Next it was Edgar’s turn. He announced the flavor-of-the-month screenwriter had been cleared through alibi and Edgar’s own gut instinct that the young man might have rightfully hated Aliso but was not of the personality type that would act on that hate with a twenty-two.
Edgar said he had also interviewed the employees at the garage where Aliso had his car washed and waxed while he went to Las Vegas. Part of the service was airport pickup, and Edgar said the man who picked Aliso up said that Tony was alone, relaxed and in no hurry.
“It was a routine pickup,” Edgar said. “Aliso took his car and went home. Gave the guy a twenty-buck tip. So whoever put him down, they intercepted him on the way home. My guess is it was somewhere up there on Mulholland. Lot of deserted curves. You could stop a guy if you did it quick. Probably two people.”
“What did the valet say about luggage?” Bosch asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Edgar said. “He said that as near as he could remember, Tony had the two bags the wife described, a silver briefcase and one of those hanging bags. He hadn’t checked either one for the flight.”
Bosch nodded, though he was alone.
“What about the media?” Bosch said. “We put anything out yet?”
“It’s being handled,” Billets said. “Media relations is putting out a release first thing tomorrow. It will have a picture of the Rolls. They’ll also make the car available at the OPG for video. And I’ll be available for sound bites. I’m hoping the stations will pick it up. Anything else, Jerry?”
Edgar concluded by saying he had the murder book up to speed and that he was halfway through the list of plaintiffs from the various lawsuits against Aliso. He said he would be setting up interviews for the next day with others who had allegedly been wronged by Aliso. Lastly, he said he had called the coroner’s office and the autopsy on Aliso had not yet been scheduled.
“Okay,” Billets said. “Kiz, what do you have?”
Rider broke her report into two parts. The first was on her interview with Veronica Aliso, which she covered quickly, saying the woman had been extremely closemouthed during their morning interview in comparison to the night before when Bosch and Rider brought her the news of her husband’s death. The morning session consisted mostly of yes and no answers and a few added details. The couple had been married seventeen years. They had no children. Veronica Aliso had been in two of her husband’s films and never worked again.
“You think she talked to a lawyer about talking to us?” Bosch asked.
“She didn’t say so, but I think that’s exactly what’s going on,” Rider said. “Just getting what I got was like pulling teeth.”
“Okay, what else?” Billets said, trying to keep the discussion moving.
Rider went on to the second part of her day’s investigation, which was the focus on the financial records of Anthony Aliso. Even listening on the poor conference line connection, Bosch could tell Kiz was excited about what she had learned so far.
“Basically, this guy’s financial portfolio shows an extremely comfortable standard of living. He’s got high-five-figure sums in his personal bank accounts, zeroed-out credit cards, that house that has a seven-hundred-thousand mortgage against a value of a million one. That’s it, though, as far as what I could find. The Rolls is leased, his wife’s Lincoln is leased, and the office we know is leased.”
She paused a moment before going on.
“Incidentally, Harry, if you have the time, here’s something you might want to check out over there. Both the cars are leased to his company, TNA Productions, through a dealership over there in Vegas. You might want to check it out if there’s time. It’s called Ridealong— one word— Incorporated. The address is two thousand and two Industrial Drive, suite three-thirty.”
Bosch’s jacket, with his notebook inside it, was on a chair on the other side of the room. He wrote the name and address down on a little pad that was on the night table.
“Okay,” Rider said, “so now we go on to his business, and this is where it gets pretty interesting. I’m really only halfway through the records we pulled out of his office, but so far it looks like this guy was into a class A scam. And I’m not talking about ripping off some schmuck’s student screenplays. I think that was just his side hobby. I’m talking about him running a laundry. I think he was a front for somebody.”
She waited a beat before going on. Bosch moved to the edge of the bed, excitement tickling the back of his neck.
“We’ve got tax returns, production orders, equipment rentals, pays and owes from the making of several films— more than a dozen. All of it straight-to-video stuff. Like Veronica said, it’s just this side of porno. I looked at some of the tapes he had in his office and it was all pretty awful stuff. Not much in the way of narrative unless you count the buildup of tension waiting for the female lead to get naked.
“The only problem is that the ledgers don’t match what’s on the film and most of the big checks paid by TNA Productions went to mail drops and companies that I’m finding out don’t exist anywhere but on paper.”
“How do you mean?” Billets asked.
“I’m saying his business records show a million to a million five going into each of these so-called movies, and you look at the tapes and, I’m telling you, there can’t be more than a hundred, maybe two hundred thousand involved. My brother works in the business as an editor, and I know enough to know that the kind of money Aliso’s books show being spent on these movies is not being spent on these movies. I think that what he was doing was using these flicks to launder money, lots of money.”
“Run it down, Kiz,” Billets said. “Just how would he do it?”
“Okay, start with his source. We’ll call him Mr. X for now. Mr. X has a million bucks he shouldn’t have. Whether it’s from drugs or whatever, he needs to clean it up, legitimize it so he can put it in the bank and spend it without drawing attention. He gives it to Tony Aliso— invests it in Tony’s production company. Aliso then makes a cheap movie with it, spending less than a tenth of it.
