Lost Light (2003)

by Michael Connelly

  I opened the briefcase Burnett Biggar had given me to carry the second round of equipment I borrowed from him along with the memory card and the three CDs containing copies of the clock surveillance. Andre had made the copies. I put the card and the CDs on her desk.

  “This is a surveillance I took. I want you to hold the original—the memory card—in a safe place. I want you to hold an envelope with one of the CDs and a letter from me. I want your private office number. I’m going to call it every night by midnight and tell you I am okay. In the morning you come in and if the message is there, then everything is all right. If you come in and there is no message from me, then you deliver the envelope to a reporter at the Times named Josh Meyer.”

  “Josh Meyer. That name is familiar. Is he on courts?”

  “I think he used to cover local crime stuff. Now he’s on terrorism. I think he works out of D.C. now.”

  “Terrorism, Harry?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She checked her watch.

  “I’ve got time. I’ve also got a computer.”

  I first took fifteen minutes to tell her about my private investigation and everything that had happened since Lawton Cross had called me out of the blue and I had pulled down the box of old cases off the closet shelf. Then I let her put the CD in her computer and watch the surveillance video. She didn’t recognize Lawton Cross until I told her who he was. She reacted with appropriate outrage when she viewed the section with Agents Milton and Carney. I had her turn it off before Danny Cross came into the room and comforted her husband.

  “First question, were they real agents?” she asked after the computer kicked the disk out.

  “Yeah, they’re part of the anti-terrorism squad working out of Westwood.”

  She shook her head in disgust.

  “If this ever gets to the Times and then onto TV, then —”

  “I don’t want it to get there. Right now, that is the worst-case scenario.”

  “Why not, Harry? Those are rogue agents. At least that one Milton is. And the other is just as guilty for standing there and letting him do it.”

  She gestured toward her computer, where the surveillance video had been replaced by a screensaver that showed a bucolic scene of a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the waves rolling endlessly to shore.

  “Do you think this is what the attorney general and the Congress of the United States wanted when they enacted legislation that changed and streamlined the bureau’s rules and tools after September eleventh?”

  “No, I don’t,” I answered. “But they should have known what could happen. What’s the saying, absolute power corrupts absolutely? Something like that. Anyway, it’s a given that this sort of thing would happen. They should have known. The difference here is that that isn’t some Middle Eastern bag man on there. That’s an American citizen. He’s a former cop and he’s a goddamn quadriplegic because he took a bullet in the line of duty.”

  Langwiser nodded somberly.

  “That is exactly why you should get this out. It has to be see—”

  “Janis, are you working for me or should I gather all this up and just find somebody else?”

  She threw her hands up in surrender.

  “Yes, I’m working for you, Harry. I’m just saying that this should not be allowed to just go by.”

  “I’m not talking about letting it go by. I just don’t want it out yet. I need to use it as leverage first. I need to get what I want out of it first.”

  “Which is what?”

  “I was going to get to that but you started in like Ralph Nader.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. I’m all calmed down now. Tell me your plan, Harry.”

  And so I did.

  25

  Kate Mantilini’s on Wilshire Boulevard had a row of high-backed booths that afforded their inhabitants more interior privacy than the lap dance cubicles in the back rooms of any of the strip clubs in town. That was why I chose the restaurant for the meeting. It was very private yet very public. I was there fifteen minutes before the appointed time, got a booth with a window fronting Wilshire and waited. Special Agent Peoples got there a little early, too. He had to walk along the row of booths and look into each one to find me. He then slipped silently and morosely into the space across from me.

  “Agent Peoples, glad you could make it.”

  “I didn’t feel like I had much choice.”

  “I guess you didn’t.”

  He flipped open one of the menus that were on the table.

  “Never been here before. Food any good?”

  “It’s not bad. Good chicken pot pie on Thursdays.”

  “It’s not Thursday.”

  “And you’re not here to eat.”

  He looked up from the menu and gave me his best deadeye stare but he didn’t have the juice this time. We both knew I was holding the high card this time. I looked out the window and glanced up and down Wilshire.

  “You have your people out there, Agent Peoples? Are they waiting for me?”

  “I came alone as instructed by your attorney.”

  “Well, just so you’re clear. If your people grab me again or make any move against my attorney, then the consequences are that the surveillance recording you were e-mailed will go to the media and out across the Internet. There are people who will know if I disappear. They’ll put it out, no hesitation.”

