“Bosch,” Lindell said, “I owe you a haircut.”
Bosch was dumbfounded to see the man he had just locked up standing there but quickly assimilated what had happened. Irving and Billets had already been told about the meeting in the parking lot behind Caesar’s, had read the affidavits and believed the alibi. They had authorized Lindell’s release. That was why Billets had asked for the booking number when Bosch had returned her page.
Bosch looked away from Lindell to Irving and Billets.
“You believe this, don’t you? You think I found the gun out there in the weeds and planted it just to make the case a slam.”
There was a hesitation while each one left space for the other to answer. Finally, it was Irving.
“The only thing we know for sure is that it wasn’t Agent Lindell. His story is solid. I’m reserving judgment on everything else.”
Bosch looked at Lindell, who was still standing.
“Then why didn’t you tell me you were federal when we were in that room together at Metro?”
“Why do you think? For all I knew, you had already put a gun in my bathroom. You think I’m just going to tell you I’m an agent and everything would be cool after that? Yeah, right.”
“We had to play along, Bosch, to see what moves you’d make and to make sure Roy got out of the Metro jail in one piece,” O’Grady said. “After that, we were two thousand feet above you and two thousand behind you all the way across the desert. We were waiting. Half of us were betting you made a deal with Joey Marks. You know, in for a pinch, in for a pound?”
They were taunting him now. Bosch shook his head. It seemed to be the only thing he could do.
“Don’t you people see what is happening?” he said. “You’re the ones who made a deal with Joey Marks. Only you don’t know it. He is playing you like a symphony. Jesus! I can’t believe I’m sitting here and this is actually happening.”
“How is he playing us?” Billets asked, the first indication that she might not have gone all the way across to the other side on him.
Bosch answered, looking at Lindell.
“Don’t you see? They found out about you. They knew you were an agent. So they set this all up.”
Ekeblad snorted in derision.
“They don’t set things up, Bosch,” Samuels said. “If they thought Roy was an informant, they’d just take him out to the desert and put him under three feet of sand. End of threat.”
“No, because we’re not talking about an informant. I’m talking about them knowing specifically he was an agent and knowing that because of that they couldn’t just take him out to the desert. Not an FBI agent. If they did that, they’d have more heat on them than the Branch Davidians ever felt. No, so what they did was make a plan. They know he’s been around a couple years and knows more than enough to take them all down hard. But they can’t just kill him. Not an agent. So they’ve got to neutralize him, taint him. Make him look like he crossed, like he’s just as bad as they are. So when he testifies, they can take him apart with Tony Aliso’s hit. Make a jury think that he’d carry out a hit to maintain his cover. They sell a jury that and they could all walk away.”
Bosch thought he had planted the seeds of a pretty convincing story, even having pulled it together on the fly. The others in the room looked at him in silence for a few moments, but then Lindell spoke up.
“You give them too much credit, Bosch,” he said. “Joey’s not that smart. I know him. He’s not that smart.”
“What about Torrino? You going to tell me he couldn’t come up with this? I just thought of it sitting here. Who knows how long he had to come up with something? Answer one question, Lindell. Did Joey Marks know that Tony Aliso had the IRS on his back, that an audit was coming?”
Lindell hesitated and looked to Samuels to see if he could answer. Bosch felt the sweat of desperation breaking on his neck and back. He knew he had to convince them or he wouldn’t walk out of the room with his badge. Samuels nodded to Lindell.
“If he knew, he didn’t tell me,” Lindell said.
“Well maybe that’s it,” Bosch said. “Maybe he knew but he didn’t tell you. Joey knew he had a problem with Aliso and somehow he knew he had a bigger problem with you. And he and Torrino put their heads together and came up with this whole thing so they could kill two birds with the one stone.”
There was another pause, but Samuels shook his head.
“It doesn’t work, Bosch. You’re stretching. Besides we’ve got seven hundred hours of tapes. There’s enough on them to put Joey away without Roy even testifying one word.”
“First of all, they might not have known there were tapes,” Billets said. “And secondly, even if they did, it’s fruit of the poison tree. You wouldn’t have the tapes without Agent Lindell. You want to introduce them in court, you have to introduce him. They destroy him, they destroy the tapes.”
Billets had clearly shifted to Bosch’s side of the equation and that gave him hope. It also made Samuels see that the meeting was over. He gathered up his pad and stood up.
“Well,” he said, “I can see we aren’t going any further with this. Lieutenant, you’re listening to a desperate man. We don’t have to. Chief Irving, I don’t envy you. You have a problem and you have to do something about it. If on Monday I find out that Bosch is still carrying his badge, then I’m going to go to the sitting grand jury and get an indictment against him for evidence tampering and violating the civil rights of Roy Lindell. I will also ask our civil rights unit to look into every arrest this man has made in the last five years. A bad cop never plants evidence once, Chief. It’s a habit.”
Samuels made his way around the table toward the door. The others got up and were following. Bosch wanted to jump up and throttle him but he remained outwardly calm. His dark eyes followed Samuels as the federal attorney moved to the door. He never looked back at Bosch. But before stepping out, he took one last shot at Irving.
