The Last Coyote (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  He took a long shower, closing his eyes and holding his head directly under the spray. As he was shaving in front of the mirror after, he couldn’t help but study the circles under his eyes again. They seemed even more pronounced than earlier and fit nicely with the eyes cracked with red from his drinking the night before.

  He put the razor down on the edge of the sink and leaned closer to the mirror. His skin was as pale as a recycled paper plate. As he appraised himself, the thought he had was that he had once been considered a handsome man. Not anymore. He looked beaten. It seemed that age was gripping him, beating him down. He thought that he resembled some of the old men he’d seen after they were found dead in their beds. The ones in the rooming houses. The ones living in refrigerator boxes. He reminded himself more of the dead than the living.

  He opened the medicine cabinet so the reflection would go away. He looked among the various items on the glass shelves and chose a squeeze bottle of Murine. He put in a heavy dose of the eye drops, wiped the excess spill off his face with a towel and left the bathroom without closing the cabinet and having to look at himself again.

  He put on his best clean suit, a gray two-piece, and a white button-down shirt. He added his maroon tie with gladiator helmets on it. It was his favorite tie. And his oldest. One edge of it was fraying but he wore it two or three times a week. He’d bought it ten years earlier when he was first assigned to homicide. He pegged it in place on his shirt with a gold tie tack that formed the number 187—the California penal code for homicide. As he did this, he felt a measure of control come back to him. He began to feel good and whole again, and to feel angry. He was ready to go out into the world, whether or not it was ready for him.

  Chapter Ten

  BOSCH PULLED THE knot of his tie tight against his throat before pulling open the back door of the station. He took the hallway to the rear of the detective bureau and then the aisle between the tables toward the front, where Pounds sat in his office behind the glass windows that separated him from the detectives he commanded. Heads at the burglary table bobbed up as he was noticed, then at the robbery and homicide tables. Bosch did not acknowledge anyone, though he almost lost a step when he saw someone sitting in his seat at the homicide table. Burns. Edgar was there at his own spot, but his back was to Bosch’s path and he didn’t see Harry coming through the room.

  But Pounds did. Through the glass wall he saw Bosch’s approach to his office and he stood up behind his desk.

  The first thing Bosch noticed as he got closer was that the glass panel that he had broken just a week before in the office had already been replaced. He thought it was strange that this could happen so quickly in a department where more vital repairs—such as replacing the bullet-riddled windshield of a patrol car—normally took a month of red tape and paper pushing. But those were the priorities of this department.

  “Henry!” Pounds barked. “Come in here.”

  An old man who sat at the front counter and took calls on the public line and gave general directions jumped up and doddered into the glass office. He was a civilian volunteer, one of several who worked in the station, mainly retirees that most cops referred to collectively as members of the Nod Squad.

  Bosch followed the old man in and put his briefcase down on the floor.

  “Bosch!” Pounds yelped. “There’s a witness here.”

  He pointed to old Henry, then out through the glass.

  “Witnesses out there as well.”

  Bosch could see that Pounds still had deep purple remnants of broken capillaries under each eye. The swelling was gone, though. Bosch walked up to the desk and reached into the pocket of his coat.

  “Witnesses to what?”

  “To whatever you’re doing here.”

  Bosch turned to look at Henry.

  “Henry, you can leave now. I’m just going to talk to the lieutenant.”

  “Henry, you stay,” Pounds commanded. “I want you to hear this.”

  “How do you know he’ll remember it, Pounds? He can’t even transfer a call to the right table.”

  Bosch looked back at Henry again and fixed him with a stare that left no doubt who was in charge in the glass room.

  “Close the door on your way out.”

  Henry made a timid glance back at Pounds but then quickly headed out the door, closing it as instructed. Bosch turned back to Pounds.

  The lieutenant slowly, like a cat sneaking past a dog, lowered himself into his seat, perhaps thinking or knowing from experience that there might be more safety in not being at a face-to-face level with Bosch. Harry looked down and saw that there was a book open on the desk. He reached down and turned the cover to see what it was.

  “Studying for the captain’s exam, Lieutenant?”

  Pounds shrank back from Bosch’s reach. Bosch saw it was not the captain’s exam manual but a book on creating and honing motivational skills in employees. It had been written by a professional basketball coach. Bosch had to laugh and shake his head.

  “Pounds, you know, you’re really something. I mean, at least you’re entertaining. I gotta give you that.”

  Pounds grabbed the book back and shoved it in a drawer.

