Lost Light (2003)

by Michael Connelly

  Which meant I had spent the night in federal lockup for nothing and Milton had been killed while pursuing what amounted to nothing, a wild goose chase. I tried not to think about this and moved on with the story.

  “When Marty Gessler got that hit, she called up Jack Dorsey because his name was on the list when it was circulated to other law enforcement agencies. It went from there.”

  “You’re saying that Dorsey then put two and two together and came up with Simonson,” Lindell said. “Maybe he knew about the forgery or maybe he knew about something else. But he knew enough to know. He went to Simonson and cut himself in.”

  I noticed that we were all nodding. The story worked.

  “Dorsey had money problems,” I added. “The insurance investigator on this did routine background checks on all the cops involved. Dorsey was in debt up to his neck, had two kids in college and two still to go.”

  “Everybody’s got money problems,” Rider said angrily. “It’s no excuse.”

  That made us all silent for a long moment and then I took up the story again.

  “There was just one problem at that point.”

  “Agent Gessler,” Rider said. “She knew too much. She had to disappear.”

  Rider didn’t know anything about Lindell’s relationship with Gessler, and Lindell did little to reveal it. He just sat quietly, his eyes down. I moved the story forward.

  “My guess is that Simonson and his guys played Dorsey along while they took care of the Gessler problem. Dorsey knew what they did, but what could he do or say about it? He was in too deep. Then Simonson took care of him in Nat’s. Cross and the bartender were window dressing.”

  Rider squinted her eyes and shook her head.

  “What?” Lindell asked.

  “Doesn’t work for me,” she said. “There’s a disconnect there. With Gessler, she’s gone without a trace. Very smooth. Three years later and who knows where the body is?”

  I was cringing for Lindell’s sake but tried not to show it.

  “But with Dorsey, it’s a shoot-out at the OK Corral. Dorsey, Cross, the bartender. Two completely different styles. One smooth as smoke, the other a blood bath.”

  “Well,” I said, “with Dorsey, they wanted it to look like a robbery gone wrong. If he just disappeared, then the obvious thing to do would be to go back over the old cases. Simonson didn’t want that. So he orchestrated the big blowout so the investigators would think robbery.”

  “I still don’t buy it. I think they’re different. Look, I don’t remember all the details but didn’t Marty Gessler disappear while driving home through the Sepulveda Pass?”

  “That’s right. Somebody bumped her and she pulled over.”

  “Okay, then here’s an armed and trained agent. Are you going to tell me Simonson and these guys got her to pull over by bumping her car and then they got the best of her? Uh-uh, guys. I say, no way. Not without a fight. Not without somebody seeing something. I think she stopped because she felt safe. She stopped for a cop.”

  She pointed at me and nodded when she said the last line. Lindell brought a fist down hard on the table. Rider had convinced him. I had defended my theory but now saw the cracks in it. I started thinking Rider might be right.

  I noticed Rider looking at Lindell. She was finally picking up the vibe.

  “You really knew her, didn’t you?” she asked.

  Lindell just nodded to the question. Then he brought his eyes up to stare angrily at me.

  “And you blew it, Bosch,” he said.

  “I blew it? What are you talking about?”

  “With your little stunt last night. Going in there like fucking Steve McQueen. What did you think, that they’d be so spooked they’d march right down to Parker Center and turn themselves in?”

  “Roy,” Rider said, “I think we —”

  “You wanted to provoke them, didn’t you? You wanted them to come after you.”

  “That’s crazy,” I said calmly. “Four against one? The only reason I’m alive right now and talking to you is because I saw them tailing me and because Milton distracted them long enough for me to get out of the house.”

  “Yeah, that’s just it. You saw the tail. You saw it because you were looking for it and you were looking for it because you wanted it. You blew it, Bosch. If that kid in the hospital doesn’t wake up with a working brain, then we’ll never know what happened to Marty or where —”

  He stopped before his voice lost it. He stopped speaking but didn’t stop staring at me.

  “Guys,” Rider said quietly, “let’s take a break here. Let’s stop questioning motives and accusing. We all want the same thing here.”

  Lindell slowly and emphatically shook his head.

  “No, not Harry Bosch,” he said quietly, his eyes still on mine. “It’s always just what he wants. He’s always been a private investigator, even when he carried a badge.”

  I looked from Lindell to Rider. She didn’t say anything but her eyes dropped away from mine, and in their movement was a tell. I saw her confirmation.

