“Right, yes.”
“And it looked like she was opening an account?”
“Yes, but I can’t be sure. That’s the problem with a one-man tail. It’s a small branch bank and I couldn’t hang around inside too long. It looked like she was signing account papers and Tony was just watching. But I had to go out and wait outside until they were done. Remember, Tony knew me. If he even saw me, the tail would be blown.”
“Okay, I’m going.”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight. I have to make some calls first.”
Bosch went back into the kitchen and called Grace Billets. While filling her in on what he had learned and his hunch about what it all meant, he got a pot of coffee going. After getting her approval to travel, he next called Edgar and then Rider and made arrangements to pick them up at the station in one hour.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter in deep thought. Felton. There was a contradiction, it seemed to Bosch. If the Metro captain was the Joey Marks organization’s inside man, why had he moved so quickly to go after Goshen when he got the match on the fingerprints Bosch had provided? Bosch played with this for a while and finally decided that Felton must have seen an opportunity in moving Goshen out of the way. He must have believed that his position in the Las Vegas underworld would rise if Goshen were out of the picture. Perhaps he even planned to arrange Goshen’s assassination, thereby ensuring the indebtedness of Joey Marks. Bosch realized that for this plan to work, Felton either didn’t know that Goshen knew he was the organization’s inside man, or he planned to get rid of Goshen before he got a chance to tell anyone.
Bosch took a sip of the scalding coffee and put these thoughts aside. He went back into the living room. Eleanor was still on the couch.
“Are you going?”
“Yeah. I’ve got to pick up Jerry and Kiz.”
“Why tonight?”
“Got to be there before the bank opens tomorrow.”
“You think Veronica is going to be there?”
“It’s a hunch. I think Joey Marks finally figured out just like we did that if he didn’t whack Tony, then somebody else did and that person had to have been close to him. And that that person now has his money. He knew Veronica from way back and would figure she was up to it. I think he sent Felton over to check into it and to get his money back and take care of her if she was dirty on it. But she must’ve talked him out of it somehow. Probably by mentioning she had two million in skim in a safe deposit box in Vegas. I think that’s what stopped Felton from killing her and instead made him take her with him. She’s probably only alive until they get into that box. I think she gave Felton her husband’s last betting slip because she knew he might cash it and we’d be watching for it.”
“What makes you think it’s at the bank where I saw him go?”
“Because we know about everything he had over here, all his accounts. It’s not over here. Powers told me Veronica had told him that Tony dropped the skim into a safe deposit box that she wouldn’t have access to until he was dead. She wasn’t a signatory on it. So my guess is that it’s in Vegas. It’s the only place he’s been outside of L.A. for the last year. And that if one day he was taking his girlfriend to open a bank account somewhere, he’d just go ahead and take her to the same bank he used.”
Eleanor nodded.
“It’s funny,” Bosch said.
“What is?”
“That what all of this really came down to was a bank caper. It’s not really about Tony Aliso’s murder, it’s about the money he skimmed and hid. A bank caper with his murder sort of a side effect. And that’s how you and I met. On a bank job.”
She nodded, her eyes going far off as she thought about it. Bosch immediately wished he hadn’t brought the memory up.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess it’s not really that funny.”
Eleanor looked up at him from the couch.
“Harry, I’m going with you to Las Vegas.”
VIII
The Silver State National Bank branch where Tony Aliso had taken his girlfriend while Eleanor Wish had watched was in the corner of a small shopping plaza between a Radio Shack and a Mexican restaurant called Las Fuentes. The parking lot was largely empty at dawn on Monday morning when the FBI agents and LAPD detectives came to set up. The bank didn’t open until nine and the other businesses would follow beginning at ten.
Because the businesses were closed, the agents had a problem in locating their surveillance points. It would be too obvious to stick four government cars in the lot. They would be too noticeable because there were only five other cars in the entire block-long parking lot, four parked on the outer fringes and an old Cadillac parked in the first row nearest the bank. There were no license plates on the Caddy, which had a spiderweb crack in the windshield, its windows left open and the trunk sprung and held closed by a chain and padlock through one of its many rusted-out spots. It had the sad appearance of having been abandoned, its owner probably another Las Vegas casualty. Like someone lost in the desert and dying of thirst just a few feet from an oasis, the Caddy had stopped for the final time just a few feet from the bank and all the money inside it.
The agents, after cruising by the location a few times to get the lay of the land, decided to use the Caddy as a blind, by popping the hood and sticking an agent in a greasy T-shirt under it and ostensibly working on the dead engine. They complemented this agent with a panel van parked right next to the Caddy. Four agents were in the van. At seven that morning they had taken it to the federal utilities shop and had a painter stencil Las Fuentes Mexican Restaurant—Established 1983 on the side panels in red paint. The paint was still drying when they drove the van into the lot at eight.
