Angels Flight (1998)

by Michael Connelly

  “I remember that case. What was that, ten years ago? The media went nuts on it.”

  “Yeah. Carjack homicide, one of the first ones. And that’s where me and Frankie came in. It was a hot case and we were under pressure. We finally got a line on the kid through a chop shop that Burglary-Auto Theft took down in the Valley. This kid lived over in Venice and when we went to pick him up he saw us coming. Fired a three fifty-seven through the front door after Frankie knocked. Missed him by an inch. Frankie had longer hair back then. The bullet actually went through his hair. The kid went through the back door and we chased him through the neighborhood, calling for backup on our handhelds as we ran. The radio calls brought the media out — helicopters, reporters, everything.”

  “You got him, right? I remember.”

  “We chased him almost all the way through Oakwood. We finally got him in an abandoned house, a shooting gallery. The hypes went scattering and he stayed inside. We knew he had the gun and he had already taken a shot at us. We could’ve gone in there and blown his shit away and there wouldn’t have been a question. But Frankie went in first and talked the kid out. It was just him and me and the kid in there. Nobody would’ve known or questioned what had happened. But Frankie, he didn’t think like that. He told the kid he knew the lady in the Jag was an accident, that he didn’t mean to kill anybody. He told him he still had a chance at life. Fifteen minutes earlier the kid tried to kill Frankie, now Frankie was trying to save the kid’s life.”

  Bosch stopped for a moment, remembering the moments in the abandoned house.

  “The kid finally stepped out of a closet, holding his hands up. He still had the gun in his hand. It would have been so easy . . . and so right. But it was Frankie’s call. He was the one who almost took the bullet. But he just went over and took the gun from the kid and cuffed him. End of story.”

  Entrenkin considered the story for a long moment before responding.

  “So what you are saying is that because he spared one black man that he could have easily gotten away with killing, then he would not have tried to suffocate another black man nearly a decade later.”

  Bosch shook his head and frowned.

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying that that was just one of the times I saw Frank Sheehan’s core. It was when I knew what he was made of. And that’s why I know the Harris thing is bullshit. He would never have planted evidence on the guy, he would never have pulled a bag over his head.”

  He waited for her to say something but she didn’t.

  “And I never said anything about the carjacker being black. That had nothing to do with it. That’s just something you bring to the story yourself.”

  “I think it was an obvious part that you left out. Maybe if it had been a white boy in that abandoned house you would never even have thought about what you could have gotten away with.”

  Bosch stared at her a long moment.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Well, it’s not worth arguing about. You left something else out of the story, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “A few years later your buddy Sheehan did use his gun. And he put a bunch of bullets into a black man named Wilbert Dobbs. I remember that case, too.”

  “That was a different story and a righteous shoot. Dobbs was a murderer who drew down on Sheehan. He was cleared by the department, the DA, everybody.”

  “But not a jury of his peers. That was one of Howard’s cases. He sued your friend and he won.”

  “It was bullshit. The case went to trial a few months after the Rodney King thing. There was no way a white cop who had shot a black man was going to get a clean verdict in this town back then.”

  “Be careful, Detective, you’re revealing too much of yourself.”

  “Look, what I said was the truth. Deep down, you know it was the truth. How come the moment the truth might be uncomfortable people raise the race card?”

  “Let’s just drop this, Detective Bosch. You have your belief in your friend and I admire that. I guess we’ll see what happens when the lawyer who inherits this case from Howard brings it to trial.”

  Bosch nodded and was thankful for the truce. The accusatory discussion had made him feel uncomfortable.

  “What else have you held back?” he asked, to try to move on.

  “That’s pretty much it. Spent all day in here to basically hold one file back.”

  She blew her breath out and suddenly seemed very tired.

  “You doing okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. I think it was good for me to stay busy. I haven’t had much time to think about what has happened. I’m sure I will tonight.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Any more reporters come around?”

  “A couple. I gave them a sound bite and they went on their merry way. They all think the city’s going to cut loose over this.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think if a cop did this, there’s no telling what’s going to happen. And if a cop didn’t do it, there will be people who just won’t believe it. But you already know that.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “One thing you should know about the trial map.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Despite what you said about Frank Sheehan a moment ago, Howard was out to prove Harris innocent.”

  Bosch hiked his shoulders.

  “I thought he already was in the criminal trial.”

