost two hours, first Crimmens and his partner, then one, then the other, then both together again. They questioned me about Tomaso, the phone calls I placed prior to arriving at his residence, and everything I saw, did, and witnessed once I reached the scene. I kept Pat Kyle out of it. I told them I had checked the exterior doors and windows for signs of forced entry because I knew they would find my fingerprints, but refused to admit I had entered the guesthouse. If I admitted entering, Marx would have an uncontested shot at me for unlawful entry, and I didn’t trust he wouldn’t book me. I told the truth about everything else. The questions were fair and appropriate, and would have been asked of anyone found at the scene. A criminalist appeared halfway through the questioning to take my fingerprints.

  We were going over the same questions for the third time when Crimmens received a call on his cell. He listened a moment before responding.

  “Sure, Chief. We’re still questioning him.”

  He listened some more, then held out the phone.

  “Chief Marx.”

  I took the phone.

  Marx said, “Listen to me, Cole, and make no mistake. Lieutenant Poitras told me you two were close. I understand you’re the godfather to one of his children.”

  I felt irritated and confused, and suddenly scared.

  “That isn’t your business, Marx.”

  “I gave the lieutenant a lawful and direct order when I instructed him to seal Byrd’s house and deny all requests for information. Yet there you were, a civilian, present at a crime scene I had sealed, and you were accompanied by the lieutenant—in direct violation of my orders, and in front of multiple witnesses. Are you hearing me?”

  I felt the sting of acid on the back of my tongue.

  “I hear you.”

  “I could have Lieutenant Poitras brought up before a review board for administrative punishment. This would effectively end his career.”

  “What are you doing, Marx?”

  “Stay away from the Repkos. Stay away from the good people at Leverage and away from my case. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give the phone to Crimmens.”

  I felt empty, as if I had not eaten in days and would never eat again. Crimmens listened for a moment, then closed his phone.

  “Get outta here, Cole. He says you can go.”

  24

  TWILIGHT SETTLED like a murky shawl as I drove away from the crime scene. Marx had taken an enormous risk by threatening Lou Poitras. He would have anticipated I would tell Poitras, which meant Marx was confident he could control the situation however Poitras reacted—probably by doing exactly what he had threatened. But people don’t take enormous risks unless they’re desperate, which meant Marx was hiding something important. If he wanted to make me back off, then I wanted to get even closer.

  I pulled into a gas station on Ventura Boulevard, called Joe Pike, then an attorney named Abbot Montoya. It was late in the day, but I knew Mr. Montoya would take my call.

  “How are you, my son? It is good to hear you.”

  The smile in his voice was warm.

  Abbot Montoya was a cultured gentleman in his seventies, but he had not always been cultured and no one in those days would have described him as a gentleman. Mr. Montoya was once an East L.A. gangbanger along with his best friend from those days, another young thug named Frank Garcia. Together, they had risen from the barrio, Abbot Montoya working his way through UCLA Law and Frank Garcia building a food empire worth more than a billion dollars. Frank owned a city councilman named Henry Maldenado. He probably owned others, as well.

  “It’s good to hear you, too, sir. I have a favor to ask.”

  “What you call a favor, we call an expression of love. However we can help, it will never be enough.”

  Frank Garcia had hired Pike and me to find the person who murdered his only child. We did, and they’ve been like this ever since.

  “Do you know anything about a political management firm called Leverage Associates?”

  “I know of them. They are a firm of long standing.”

  “I need background information on them and their clients. One of their clients is an LAPD deputy chief named Thomas Marx. Another is Nobel Wilts.”

  “Councilman Wilts?”

  “Yes, sir. Is Councilman Maldenado a client of theirs?”

  “He is not, but it would not matter if he were. Would you like to speak with him about these people?”

  “Yes, sir. If he would.”

  Mr. Montoya chuckled as if the thought of Maldenado refusing was laughable.

  “He will be most happy to see you.”

  “Sir, I can’t have Leverage learning of this. The people I ask about, they can’t know I’m asking.”

  “Para siempre. Trust me on this.”

  I lowered the phone but remained in the gas station, thinking how easily I had found Angel Tomaso. Having Jack Ei
sley as a contact had helped, but a couple of phone calls and there he was. Almost as if Bastilla and Crimmens hadn’t been trying. Ivy Casik hadn’t been much more difficult, and now I wondered if Bastilla had bothered to follow up. She had ignored me when I asked.

