Lost Light (2003)

by Michael Connelly

  Soon I heard the other one call for him from further down the hillside.

  “B.B., you got him? Hey, Beeb!”

  I backed away from Banks and crouched in the bushes ten feet away. I pulled the gun from my pants. In the moonlight I could not tell the make. It was a black steel pistol with no safety. Probably a Glock. I then realized it was probably my own gun. It must have been the one Milton had shoved into my neck. Banks had taken it from his body.

  I heard the other one approaching in the brush. He was coming from my left and would cross within five feet of me when he approached Banks. I waited until I heard him and knew he was close.

  “Banks, what are you doing? You pussy, get up and —”

  He shut up when he felt the barrel of the gun against his neck.

  “Drop the gun or you die right here.”

  I heard it hit the ground. With my free hand I reached up and grabbed the back of his collar and pulled him around and then back underneath the shelter of the deck where we couldn’t be seen from above. We were both facing the lights of the canyon and the freeway below. He was the fourth king, the one in the magazine picture who had the bar towel over his shoulder. I couldn’t remember his name in all of the excitement. He’d been sitting at the bar at Chet’s with Banks.

  “What’s your name, asshole?”

  “Jimmy Fazio. Look, I —”

  “Shut up.”

  He was quiet. I leaned forward and whispered into his ear.

  “Look at the lights. You are going to die here, Jimmy Fazio. The lights are the last thing you’ll ever see.”

  “Please . . .”

  “Please? Is that what Angella Benton said? Did she say please to you?”

  “No, please, no, I mean, I wasn’t even there.”

  “Convince me.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Or die.”

  “Okay, it wasn’t me. Please believe me. It was Linus and Vaughn. It was their idea and they did it without even telling the rest of us. We couldn’t stop it because we didn’t know about it.”

  “Yeah, what else? You’re only alive because you’re talking.”

  “That’s why we shot Vaughn. Linus said we had to because he was going to take the money and pin the girl on Linus.”

  “What about Linus getting shot? Was that part of the plan?”

  He shook his head.

  “That wasn’t supposed to happen but we figured out how to make it work. Like a cover for us buying the clubs.”

  “Yeah, it worked all right. What about Marty Gessler and Jack Dorsey?”

  “Who?”

  I jammed the gun’s muzzle hard into his neck.

  “Don’t give me that shit. I want the whole goddamn story.”

  “I don’t —”

  “Faz! You fucking coward!”

  The voice came from above us. I looked up and saw the upper body of a man hanging down over the edge of the deck. His arms were extended, two hands on a gun. I let go of my captive and dove left just as the gunfire erupted. The shooter was Oliphant. He screamed as he fired. Just blindly screamed. The whole shelter area beneath the house lit up with the flashes. Slugs ricocheted off the iron beams. I came up on the side of one of the beams and fired three times in a quick burst at him. His shout cut off and I knew I’d hit him. I watched as he dropped his gun, lost his balance and fell the twenty feet down, making a heavy thud in the bushes.

  I looked around for Fazio and found him on the ground near Banks. He’d been hit in the upper chest but was still alive. It was too dark to see his eyes but I knew they were open and panicked, looking at me for help. I grabbed his jaw and turned his face to mine.

  “Can you talk?”

  “Uh . . . it hurts.”

  “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? Tell me about the FBI agent. Where is she? What happened to her?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Who killed the cop? Was that Linus, too?”

  “Linus . . .”

  “Is that a yes? Did Linus do it?”

  He didn’t answer. I was losing him. I lightly patted his cheeks and then shook him by the collar.

  “Come on, man, stay with me. Was that a yes? Fazio, did Linus Simonson kill the cop?”

  Nothing. He was gone. Then a voice came from behind me.

  “I think that would be a yes.”

  I turned. It was Simonson. He had found the trapdoor and come down out of the house behind me. He was holding a sawed-off shotgun. I slowly stood up, leaving my gun on the ground next to Fazio’s body and raising my hands. I backed away from Simonson, stepping further down the hill.

  “Cops on the payroll are always a pain in the ass,” he said. “I had to put an end to that pronto.”

  I took another step backwards, but for every step I took, Simonson did likewise. The shotgun was only three feet away. I knew I’d be unable to escape its kill range if I tried to make a move. All I could do was play for time. Somebody in the neighborhood had to have heard the shots and made a call.

  Simonson aimed the weapon at my heart.

  “I’m going to enjoy this. This one’s for Cozy.”

  “Cozy?” I asked, though I had already put it together. “Who the hell is Cozy?”

  “You hit him that day. With your bullets. And he didn’t make it.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “What do you think happened? He died in the back of the van.”