  “What do you want, Bosch? You know you’re not supposed to be in here. You’re on leave.”

  “But you called me in, remember?”

  “I did not.”

  “The car. You said you wanted the car.”

  “I said turn it in at the garage. I didn’t say come in here. Now get out!”

  Bosch could see the rosy spread of anger on the other man’s face. Bosch remained cool and took that as a sign of a declining level of stress. He brought his hand out of his pocket with the car keys in them. He dropped them on the desk in front of Pounds.

  “It’s parked out by the drunk tank door. You want it back, you can have it. But you take it through the checkout at the garage. That’s not a cop’s job. That’s a job for a bureaucrat.”

  Bosch turned to leave and picked up his briefcase. He then opened the door to the office with such force that it swung around and banged against one of the glass panels of the office. The whole office shook but nothing broke. He walked around the counter, saying, “Sorry about that, Henry,” without looking at the old man, and then headed down the front hall.

  A few minutes later he was standing on the curb on Wilcox, in front of the station, waiting for the cab he had called with his portable. A gray Caprice, almost a duplicate of the car he had just turned in, pulled up in front of him and he bent down to look in. It was Edgar. He was smiling. The window glided down.

  “You need a ride, tough guy?”

  Bosch got in.

  “There’s a Hertz on La Brea near the Boulevard.”

  “Yeah, I know it.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Edgar laughed and shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Nothing…Burns, man. I think he was about to shit his pants when you were in there with Pounds. He thought you were gonna come outta there and throw his ass outta your chair at the table. He was pitiful.”

  “Shit. I should’ve. I didn’t think of it.”

  Silence came back again. They were on Sunset coming up to La Brea.

  “Harry, you just can’t help yourself, can you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “What happened to your hand?”

  Bosch held it up and studied the bandage.

  “Ah, I hit it last week when I was working on the deck. Hurt like a son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah, you better be careful or Pounds is going to be on you like a son of a bitch.”

  “He already is.”

  “Man, he’s nothing but a bean counter, a punk. Why can’t you just leave it alone? You know you’re just—”

  “You know, you’re beginning to sound like the shrink they’re sending me to. Maybe I should just sit with you for an hour today, what you say?”

  “Maybe she’s talking some sense to you.”

  �
�Maybe I should’ve taken the cab.”

  “I think you should figure out who your friends are and listen to them for once.”

  “Here it is.”

  Edgar slowed in front of the rental car agency. Bosch got out before the car was even stopped.

  “Harry, wait a minute.”

  Bosch looked back in at him.

  “What’s going on with this Fox thing? Who is the guy?”

  “I can’t tell you now, Jerry. It’s just better this way.”

  “You sure?”

  Bosch heard the phone in his briefcase start to ring. He looked down at it and then back at Edgar.

  “Thanks for the ride.”

  He closed the car door.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE CALL WAS from Keisha Russell at the Times. She said she’d found one small story in the morgue under Fox’s name but she wanted to meet with Bosch to give it to him. He knew it was part of the game, part of making the pact. He looked at his watch. He could wait to see what the story said. He told her he’d buy her lunch at the Pantry in downtown.

  Forty minutes later she was already in a booth near the cashier’s cage when he got there. He slipped into the opposite side of the booth.

  “You’re late,” she said.

  “Sorry, I was renting a car.”

  “They took your car, huh? Must be serious.”

  “We’re not going to talk about that.”

  “I know. You know who owns this place?”

  “Yeah, the mayor. Doesn’t make the food bad.”

  She curled her lip and looked around as if the place were crawling with ants. The mayor was a Republican. The Times had gone with the Democrat. What was worse, for her, at least, was that the mayor was a supporter of the Police Department. Reporters didn’t like that. That was boring. They wanted City Hall infighting, controversy, scandal. It made things more interesting.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I could’ve suggested Gorky’s or some more liberal establishment.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Bosch. I’m just funnin’ with ya.”

  She wasn’t more than twenty-five, he guessed. She was a dark-complected black woman who had a beautiful grace about her. Bosch had no idea where she was from but he didn’t think it was L.A. She had the touch of an accent, a Caribbean lilt, that maybe she had worked on smoothing out. It was still there, though. He liked the way she said his name. In her mouth, it sounded exotic, like a wave breaking. He didn’t mind that she was little more than half his age and addressed him only by his last name.

  “Where you from, Keisha?”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I’m interested is all. You’re on the beat. I wanna know who I’m dealing with.”

