“You tell all this to your friend?”
“Hell no. I just acted natural and got the hell out of there. I tell you, Harry, I don’t like this inside stuff. I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll figure something. Look, I’m going to go. I’ll be there as soon as I can. What you might want to do in the meantime, Lieutenant, is try to use some juice with ballistics. Tell them we’ll be coming in with a code three in the morning.”
Billets said she would do what she could on that.
After making arrangements to fly back to L.A., Bosch barely had time to take a cab back to the Mirage and check out and still make it by Eleanor’s apartment to say good-bye. But his knock on her door went unanswered. He didn’t know what kind of car she had, so it was impossible for him to check the lot to make sure she was gone. He went back to his rental and sat inside and waited as long as he could, until he was at risk of missing his flight. He then scribbled a message on a page from his notebook saying he would call her and went back to the door. He folded the page up tight and stuck it in the crack of the doorjamb so that it would fall and be noticed the next time she opened the door.
He wanted to wait around longer and talk to her in person but he couldn’t. Twenty minutes later he was leaving the security office of the airport. The gun from Goshen’s house was wrapped in an evidence bag and safely in his briefcase. Five minutes later he was aboard a jet headed for the city of angels.
III
Billets had a weighted and worried look on her face when Bosch stepped into her office.
“Harry.”
“Lieutenant. I dropped the gun at ballistics. They’re waiting on the bullets. Whoever it was you talked to over there, they snapped to.”
“Good.”
“Where is everybody?”
“They’re both over at Archway. Kiz spent the morning at the IRS and then went over to help Jerry with the interviews with Aliso’s associates. I also borrowed a couple of people from Major Fraud to help with the books. They’re tracing down these dummy corporations. They’re going to go after the bank accounts. Search and seizure. When we freeze the money, then maybe some real live people will come out of the woodwork and claim it. My theory is that this Joey Marks was not the only one Aliso was washing money for. There’s too much involved—if Kiz’s numbers are right. Aliso was probably working for every mob combine west of Chicago.”
Bosch nodded.
“Oh, by the way,” she continued, “I told Jerry that you’d take the autopsy so he can stay at Archway. Then I want everybody back here at six to talk about what we have.”
“Okay, when’s the autopsy?”
“Three-thirty. That going to be a problem?”
“No. Can I ask you something, why’d you call Major Fraud in instead of OCID?”
“For obvious reasons. I don’t know what to do about Carbone and OCID. I don’t know whether to bring in Internal Affairs, look the other way or what.”
“Well, we can’t look the other way. They have something we need. And if you call in IAD, then forget it. That will freeze everything up down there and that will be that.”
“What do they have that we need?”
“It stands to reason that if Carbone was pulling a bug out of that office, then —”
“There’s tapes. Jesus, I forgot about that.”
They dropped into silence for a few moments. Bosch pulled the chair out across from her desk and finally sat down.
“Let me take a run at Carbone, see if I can figure out what they were doing and get the tapes,” he said. “We’ve got the leverage.”
“This may have something to do with the chief and Fitzgerald, you know.”
“Maybe.”
She was referring to the intradepartmental skirmish between Deputy Chief Leon Fitzgerald, commander of OCID for more than a decade, and the man who was supposed to be his boss, the chief of police. In the time Fitzgerald had run the OCID, he had taken on an aura akin to J. Edgar Hoover’s at the FBI, a keeper of secrets who would use them to protect his position, his division and his budget. It was believed by many that Fitzgerald had his minions investigate and keep tabs on more honest citizens, cops and elected officials of the city than the mobsters his division was charged with rooting out. And it was no secret within the department that there was an ongoing power struggle between Fitzgerald and the police chief. The chief wanted to rein in OCID and its deputy chief but Fitzgerald didn’t want to be reined in. In fact, he wanted his domain to broaden. He wanted to be police chief. The struggle was largely at a name-calling standstill. The chief could not fire Fitzgerald outright because of civil service protections; and he could not get backing to simply gut and overhaul OCID from the police commission, mayor or city council members because it was believed that Fitzgerald had thick files on all of them, including the chief. These elected and appointed officials did not know what was in those files but they had to assume that the worst things they had ever done were duly recorded. And therefore they would not back the chief’s move against Fitzgerald unless they and the chief were in a guaranteed no-lose position.
Most of this was department legend or rumor, but Bosch knew even legend and rumor usually have some basis in reality. He was reluctant to step behind this curtain and possibly into this fight, as Billets clearly was, but offered to do so because he saw no alternative. He had to know what OCID had been doing and what it was that Carbone was trying to protect by breaking into the Archway office.
“Okay,” Billets said after some long thought. “But be careful.”
“Where’s the video from Archway?”
She pointed to the safe on the floor behind her desk. It was used to secure evidence.
“It will be safe,” she said.
“It better be. It will probably be the only thing that keeps them off me.”
She nodded. She knew the score.
