The Last Coyote (1995)

by Michael Connelly

  What struck him most about Florida on this first drive was its flatness. For forty-five minutes not a hillrise came in sight until he reached the concrete-and-steel mountain called the Skyway Bridge. Bosch knew that the steeply graded bridge over the mouth of the bay was a replacement for one that had fallen but he drove across it fearlessly and above the speed limit. After all, he came from postquake Los Angeles, where the unofficial speed limit under bridges and overpasses was on the far right side of the speedometer.

  After the skyway the freeway merged with the 75 and he reached Venice two hours after landing. Cruising along the Tamiami Trail, he found the small pastel-painted motels inviting as he struggled with fatigue, but he drove on and looked for a gift shop and a pay phone.

  He found both in the Coral Reef Shopping Plaza. The Tacky’s Gifts and Cards store wasn’t due to open until ten and Bosch had five minutes to waste. He went to a pay phone on the outside wall of the sand-colored plaza and looked up the post office in the book. There were two in town so Bosch took out his notebook and checked Jake McKittrick’s zip code. He called one of the post offices listed in the book and learned that the other one catered to the zip code Bosch had. He thanked the clerk who had provided the information and hung up.

  When the gift shop opened, Bosch went to the cards aisle and found a birthday card that came with a bright red envelope. He took it to the counter without even reading the inside or the outside of the card. He picked a local street map out of a display next to the cash register and put that on the counter as well.

  “That’s a nice card,” said the old woman who rang up the sale. “I’m sure she’ll just love it.”

  She moved as if she were underwater and Bosch wanted to reach over the counter and punch in the numbers himself, just to get it going.

  In the Mustang, Bosch put the card in the envelope without signing it, sealed it and wrote McKittrick’s name and post office box number on the front. He then started the car and got back on the road.

  It took him fifteen minutes working with the map to find the post office on West Venice Avenue. When he got inside, he found it largely deserted. An old man was standing at a table slowly writing an address on an envelope. Two elderly women were in line for counter service. Bosch stood behind them and realized that he was seeing a lot of senior citizens in Florida and he’d only been here a few hours. It was just like he had always heard.

  Bosch looked around and saw the video camera on the wall behind the counter. He could tell by its positioning it was there more for recording customers and possible robbers than for surveilling the clerks, though their workstations were probably fully in view as well. He was undeterred. He took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket, folded it cleanly and held it with the red envelope. He then checked his loose change and came up with the right amount. It seemed like an excruciatingly long time as the one clerk waited on the women.

  “Next in line.”

  It was Bosch. He walked up to the counter where the clerk waited. He was about sixty and had a perfect white beard. He was overweight and his skin seemed too red to Bosch. As if he was mad or something.

  “I need a stamp for this.”

  Bosch put down the change and the envelope. The ten-dollar bill was folded on top of it. The postman acted like he didn’t see it.

  “I was wondering, did they put the mail out yet in the boxes?”

  “They’re back there doin’ it now.”

  He handed Bosch a stamp and swiped the change off the counter. He didn’t touch the ten or the red envelope.

  “Oh, really?”

  Bosch picked up the envelope, licked the stamp and put it on. He then put the envelope back down on top of the ten. He was sure the postman had observed this.

  “Well, jeez, I really wanted to get this to my Uncle Jake. It’s his birthday today. Any way somebody could run it back there? That way he’d get it when he came in today. I’d deliver it in person but I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Bosch slid the envelope with the ten underneath it across the counter, closer to white beard.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The postman shifted his body to the left and turned slightly, shielding the transaction from the video camera. In one fluid motion he took the envelope and the ten off the counter. He quickly transferred the ten to his other hand and it dove for cover in his pocket.

  “Be right back,” he called to the people still in line.

  Out in the lobby, Bosch found Box 313 and looked through the tiny pane of glass inside. The red envelope was there along with two white letters. One of the white envelopes was upside down and its return address was partially visible.

  City of

  Departm

  P.O. Bo

  Los Ang

  90021-3

  Bosch felt reasonably sure the envelope carried McKittrick’s pension check. He had beaten the mail to him. He walked out of the post office, bought two cups of coffee and a box of doughnuts in the convenience store next door and then returned to the Mustang to wait in the day’s growing heat. It wasn’t even May yet. He couldn’t imagine what a summer must be like here.

  Bored with watching the post office door after an hour, Bosch turned on the radio and found it tuned to a channel featuring a southern evangelical ranter. It took several seconds before Harry realized that the speaker’s subject was the Los Angeles earthquake. He decided not to change the station.