  42

  It was dawn by the time I got back to my house. The place was still a swarm of police and media activity and the police would not let me back in. The house and canyon comprised a major crime scene and as such they had commandeered custody of it. I was told to try back in a day, maybe two. They would not even let me go back inside to get fresh clothes or any other belongings. I was strictly persona non grata. I was asked to stay away. The one concession I was able to talk my way into was my car. Two uniform cops—Hurwitz and Swanny, who had caught the precious overtime assignment—cleared room for me among the police and media vehicles and I backed the Mercedes out of the carport and took off.

  The adrenaline rush that came with the near-death experience of the night before had long since ebbed away. I was exhausted but had no place to go. I drove aimlessly along Mulholland until I came to Laurel Canyon Boulevard and then took a right and drove down into the Valley.

  I started getting a sense of where I was headed but knew it was too early. When I got to Ventura I took another right and pulled into the parking lot at the Dupar’s. I decided that I needed some high octane, and coffee and pancakes would fit the bill. Before getting out of the car I got the cell phone out and turned it on. I called the numbers I had for Janis Langwiser and Sandor Szatmari and got no answers but left messages that the morning meeting was canceled because of circumstances beyond my control.

  The phone’s screen showed that I had messages waiting. I called to pick them up and listened to four messages left through the night by Keisha Russell, the Times reporter. She started out very cool and concerned about my well-being and wanting to talk to me at my convenience to make sure I was okay. By the third message her voice had taken on a high-pitched urgency, and in the fourth she demanded that I make good on our deal in which I promised to talk to her if anything happened with what I was working on.

  “Something’s obviously happened now, Harry. You’ve got four on the floor on Woodrow Wilson. Call me like you promised me you would.”

  “Yes, dear,” I said as I erased the message.

  The last message was from Alexander Taylor, the box office champion. There was a proprietary tone to his voice. He wanted me to know that this story was his.

  “Mr. Bosch, I see you are all over the news. I am assuming that the nastiness on the hill last night is related to my heist. There were four robbers; the news says there are four dead men on your property. I want you to know that the offer I made still stands. But I’ll double it. One hundred thousand as an option on the story. The back end is open to negotiation and we can talk about that when I hear back from you. I will give you my assistant’s private number. Call me back. I’ll be waiting.”

  He gave a number but I didn’t bother writing it down. I thought about the money for all of five seconds and then erased the message and closed the phone.

  As I walked into the restaurant I wondered about what constituted circumstances beyo
nd my control and what Lindell had said at the end of the interview in North Hollywood. I thought about fighting monsters and what had been said about me and to me in the past, and what I had said to Peoples in that restaurant booth just a few nights earlier. I wondered if a subtle slide into the abyss was any different from the kind of swan dive Milton had taken.

  I knew I would have to think about this and the motives behind my actions of the last ten hours. But I soon decided it would have to keep. There was still a mystery to solve and as soon as I refueled I was going after it.

  I sat at the counter and ordered the number two special without looking at a menu. The waitress with the wide hips poured my coffee and was about to put the order in at the kitchen window when somebody took the stool next to me and said, “I’ll have coffee, too.”

  I recognized the voice and turned and saw Keisha Russell smiling at me as she put her bag down on the floor between us. She had followed me down the hill.

  “I should’ve known.”

  “Harry, if you don’t want to be followed all you have to do is return your calls.”

  “I just got your messages five minutes ago, Keisha.”

  “Well, now you don’t have to call me back.”

  “I’m not talking to you. Not yet.”

  “Harry, your house is like a war zone. Bodies all over. Are you all right?”

  “I’m sitting here, aren’t I? I’m all right. But I still can’t talk to you. I don’t know how this is going to play out and I’m not going to say anything that shows up in the paper and might be at odds with the official line. That’s suicide.”

  “You mean you don’t want to tell me the truth just in case what they put out isn’t.”

  “Keisha, you know me. I will talk to you when I can. Why don’t you let me have my coffee and eat in peace now?”

  “Just answer one question. It’s not even a question. Just confirm for me that whatever happened up there is related to what you called me about. About Martha Gessler.”

  I shook my head in frustration. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to shake her without giving her something.

  “Actually, I can’t confirm that, and that’s the truth. But, look, if I give you something that will help you, will you let me be until there is a time I can talk about it?”

  Before she answered, the waitress slid a plate in front of me. I looked down at a short stack of buttered pancakes with a fried egg and two pieces of bacon forming an X on top. She then put down a small pitcher of maple syrup. I grabbed it and started pouring syrup over everything.