***
The OCID offices were on the third floor of Central Division in downtown. The division was located away from police headquarters at Parker Center because the work of the OCID involved many undercover operations and it would not be wise to have so many undercovers going in and out of a place as public as the so-called Glass House, Parker Center. But it was that separation that helped foster the deepening gulf between Leon Fitzgerald and the police chief.
On the drive over from Hollywood, Bosch thought about a plan and knew just how he was going to play it by the time he got to the guard shack and flipped his ID to the rookie assigned parking lot duty. He read the name off the tag above the cop’s breast pocket and drove into the lot and over toward the back doors of the station, then put the car in park and got out his phone. He called the OCID’s main number and a secretary answered.
“Yeah, this is Trindle down on the parking lot,” Bosch said. “Is Carbone there?”
“Yes, he is. If you hold a —”
“Just tell him to come down. Somebody busted into his car.”
Bosch hung up and waited. In three minutes one of the doors at the rear of the station house opened and a man hurried out. Bosch recognized him from the Archway surveillance tape. Billets had been right on. Bosch put the car in drive and followed along behind the man. Eventually, he pulled up alongside him and lowered the window.
“Carbone.”
“Yeah, what?”
He kept walking, barely giving Bosch a glance.
“Slow down. Your car’s all right.”
Carbone stopped and now looked closely at Bosch.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I made the call. I just wanted to get you out here.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Bosch. We talked the other night.”
“Oh, yeah. The Aliso caper.”
Then it dawned on him that Bosch could have just taken the elevator up to the third floor if he wanted to see him.
“What is this, Bosch? What’s going on?”
“Why don’t you get in? I want to take a l
ittle ride.”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t like the way you’re doing this.”
“Get in, Carbone. I think you better.”
Bosch said it in a tone and with an accompanying stare that invited no choice but compliance. Carbone, who was about forty with a stocky build, hesitated a moment, then walked around the front of the car. He was wearing a nice dark blue suit like most mob cops liked to wear and he filled the car with the smell of a brisk cologne. Right away Bosch didn’t like him.
They drove out of the parking lot and Bosch went north toward Broadway. There was a lot of traffic and pedestrians and they moved slowly. Bosch said nothing, waiting for Carbone.
“Okay, so what’s so important you have to kidnap me away from the station?” he finally asked.
Bosch drove another block without answering. He wanted Carbone to sweat a little.
“You’ve got problems, Carbone,” he finally said. “I just thought I should tell you. See, I want to be your friend, Carbone.”
Carbone looked at Bosch with caution.
“I know I got problems,” he said. “I’m paying two different women child support, my house still has cracks in the walls from the earthquake and the union ain’t going to get us a raise again this year. So fuckin’ what?”
“Those aren’t problems, man. Those are inconveniences. I’m talking about real problems. About the break-in you did the other night over at Archway.”
Carbone was silent for a long moment and Bosch wasn’t sure but he thought the man was holding his breath.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Take me back.”
“No, Carbone, see, that’s the wrong answer. I’m here to help you, not hurt you. I’m your friend. And that goes for your boss, Fitzgerald, too.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay, then I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. I called you Sunday night and asked you about my stiff named Aliso. You call me back and tell me not only is OCID taking a pass, but you never heard of the guy. But as soon as you hang up the phone, you get over to Archway, break into the guy’s office and pop the bug you people planted in his phone. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Bosch looked over at him for the first time and he saw the face of a man whose mind is racing to find a way out. Bosch knew he had him now.
“Bullshit, that’s what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, you dumb fuck? Next time you decide to do a little breaking and entering, look up. Check for cameras. Rodney King Rule Number One, don’t get caught on tape.”
He waited a moment to let that sink in and then put the final nails in the coffin.
“You knocked the mug off the desk and broke it. You then dumped it outside hoping nobody would notice anything. And one last thing about the rules. If you’re going to do a B-and-E in short sleeves, then you ought to get yourself a Band-Aid or somethin’ and cover up that tattoo on your arm, know what I mean? That’s a slam-bang identifier when you got it on tape. And, Carbone, you’re on tape, lots of tape.”
Carbone wiped a hand across his face. Bosch turned on Third and they went into the tunnel that runs under Bunker Hill. In the darkness that shrouded the car, Carbone finally spoke.
“Who knows about this?”
“For the moment, just me. But don’t get any ideas. Anything happens to me and the tape will get known by a lot of people. But for the moment, I can probably contain it.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to know what was going on and I want all the tapes you took off his phone.”
“Impossible. Can’t do it. I don’t have those tapes. It wasn’t even my file. I just did what . . .”
“What Fitz told you to do. Yeah, I know. But I don’t care about that. You go to Fitz or whoever’s file it was and get it. I’ll go with you if you want or I’ll wait out in the car. But we’re going back now to get them.”
“I can’t do it.”
What Bosch knew he meant was that he couldn’t get the tapes without going to Fitzgerald and telling him how he had so badly messed up the break-in.