  “And ah ask, is it a coincidence that this cata-clysmic calamity was centered in the very heart of the ind’stry that poe-loots this entarh nation with the smut of pone-ography? I think not! I believe the Lahd struck a mighty blow to the infidels engaged in this vile and mul-tie-billyon-dollah trade when he cracked the uth asundah. It is a sign, mah frens, a sign of things that ah to come. A sign that all is not right in—”

  Bosch turned it off. A woman had just come out of the post office holding a red envelope among other pieces of mail. Bosch watched her cross the parking lot to a silver Lincoln Town Car. Bosch instinctively jotted the plate number down, though he had no law enforcement contact in this part of the state who would run it for him. The woman was in her mid-sixties, Bosch guessed. He had been waiting for a man, but her age made her fit. He started the Mustang and waited for her to pull out.

  She drove north on the main highway toward Sarasota. Traffic moved slowly. After about fifteen minutes and maybe two miles, the Town Car took a left on Vamo Road and then almost immediately took a right on a private road camouflaged by tall trees and green growth. Bosch was only ten seconds behind her. As he came up to the drive, he slowed but didn’t turn in. He saw a sign set back in the trees.

  Welcome To

  PELICAN COVE

  Condominium Homes, Dockage

  The Town Car passed by a guard shack with a red-and-white-striped gate arm coming down behind it.

  “Shit!”

  Bosch hadn’t anticipated anything like a gated community. He assumed that such things were rare outside of Los Angeles. He looked at the sign again, then turned around and headed out to the main road. He remembered seeing another shopping plaza right before he had turned on to Vamo.

  There were eight homes in Pelican Cove listed in the For Sale section of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, but only three were for sale by owner. Bosch went to a pay phone in the plaza and called the first one. He got a tape. On the second call the woman who answered said her husband was golfing for the day and she felt uncomfortable showing the property without him. On the third call, the woman who answered invited Bosch to come over right away and even said she’d have fresh lemonade prepared when he got there.

  Bosch felt a momentary pang of guilt about taking advantage of a stranger who was just trying to sell her home. But it passed quickly as he considered that the woman would never know she had been used in such a way, and he had no other alternative for getting to McKittrick.

  After he was cleared at the gate and got directions to the lemonade lady’s unit, Bos
ch drove through the densely wooded complex, looking for the silver Town Car. It didn’t take him long to see that the complex was mostly a retirement community. He passed several elderly people in cars or on walks, almost all of them with white hair and skin browned by the sun. He quickly found the Town Car, checked his location against the map given to him at the guard shack and was about to make a cursory visit to the lemonade lady to avoid suspicion. But then he saw another silver Town Car. It was a popular car with the older set, he guessed. He took out his notebook and checked the plate number he had written down. Neither car had been the one he had followed earlier.

  He drove on and finally found the right Town Car in a secluded spot in the far reaches of the complex. It was parked in front of a two-story building of dark wood siding surrounded by oak and paper trees. It looked to Bosch as if there were six units in the building. Easy enough, he thought. He consulted the map and got back on course to the lemonade lady. She was on the second floor of a building on the other side of the complex.

  “You’re young,” she said when she answered the door.

  Bosch wanted to say the same thing back to her but held his tongue. She looked like she was in her mid- to late thirties, which put her three decades behind anyone Bosch had seen around the complex so far. She had an attractive and evenly tanned face framed in brown shoulder-length hair. She wore blue jeans, a blue oxford shirt and a black vest with a colorful pattern in the front. She didn’t bother with much makeup, which Bosch liked. She had serious green eyes, which he also didn’t disagree with.

  “I’m Jasmine. Are you Mr. Bosch?”

  “Yes. Harry. I just called.”

  “That was quick.”

  “I was nearby.”

  She invited him in and started the rundown.

  “It’s three bedrooms, like the paper said. Master suite has a private bath. Second bath off the main hall. The view is what makes the place, though.”

  She pointed Bosch toward a wall of sliding glass doors that looked out on a wide expanse of water dotted with mangrove islands. Hundreds of birds perched in the branches of these otherwise untouched islands. She was right, the view was beautiful.

  “What is that?” Bosch asked. “The water.”

  “That’s—you’re not from around here, are you? That’s Little Sarasota Bay.”

  Bosch nodded while computing the mistake he had made by blurting out the question.

  “No, I’m not from around here. I’m thinking of moving here though.”

  “Where from?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve heard. A lot of people are bailing out. Because the ground won’t stop shaking.”

  “Something like that.”