  “My God,” Russell said. “You eat that and I’m not sure there will ever be a time you can talk about it. You are killing yourself, Harry.”

  I looked up at the waitress, who was standing there writing up my check. I gave her a what-are-you-going-to-do smile and shrugged.

  “Are you paying for her coffee?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  She put the bill down on the counter and walked away. I looked at Russell.

  “Why don’t you say that louder next time?”

  “Sorry, Harry, but I don’t want you to get fat and old and ugly. You’re my bud. I want you around.”

  I saw through all of that. She hid her motives the way the bartenders I’d seen the night before hid their nipples.

  “Do we have a deal? I give you something and you hit the road, leave me alone?”

  She took a sip from her free coffee and smiled.

  “Deal.”

  “Go pull your clips on the Angella Benton case.”

  She narrowed her eyes. She didn’t remember it.

  “You didn’t do much with it at first, then it blew up big when it was connected to the movie set heist over on Selma. Eidolon Productions? Ring a bell?”

  She almost came off her stool.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” she said a little too loud. “The four on the floor are those guys?”

  “Not quite. Three of them are those guys. Plus the one they took to the hospital.”

  “Then who is the fourth?”

  “I gave you what I’m giving you, Keisha. I’m going to eat now.”

  I turned to my plate and started cutting my food up.

  “This is so cool!” she said. “This is going to be big.”

  As if four bodies in the Cahuenga Pass wasn’t already big. I took my first bite and the syrup hit me like a sugar bullet.

  “Great,” I said.

  She reached down to her bag and started getting up.

  “I’ve gotta go, Harry. Thanks for the coffee.”

  “One last thing.”

  I took another bite and turned to her and started talking with my mouth full.

  “Check out Los Angeles Magazine seven months ago. They did this story on these four guys who own all the hot bars in Hollywood. It called them the kings of the night crawlers. Check it out.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, check it out.”

  She leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. She had never done that before, when I carried a badge.

  “Thanks, Harry. I’ll call you.”

  “I bet you will.”

  I watched her glide quickly through the restaurant and out. I turned back to my plate. The egg had been over easy and cutting it up had made a mess of things. But at that moment it tasted like the best thing I had ever eaten.

  Finally alone, I considered the question Kiz Rider had raised during the interview about how the style of the Marty Gessler disappearance was so different from the massacre at Nat’s. I was now sure Rider was right. The crimes had been designed, if not carried out, by different perpetrators.

  “Dorsey,” I said out loud.

  Maybe too loud. A man three stools down turned and looked at me until I turned and stared him back to his coffee cup.

  Most of my records and notes were in the house and not attainable. I had the murder book in the Mercedes but it contained nothing from the Gessler case. From memory I worked on the details of the FBI agent’s disappearance. The car left at the airport. The use of her credit card up near the desert to buy more gas than her car could hold. I tried to fit these facts under the new heading of Dorsey. It was hard to make it work. Dorsey had been working crimes from one side of the law for nearly thirty years. He was too smart, he had seen too much, to leave a trail like that.

  But by the time I finished my plate I thought I had something. Something that worked. I looked around to make sure the man three stools down and nobody else was looking at me. I poured a little more syrup onto my plate and then dipped my fork into it and ate it. I was about to dip again when the wide hips of the waitress appeared in front of me.

  “Finished?”

  “Uh, yes, sure. Thank you.”

  “More coffee?”

  “Can I get a to-go cup?”

  “Yes, you may.”

  She took the plate and my syrup away. I thought about my next moves until she came back with the coffee and reworked my bill. I left two bucks on the counter and took the bill to the cashier, where I noticed bottles of the restaurant’s syrup were on display and for sale. The cashier noticed my gaze.

  “How about a bottle of syrup to go?”

  I was tempted but decided to stick with the coffee.

  “Nah, I think I’ve had enough sweetness for today. Thanks.”

  “You need sweetness. It’s a nasty world out there.”

  I agreed with her, paid my bill and left with my cup of harsh black coffee. Back in the car I opened the phone and called Roy Lindell’s cell number.

  “This is Roy.”

  “This is Bosch. We still talking?”

  “What do you want, an apology? Fuck you, you’re not getting one.”

  “No, I can live without an apology from you, Roy. So fuck you, too. I want to know if you still want to find her.”

  There was no need to use a name.

  “What do you think, Bosch?”

  “Okay, then.�
��

  I thought for a moment about how to do this.

  “Bosch, you still there?”

  “Yeah, listen, I’ve got to go see somebody right now. Can you meet me in two hours?”

  “Two hours. Where?”