He stood there a long moment thinking about Eleanor, the phone still at his ear, when suddenly he heard her voice.
“Harry, is that you?”
“Eleanor?”
“I’m here, Harry.”
“Why didn’t you answer?”
“I didn’t think it would be for me.”
“When did you get there?”
“Last night. I’ve been waiting for you. Thanks for leaving the key.”
“You’re welcome. . . . Eleanor, where’d you go?”
There was a beat of silence before she answered.
“I went back to Vegas. I needed to get my car . . . clear out my bank account, things like that. Where have you been all night?”
“Working. We have a new suspect. We’re holding him here. Did you go by your apartment?”
“No. There was no reason to. I just did what I had to do and drove back.”
“I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“That’s okay. I was worried about where you were, but I didn’t want to call you there in case you were in the middle of something.”
Bosch wanted to ask her what came next for them, but he felt such a sense of happiness that she was there in his home that he didn’t dare to ruin the moment.
“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be tied up,” he said.
Bosch heard the heavy doors in the station’s rear hallway open and bang shut. Footsteps were coming toward the squad room.
“Do you have to go?” Eleanor asked.
“Um . . .”
Edgar and Rider walked into the squad room. Rider carried a brown evidence bag with something heavy in it. Edgar carried a closed cardboard box across which someone had stenciled Xmas with a Magic Marker. He also had a broad smile on his face.
“Yeah,” Bosch said, “I think I better go.”
“Okay, Harry, I’ll see you.”
“You’ll be there?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Okay, Eleanor, I’ll see you as soon as I can.”
He hung up and looked up at his two partners. Edgar was still smiling.
“We got your Christmas present here, Harry,” Edgar said. “We got Powers right here in this box.”
“You got the boots?”
“No. No boots. We got better than boots.”
“Show me.”
Edgar lifted the lid off the box. Off the top he took out a manila envelope. He then tilted the box so that Bosch could look in. Bosch whistled.
“Merry Christmas,” Edgar said.
“You count it?” Bosch asked, his eyes still on the stacks of currency with rubber bands around them.
“Each bundle has a number on it,” Rider said. “You add them all up, it equals four hundred eighty thousand. It looks like it’s everything.”
“Not a bad present, eh Harry?” Edgar said excitedly.
“No. Where was it?”
“Attic crawl space,” Edgar said. “One of the last places we looked. Box was just sitting there in front of me as soon as I stuck my head up.”
Bosch nodded.
“Okay, what else?”
“Found these under his mattress.”
From the envelope Edgar withdrew a stack of photos. They were six by four in size and each had the date of the photograph digitally printed on the bottom left corner. Bosch put them on the table in front of them and looked through them, carefully picking them up by the corners. He hoped Edgar had handled them the same way.
The first photo was of Tony Aliso getting into a car at the valet stand in front of the Mirage. The next was of him walking to the door of Dolly’s. Following that was a series of shots of him outside Dolly’s talking to the man Aliso knew as Luke Goshen. It was dark outside in these shots and they were taken from a distance, but the neon-glutted entrance of the club was lit as brightly as daylight and Aliso and Goshen were easily recognizable.
Then there were photos from the same location but the date at the bottom corner had changed. They showed a young woman leaving the club and walking to Aliso’s car. Bosch recognized her. It was Layla. There were also pictures of Tony and Layla poolside at the Mirage. The last shot was of Tony leaning his deeply tanned body over Layla’s lounge chair and kissing her on the mouth.
Bosch looked up at Edgar and Rider. Edgar was smiling again. Rider wasn’t.
“Just like we thought,” Edgar said. “He cased this guy over there in Vegas. That shows he had the knowledge to set this whole thing up. Him and the widow. We got ’em, Harry. This shows premeditation, lying in wait, the works. We got ’em both, nine ways to Sunday.”
“Maybe.” He looked at Rider. “What’s up with you, Kiz?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know. It just seems too easy. The place was very clean. No old boots, no sign that Veronica ever even set foot in that place. Then we find these so easy. It was like we were supposed to find it all. I mean, why would he take the time to get rid of the boots but leave the photos under the mattress? I can see him wanting to hang on to the money, but putting it in the attic seems pretty lame.”
She moved her hand toward the photos and the cash in a dismissive gesture. Bosch nodded his agreement and leaned back in his chair.
“I think you’re right,” he said. “He’s not that stupid.”
He thought about the similarity to the gun being planted on Goshen. That, too, turned out to be too easy.
“I think it’s a setup,” Bosch said. “Veronica did this. He took the photos for her. He probably told her to destroy them, but she didn’t. She hung on to them just in case. She probably snuck them back in under his bed and put the cash up in the attic. Was it easy to get to?”
“Easy enough,” Rider said. “Fold-down ladder.”
“Wait a minute, why would she set him up?” Edgar asked.
“Not from the start,” Bosch said. “It was like a fallback position. If things started to go wrong, if we got too close, she had Powers out there ready to take the fall. Maybe when she sent Powers after the suitcase she went to his place with the photos and the cash. Who knows when it started? But I bet when I tell Powers we found this stuff in his house, his eyes are going to pop. Whaddaya got in the bag, Kiz, the camera?”
