Angels Flight (1998)

by Michael Connelly

  Bosch put the last notebook into his briefcase and wondered if the discoveries he had made through the notes, particularly about Elias’s source inside the department, now placed him in the area Janis Langwiser feared might be an infringement of attorney-client privilege. After mulling it over for a few moments he decided not to go out into the file room and ask her for an interpretation. He moved on with the search.

  Bosch turned the chair to a side desk that had a personal computer and laser printer set up on it. The machines were off. There were two small drawers in this desk. The top contained the computer keyboard while the bottom contained office supplies with a single manila file on top. Bosch took out the file and opened it. It contained a color printout of a photo of a partially nude woman. The printout had two crease marks indicating it had been folded at one time. The photo itself did not have the technical quality of those in skin magazines found on the newsstand. There was an amateurish, badly lit quality to it. The woman in the picture was white and had short, white-blond hair. She wore thigh-high leather boots with three-inch heels and a G-string, nothing else. She stood with her rear to the camera, one foot up on a chair, her face turned mostly away. There was a tattoo of a ribbon and bow at the center of the small of her back. Bosch also saw at the bottom of the picture a notation that had been printed by hand. http:/www.girlawhirl.com/gina Bosch knew little about computers but he knew enough to understand he was looking at an Internet address.

  “Kiz?” he called.

  Rider was the resident computer expert on his team. Before coming to Hollywood Homicide she had worked a fraud unit in Pacific Division. A lot of the work she had done was on computers. She walked in from the file room and he waved her over to the desk.

  “How is it going out there?”

  “Well, we’re just stacking files. She won’t let me look through anything until we hear from the special master. I hope Chastain brings back a lot of boxes because we have a—what is that?”

  She was looking at the open file and the printout of the blond woman.

  “It was in the drawer. Take a look. It’s got an address on it.”

  Rider came around the desk and looked down at the printout.

  “It’s a web page.”

  “Right. So how do we get to it and take a look?”

  “Let me get in there.”

  Bosch got up and Rider sat in front of the computer. Bosch stood behind the chair and watched as she turned the computer on and waited for it to boot up.

  “Let’s see what Internet provider he’s got,” she said. “Did you see any letterhead around?”

  “What?”

  “Letterhead. Stationery. Sometimes people put their E-mail address on it. If we know Elias’s E-mail address we’re halfway there.”

  Bosch understood now. He hadn’t seen any letterhead during his search.

  “Hold on.”

  He went out to the reception room and asked Chastain, who was sitting behind the secretary’s desk, if he’d seen any stationery. Chastain opened a drawer and pointed to an open box of letterhead stationery. Bosch grabbed a page off the top. Rider had been correct. Elias’s E-mail address was printed beneath his postal address on the top center of the page. helias@lawyerlink.net Bosch took the page with him back to Elias’s office. When he got there he saw Rider had closed the file that contained the printout of the blond woman. Bosch realized it must have been embarrassing to her.

  “I got it,” he said.

  She looked at the page Bosch placed on the desk next to the computer.

  “Good. That’s the user name. Now we just need his password. He’s got the whole computer password protected.”

  “Shit.”

  “Well,” she said as she began typing, “most people choose something pretty easy — so even they won’t forget.”

  She stopped typing and watched the screen. The cursor had turned into an hourglass as it worked. A message then printed across the screen informing Rider she had used an improper password.

  “What did you use?” Bosch asked.

  “His DOB. You did next of kin, right? What was his wife’s name?”

  “Millie.”

  Rider typed it in and after a few seconds got the same rejection message.

  “What about his son?” Bosch asked. “His name’s Martin.”

  Rider didn’t type anything.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “A lot of these password gates give you three strikes. If you don’t get in on the third one they go into automatic lockdown.”

  “Forever?”

  “No. For however long Elias would have set it at. Could be fifteen minutes or an hour or even longer. Let’s think about this for a — ”

  “V-S-L-A-P-D.”

  Rider and Bosch turned. Chastain was in the doorway.

  “What?” Bosch asked.

  “That’s the password. V-S-L-A-P-D. As in Elias versus the LAPD.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The secretary wrote it down on the underside of her blotter. Guess she’s got to use the computer, too.”

  Bosch studied Chastain for a moment.

  “Harry?” Rider said. “Should I?”

  “Give it a shot,” Bosch said, still looking at Chastain. He then turned and watched as his partner typed in the password. The hourglass blinked on and then the screen changed and icon symbols began appearing on a field of blue sky and white clouds.