  “You buried him? Where?”

  “Not me. I was sort of busy that day, remember? They buried him. Cozy liked boats. They gave him a burial at sea, you could say.”

  I took another step back. Simonson followed. I was walking out from beneath the deck. If the cops ever showed up they could put a bead on him from above.

  “What about the FBI agent? What happened to Marty Gessler?”

  “See that’s the thing. When Dorsey told me about her and what the plan was, that was when I knew he had to go. I mean, he was —”

  The shotgun suddenly pointed skyward as the foot Simonson had put his weight down on went out from under him. He took a classic pratfall, landing on his back. I was on him then like a wild man. We rolled and fought for control of the shotgun. He was younger and stronger and quickly was able to hold the top position. But he was an inexperienced fighter. His focus was on controlling the struggle rather than on simply overpowering his opponent.

  I had my left hand wrapped around the snubbed barrel while the other was gripped at the trigger guard. I managed to squeeze my thumb into the guard behind his finger. I closed my eyes and an image came to me. Angella Benton’s hands. The image from memory and dreams. I channeled all my strength into my left arm and pushed. The angle of the gun shifted. I closed my eyes and depressed the trigger with my thumb. The loudest sound I have ever heard in my life roared through my head as the shotgun discharged. My face felt like it had caught on fire. I opened my eyes and looked up at Simonson and saw that he no longer had a face.

  He rolled off of me and an inhuman sound gurgled from the pulp that had been his face. His legs kicked like he was riding an invisible bicycle. He rolled back and forth as his hands balled into fists as tight as stones, and then he stopped and went still.

  Slowly, I sat up, registering what had happened. I touched my own face and found it intact. I was burned from the discharge gases but otherwise I was okay. My ears were ringing and for once I couldn’t hear the ever present sound of the freeway below.

  I saw a glint in the brush and reached for the object. It was a water bottle. It was full, unopened. I realized that Simonson had slipped on the water bottle I had knocked off the deck a few days before. And it had saved my life. I twisted the cap off the bottle and poured water over my face, washing away the blood and the sting of the burn.

  “Don’t move!”

  I looked up from my position and saw a man leaning over the deck railing, pointing another gun at me. The moon reflected off the badge on his uniform. The cops had finally arrived. I dropped the bottle and
spread my hands wide.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not moving.”

  I leaned back, my arms still spread. My head rested on the ground and I pulled great gulps of air into my lungs. The ringing in my ears was still there but I could now also hear my heart as it slowed its cadence to the normal beat of life. I looked up into the dark, sacred night, to the place where those not saved on earth wait for the rest of us above. Not yet, I thought. No, not yet.

  40

  While the cop on the deck above kept his gun on me his partner dropped through the trapdoor and made his way down the slope to me. He had a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other and the wild eyes of a man who has no idea what he has stepped into.

  “Roll over and put your hands behind your back,” he ordered, adrenaline drawing his voice high and tight.

  I did as I was instructed and he put his flashlight down on the ground as he cuffed my wrists, thankfully not in the style of the FBI. I tried to calmly talk to him.

  “Just so you know, I —”

  “I don’t want to know anything from you.”

  “— I’m LAPD retired. Out of Hollywood. Pulled the pin last year after twenty-five-plus.”

  “Good for you. Why don’t you save it for the suits?”

  My house was in North Hollywood Division. I knew there was no reason why they should know me or care.

  “Hey,” said the one from above. “What’s his name? Put the light on him.”

  The man on the ground put the light in my face from a foot away. It was blinding.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Harry Bosch. I worked homicide.”

  “Har—”

  “I know who he is, Swanny. He’s all right. Get the light out of his face.”

  Swanny took the light away.

  “Yeah, fine. But the cuffs stay on. The suits can sort it all—ah, Jesus!”

  He had put his light on the faceless body in the brush to my left. Linus Simonson, or what was left of him.

  “Don’t puke, Swanny,” came the voice from above. “It’s a crime scene.”

  “Fuck you, Hurwitz, I’m not gonna puke.”

  I heard him moving around. I tried to lift my head to watch him but the brush was too tall. I could only listen. It sounded like he was moving from body to body. I was right.

  “Hey, we got a live one down here! Call it in.”

  That would be Banks, I assumed. I was glad to hear it. I had the feeling I was going to need a survivor to back up my account. I figured that with Banks facing the fall by himself for the whole thing, he would cut a deal to save his ass and tell the story.

  I rolled over and sat up. The cop was kneeling next to Banks on the dirt below the deck. He looked over at me.

  “I didn’t tell you to move.”