  I fought my way down through the Cahuenga Pass into Hollywood, then up again through the soft hills surrounding the Hollywood Bowl, where Ivy Casik lived. The low apartment building was just as quiet as when I met her, the neighboring apartments locked tight against the world. I rang her bell and knocked, the knocking loud in the silent courtyard.

  “May I help you?”

  A bald man shaped like a pear had stepped into the courtyard. He was wearing oversize shorts and a baggy undershirt and holding a cocktail glass. A small sign beside his door identified him as the manager.

  “I’m here to see Ms. Casik.”

  He shook the glass. The courtyard magnified the tinkling ice.

  “She isn’t home. Your knocking is quite loud, you know. You don’t have to knock so loud.”

  He tinkled the ice again.

  “Sorry. I’ll leave a note.”

  I took out a card and held it against the building to write a note asking Ivy to call.

  The man said, “Is this about the police? They were loud, too.”

  I stopped writing to look at him. When I looked, he tinkled the ice, then sipped his drink.

  “Was that Detective Bastilla?”

  “I don’t know her name.”

  Her. I put my hand at Bastilla’s height.

  “This tall. Forties. Latina.”

  “That’s right. This morning.”

  Another sip. Tinkle.

  “You know if they spoke with her?”

  “Ivy wasn’t home.”

  He reached out his hand for the note.

  “If you’d like, I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  “Thanks anyway. I’ll leave it in her box.”

  I dropped the card in Ivy’s mailbox, then wound my way down out of the hills toward home. The drive home seemed long, maybe because there was so much to think about, and so little that made any sense.

  I put the car in the carport, let myself into the kitchen, then drank a bottle of water. I had parked in the carport and opened the kitchen door and drank the same bottle of water ten thousand times. The cat wasn’t home, but I put out new food for him exactly as I had another ten thousand times. Ten thousand fresh bowls of water. The patterns were reassuring.

  I stripped off my shoes and clothes in the kitchen, threw them into the laundry room, then went upstairs to shower, which is what I did every time I came home after being with a body. My patterns continued, but Angel Tomaso did not have the same luxury. His pattern was a single event that could not be washed away.

  I did my best in the shower, then put on fresh clothes, went downstairs, and found Pike in the living room. He was holding the cat in his arms like someone cradling a baby. The cat’s eyes were closed. All four of his feet were straight up in the air as if he was drunk.

  I said, “I’m going to cook. You want a beer?”

  “Sure.”

  I took two beers from the fridge, set them on the counter, then told him about Angel Tomaso.

  “An anonymous caller tipped the police, and the cops arrived while I was with him.”

  “Think they set you up?”

  “They couldn’t know I would find him. They couldn’t know I was at his house.”

  “Someone watching the body would know.”

  I drank more of the beer, then went through the rest.

  “They sweated me for a couple of hours, then Marx told me if I didn’t back off he would bring Lou up on charges for disobeying his orders. He would ruin Lou’s career.”

  “He threatened Poitras.”

  “Yeah. For letting me into Byrd’s house.”

  “He actually made the threat.”

  “Yes.”

  The corner of Pike’s mouth twitched and he leaned against the counter.

  “What did he mean, back off?”

  I described how Marx was involved with Leverage Associates.

  “Marx ran interference for Leverage during the original investigation into the Repko murder. He shut out Darcy and Maddux weeks before Byrd’s body was discovered, and those guys never knew he was involved. Darcy also turned up a security vid made in the alley where Repko was murdered. SID couldn’t do anything with it, so Darcy sent the disk to a CGI house. Thing is, when Byrd turned up, the task force sucked up the disk before the CGI house finished their work. Now nobody knows what happened to it.”

  “You think Marx is sitting on it?”

  “I don’t know what to think. If it showed Byrd committing the murder, Marx would have used it. If it was garbage, why make it disappear?”

  “Maybe it showed someone else.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Pike took a careful sip of his beer.

  “You’re not just talking about Marx, Elvis. You’re talking about an entire task force. Someone would be talking about it. You can’t keep secrets like that.”