“But when it comes to keeping the books, he makes it look like he’s used all of the money for production costs. He’s got checks going out almost weekly to various production companies, prop companies, movie equipment companies. All the checks are in the eight- to nine-thousand range, just under the government reporting limit.”
Bosch listened carefully as she spoke. He had his eyes closed and concentrated. He admired Rider’s ability to cull all of this out of the records.
“Okay, then at the end of production, Tony probably dubs a few thousand copies of the flick, sells them or tries to sell them to independent video stores and distributors— because the chains wouldn’t touch this crap— and that’s that, end of show. But what he has done is turned around and given back to Mr. X, his original investor, about eighty cents on the dollar in the form of payments to these dummy companies. It’s a shell game. Whoever is behind these companies is being paid with his own money for services not rendered. But now the money’s legit. It’s clean and he can walk into any bank in America and deposit it, pay taxes on it, then spend it. Meantime, Tony Aliso takes a nice production fee for his end of it and goes on to the next flick. It looks like he was handling two or three of these productions a year and clearing half a million in fees himself.”
They were all silent for a few moments before Rider spoke again.
“There’s only one problem,” Rider said.
“He’s got the IRS on him,” Bosch said.
“Riiiiiight,” she responded, and he could visualize the smile on her face. “It’s a nice scam but it was about to go down the toilet. The IRS was going to take a look at Tony’s books later this month, and there is a good chance that if I could come up with this in just one day, the feds would pick up on it in an hour.”
“That would make Tony a danger to Mr. X,” Edgar said.
“Especially if he was going to cooperate with the audit,” Rider added.
Someone on the other
end of the line whistled, but Bosch couldn’t tell who it was. He guessed it was Edgar.
“So what’s next, find Mr. X?” Bosch asked.
“For starters,” Rider replied. “I’m working up a request I’ll fax to the state department of corporations tomorrow morning. It’s got all the dummy companies on it. Maybe, whoever he is, he was foolish enough to put a real name or address on the incorporation forms. I’m also working on another search warrant. I have the canceled checks from Tony’s company. I want the records of the accounts the checks were deposited to, maybe find out where the money went after Tony cleaned it up.”
“What about the IRS?” Bosch asked. “Have you talked to them?”
“They’re closed for the holiday. But according to the notice Aliso got in the mail, there is a criminal prefix on the audit number. That makes me think this wasn’t a random audit. They were tipped somehow. There’s an agent assigned to it and I’ll be on the phone to him first thing in the morning.”
“You know,” Edgar said, “this whole thing about OCID taking a pass is beginning to stink. Whether Tony was hooked up with the Eye-talians or not, this shit is as organized as organized crime can get. And I’d bet my last button that they’d heard somewhere along the line, whether it was from the IRS or not, about our guy here.”
“I think you’re right,” Billets said.
“I forgot to mention something,” Bosch threw in. “Today I was talking with Art Donovan. He said the guy I talked to at OCID last night, a supe named Carbone, well he just happens to show up over at SID today and starts asking Art about the case. Art says the guy’s acting like he’s not interested, but he’s very interested, you know what I mean?”
Nobody said anything for a long moment.
“So what do we do?” Edgar asked.
Bosch closed his eyes again and waited. Whatever Billets said would determine the course of the case as well as affect his regard for her. Bosch knew what her predecessor would have done. He would have made sure the case was dumped on OCID.
“We don’t do anything,” Billets finally said. “It’s our case, we work it. But be careful. If OCID is sniffing around after taking a pass, then there is something going on here we don’t know about yet.”
Another silence passed and Bosch opened his eyes. He was liking Billets better all the time.
“Okay,” Billets said. “I think we should be focusing on Tony’s company as a priority. I want to shift most of our attention there. Harry, can you wrap up Vegas quickly and get back here?”
“Unless I find something, I should be out of here before lunch tomorrow. But remember this, last night Mrs. Aliso told us that Tony always told her he came to Vegas to see investors. Maybe our Mr. X is right here.”
“Could be,” Billets said. “Okay then, again, people, it’s been good work. Let’s stay on it.”
They said their good-byes and Bosch put the phone back on the side table. He felt invigorated by the advances of the investigation. He just sat there a moment and reveled in the feeling of the adrenaline jazzing through his body. It had been a long time coming. He squeezed his hands into fists and banged them together.
Bosch stepped out of the elevator and began moving through the casino. It was quieter than most casinos he had been in— there wasn’t any yelling or whooping from the craps table, no begging of the dice to come up seven. The people who gambled here were different, Bosch thought. They came with money and they’d leave with money no matter how much they lost. The smell of desperation wasn’t here. This was the casino for the well-heeled and thick-walleted.
He passed by a crowded roulette wheel and remembered Donovan’s bet. He squeezed between two smoking Asian women, put down a five and asked for a chip but was told it was a twenty-five-dollar-minimum table. One of the Asians pointed with her cigarette across the casino to another roulette table.
“They’ll take your five over there,” she said with distaste.