“The last thing I want to have to do is air your dirty laundry, Chief. But if you don’t take care of this, you’ll leave me no choice.”
With that, the federals filed out and those remaining sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the sound of the steps tracking down the polished linoleum in the hallway. Bosch looked at Billets and nodded.
“Thanks, Lieutenant.”
“For what?”
“Sticking up for me at the end there.”
“I just don’t believe you’d do it, is all.”
“I wouldn’t plant evidence on my worst enemy. If I did that I’d be lost.”
Chastain shifted in his seat while a small smile played on his face, but not small enough to pass Bosch’s notice.
“Chastain, you and I have hooked up a couple times before and you missed me both times,” Bosch said. “You don’t want to strike out, do you? You better sit this one out.”
“Look, Bosch, the chief asked me to sit in on this and I did that. It’s his call, but I think you and that story you just wove out of thin air are full of shit. I agree with the feds on this one. If it was my choice, I wouldn’t let you out of this room with a badge.”
“But it’s not your choice, is it?” Irving said.
When Bosch got to his house, he carried a bag of groceries to the door and knocked but there was no answer. He kicked over the straw mat and found the key he had given Eleanor there. A feeling of sadness came over him as he bent to pick it up. She was not there.
Upon entering he was greeted by the strong smell of fresh paint, which he thought was odd because it had now been four days since he had painted. He went directly into the kitchen and put away the groceries. When he was finished, he took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator and leaned against the counter drinking it slowly, making it last. The smell of paint reminded him that now he would have plenty of time to finish all the work the house needed. He was strictly a nine-to-fiver at the moment.
He thought of Eleanor again and decided to look to see if there was a note from her or wheth
er her suitcase might be in the bedroom. But he went no further than the living room, where he stopped and looked at the wall he had left half-painted after getting the call to the crime scene on Sunday. The wall was now completely painted. Bosch stood there a long moment, appraising the work as though it were a masterpiece in a museum. Finally he stepped to the wall and lightly touched it. It was fresh but dry. Painted just a few hours before, he guessed. Though no one was there to see it, a broad smile broke across his face. He felt a jolt of happiness break through the gray aura surrounding him. He didn’t need to look for her suitcase in the bedroom. He took the painted wall as a sign, as her note. She’d be back.
An hour later, he had unpacked his overnighter and the rest of her belongings from the car and was standing in the darkness on the rear deck. He held another bottle of beer and watched the ribbon of lights moving along the Hollywood Freeway at the bottom of the hill. He had no idea how long she had stood in the frame of the sliding door to the deck and watched him. When he turned around, she was just there.
“Eleanor.”
“Harry . . . I thought you wouldn’t be back until later.”
“Neither did I. But I’m here.”
He smiled. He wanted to go to her and touch her, but a cautious voice told him to move slowly.
“Thanks for finishing.”
He gestured toward the living room with his bottle.
“No problem. I like to paint. It relaxes me.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
They looked at each other a moment.
“I saw the print,” she said. “It looks good there.”
Bosch had taken her print of Hopper’s Nighthawks out of the trunk and hung it on the freshly painted wall. He knew that how she reacted to seeing it there would tell him a lot about where they were and where they might be headed.
“Good,” he said, nodding and trying not to smile.
“What happened to the one I sent you?”
That had been a long time ago.
“Earthquake,” he said.
She nodded.
“Where’d you just come from?”
“Oh, I went and rented a car. You know, until I can figure out what I’m going to do. I left my car in Vegas.”
“I guess we could go over and get it, drive it back. You know, get in and out, not hang around.”
She nodded.
“Oh, I got a bottle of red wine, too. You want something? Or another beer?”
“I’ll have what you’re having.”
“I’m going to have a glass of wine. You sure you want that?”
“I’m sure. I’ll open it.”
He followed her into the kitchen and opened the wine and took down two glasses from a cabinet and rinsed them. He hadn’t had anyone who liked wine over in a long time. She poured and they touched glasses before drinking.
“So how’s the case going?” she asked.
“I don’t have a case anymore.”
She creased her brow and frowned.
“What happened? I thought you were bringing your suspect back.”
“I did. But it’s no longer my case. Not since my suspect turned out to be a bureau agent with an alibi.”
“Oh, Harry.” She looked down. “Are you in trouble?”
Bosch put his glass on the counter and folded his arms.
“I’m on a desk for the time being. I’ve got the squints investigating me. They think—along with the bureau—that I planted evidence against the agent. The gun. I didn’t. But I guess somebody did. When I figure out who, then I’ll be okay.”
“Harry, how did this —”
He shook his head, moved toward her and put his mouth on hers. He gently took the glass out of her hand and put it on the counter behind her.