  She led him down a hallway to what must have been the master suite. Bosch was immediately struck by how the room didn’t seem to fit this woman. It was all dark and old and heavy. A mahogany bureau that looked like it weighed a ton, matching bedside tables with ornate lamps and brocaded shades. The place smelled old. It couldn’t be where she slept.

  He turned and noticed on the wall next to the door an oil painting that was a portrait of the woman standing next to him. It was a younger likeness of her, the face much gaunter, more severe. Bosch was wondering what kind of person hangs a painting of herself in her bedroom when he noticed that the painting was signed. The artist’s name was Jazz.

  “Jazz. Is that you?”

  “Yes. My father insisted on hanging that in here. I actually should have taken it down.”

  She went to the wall and began to lift the painting off.

  “Your father?”

  He moved to the other side of the painting to help her.

  “Yes. I gave this to him a long time ago. At the time I was thankful he didn’t hang it out in the living room where his friends would see it but even here is a little too much.”

  She turned the painting so the back faced outward and leaned it against the wall. Bosch put together what she had been saying.

  “This is your father’s place.”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve just been staying here while the ad ran in the paper. You want to check out the master bath? It has a Jacuzzi tub. That wasn’t mentioned in the ad.”

  Bosch moved closely by her to the bathroom door. He looked down at her hands, a natural instinct, and saw no rings on any of her fingers. He could smell her as he passed and the scent he picked up was the same as her name: Jasmine. He was beginning to feel some kind of attraction to her but wasn’t sure if it was the titillation of being there under false pretenses or an honest pull. He was exhausted, he knew, and decided that was it. His defenses were down. He gave the bathroom a quick once-over and stepped out.

  “Nice. Did he live here alone?”

  “My father? Yes, alone. My mother died when I was little. My father passed away over Christmas.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. What else can I tell you?”

  “Nothing. I was just curious about who had been living here.”

  “No. I mean, what else can I tell you about the condo?”

  “Oh, I…nothing. It’s very nice. I’m still in the looking-around stage, I guess, not sure what I’m going to do. I—”

  “What are you really doing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What are you doing here, Mr. Bosch? You’re not looking to buy a condo in here. You’re not even looking at the place.”

  There was no anger in her voice. It was a voice full of the confidence she had in reading people. Bosch felt himself turning red. He had been found out.

  “I’m just…I’m just here to look at places.”

  It was a terribly weak comeback and he knew it. But it was all he could think of to say. She sensed his predicament and let him off the hook.

  “Well, I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. Do you want to see the rest of the place?”

  “Yes—uh, well, did you say it was three bedrooms? That’s really too big for what I’m looking for.”

  “Yes, three. But it said that in the newspaper ad, too.”

  Luckily, Bosch knew he probably couldn’t get any redder than he already was.

  “Oh,” he said. “I must’ve missed that. Uh, thanks for the tour, though. It’s a very nice place.”

  He moved quickly through the living room toward the door. As he opened it he looked back at her. She spoke before he could say anything.

  “Something tells me it’s a good story.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whatever it is you’re doing. If you ever feel like telling it, the number’s in the paper. But you already know that.”

  Bosch nodded. He was speechless. He stepped through the door and closed it behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  BY THE TIME he drove back to where he had seen the Town Car, his face had returned to its normal color but he still felt embarrassed about being cornered by the woman. He tried to dismiss it and concentrate on the task at hand. He parked and went to the first-floor door that was nearest the Town Car and knocked. Eventually, an old woman opened the door and stared at him with frightened eyes. One hand clasped the handle of a small two-wheeled cart that carried an oxygen bottle. Two clear plastic tubes snaked over her ears and across both cheeks to her nose.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said quickly. “I was looking for the McKittricks.”

  She raised a frail hand, formed a fist with the thumb out and jerked it up toward the ceiling. Her eyes went up that way, too.

  “Upstairs?”

  She nodded. He thanked her and headed for the stairs.

  The woman who had picked up the red envelope answered the next door he knocked on and Bosch exhaled as if he had spent a lifetime looking for her. It almost felt that way.

  “Mrs. McKittrick?”

  “Yes?”

  Bosch pulled out his badge case and flipped it open. He held the wallet so that his first two fingers crossed most of the badge, obscuring the LIEUTENANT.

  �
��My name’s Harry Bosch. I’m a detective with the LAPD. I was wondering if your husband was here. I’d like to talk to him.”

  An immediate concern clouded her face.

  “LAPD? He hasn’t been out there in twenty years.”

  “It’s about an old case. I was sent out to ask him about it.”

  “Well, you could’ve called.”

  “We didn’t have a number. Is he here?”