  Peoples shook his head.

  “You keep saying that. ‘Disappear.’ This isn’t South America, Bosch. And we’re not Nazis.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Sitting in this nice restaurant it sure doesn’t seem so. But when I was sitting in that cube on the ninth floor and nobody knew I was there, that was a different story. Mouse Aziz and those other guys you’ve got up there probably don’t know the difference between California and Chile right now either.”

  “And you are defending them now, is that it? The men who would like to see this country burn to the ground.”

  “I’m not de—”

  I stopped when the waitress came to the booth. She said her name was Kathy and asked if we were ready to order. Peoples ordered coffee and I ordered coffee and an ice cream sundae with no whipped cream. After Kathy left, Peoples looked at me funny.

  “I’m retired. I can have a sundae.”

  “Some retirement.”

  “They make good sundaes here and they’re open late. That’s a good combination.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Did you ever see the movie Heat? This is the place where Pacino the cop meets De Niro the burglar. It’s where they both tell each other they won’t hesitate to put the other down if it comes to that.”

  Peoples nodded and we held each other’s eyes for a long moment. Message delivered. I decided to get down to the business at hand.

  “So what did you think of my clock camera?”

  The façade dropped and Peoples suddenly looked wounded. He looked as though he had been thrown to the lions. He knew what the future held for him if that recording got out. Milton worked for him; therefore he’d take the fall, too. The Rodney King tape cut a swath through the LAPD that went all the way to the top. Peoples was smart enough to know he would get trampled if he didn’t contain this problem.

  “I was disgusted by what I saw. First off, I apologize to you and my plan is to go out to see that man, Lawton Cross, and apologize as well.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “Don’t think for a moment that that is how we operate. That it is the status quo. That I condone it. Agent Milton is gone. He’s out. I knew that the moment I saw the recording. I’m not promising you he will be prosecuted, but he won’t be carrying a badge for very long. Not an FBI badge. I’ll see to that.”

  I nodded.

  “Right, you’ll see to that.”

  I said it with high-octane sarcasm and I could see it put some color in his cheeks. The color of anger.

  “You called the meeting, Bosch. What do you wan
t?”

  There it was. The question I was waiting for.

  “You know what I want. I want you people off my back. I want my files and my notes back. I want Lawton Cross’s file back. I want a copy of the LAPD murder book—which I know you must have—and I want access to Aziz and what you have on him.”

  “What we have on him is classified. It’s a national security matter. We can’t —”

  “Declassify it. I want to know how strong the connection is to my movie heist. I want to know what you have on his whereabouts on two nights. All that federal intelligence has got to be good for something and I want it. And then I want to talk to him.”

  “Who? Aziz? That’s not going to happen.”

  I leaned across the table.

  “Yes, it is. Because the alternative to that is that everybody who has a TV or America Online is going to see what your boy Milton did to a helpless man in a wheelchair. Make that a highly decorated retired cop who had the use of his limbs and fucking life taken from him while in the line of duty. You think the Rodney King tape did some damage to the LAPD? You wait and see what happens with this one. I guarantee you that Milton and you and your whole little ninth-floor BAM squad will be cut loose by the bureau and the attorney general and everybody else faster than you can say civil rights indictment. You understand, Special Agent Peoples?”

  I gave him a moment to respond but he didn’t. His eyes were fixed and staring out through the window to Wilshire.

  “And if you think for one minute I won’t pull the trigger on this, then you haven’t done your homework on me.”

  This time I waited him out and eventually his eyes came back through the window and to me. The waitress came and put down our coffees and told me my sundae was on the way. Neither Peoples nor I said thank you.

  “Believe me,” Peoples said, “I know you will pull the trigger. You are that kind of guy, Bosch. I know your kind. You will put yourself and your own interests ahead of the greater good.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘greater good’ bullshit. This isn’t about that. You give me what I want and you get rid of Milton, then you get to cruise along like nothing ever happened. The recording is never seen. How’s that for greater good?”

  Peoples leaned forward to sip his coffee. As he had done in the cube on the ninth floor he burned his mouth and grimaced. He pushed the cup and saucer away on the table and then slid to the edge of the booth before looking back at me.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Twenty-four hours. I hear from you by this time tomorrow night or all bets are off. I go public with it.”

  He stood up and remained next to the booth looking at me and still holding a napkin. He nodded his agreement.

  “Let me ask you something,” he said. “If you’re here, who used your credit card tonight to buy dinner at Commander’s Palace in Vegas?”