After they made love, Bosch went into the kitchen to open a bottle of beer and make dinner. He peeled an onion and chopped it up along with a green pepper. He then cleared the cutting board into a frying pan and sautéed the mixture with butter, powdered garlic and other seasonings. He added two chicken breasts and cooked them until the meat was easy to shred and pull away from the bone with a fork. He added a can of Italian tomato sauce, a can of crushed tomatoes and more seasonings. He finished by pouring a shot of red wine from Eleanor’s bottle in. While it all simmered, he put a pot of water on to boil for rice.
It was the best dinner he knew how to cook in a kitchen. He would have preferred grilling something on the deck, but the grill had been hauled away when the original house was demolished after the earthquake. While he had replaced the house, he had not yet gotten around to getting a new grill. He decided as he mixed rice into the boiling water that if Eleanor chose to stay for a while, he would get the grill.
“Smells good.”
He turned and she was standing in the doorway. She was dressed in blue jeans and a denim shirt. Her hair was damp from the shower. Bosch looked at her and felt the desire to make love to her again.
“I hope it tastes good,” he said. “This is a new kitchen, but I don’t really know how to use it yet. Never did much cooking.”
She smiled.
“I can tell already it will be good.”
“Tell you what, will you stir this every few minutes while I take a shower?”
“Sure. I’ll set the table.”
“Okay. I was thinking we’d eat out on the deck. It doesn’t smell like paint out there.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I mean it will be nice out there. I’m not complaining about the paint. In fact, that was all a ruse, you know, to leave the wall half painted like that. I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.”
She smiled.
“A regular Tom Sawyer, detective third grade.”
“Maybe not for long.”
His comment ruined the moment and she stopped smiling. He silently chastised himself on the way back to the bedroom.
After his shower, Bosch put the last part of his recipe into the frying pan. He took a handful of frozen peas and mixed them into the simmering chicken-and-tomato stew. As he brought the food and wine out to the picnic table on the deck, he told Eleanor, who was standing at the railing, to have a seat.
“Sorry,” he said as they settled in. “I forgot about a salad.”
“This is all I need.”
They started the meal in silence. He waited.
“I like it a lot,” she finally said. “What do you call this?”
“I don’t know. My mother just called it Chicken Special. I think that’s what it was called in a restaurant where she first had it.”
“A family recipe.”
“The only one.”
They ate quietly for a few minutes during which Bosch surreptitiously tried to watch her to see if she really enjoyed the food. He was pretty sure she did.
“Harry,” Eleanor said after a while, “who are the agents involved in this?”
“They’re from all over; Chicago, Vegas, L.A.”
“Who from L.A.?”
“Guy named John O’Grady? You know him?”
It had been more than five years since she had worked in the bureau’s L.A. field office. FBI agents moved around a lot. He doubted she would know O’Grady and she said she didn’t.
“What about John Samuels? He’s the AUSA on it. He’s from the OC strike force.”
“Samuels I know. Or knew. He was an agent for a while. Not a particularly good one. Had the law degree and when he figured out he wasn’t much of an investigator, he decided he wanted to prosecute.”
She started laughing and shook her head.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just something they used to say about him. It’s kind of gross.”
“What?”
“Does he still have his mustache?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, they used to say that he could sure put a case together for prosecution, but as far as investigating it out on the street went, he couldn’t find shit if it was in his own mustache.”
She la
ughed again—a little too hard, Bosch thought. He smiled back.
“Maybe that’s why he became a prosecutor,” she added.
Something occurred to Bosch then and he quickly withdrew into his thoughts. Eventually he heard Eleanor’s voice.
“What?”
“You disappeared. I asked what you were thinking. I didn’t think it was that bad a joke.”
“No, I was just thinking about what a bottomless hole I’m in. About how it doesn’t really matter whether Samuels actually believes I’m dirty on this. He needs me to be dirty.”
“How so?”
“They’ve got cases to make with their undercover guy against Joey Marks and his crew. And they’ve got to be ready and able to explain how a murder weapon got to be in their guy’s house. Because if they can’t explain it, then Joey’s lawyers are going to shove it down their throats, make it look like their guy is tainted, is a killer worse than the people he was after. That gun has reasonable doubt written all over it. So the best way to explain away the gun is to blame it on the LAPD. On me. A bad cop from a bad department who found the gun in the weeds and planted it on the guy he thought did it. The jury will go along. They’ll make me out to be this year’s Mark Fuhrman.”
He saw the humor was long gone from her face now. There was obvious concern in her eyes but he thought there was also sadness. Maybe she understood, too, how well he was boxed in.
“The alternative is to prove that Joey Marks or one of his people planted the gun because they somehow knew Luke Goshen was an agent and needed to discredit him. Though that’s the likely truth, it’s a harder road to follow. It’s easier for Samuels just to throw the mud on me.”
He looked down at his half-finished dinner and put his knife and fork on the plate. He couldn’t eat any more. He took a long drink of wine and then kept the glass in his hand, ready.
“I think I’m in big trouble, Eleanor.”
The gravity of his situation was finally beginning to weigh on him. He’d been operating on his faith that the truth would win out and now clearly saw how little truth would have to do with the outcome. He looked up at her. Their eyes connected and he saw that she was about to cry. He tried to smile.