  “No, he was found not guilty. There’s a difference. Howard was going to prove his innocence by proving who did it.”

  Bosch stared at her a long moment, wondering how he should proceed.

  “Does it say in that trial map who that was?”

  “No. Like I said, there was just an outline of the opener. But it’s in there. He was going to tell the jury that he would deliver the murderer to them. Those were his words. ‘Deliver the murderer to you.’ He just didn’t write who that was. It would have been a bad opener, if he did. It would give it away to the defense and make for an anticlimactic moment later in trial when he revealed who this person was.”

  Bosch was silent as he thought about this. He didn’t know how much weight to give what she had told him. Elias was a showman, in and out of court. Revealing a killer in court was Perry Mason stuff. It almost never happened.

  “I’m sorry but I probably shouldn’t have told you that,” she said.

  “Why did you?”

  “Because if others knew this was his strategy, it could have been a motive.”

  “You mean the real killer of that little girl came back to kill Elias.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “Did you read the depos?” he asked.

  “No, not enough time. I’m giving all depositions to you because the defense — in this case the city attorney’s office — would have been furnished copies. So I’m not giving you something you wouldn’t already have access to.”

  “What about the computer?”

  “I looked through it very quickly. It appears to be depositions and other information out of the public file. Nothing privileged.”

  “Okay.”

  Bosch started to get up. He was thinking about how many trips down to the car it would take him to move the files.

  “Oh, one other thing.”

  She reached down to the box on the floor and came up with a manila file. She opened it on the desk, revealing two envelopes. Bosch leaned over the desk to see.

  “This was in the Harris stuff. I don’t know what it means.”

  Both envelopes were addressed to Elias at his office. No return addresses. Both were postmarked Hollywood, one mailed five weeks earlier and the other three weeks earlier.

  “There’s a single page with a line in each. Nothing that makes sense to me.”

  She started opening one of the envelopes.

  “Uh . . . ,” Bosch began.

  She stopped, holding the envelope in her hand.


  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I was thinking about prints.”

  “I already handled these. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, go ahead, I guess.”

  She finished opening the envelope, unfolded the page on the desk and turned it so Bosch could read it. There was one typed line at the top of the page. dot the i humbert humbert “Humbert humbert . . . ,” Bosch said.

  “It’s the name of a character from literature — or what some people consider literature,” Entrenkin said. “Lolita, by Nabokov.”

  “Right.”

  Bosch noticed that a notation had been written in pencil at the bottom of the page.

  #2 – 3/12

  “That was probably Howard’s marking,” Entrenkin said. “Or someone in his office.”

  She opened the next envelope, the more recently mailed of the two, and unfolded the letter. Bosch leaned over again. license plates prove his innocense “Looks to me like they’re obviously from the same person,” Entrenkin said. “Also, notice that innocence is spelled wrong.”

  “Right.”

  There was also a pencil notation at the bottom of the page.

  #3 – 4/5

  Bosch pulled his briefcase up onto his lap and opened it. He took out the evidence envelope that contained the letter Elias had been carrying in his inside suit pocket when gunned down.

  “Elias was carrying this when he . . . when he got on Angels Flight. I forgot that the crime scene people gave it to me. It might be good if you are here observing when I open it. It’s got the same postmark as those two. It was mailed to him Wednesday. This one I want to preserve for prints.”

  He took a pair of rubber gloves out of the cardboard dispenser in his case and put them on. He then carefully removed the letter and opened it. He unfolded a piece of paper similar to the first two. Again there was one line typed on the page. he knows you know As Bosch stared at the page he felt the slight flutter in his heart that he knew came with the surge of adrenaline.

  “Detective Bosch, what does this mean?”

  “I don’t know. But I sure wish I had opened it sooner.”

  There was no pencil notation on the bottom of the third page. Elias hadn’t gotten around to it, apparently.

  “It looks like we’re missing one,” Bosch said. “These are marked two and three and this one came after — this one would be four.”

  “I know. But I haven’t found anything that would be number one. Nothing in the files. Maybe he threw it out, not realizing it meant something until the second one came.”

  “Maybe.”

  He thought about the letters for a moment. He was mostly going on instinct and premonition, but he felt the charge sustaining in his blood. He felt he had found his focus. This exhilarated him but at the same time he also felt a bit foolish at having unknowingly carried such a potentially key piece of the case around in his briefcase now for about twelve hours.