  I smiled. They had been tracking me.

  “A friend. Is that a nice place, Commander’s Palace?”

  He nodded.

  “One of the best. I’ve been there. The shrimp in the gumbo is as soft as marshmallow.”

  “That’s great, I guess.”

  “Expensive too. Your friend put over a hundred bucks on your AmEx. Dinner for two it looked like.”

  He tossed his napkin onto the table.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  A moment after he was gone the waitress brought my sundae. I asked her for the check and she said she’d bring it right away.

  I poked a spoon into the fudge and ice cream but I didn’t taste it. I sat there thinking about what Peoples had just said. I wasn’t sure if there was an implied threat in his telling me he knew somebody was using my credit card. Maybe he even knew who. But the thing I thought about the most was what he had said about it being dinner for two at Commander’s Palace. That “we” thing again. Just as with Eleanor, I couldn’t let it go.

  26

  Since the Las Vegas ruse was no longer in play I drove out to Burbank Airport, turned in my rental and took the tram out to the long-term lot to collect my car. I had borrowed Lawton Cross’s dolly and it was in the back of the Mercedes. Before driving off I got it out and slid underneath the car. I detached the satellite tracker and the heat sensor and slid under the pickup truck parked in the next space. I attached the equipment to the pickup’s underside and then got into the Mercedes. As I backed out I saw that the pickup had an Arizona plate. I figured if Peoples didn’t dispatch somebody soon to collect the bureau’s equipment, then they’d have to chase it to the next state. That left me smiling to myself when I pulled up to the parking booth to pay.

  “You must have had a nice flight,” said the woman who took my ticket.

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that. I made it back alive.”

  I went home and called Janis Langwiser on her cell phone as soon as I got in the door. She had changed my plan a little bit. She didn’t want me leaving a message on her office line every night. She insisted I call her directly on her cell.

  “How did it go?”

  “Well, it went. Now I just have to wait. I gave him until tomorrow night. I guess we’ll know by then.”

  “And how did he take it?”

  “About what we expected. Not well. But I think by the end he saw the light. I think he’ll call tomorrow.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Everything set on your end?”

  “I think so. The memory card’s in the office safe and I’ll wait to hear from you. If I don’t, then I’ll know what to do.”

  “Good, Janis. Thanks.”

  “Good night, Harry.”

  I hung up and thought about things. Everything seemed to be in place. It was Peoples who would have to make the next move. I lifted the phone again and called Eleanor. She answered immediately, no sleep in her voice.

  “Sorry, it’s Harry. Are you playing?”

  “Yes and no. I’m playing but I’m not doing well so I took a break. I’m standing outside the Bellagio watching the fountains.”

  I nodded. I could picture her there at the railing, the dancing fountains lit up in front of her. I could hear the music and the splash of water over the phone.

  “How was Commander’s Palace?”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “Had a visit from the bureau tonight.”

  “That was quick.”

  “Yeah. I heard that’s a good restaurant. Shrimp like marshmallow. Did you like it?”

  “It’s nice. I like the one in New Orleans better. The food’s the same but the original is the original, you know?”

  “Yeah. Plus it’s probably not so great eating by yourself.”

  I almost cursed out loud at how lame and transparent that was.

  “I wasn’t alone. I took a friend that I play with. One of the girls. You didn’t tell me there was a spending limit, Harry.”

  “No, I know. There wasn’t.”

  I needed to steer away from this. We both knew what I had been asking about and it was getting embarrassing, especially considering there might be other ears listening.

  “You didn’t notice anybody watching you, did you?”

  There was a pause.

  “No. And I hope you didn’t get me into any kind of trouble, Harry.”

  “No, you’re fine. I’m just calling to let you know the scam is over. The bureau knows I’m still here.”

  “Damn, I never got the chance to go shopping and get myself that present you promised.”

  I smiled. She was kidding and I could tell.

  “That’s okay, you can still do that.”

  “Is everything okay, Harry?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  Not on this line, I thought but didn’t say.

  “Maybe when I see you next time. I’m too tired right now.”

  “Okay, then I’ll let you go. What should I do with your cards? And you know you left your bag on my backseat.”

  She said it like
she knew I had done it on purpose.

  “Um, why don’t you just hold on to that stuff for now and maybe when I get past this thing I’m working on I’ll come back out and get it from you.”

  It was a long time before she answered.