Bosch thanked her and headed over to the cheap table. He put a five chip down on the seven and watched the wheel turn, the little metal ball bouncing over the numbers. It did nothing for him. He knew that true-blue gamblers said it wasn’t the winning and losing, it was the anticipation. Whether it was the next card, the fall of the dice or the number the little ball stopped on, it was those few seconds of waiting and hoping and wishing that charged them, that addicted them. But it did nothing for Bosch.
The ball stopped on five and Donovan owed Bosch five. Bosch turned and started looking for the poker pit. He saw a sign and headed that way. It was early, not yet eight, and there were several chairs open at the tables. He checked the faces and did not see Eleanor Wish, though he wasn’t really expecting to. Bosch recognized many of the dealers he had interviewed earlier, including Amy Rohrback. He was tempted to take one of the empty chairs at her table and ask how she had recognized Eleanor Wish but figured it wouldn’t be cool to question her while she worked.
While he considered what to do, the pit boss stepped up to him and asked if he was waiting to play. Bosch recognized him as the one from the video who had led Tony Aliso to his place at the tables.
“No, I’m just watching,” Bosch said. “You got a minute while it’s slow?”
“A minute for what?”
“I’m the cop who’s been interviewing your people.”
“Oh, yeah. Little Hank told me about that.”
He introduced himself as Frank King and Bosch shook his hand.
“Sorry, I couldn’t come up. But I don’t work on rotation. I had to be here. This is about Tony A., right?”
“Yeah, you knew him, right?”
“Sure, we all knew him. Good guy. Too bad about what happened.”
“How do you know what happened?”
Bosch had specifically not told any of the dealers about Aliso’s demise during the interviews.
“Little Hank,” King said. “He said he got shot up or something in L.A. What do you want, I mean you live in L.A. you take your chances.”
“I guess. How long have you known him?”
“We go back years, me and Tony. I used to be at the Flamingo before the Mirage opened. Tony stayed there back then. He’s been coming out here a long time.”
“You ever socialize with him? Outside the casino?”
“Once or twice. But that was usually by accident. I’d be some place and Tony’d just happen to come in or something. We’d have a drink, be cordial, but that was about it. I mean, he was a guest of the hotel and I’m an employee. We weren’t buddies, if you know what I mean.”
“I get it. What places did you run into him?”
“Oh, Jesus, I don’t know. You’re talking— hold on a sec.”
King cashed out a player who was leaving Amy Rohrback’s table. Bosch had no idea how much the man had started with, but he was leaving with forty dollars and a frown. King sent him away with a better-luck-next-time salute and then came back to Bosch.
“Like I was saying, I saw him in a couple bars. You’re talking a long time ago. One was the round bar at the Stardust. One of my buddies was the barkeep and I used to drop by there after work time to time. I saw Tony there and he sent over a drink. This was probably three years ago, at least. I don’t know what good it does you.”
“Was he alone?”
“No, he was with some broad. Young piece of fluff. Nobody I recognized.”
“All right, what about the other time, when was that?”
“That was maybe last year sometime. I was with a bachelor party— it was for Marty, who runs the craps here— and we all went to get straightened out at Dolly’s. It’s a strip club on the north side. And Tony was in there, too. He was by hisself and he came over and had a drink. In fact, he bought the whole table a drink. Must’ve been eight of us. He was a nice guy. That was it.”
Bosch nodded. So Aliso had been a regular at Dolly’s going back at least a year. Bosch was planning to go there, to get a line on the woman named Layla. She was probably a dancer, Bosch guessed,
and Layla was more than probably not her real name.
“You seen him more recently with anybody?”
“You mean a broad?”
“Yeah, some of the dealers said there was a blonde recently.”
“Yeah, I think I saw him a couple, three times with the blonde. He was giving her the dough to play the machines while he played cards. I don’t know who it was, if that’s what you mean.”
Bosch nodded.
“That it?” King asked.
“One more thing. Eleanor Wish, you know her? She was playing the cheap table on Friday night. Tony played for a while at the same table. It looked like they knew each other.”
“I know a player named Eleanor. I never knew her last name. She the looker, brown hair, brown eyes, still in nice shape despite, as they say, the encroachment of time?”
King smiled at his clever use of words. Bosch didn’t.
“That sounds like her. She a regular?”
“Yeah, I see her in here maybe once a week, maybe less. She’s a local, as far as I know. The local players run a circuit. Not all the casinos have live poker, see. It doesn’t earn a lot for the house. We have it as a courtesy to our customers, but we hope they play a little poker and a lot of blackjack. Anyway, the locals run a circuit so they don’t play against the same faces all the time. So they maybe play here one night, over to Harrah’s the next, then it’s the Flamingo, then maybe they work the downtown casinos a few nights. You know, like that.”
“You mean she’s a pro?”
“No, I mean she’s a local and she plays a lot. Whether she’s got a day job or lives off poker I don’t know. I don’t think I ever cashed her out for more than two bills. That’s not a lot. The other thing is I heard she tips the dealers too well. The pros don’t do that.”
Bosch asked King to list all the casinos in the city that he knew offered live poker, then thanked him.
“You know, I doubt you’re going to find anything other than Tony knowin’ her to say hello to, that’s all.”