She nodded and put the bag on the table without opening it.
“Nikon with a telephoto on it, credit card receipt for his purchase of it.”
Bosch nodded and his thoughts strayed a bit. He was trying to think about how he was going to work the photos and money with Powers. It was their shot at breaking him. It had to be played right.
“Hold on, hold on,” Edgar said, a look of confusion on his face. “I still don’t get this. What makes you say it was a setup? Maybe he was holding the cash and the photos and they were going to split it all after the heat died down. Why does it have to be that she set him up?”
Bosch looked at Rider and then back at Edgar.
“’Cause Kiz is right. It’s too easy.”
“Not if he thought we didn’t have a clue, if he thought he was clear right up to the moment we jumped out of the bushes up there in the woods.”
Bosch shook his head.
“I don’t know. I don’t think he would have played it the way he did when I was just talking to him. Not if he knew he had this stuff back at his place. I go with it being a setup. She’s putting it all on him. We pull her in and she’ll feed us some story about the guy being obsessed with her. Maybe, if she’s any kind of actress, she tells us, yes, she had an affair with him but then she broke it off. But he wouldn’t go away. He killed her old man so he could have her all to himself.”
Bosch leaned back and looked at them, waiting for their response.
“I think it’s good,” Rider said. “It could work.”
“Except we don’t believe it,” Bosch said.
“So what’s she get out of this?” Edgar asked, refusing to drop his disagreement. “She’s givin’ up the money puttin’ it in his pad. What’s that leave her?”
&n
bsp; “The house, the cars, insurance,” Bosch said. “Whatever’s left of the company—and the chance to get away.”
But it was a weak answer and he knew it. A half million dollars was a lot of cash to use to set somebody up. It was the one flaw in the theory he had just spun.
“She got rid of her husband,” Rider said. “Maybe that was all that was important to her.”
“He’d been screwing around on her for years,” Edgar said. “Why now? What was different this time?”
“I don’t know,” Rider said. “But there was something different or something else we don’t know about. That’s what we have to find out.”
“Yeah, well, good luck,” Edgar said.
“I’ve got an idea,” Bosch said. “If anyone knows what that something else is, it’s Powers. I want to try to scam him and I think I know how. Kiz, you still got that tape, the one with Veronica in it?
“Casualty of Desire? Yeah. It’s in my drawer.”
“Go get it and set it up in the lieutenant’s office. I’m going to grab some more coffee and I’ll meet you there.”
Bosch stepped into interview room three with the box of cash turned so that the side that said Xmas on it was held against his chest. He hoped it looked like any common cardboard box. He watched Powers for a sign of recognition and got none. Powers was sitting just as Bosch had left him. Ramrod straight, his arms behind him as if by choice. He looked at Bosch with deadpan eyes that were ready and waiting for the next go-round. Bosch put the box on the floor where it would be shielded from view, pulled out the chair and sat across from him again. He then reached down, opened the box and took out a tape recorder and a file folder. He put them on the table in plain sight.
“I told you, Bosch, no taping. If you got the camera on the other side of the glass going, then you’re ripping off my rights, too.”
“No camera, no tape, Powers. This is just to play you something, that’s all. Now, where were we?”
“We were to the point of put up or shut up. You cut me loose or you get my lawyer in here.”
“Well, actually, a couple of things have come up. I thought you might want to know about them first. You know, before you make a decision like that.”
“Fuck that. I’m through with this shit. Get me the phone.”
“Do you own a camera, Powers?”
“I said get—a camera? What about it?”
“Do you own a camera? It’s a pretty straightforward question.”
“Yes. Everybody owns a camera. What about it?”
Bosch studied him for a moment. He could feel the momentum and control start to maybe shift just a bit. It was coming across the table from Powers. He could feel it. Bosch played a thin smile on his face. He wanted Powers to know that from this point on it was slipping away from him.
“Did you take the camera with you when you went to Vegas last March?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I take it on all my vacations. Didn’t know it was a crime. The fucking legislature, what will they think of next?”
Bosch let him have his smile but didn’t return it.
“Is that what you called it?” he said quietly. “A vacation?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I called it.”
“That’s funny, because that’s not what Veronica is calling it.”
“I don’t know anything about that or her.”
His eyes momentarily looked away from Bosch. It was the first time, and again Bosch felt the balance shifting. He was playing it right. He felt it. Things were shifting.
“Sure you know about it, Powers. And you know her pretty good, too. She just told us all about it. She’s in the other room right now. Turns out she was weaker than I thought. My money had been on you. You know the saying, the bigger they are the harder they fall, all of that. I thought you’d be the one but it was her. Edgar and Rider broke her down a little while ago. Amazing how crime scene photos can work on somebody’s guilty conscience. She told us everything, Powers. Everything.”
“You’re so full of bullshit, Bosch, and it’s getting pretty old. Where’s the phone?”
