The Last Coyote (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay. So what else is new? Haven’t seen you in the building. You got anything coming my way?”

  It was the question Bosch had been waiting for Goff to get to so he could nonchalantly steer the conversation toward Arno Conklin.

  “Ah, nothing much. It’s been slow. But, hey, let me ask you, did you know Arno Conklin?”

  “Arno Conklin? Sure, I knew him. He hired me. What are you asking about him for?”

  “Nothing. I was going through some old files, making room in one of the cabinets, and I came across some old newspapers. They were pushed into the back. There were some stories about him and I thought of you, thought it was about when you started.”

  “Yeah, Arno, tried to be a good man. A little high and mighty for my taste, but I think he was a decent man overall. Especially considering he was both a politician and a lawyer.”

  Goff laughed at his own line but Bosch was silent. Goff had used the past tense. Bosch felt a heavy presence push into his chest and he only realized then how strong the desire to avenge could be.

  “He’s dead?”

  He closed his eyes. He hoped Goff wouldn’t detect the urgency he had let slip into his voice.

  “Oh, no, he’s not dead. I meant, you know, when I knew him. He was a good man then.”

  “He’s still practicing law somewhere?”

  “Oh, no. He’s an old man. Retired. Once a year they wheel him out at the annual prosecutors banquet. He personally hands out the Arno Conklin Award.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Some piece of wood with a brass plate on it that goes to the administrative prosecutor of the year, if you can believe that. That’s the guy’s legacy, an annual award to a so-called prosecutor who doesn’t set foot inside a courtroom all year. It always goes to one of the division heads. I don’t know how they decide which one. Prob’ly whoever got his or her nose farthest up the DA’s ass that year.”

  Bosch laughed. The line wasn’t that funny but he was also feeling the relief of learning that Conklin was still alive.

  “It’s not funny, Bosch. It’s fucking sad. Administrative prosecutor, whoever heard of such a thing? An oxymoron. Like Andrew and his screenplays. He deals with these studio people called, get this, creative executives. There’s your classic contradiction. Well, there you go, Bosch, you got me going again.”

  Bosch knew Andrew was Goff’s roommate but he had never met him.

  “Sorry, Roger. Anyway, what do you mean, they wheel him out?”

  “Arno? Well, I mean they wheel him out. He’s in a chair. I told you, he’s an old man. Last I heard he was in some full-care retirement home. One of the classy ones in Park La Brea. I keep saying I’m going to see him one day, thank him for hiring me way back when. Who knows, maybe I could put in a word for that award or something.”

  “Funny guy. You know, I heard that Gordon Mittel used to be his frontman.”

  “Oh, yeah, he was the bulldog outside the door. Ran his campaigns. That’s how Mittel got started. Now that’s one mean—I’m glad he got out of criminal law and into politics, he’d be a motherfucker to come up against in court.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard,” Bosch said.

  “Whatever you’ve heard, you can double it.”

  “You know him?”

  “Not now and not then. I just knew to keep clear. He was already out of the office by the time I came in. But there were stories. Supposedly in those early days, when Arno was the heir apparent and everybody knew it, there was a lot of maneuvering. You know, to get next to him. There was one guy, Sinclair I think his name was, that was set to run Arno’s campaign. Then one night the cleaning lady found some porno shots under his blotter. There was an internal investigation and the photos proved to be stolen from another prosecutor’s case files. Sinclair was dumped. He always claimed he was set up by Mittel.”

  “Think he was?”

  “Yes. It was Mittel’s style…But who knows.”

  Bosch sensed that he had said and asked enough to pass it off as conversation and gossip. Anything further and Goff might get suspicious about the call.

  “So what’s the deal?” he asked. “You zipped up for the night or you want to go by the Catalina? I heard Redman’s in town to do Leno. I’d bet you the cover charge that he and Branford drop by to sit in on the late set.”

  “Sounds tempting, Harry, but Andrew’s making a late dinner now and I think we’re just going to stay at home tonight. He’s counting on it. You mind?”

  “Not at all. Anyway, I’m trying not to bend the elbow so much lately. I need to give it a rest.”

  “Now that, sir, is quite admirable. I think you deserve a piece of wood with a brass plate on it.”

  “Or a shot of whiskey.”

  After hanging up Bosch sat back down at the desk and wrote notes on the highlights of the conversation with Goff into his notebook. Next he pulled the stack of clips on Mittel in front of him. These were more recent clips than those on Conklin because Mittel had not made a name for himself until much later. Conklin had been his first step up the ladder.

  Most of the stories were just mentions of Mittel as being in attendance at various galas in Beverly Hills or as host of various campaign or charity dinners. From the start he was a money man, a man politicians and charities went to when they wanted to cast their nets into the rich enclaves of the Westside. He worked both sides, Republican, Democrat, it didn’t seem to matter. His profile grew, though, when he started working for candidates on a larger scale. The current governor was a client. So, too, were a handful of congressman and senators from other western states.