  “We’re in,” Rider said.

  Bosch glanced back at Chastain.

  “Good one.”

  He then looked back at the screen and watched as Rider hit keys and maneuvered through the icons, files and programs, all of it meaning little to Bosch and reminding him that he was an anachronism.

  “You really ought to learn this stuff, Harry,” Rider said, seeming to know his thoughts. “It’s easier than it looks.”

  “Why should I when I’ve got you? What are you doing anyway?”

  “Just having a look around. We’ll have to talk to Janis about this. There are a lot of file names corresponding with cases. I don’t know if we should open them before — ”

  “Don’t worry about it for now,” Bosch interjected. “Can you get on the Internet?”

  Rider made a few more moves with the mouse and then typed the user name and password into blanks on the screen.

  “I’m running lawyerlink,” she said. “Hopefully the same passwords work and we’ll be able to go to that naked lady’s web page.”

  “What naked lady?” Chastain said.

  Bosch picked the file off the desk and handed it unopened to Chastain. He opened it, glanced at the photo and smirked.

  Bosch looked back at the screen. Rider was on lawyerlink, using Elias’s user name.

  “What’s that address?”

  Chastain read it off to her as she typed. She then hit the enter key and they waited.

  “What this is is a singular web page address within a larger web site,” she said. “What we’ll get here is the Gina page.”

  “You mean that’s her name? Gina?”

  “Looks like it.”

  As she said this the photo from the printout appeared on the screen. Beneath it was information on what the woman in the photo provided and how to contact her.

  I am Mistress Regina. I am a lifestyle dominatrix providing elaborate bondage, humiliation, forced feminization, slave training and golden blessings. Other torments available upon request. Call me now.

  Below the block of information there was a phone number, a pager number and an E-mail address. Bosch wrote these down in a notebook he took from his pocket. He then looked back at the screen and saw there was also a blue button with the letter A on it. He was about to ask Rider what the button meant when Chastain made a disdainful sound with his mouth. Bosch turned and looked at him and the Internal Affairs man shook his head.

  “The bastard was probably getting his rocks off on his knees with this broad,” Chastain said. “I wonder if Reverend Tuggins and
his pals down at the SCCA knew about that.”

  He was referring to an organization called the South Central Churches Association, a group which Tuggins headed and which always seemed to be at Elias’s beck and call when he needed to show the media an image of South Central outrage in regard to alleged police misconduct.

  “We don’t know that he ever even met the woman yet, Chastain,” Bosch said.

  “Oh, he met her. Why else did he have this laying around? I tell you, Bosch, if Elias was into rough trade like that, there’s no telling where that could’ve led. It’s a righteous avenue of investigation and you know it.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll be checking everything out.”

  “You’re damn right we will.”

  “Uh,” Rider said, interrupting. “There’s an audio button.”

  Bosch looked at the screen. Rider had the arrow poised over the blue button.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I think we can actually hear Mistress Regina.”

  She clicked the arrow on the button. The computer then downloaded an audio program and started playing it. A dark and heavy voice came from the computer’s speaker.

  “This is Mistress Regina. If you come to me I will find the secret of your soul. Together, we will reveal the true subservience through which you will know your rightful identity and attain the release you can find nowhere else. I will mold you into my own. I will own you. I am waiting. Call me now.”

  They were all silent for a long moment. Bosch looked at Chastain.

  “Does it sound like her?”

  “Like who?”

  “The woman on tape at the apartment.”

  Chastain suddenly realized the possibility and was silent as he thought about this.

  “What tape?” Rider asked.

  “Can you play it again?” Bosch asked.

  Rider clicked the audio button again and asked about the tape once more. Bosch waited until the replay was over.

  “A woman left a message on the phone at Elias’s apartment. It wasn’t his wife. But I don’t think it was this voice either.”

  He looked at Chastain once more.

  “I don’t know,” Chastain said. “Could be. We’ll be able to do a comparison in the lab if we need to.”

  Bosch hesitated, studying Chastain for any indication that he knew the phone message had been erased. He saw nothing.

  “What?” Chastain said, uneasy under Bosch’s stare.

  “Nothing,” Bosch said.

  He turned back and looked at the computer screen.

  “You said this was part of a larger web site,” he said to Rider. “Can we look at that?”