“This is how she tells it. You —”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“You met her when you went up there that night to take the burglary report. One thing led to another and pretty soon you two were having a little romance. An affair to remember. Only she came to her senses and broke it off. She still loved ol’ Tony. She knew he traveled a lot, strayed a lot, but she was used to that. She needed him. So she cut you off. Only, and this is according to her, you wouldn’t be cut off. You kept after her, calling her, following her when she’d leave the estate up there. It was getting scary. I mean, what could she do? Go to Tony and say this guy I had an affair with is following me all the time? She —”
“This is so much bullshit, Bosch. It’s a joke!”
“Then you started following Tony. You see, he was your problem. He was in the way. So you did your homework. You followed him to Vegas and you caught him in the act. You knew just what he was up to and how to put him down in a way that we’d go down the wrong path. Trunk music, they call it. Only you couldn’t carry the tune, Powers. We’re on to you. With her help, we’re going to put you down.”
Powers was looking down at the table. The skin around his eyes and his jawline had drawn tight.
“This is so much crap,” he said without looking up. “I’m tired of listening to it and to you. She’s not in the other room. She’s sitting up there in that big house on the hill. This is the oldest trick in the book.”
Powers looked up and a twisted smile cracked his face.
“You try to pull this shit on a cop? I can’t believe it. This is really weak, man. You’re weak. You’re embarrassing yourself here.”
Bosch reached over to the tape recorder and pushed the play button. Veronica Aliso’s voice filled the tiny room.
“It was him. He’s crazy. I couldn’t stop him until it was too late. Then I couldn’t tell anyone because it . . . it would look like I —”
Bosch turned it off.
“That’s enough,” he said. “It’s out of line for me to even play that for you. But I thought, cop to cop, you should know where you stand.”
Bosch silently watched Powers as he did a slow burn. Bosch could see the anger boiling up behind his eyes. He didn’t seem to move a muscle, yet he seemed all at once to become as hard as a stack of lumber. He finally was able to hold himself back, though, and compose himself.
“It’s just her word,” he said in a quiet voice. “There’s no corroboration of anything. It’s a fantasy, Bosch. Her word against mine.”
“It could be. Except we have these.”
Bosch opened the file and threw the stack of photos in front of Powers. Then he reached across and carefully fanned them on the table so they could be seen and recognized.
“That backs up a good part of her story, don’t you think?”
Bosch watched as Powers studied the photographs. Once again Powers seemed to go to the edge with an interior rage, but once more he contained it.
“It doesn’t back up shit,” he said. “She could’ve taken these herself. Anybody could have. Just because she gives you a stack of . . . She’s got you people wrapped up, doesn’t she? You’re buying every line she feeds you.”
“Maybe that would be so, only she didn’t give us the photos.”
Bosch reached into the file again and pulled out a copy of the search warrant. He reached over and put it on top of the photos.
“Five hours ago we faxed that to Judge Warren Lambert at his home in the Palisades. He faxed it back signed. Edgar and Rider have been in your little Hollywood bungalow most of the night. Among the items seized was a Nikon camera with telephoto lens. And these photos. They were under your mattress, Powers.”
He paused here to let it all sink in behind Powers’s darkening eyes.
“Oh, and one other thing we found.” Bosch reached down and brought the box up. “This was in t
he attic with the Christmas stuff.”
He dumped the contents of the box on the table and the stacks of cash tumbled every which way, some falling to the floor. Bosch shook the box to make sure it had all come out and then dropped it to the floor. He looked at Powers. His eyes were wild, darting over the thick bundles. Bosch knew he had him. And he also knew in his gut that he had Veronica Aliso to thank for that.
“Now, personally, I don’t think you are this stupid,” Bosch said quietly. “You know, to keep the pictures and all this cash right in your house. Of course, I’ve seen crazier things in my time. But if I was betting, I’d bet that you didn’t know all of this was there because you didn’t put it there. But, hey, either way it works fine for me. We’ve got you and we’ll clear this one, that’s all I care about. It would be nice to grab her, too, but that’s okay. We’ll need her for you. With the photos and her story and all the other stuff we’ve talked about here, I think we got you for the murder easy. There’s also lying-in-wait to tack on. That makes it a special-circumstances case, Powers. You’re looking at one of two things. The needle or LWP.”
He pronounced the last acronym el-wop, knowing that any cop, just as any criminal in the system, would know it meant life without parole.
“Anyway,” Bosch continued, “I guess I’ll go get that phone brought in here so you can call your lawyer. Better make it a good one. And none of those grandstanders from the O.J. case. You need to get yourself a lawyer who does his best work outside of the courtroom. A negotiator.”
He stood up and turned to the door. With his hand on the knob he looked back at Powers.
“You know, I feel bad, Powers. You being a cop and all, I was sort of hoping you’d catch the break instead of her. I feel like we’re hitting the wrong person with the hammer. But I guess that’s life in the big city. Somebody’s got to be hit with it.”
He turned back to the door and opened it.
“Bitch!” Powers said with a quiet forcefulness.
Then he whispered something under his breath that Bosch couldn’t hear. Bosch looked back at him. He knew enough not to say a word.
“It was her idea,” Powers said. “All of it. She conned me and now she’s conning you.”