  A profile written several years earlier—and apparently without his cooperation—ran under the headline THE PRESIDENT’S MAIN MONEY MAN. It said Mittel had been tapped to round up California contributors for the president’s reelection war chest. It said the state was one of the cornerstones of the national campaign’s funding plan.

  The story also noted the irony that Mittel was a recluse in the high-profile world of politics. He was a backstage man who abhorred the spotlight. So much so that he had repeatedly turned down patronage jobs from those he’d helped elect.

  Instead, Mittel elected to stay in Los Angeles, where he was the founding partner of a powerful financial district law firm, Mittel, Anderson, Jennings & Rountree. Still, it seemed to Bosch that what this Yale-educated lawyer did had little to do with law as Bosch knew it. He doubted Mittel had been inside a courtroom in years. That made Harry think of the Conklin award and he smiled. Too bad Mittel had quit the DA’s office. He might’ve been in line for it someday.

  There was a photo that ran with the profile. It showed Mittel at the bottom of the steps of Air Force One greeting the then president at LAX. Though the article had been published years earlier, Bosch was nevertheless startled by how young Mittel was in the photo. He looked at the story again and checked the man’s age. Doing the arithmetic, he realized that currently Mittel was barely sixty years old.

  Bosch pushed the newspaper clips aside and got up. For a long time he stood at the sliding glass door to the deck and stared at the lights across the pass. He began to consider what he knew about circumstances thirty-three years old. Conklin, according to Katherine Register, knew Marjorie Lowe. It was clear from the murder book that he had somehow reached into the investigation of her death for reasons unknown. His reach was then apparently covered up for reasons unknown. This had occurred only three months before he announced his candidacy for district attorney and less than a year before a key figure in the investigation, Johnny Fox, died while in his political employ.

  Bosch thought that it was obvious that Fox would have been known to Mittel, the campaign manager. Therefore, he further concluded, whatever it was that Conklin did or knew, it was likely that Mittel, his frontman and the architect of his political run, had knowledge of it as well.

  Bosch went back to the table and turned to the list of names in his notebook. Now he pic
ked up the pen and circled Mittel’s name as well. He felt like having another beer but he settled for a cigarette.

  Chapter Fourteen

  IN THE MORNING Bosch called the LAPD personnel office and asked them to check whether Eno and McKittrick were still current. He doubted they were still around but knew he had to make the check. It would be embarrassing if he went through a search for them only to find one or both still on the payroll. The clerk checked the roll and told him no such officers were currently on the force.

  He decided he would have to put on his Harvey Pounds pose after that. He dialed the DMV in Sacramento, gave the lieutenant’s name and asked for Ms. Sharp again. By the tone she inflected in the single word “Hello” after picking up the phone, Bosch had no doubt that she remembered him.

  “Is this Ms. Sharp?”

  “That’s who you asked for, isn’t it?”

  “I did, indeed.”

  “Then it’s Ms. Sharp. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, I wanted to mend our fences, so to speak. I have a few more names I need driver’s license addresses for and I thought that directly working with you would expedite the matter and perhaps repair our working relationship.”

  “Honey, we don’t have a working relationship. Hold the line, please.”

  She punched the button before he could say anything. The line was dead for so long that he began to believe his scam to burn Pounds wasn’t worth it. Finally, a different clerk picked up and said Ms. Sharp had instructed her to help. Bosch gave her Pounds’s serial number and then the names Gordon Mittel, Arno Conklin, Claude Eno and Jake McKittrick. He said he needed the home addresses on their licenses.

  He was put on hold again. During the time he waited he held the phone to his ear with his shoulder and fried an egg over easy in a pan on the stove. He made a sandwich out of it with two slices of white toast and cold salsa from a jar he kept in the refrigerator. He ate the dripping sandwich while leaning over the sink. He had just wiped his mouth and poured himself a second cup of coffee when the clerk finally picked back up.

  “Sorry it took so long.”

  “No problem.”

  He then remembered he was Pounds and wished he hadn’t said that.

  The clerk explained that she had no addresses or license information on Eno or McKittrick, then gave him addresses for Conklin and Mittel. Goff had been right. Conklin lived in Park La Brea. Mittel lived above Hollywood on Hercules Drive in a development called Mount Olympus.

  Bosch was too preoccupied at that point to continue the Pounds charade. He thanked the clerk without further confrontation and hung up. He thought about what his next move should be. Eno and McKittrick were either dead or out of state. He knew he could get their addresses through the department’s personnel office but that might take all day. He picked up the phone again and called Robbery-Homicide, asking for Detective Leroy Ruben. Ruben had put nearly forty years in on the department, half of it in RHD. He might know something about Eno and McKittrick. He might also know Bosch was on stress leave.