  “Lindo told me the task force was vertically integrated. Only the people at the top knew the full picture, what Lindo called the inner circle. He said the guys on his team even used to joke about it. Secrets are a lot easier to keep when people don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Who ran the show?”

  “Marx on top with Bastilla and a dick named Munson. Lindo heard Marx and Munson have some kind of history together.”

  Pike put down the cat. He slid from Pike’s arms like molasses and puddled at his feet.

  “If Marx is shading the case, Bastilla and Munson would have to go along.”

  “He’s a deputy chief, Joe. He can make their careers before he retires.”

  The cat peeled himself off the floor. He gazed at Pike, then came over and head-bumped my leg. I poured some of my beer in his beer dish, and watched him lap it.

  Pike said, “So what are you going to do?”

  “Dig into Leverage. It’s all about Leverage and Marx. While I’m doing that, maybe you can try to dig up something on Munson and Bastilla. Dirty cops leave a dirty trail.”

  Pike grunted.

  “Have you told Lou?”

  I finished the rest of the beer.

  “You know Lou. If I tell him, he’ll jump in Marx’s face.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I have to keep him as far from Marx as I can, but I can’t drop this thing now and walk away.”

  I glanced at Pike, but Pike was impenetrable.

  “You understand what I’m talking about?”

  “I understand.”

  “If Marx is so worried about something he’s willing to threaten Lou, if I can find that something then I take away his power to threaten.”

  Pike nodded.

  “Do you think I should tell Lou anyway?”

  “No.”

  “Let him decide for himself?”

  “Telling him takes the responsibility off you and puts it on him. But you already know that.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “You’re going to move forward anyway. We always drive forward.”

  “That’s right.”

  Pike watched me for a while through the quiet dark glasses, then squeezed my trapezius muscle.

  “Lou wouldn’t want you to stop. He would think less of you if you did.”

  I nodded. Sometimes it helps to hear it.

  Pike said, “What do you want me to do?”

  “You’re doing it.”

  We cooked, and drank more beer, and ate in silence as we watched an ESPN sports recap. Sometime after Pike left, the coyotes began to sing.

  I was getting ready for bed when I remembered Pat Kyle. Angel’s agent would be questioned the next day. He would almost certainly tell the police Pat had been looking for Tomaso, after which the police would call her. Crimmens would likely be the caller. I didn’t like calling so late a
nd didn’t want to tell her this would be waiting for her tomorrow, and I didn’t like knowing my call would upset her and cost her a miserable night. I didn’t want to call, but I did. She needed to hear it from me so she would be prepared. Pat Kyle was my friend. You have to take care of your friends.

  25

  JOE’S SUGGESTION that someone had been watching Angel Tomaso’s guesthouse left me with a wakeful paranoia the rest of the night. An opossum foraging on the deck became a home invasion crew. The soft clicking of the cat door was a lip gloss tube being readied to write. I loved u. I locked the doors and windows before shutting off the lights, but woke to check them twice, as if I had only imagined locking them in an earlier dream. The second time up I carried the Dan Wesson, but told myself I was being silly. I covered my head with a pillow. The ostrich approach.

  Abbot Montoya phoned at twenty minutes after eight the next morning to tell me the meeting with Councilman Maldenado had been arranged. Maldenado would see me at ten and offer every assistance. Frank Garcia assured it. By eight forty-five, I was showered, dressed, and eating scrambled eggs with cilantro when the doorbell rang. It rang three fast times before I reached the door and found Alan Levy. Levy had never been to my home or my office. Outside of the six or eight times we met when I worked for him, I had never seen him anyplace other than his office or court.

  “Alan. This is a surprise.”

  A sleek Mercedes convertible was parked off the road behind him, but Alan didn’t look sleek. He looked awkward and worried, and his bulging frog eyes flickered as if he was nervous.

  “I hope you don’t mind, me dropping in like this. I thought we could speak more freely outside of the office.”

  This, from a man who made his living as a criminal defense attorney having the most private conversations in the world.

  I stepped back to let him in. Levy noticed my loft, then stared out through the sliders into the canyon. The morning haze filled the house with a milky glare.

  “Hey, this is nice. You’re very private up here.”

  “What’s up, Alan? I have to leave for an appointment.”

  He turned from the view and put his hands in his pockets like he didn’t know what else to do with them.

  “Angel Tomaso was murdered.”