Now at nine, the lot was slowly beginning to fill, mostly with employees of the stores and a few Silver State customers who needed to take care of business as soon as the bank opened its doors. Bosch watched all of this from the backseat of a federal car. Lindell and an agent named Baker were in the front seat. They were parked in the service bay of a gas station across Flamingo Road from the shopping center where the bank was located. Edgar and Rider were in another bureau car parked further up Flamingo. There were two other bureau cars in the area, one static and one roving. The plan was for Lindell to move his car into the bank parking lot once it became more crowded with cars and the bureau car would not stand out. This plan included a bureau helicopter making wide arcs around the shopping center.
“They’re opening up,” a voice from the car radio reported.
“Gotcha, Las Fuentes,” Lindell said back.
The bureau cars were each equipped with a radio pedal and overhead mike on the windshield visor, meaning the driver of each car simply depressed the foot pedal and spoke, avoiding having to raise a microphone to his mouth and possibly being noticed and identified as law enforcement. Bosch had heard that the LAPD was finally getting such equipment, but the narcotics units and specialized surveillance teams were getting it first.
“Lindell,” he said, “you ever go to talk on the radio and slam on the brakes by mistake?”
“Not yet, Bosch. Why?”
“Just curious how all this fancy equipment works.”
“It’s only as good as the people who work it.”
Bosch yawned. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept. They had driven through the night to get to Las Vegas and then spent the rest of the time planning for the bank surveillance.
“So what do you think, Bosch?” Lindell asked him. “Sooner or later?”
“This morning. They’ll want their money. They don’t want to wait.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You think it’s later?”
“If it was me, I’d do it later. That way if there were people out there watching and waiting—whether it’s the bureau or LAPD or Powers or whoever—they’d get cooked in the sun. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah. We sit out here all day and we aren’t going to be very sharp whe
n the time comes.”
Bosch was quiet for a little while after that. From the backseat he studied Lindell. He noticed that the agent had gotten a haircut. There was no sign of the spot where Bosch had hacked off his ponytail.
“You think you’re going to miss it?” Bosch asked.
“Miss what?”
“Being under. The life, I mean.”
“No, it was getting old. I’ll be happy to go straight.”
“Not even the girls?”
Bosch saw Lindell’s eyes take a quick swipe at Baker and then look at Bosch in the rearview mirror. That told Bosch to let that subject go.
“Whaddaya think about the lot now, Don?” Lindell said, changing the subject.
Baker scanned the lot. It was slowly filling up. There was a bagel shop on the far end from the bank, and that was responsible for most of the autos at the moment.
“I think we can take it in, park it by the bagel place,” Baker said. “There’s enough cover now.”
“Okay, then,” Lindell said. He tilted his head slightly so that he was projecting his voice toward the visor. “Uh, Las Fuentes, this is Roy Rogers. We’re going to take our position in now. We’ll check ya from the bagel shop. That will be to your posterior. I believe.”
“Roger that,” came the return. “You always wanted to be on my tail end, didn’t you, Roy?”
“Funny guy,” Lindell said.
An hour went by while they watched from their new position and nothing happened. Lindell was able to move their car in closer, parking in front of a card-dealing school about half the parking lot’s length from the bank. It was class day and several would-be dealers had been pulling in and parking. It was good cover.
“I don’t know, Bosch,” Lindell said, breaking a long silence. “You think they’re going to show or not?”
“I never said it was anything more than a hunch. But I still think it all fits. It even fits better since we got here. Last week I found a matchbook in Aliso’s room at the Mirage. It was from Las Fuentes. Whether they show or not, I say Tony’s got a box in that bank.”
“Well, I’m thinking about sending Don here in to ask about that. We might be able to call an end to this and stop wasting our time if we find out there’s no box.”
“Well, it’s your call.”
“You got that right.”
A couple more minutes of tense silence went by.
“What about Powers?” Lindell asked.
“What about him?”
“I don’t see him here, either, Bosch. When you got here this morning, you were all hot and heavy about him comin’ out here to find her and blast her full of holes. So where is he?”
“I don’t know, Lindell. But if we’re smart enough to figure this out, so is he. I wouldn’t doubt it if he knew from tailing Tony where the box was all along and just left that out of our little conversation.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, either. But I still say it’d be stupid for him to come here. He’s got to know we have a fix on this.”
“Stupid isn’t the word. It’s suicidal. But I don’t think he cares. He just wants her to go down. And if he takes a bullet, too, then that’s the way it goes. Like I told you before, he was ready to do the kamikaze scene at the station when he thought she was there.”
“Well, let’s just hope he’s cooled down a little since —”
“There!” Baker barked out.
Bosch followed his pointing finger toward the far corner of the lot, where a white limousine had just pulled in and was moving slowly toward the bank.
“Jesus,” Lindell said. “Don’t tell me he is this stupid.”
All limos looked basically the same to Bosch but somehow Lindell and Baker had recognized the car.
“Is that Joey Marks?”
“It’s his limo. He likes those big whitewalls. It’s the wop in him. I just can’t—he can’t be in there. He’s not going to waste two years of my fucking life making this pickup, is he?”