  “Did Howard ever talk to you about this case?” he asked.

  “No, we never talked about each other’s work,” Entrenkin said. “We had a rule. You see, we knew that what we were doing was . . . something that wouldn’t be understood — the inspector general with one of the department’s most vocal and well-known critics.”

  “Not to mention him being married and all.”

  Her face turned hard.

  “Look, what is wrong with you? One minute we’re getting along fine and maybe making some progress on this and the next you just want to antagonize me.”

  “What’s wrong is that I wish you would save the we-knew-it-was-wrong sermon for somebody else. I find it hard to believe you two didn’t talk about the LAPD when you were alone up in that apartment.”

  Bosch saw pure fire in her eyes.

  “Well, I don’t give a good goddamn what you find hard to believe, Detective.”

  “Look, we made our deal. I’m not going to tell anyone. If I make trouble for you, you can make trouble for me. If I did tell even my partners, you know what they’d say? They’d say I was crazy for not treating you as a suspect. That’s what I should be doing but I’m not. I’m flying on pure instinct and that can be scary. So to make up for it I’m looking for any edge or piece of luck or help I can get.”

  She was silent a moment before responding.

  “I appreciate what you are doing for me, Detective. But I am not lying to you. Howard and I never spoke in detail about his cases or my work with the department. Never in detail. The one thing I remember him saying about the Harris case is so vague as to defy interpretation. But if you must know what it was, I will tell you. He told me to brace myself because he was going to blow the department and a few of the city’s big shots out of the water on this one. I didn’t ask him what he meant.”

  “And when was that?”

  “That was Tuesday night.”

  “Thank you, Inspector.”

  Bosch got up and walked around a bit. He found himself at the window staring out at Anthony Quinn in shadows. He looked at his watch and saw it was almost six. He was supposed to rendezvous with Edgar and Rider at seven at the Hollywood station.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” he asked, without turning back to Entrenkin.

  “What does it mean?”

  He turned to her.

  “That if Elias was on to something and got close to identifying the killer — the real killer — then it wasn’t a cop who put him down.”

  She thought a moment and said, “You’re only looking at it from one side.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “Say he was about to go to trial and pull the real killer out of his hat. Conclusively. That would put the lie to the police evidence, wouldn’t it? So proving Harris innocent would at the same time prove the cops framed him. If the real killer knew Howard was on to him, yes he could have come after him. But say a cop knew that Howard was going to prove that that cop framed Harris, he could have come at him, too.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “It’s always the cops with you. Maybe the frame was in place before the cops even showed up.”

  He shook his head again, more emphatically, as if warding off a thought.

  “I don’t know what I’m saying. There was no frame. It’s too farfetched.”

  Entrenkin watched him for a long moment.

  “Whatever you say, Detective. Just never say I didn’t warn you.”

  Bosch ignored her statement. He looked at the boxes on the floor. For the first time he noticed a two-wheeled trolley leaning against the wall near the door. Entrenkin followed his eyes to it.

  “I called the security guy and told him we needed to move some boxes. He brought it up.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “I guess I better get this stuff to my car. Do you still have the search warrant or did Miss Langwiser take it? I need to fill out the receipt.”

  “I have it and I’ve already catalogued the files. You just need to sign it.”

  Bosch nodded and walked over to the trolley. He remembered something and turned back to her.

  “What about the file we were looking at when you came in this morning? With the photo in it.”

  “What about it? It’s in the box there.”

  “Well, I mean . . . uh . . . what do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think about it. If you’re asking me if I believed Howard Elias was involved with that woman I would say no.”

  “We asked his wife today if it was possible he was having an affair and she said no, it was not possible.”

  “I get your point. But I still think it’s impossible. Howard was a well-known man in this city. First of all, he would hardly have to pay for sex. And secondly, he was smart enough to know that he would be vulnerable to extortion from these people if they recognized him.”

  “Then what was the file doing in his desk?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. It had to be part of a case but I don’t know which one. I looked at every file in the office today and
didn’t find anything that connects to it.”

  Bosch just nodded. His mind was already off the file and back on the mystery letters, the last one in particular. His take on it was that it was a warning to Elias. Someone had discovered that the lawyer was in possession of a dangerous piece of information. Bosch was feeling more certain that the investigation, the true investigation, should stem from that note.