  “I couldn’t breathe with my face in the dirt.”

  “Don’t fucking move again.”

  “Hey, Swanny,” Hurwitz called down. “The stiff in the house? He’s got a badge. FBI.”

  “Holy shit!”

  “Yeah, holy shit.”

  And they were right. It was a holy shit case. Within the hour the place was swarmed. By the LAPD. By the LAFD. By the FBI. By the media. By my count, there were six helicopters circling in the sky through most of the night, the cacophony so loud I found myself preferring the shotgun blast ringing in my ears.

  The LAFD used a chopper to bring Banks up out of the canyon on a stretcher. When they were done with him I called the paramedics over and they put a clear aloe-based gel over the gas burns on my face. They gave me an aspirin and told me the injuries were minor and that there would be no scarring. It felt to me like I’d had my face laser-peeled by a blind surgeon.

  I was uncuffed long enough to climb up the slope and then up through the trapdoor. In my house I was recuffed and made to sit on a couch in the living room. From there I could see Milton’s legs extending from the hallway as a crime scene team hovered over him.

  Once all of the suits started showing up it started getting serious. Most of them followed the same pattern. They came in, somberly studied Milton’s body, then walked through the living room without looking at me and out onto the deck, where they looked down at the other three bodies. Then they came back in, looked at me without saying a word and went into the kitchen, where somebody had taken it upon himself to open up my new bag of coffee and put the percolator into heavy rotation.

  This went on for at least two hours. At first I didn’t know any of them because they were North Hollywood detectives. But then the command decision was made to shift the investigation—LAPD’s part of it—to Robbery-Homicide Division. When the RHD dicks started showing up it started getting like old-home week. I knew many of them and had even worked side by side with some. It wasn’t until Kiz Rider showed up from the chief’s office that anybody thought to take the cuffs off my wrists. She angrily demanded that I be released from the bindings and when nobody made a move to do it, she did it herself.

  “You okay, Harry?”

  “I think I am now.”

  “Your face is red and kind of puffy. You want me to call paramedics?”

  “They already checked me out. Minor burns from getting too close to the wrong end of a shotgun.”

  “How do you want to do this? You know the score. You want to get a lawyer or can we talk?”

  “I’ll talk to you, Kiz. I’ll tell you the whole story. Otherwise, I’ll take the lawyer.”

  “I’m not in RHD anymore, Harry. You know that.”

  “You should be and you know that.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “Well, that’s the deal, Kiz. Take it or leave it. I’ve got a good lawyer.”

  She thought about it for a few moments.

  “All right, wait here for a minute and I’ll be right back.”

  She went out the front door to consult with the powers that be about my offer. While she was gone and I was waiting I saw Special Agent John Peoples come in and crouch next to Milton’s body. He then looked over at me and held my eyes. If he was trying to send me a message I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. But he knew I held something of his in the balance. His future.

  Rider came back inside and over to me.

  “This is the deal. It’s turning into a major gang bang. We’ve got FBI all over this. The guy on the floor is apparently from a terrorism squad and that trumps all. They’re not going to let you and me waltz off into the sunset.”

  “Okay, this is what I’ll do. I’ll talk to you and one agent. I want it to be Roy Lindell. Wake him up and bring him in and I’ll lay it all out for everybody. It’s got to be you and Roy or I lawyer up and everybody can figure it out for themselves.”

  She nodded and turned and went back out. I noticed that Peoples was no longer in the hallway but I hadn’t seen him leave.

  This time Rider was gone for a half hour. But when she came back she strode in with a command presence. I knew before she told me that the deal had been made. The case was hers, at least on the LAPD side of the ledger.

  “Okay, we’re going to go down the hill to North Hollywood Division. We’ll use a room there and they’ll tape it for us. Lindell is on his way there. This way everybody’s happy and everybody’s got a piece.”

  That was always the way. You had to walk the gauntlet of departmental and intra-agency politics just to get the job done. I was glad I no longer had a part of it.

  “You can stand up now, Harry,” Rider said. “I’ll drive.”

  I stood up.

  “I want to go out on the deck first. I want to look down there.”

  She let me go. I walked across the deck and looked down over the railing. Below, large crime scene lights had been erected. The slope was like an anthill with crime scene techs working all over the place. Crews from the medical examiner’s office were huddled over the bodies. Above it all the helicopters moved in a loud, multilevel choreography. I knew that whatever relationships I’d previously had with my neighbors were surel
y gone now.

  “Know what, Kiz?”

  “What, Harry?”

  “I think it’s time to sell this place.”

  “Yeah, good luck with that, Harry.”