  “I’m from right here, Bosch. I came from Jamaica when I was five years old. I went to USC. Where are you from?”

  “Right here. Been here all my life.”

  He decided not to mention the fifteen months he spent fighting in the tunnels in Vietnam and the nine in North Carolina training for it.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “Cut it working on my house. Been doing odd jobs while I’m off. So, what’s it been like taking Bremmer’s place on the cop beat? He’d been there a long time.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s been difficult. But I’m making my way. Slowly. I’m making friends. I hope you’ll be one of my friends, Bosch.”

  “I’ll be your friend. When I can. Let’s see what you got.”

  She brought a manila file up onto the table but the waiter, an old bald man with a waxed mustache, arrived before she could open it. She ordered an egg salad sandwich. He ordered a well-done hamburger and fries. She frowned and he guessed why.

  “You’re vegetarian, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry. Next time you pick the place.”

  “I will.”

  She opened the file and he noticed she had several bracelets on her left wrist. They were made of braided thread in many bright colors. He looked in the file and saw a photocopy of a small newspaper clipping. Bosch could tell by the size of the clip that it was one of the stories that gets buried in the back of the paper. She passed it over to him.

  “I think this is your Johnny Fox. The age is right but it does not describe him like you did. White trash, you said.”

  Bosch read the story. It was dated September 30, 1962.

  CAMPAIGN WORKER VICTIM OF HIT AND RUN

  By Monte Kim, Times Staff Writer

  A 29-year-old campaign worker for a candidate for the district attorney’s office was killed Saturday when he was struck by a speeding car in Hollywood, the Los Angeles police reported.

  The victim was identified as Johnny Fox, who lived in an apartment on Ivar Street in Hollywood. Police said Fox had been distributing campaign literature supporting district attorney hopeful Arno Conklin at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue when he was cut down by the speeding car as he crossed the street.

  Fox was crossing the southbound lanes of La Brea about 2 P.M. when the car struck him. Police said it appeared Fox was killed on impact and his body was dragged for several yards by the car.

  The car that hit Fox slowed momentarily after the collision but then sped away, police said. Witnesses told investigators the car proceeded south on La Brea at a high rate of speed. Police have not located the vehicle and witnesses could not provide a clear description of the make and model year. Police said an investigation is continuing.

  Conklin campaign manager Gordon Mittel said Fox had joined the campaign only a week ago.

  Reached at the district attorney’s office, where he is in charge of the special investigation branch under retiring DA John Charles Stock, Conklin said he had not yet met Fox but regretted the death of the man working for his election. The candidate declined further comment.

  Bosch studied the clip for a long moment after reading it.

  “This Monte Kim, is he still at the paper?”

  “Are you kidding? That’s like a millennium ago. Back then the newsroom was a bunch of white guys sitting around in white shirts and ties.”

  Bosch looked down at his own shirt, then at her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Anyway, he’s not around. And I don’t know about Conklin. A little before my time. Did he win?”

  “Yeah. I think he had two terms, then I think he ran for attorney general or something and got his ass handed to him. Something like that. I wasn’t here then.”

  “I thought you said you’ve been here all your life.”

  “I went away for a while.”

  “Vietnam, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, a lot of cops your age were there. Must’ve been a trip. Is that why you all became cops? So you could keep carrying guns?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Anyway, if Conklin’s still alive, he’s probably an old man. But Mittel’s still around. Obviously, you know that. He’s probably in one of these booths eating with the mayor.”

  She smiled and he ignored it.

  “Yeah, he’s a big shot. What’s the story on him?”

  “Mittel? I don’t know. First name on a big downtown law firm, friend of governors and senators and other powerful people. Last I heard, he’s running the financing behind Robert Shepherd.”

  “Robert Shepherd? You mean that computer guy?”

  “More like computer magnate. Yeah, don’t you read the paper? Shepherd wants to run but doesn’t want to use up his own money. Mittel is doing the fund-raising for an exploratory campaign.”

  “Run for what?”

  “Jesus, Bosch, you don’t read the paper or watch TV.”

  “I’ve been busy. Run for what?”

  “Well, like any egomaniac I guess he wants to run for president. But for now he’s looking at the Senate. Shepherd wants to be a third-party candidate. Says the Republicans are too far right and the Democrats too left. He’s right down the middle. And from what I hear, if anybody can get
the money together for him to do the third-candidate dance, it’s Mittel.”

  “So Mittel wants to make himself a president.”