  Rider didn’t answer. She just went to work on the keyboard. In a few moments the screen changed and they were looking at a graphic which showed a woman’s stocking-clad leg bent at the knee and reaching across the screen. Below this it said:

  WELCOME TO GIRLAWHIRL A directory of intimate, sensual and erotic services in Southern California Below this was a table of contents by which the user could choose listings of women offering a variety of services, from sensual massage to evening escort to female domination. Rider clicked the mouse on this last offering and a new screen was revealed featuring boxes with the names of mistresses followed by an area code prefix.

  “It’s a goddamn Internet whorehouse,” Chastain said. Bosch and Rider said nothing. Rider moved the arrow onto the box marked Mistress Regina.

  “This is your directory,” she said. “You choose which page you want and click.”

  She clicked the mouse and the Regina page appeared again.

  “He chose her,” Rider said.

  “A white woman,” Chastain said. There was glee in his voice. “Golden blessings from a white woman. I bet they aren’t going to be too pleased about that on the South Side, either.”

  Rider turned around and looked sharply at Chastain. She was about to say something when her eyes widened and looked past the IAD detective. Bosch noticed this and turned. Standing in the doorway of the office was Janis Langwiser. Next to her was a woman Bosch recognized from her newspaper photos and television appearances. She was an attractive woman with the smooth coffee-and-cream skin of mixed races.

  “Wait a minute,” Bosch said to Langwiser. “This is a crime investigation. She can’t come in here and — ”

  “Yes, Detective Bosch, she can,” Langwiser said. “Judge Houghton just appointed her special master on the case. She’ll be reviewing the files for us.”

  With that the woman Bosch recognized stepped fully into the room, smiled, but not warmly, and held her hand out to him in order to shake his.

  “Detective Bosch,” she said. “It’s good to meet you. I hope we will be able to work together on this. I’m Carla Entrenkin.”

  She waited a beat but no one responded. She continued.

  “Now the first thing I am going to need is for you and all of your people to vacate these premises.”

  12

  OUTSIDE the front doors of the Bradbury the detectives walked empty-handed to their cars. Bosch was still angry but was cooler now. He walked slowly, allowing Chastain and Dellacroce to get to their car first. As he watched them drive off on their way back up Bunker Hill to California Plaza he opened the passenger door of Kiz’s slickback but didn’t get in. He bent down and looked in at her as she pulled the seat belt across her lap.

  “You go on up, Kiz. I’ll meet you up there.”

  “You’re going to walk it?”

  Bosch nodded and looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty.

  “I’ll take Angels Flight. It should be running again. When you get up there you know what to do. Start everybody knocking on doors.”

  “Okay, see you up there. You going to go back up and talk to her again?”

  “Entrenkin? Yeah, I think so. Do you still have Elias’s keys?”

  “Yeah.” She dug them out of her purse and handed them to Bosch. “Is there something I should know about?”

  Bosch paused for a moment.

  “Not yet. I’ll see you up there.”

  Rider started the car. She looked over at him again before putting it into drive.

  “Harry, you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine.” He nodded. “It’s just the case. First we got Chastain — asshole’s always been able to get to me. Now we’ve got Carla I’mthinkin’. It’s bad enough we knew she’d be watching the case. Now she’s a part of it. I don’t like politics, Kiz. I just like putting cases together.”

  “I’m not talking about all of that. It’s like you’ve been walking on the sun since we met this morning to pick up the cars in Hollywood. You want to talk about it?”

  He almost nodded.

  “Maybe later, Kiz,” he said instead. “We got work to do right now.”

  “Whatever, but I’m about to get worried about you, Harry. You need to be straight. If you’re distracted, then we’re distracted and we aren’t going to get anywhere on this thing. That’d be okay most days but on this one you just said it yourself, we’re under the glass.”

  Bosch nodded again. Her having picked up on his personal turmoil was a testament to her skill as a detective — reading people was always more important than reading clues.

  “I hear you, Kiz. I’ll straighten up.”

  “I copy that.”

  “I’ll see you up there.”

  He slapped the roof of the car and watched her drive off, knowing this would be the time he would normally put a cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t. Instead he looked down at the keys in his hand and thought about his next move and how he had to be very careful.

  Bosch went back into the Bradbury and as he rode the slow-moving elevator back up he tumbled the keys in his hand and thought about Entrenkin’s three separate entries into the case. First as a curious listing in Elias’s now missing phone book, then in her capacity as inspector general and now finally a full entrance as a player, the special master who would decide what in Elias’s files the invest
igators would be allowed to see.