“You’re going to have to, Carbone. I don’t give a shit about you. You lied to me and fucked with my case. You either get me the tapes and an explanation or this is what I do. I dub off three copies of the surveillance tape. One goes to the chief’s office in the Glass House, one goes to Jim Newton at the Times and the last goes over to Stan Chambers at Channel 5. Stan’s a good man, he’ll know what to do with it. Do you know he’s the one who got the Rodney King tape first?”
“Jesus, Bosch, you’re killing me!”
“You’ve got your choice.”
The autopsy was being conducted by a deputy coroner named Salazar. He had already started by the time Bosch got to the coroner’s office at County-USC Medical Center. They said their perfunctory hellos and Bosch, garbed in the protective paper body suit and plastic mask, leaned back against one of the stainless counters and just watched. He wasn’t expecting much from the autopsy. He had really only come for the bullets and his hope was that one of them would be usable for comparison purposes. It was well known that one reason hitters preferred to use twenty-twos on the job was that the soft bullets often became so misshapen after bouncing around in the braincase that they were worthless for ballistic comparison.
Salazar kept his long black hair in a ponytail that he then wrapped in a larger paper cap. Because he was in a wheelchair, he worked at an autopsy table that was lowered to accommodate him. This gave Bosch an unusually clear vantage point in viewing what was happening to the body.
In years past, Bosch would have maintained an ongoing banter with Salazar while the autopsy proceeded. But since his motorcycle accident, his nine-month medical leave and his return in a wheelchair, Salazar was no longer a cheerful man and rarely engaged in small talk.
Bosch watched as Salazar used a dulled scalpel to scrape a sample of the whitish material from the corners of Aliso’s eyes. He placed the material in a paper bindle and put it in a petri dish. He placed the dish on a tray that held a small stand containing the test tubes filled with blood, urine and other samples of body materials to be scanned and tested.
“Think it was tears?” Bosch asked.
“I don’t think so. Too thick. He had something in his eyes or on his skin. We’ll find out what.”
Bosch nodded and Salazar proceeded to open the skullcap and examine the brain.
“The bullets mushed this puppy,” he said.
After a few minutes he used a pair of long tweezers to pick out two bullet fragments and drop them in a dish. Bosch stepped over and looked at them and frowned. At least one of the bullets had fragmented upon impact. The pieces were probably worthless for comparison purposes.
Then Salazar pulled out a complete bullet and dropped it in the tray.
“You might be able to work with this one,” he said.
Bosch took a look. The bullet had mushroomed on impact but about half the shaft was still intact, and he could see the tiny scratches made when it was fired through the barrel of a gun. He felt a twinge of encouragement.
“This might work,” he said.
The autopsy wrapped up in about ten more minutes. Overall, Aliso had gotten fifty minutes of Salazar’s time. It was more than most. Bosch checked a clipboard that was on the counter and saw that it was the eleventh autopsy of the day for Salazar.
Salazar cleaned the bullets and put them in an evidence envelope. As he handed it to Bosch, he told the detective that he would be informed of the results of the analysis of the samples retrieved from the body as soon as it was completed. The only other thing that he thought was worth mentioning was that the bruise on Aliso’s cheek was antemortem by four or five hours. This Bosch found to be very curious. He didn’t know how it fit in. It would mean that someone had roughed Aliso up while he was in Las Vegas, yet he had been killed here in L.A. He thanked Salazar, calling him Sally as many people did, and headed out. He was in the hallwa
y before he remembered something and went back to the door of the autopsy suite. When he stuck his head in, he saw Salazar tying the sheet around the body, making sure the toe tag hung free and could be read.
“Hey, Sally, the guy had hemorrhoids, right?”
Salazar looked back at him with a quizzical look on his face.
“Hemorrhoids? No. Why do you ask?”
“I found a tube of Preparation H in his car. In the glove box. It was half used.”
“Hmmm . . . well, no hemorrhoids. Not on this one.”
Bosch wanted to ask him if he was sure but knew that would be insulting. He let it go for the moment and left.
Details fueled any investigation. They were important and not to be misplaced or forgotten. As he headed toward the glass exit doors of the coroner’s office, Bosch found himself bothered by the detail of the tube of Preparation H found in the glove box of the Silver Cloud. If Tony Aliso hadn’t suffered from hemorrhoids, then whom did the tube belong to and why was it in his car? He could dismiss it as probably being unimportant, but that wasn’t his way. Everything had its place in an investigation, Bosch believed. Everything.
His deep concentration on this problem caused Bosch to go through the glass doors and down the stairs to the parking lot before he saw Carbone standing there smoking a cigarette and waiting. When Bosch had dropped him off earlier, the OCID detective had begged for a couple of hours to get the tapes together. Bosch had agreed but hadn’t told him that he was heading to an autopsy. So he now assumed that Carbone had called the bureau in Hollywood and been told by Billets or someone else that he was at the coroner’s office. Bosch wouldn’t check this with Carbone because he didn’t want to show any kind of concern that the OCID detective had so easily found him.
“Bosch.”
“Yeah.”
“Somebody wants to talk.”
“Who? When? I want the tapes, Carbone.”