  “Ruben, can I help you?”

  “Leroy, it’s Harry Bosch. What do you know?”

  “Not much, Harry. Enjoying the good life?”

  Right away he was telling Bosch he knew of his situation. Bosch knew now that his only alternative was to be straight with him. To a point.

  “It ain’t bad. But I’m not sleeping late every day.”

  “No? What’re you getting up for?”

  “I’m kind’ve freelancing on an old case, Leroy. That’s why I called. I want to try to track down a couple of old dicks. Thought maybe you’d know of them. They were out of Hollywood.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Claude Eno and Jake McKittrick. Remember them?”

  “Eno and McKittrick. No…I mean, yeah, I think I remember McKittrick. He checked out…it must’ve been ten, fifteen years ago. He went back to Florida, I think. Yeah, Florida. He was here in RHD for a year or so. At the end there. The other one, Eno, I don’t remember any Eno.”

  “Well, it was worth a try. I’ll see what I can find in Florida. Thanks, Leroy.”

  “Hey, Harry, what gives anyway?”

  “It’s just an old case I had in my desk. It’s giving me something to do while I see what happens.”

  “Any word?”

  “Not yet. They got me talking to the shrink. If I can talk my way past her, I’ll get back to the table. We’ll see.”

  “Okay, well, good luck. You know, me and some of the boys here, when we heard that story we laughed our asses off. We heard about that guy Pounds. He’s an asshole. You done good, kid.”

  “Well, let’s hope I didn’t do so good that I lost my job.”

  “Ah, you’ll be all right. They send you to Chinatown a few times, brush you off and send you back into the ring. You’ll be okay.”

  “Thanks, Leroy.”

  After hanging up, Bosch got dressed for the day, putting on a fresh shirt and the same suit as the day before.

  He headed downtown in his rented Mustang and spent the next two hours in a bureaucratic maze. He first went to the Personnel Office at Parker Center, told a clerk what he wanted and then waited half an hour for a supervisor to tell him all over again. The supervisor told him he had wasted his time and that the information he sought was at City Hall.

  He walked across the street to the City Hall annex, took the stairs up and then crossed on the tramway over Main Street into the white obelisk of City Hall. He took the elevator up to the Finance Department, on nine, showed his ID card to another counter clerk and told her that, in the interest of streamlining the process, maybe he should talk to a supervisor first.

  He waited on a plastic chair in a hallway for twenty minutes before he was ushered into a small office cramped with two desks, four file cabinets and several boxes on the floor. An obese woman with pale skin and black hair, sideburns and the slight hint of a mustache sat behind one of the desks. On her calendar blotter Bosch noticed a food stain from some prior mishap. There was also a reusable plastic quart soda container with a screw-on top and straw on her desk. A plastic name plate on the desk said Mona Tozzi.

  “I’m Carla’s supervisor. She said you are a police officer?”

  “Detective.”

  He pulled the chair away from the empty desk and sat down in front of the fat woman.

  “Excuse me, but Cassidy is probably going to need her chair when she gets back. That’s her desk.”

  “When’s she coming back?”

  “Anytime. She went up for coffee.”

  “Well, maybe if we hurry we’ll be done by then and I’ll be out of here.”

  She gave a short who-do-you-think-you-are laugh that sounded more like a snort. She said nothing.

  “I’ve spent the last hour and a half trying to get just a couple addresses from the city and all I get are a bunch of people who want to send me to someone else or make me wait out in the hall. And what’s funny about that is that I work for the city myself and I’m trying to do a job for the city and the city isn’t giving me the time of day. And, you know, my shrink tells me I’ve got this post-traumatic stress stuff and should take life easier. But, Mona, I gotta tell you, I’m getting pretty fucking frustrated with this.”

  She stared at him a moment, probably wondering if she could possibly make it out the door if he decided to go nuts on her. She then pursed her lips, which served to change her mustache from a hint to an announcement, and took a hard pull on the straw of her soda container. Bosch saw a liquid the color of blood go up through the straw into her mouth. She cleared her throat before talking in a comforting tone.

  “Tell you what, Detective, why don’t you tell me what it is you are trying to find?”

  Bosch put on his hopeful face.

  “Great. I knew there was somebody who cared. I need to get the addresses where pension checks for two different retired officers are sent each month.”

  Her eyebrows mated as she frowned.

  “I’m s
orry, but those addresses are strictly confidential. Even within the city. I couldn’t give—”

  “Mona, let me explain something. I’m a homicide investigator. Like you, I work for the city. I have leads on an old unsolved murder that I am following up on. I need to confer with the original case detectives. We’re talking about a case more than thirty years old. A woman was killed, Mona. I can’t find the two detectives that originally worked the case and the police personnel people sent me over here. I need the pension addresses. Are you going to help me?”