The limo stopped in the lane in front of the bank. There was no further movement.
“You got this, Las Fuentes?” Lindell asked.
“Yeah, we got it,” came a whispered reply, though there was clearly no way anyone in that van could be overheard by someone in the limo.
“Uh, one, two and three, stand by,” Lindell continued. “Looks like we might have the fox in the henhouse. Air Jordan, you take five until further. I don’t want you swinging over and spooking anybody.”
This brought a chorus of rogers from the three other ground units and the helicopter.
“On second thought, three, why don’t you come on up by the southwest entrance and stand by there for me,” Lindell said.
“Roger that.”
Finally, the door to the limo opened, but it was on the side blocked from Bosch’s view. He waited, not breathing, and after a beat Captain John Felton emerged from the limo.
“Bingo,” the whisper came over the radio.
Felton then leaned back into the open door and reached in. Veronica Aliso now emerged, Felton’s hand tightly around her arm. Following her, another man emerged at the same time the trunk opened automatically. While this second man, who was wearing gray pants and a shirt with an oval name tag sewn above the breast pocket, went to the trunk, Felton bent down and said something to someone still inside the limo. He never took his hand off Veronica’s arm.
Bosch caught only a glimpse of Veronica’s face then. Though he was an easy thirty yards from her, he could see the fear and weariness. It had probably been the longest night of her life.
The second man pulled a heavy red toolbox from the trunk and followed behind as Felton walked Veronica toward the bank, his arm still gripping her and his head swiveling as he looked about. Bosch saw Felton’s focus linger on the van and then finally look away. The paint job had probably been the deciding factor. It had been a nice touch.
As they walked alongside the old Cadillac, Felton bent down to look at the man working under the hood. Satisfied he was not a threat, Felton straightened up and went on to the glass doors of the bank. Before they disappeared inside, Bosch saw that Veronica was clutching a cloth bag of some kind. Its dimensions were not discernible because it appeared to be empty and folded over on itself.
Bosch didn’t breathe again until they were no longer in sight.
“Okay,” Lindell said to the visor. “We’ve got three. Felton, the woman, and the driller. Anybody recognize him?”
The radio was silent for a few seconds and then a lone voice answered.
“I’m too far away but I thought it looked like Maury Pollack. He’s a safe-and-lock man who’s worked for Joey’s crew before.”
“Okay,” Lindell said. “We’ll check him later. I’m sending Baker in now to open a new account. Wait five and then, Conlon, you go in next. Check your sets now.”
They went through a quick check of the radio sets Baker and Conlon were wearing under their clothes with wireless earpieces and wrist mikes. They checked out and Baker got out of the car and walked briskly along the sidewalk in front of the other stores toward the bank.
“Okay, Morris,” Lindell said. “Take a walk. Try the Radio Shack.”
“Roger.”
Bosch watched as an agent he recognized from the pre-dawn meeting started crossing the lot from a car parked near the southwest entrance to the lot. Morris and Baker crossed paths ten feet apart but didn’t acknowledge each other or even glance at the limo, which still sat with its engine idling in the lane in front of the bank.
It took about an hour for the next five minutes to go by. It was hot out but Bosch was mainly sweating from the anxiety of waiting and wondering what was going on. There had been only one transmission from Baker once he was inside. He had whispered that the subjects were in the safe deposit vault.
“Okay, Conlon, go,” Lindell ordered at the five-minute mark.
Bosch soon saw Conlon walking along the storefronts from the direction of the bagel shop. He went into the bank.
>
And then there was nothing for the next fifteen excruciating minutes. Finally, Lindell spoke just to break the silence.
“How we doin’ out there. Everybody chipper?”
There was a chorus of microphone clicks signaling an affirmative response. Just as the radio had gone silent again, Baker’s voice came up in an urgent whisper.
“They’re coming out, coming out. Something’s wrong.”
Bosch watched the bank doors and in a moment Felton and Veronica came out, the police captain’s hand still firmly on her arm. The driller followed behind, lugging his red toolbox.
Felton didn’t look around this time. He just walked with purpose toward the limo. He carried the bag now and it did not appear to Bosch to have grown in size. If Veronica’s face looked fearful and tired before, it now looked even more distorted by fright. It was hard for Bosch to tell at this distance, but it looked like she was crying.
The door to the limo was opened from within as the threesome retraced their path alongside the old Cadillac and were getting near.
“All right,” Lindell said to the listening agents. “On my call we go in. I’ll take the front of the limo, three, you are in behind me. One and two, you got the back. Standard vehicular stop. Las Fuentes, I want you people to come up and clear the limo. Do it quick. If there’s shooting, everybody watch the cross fire. Watch the cross fire.”
As the rogers were coming in, Bosch was watching Veronica. He could tell she knew she was going to her death. The look on her face was vaguely reminiscent of what Bosch had seen on her husband’s face. That certain knowledge that the game was up.
As he watched, he suddenly saw the trunk of the Cadillac spring open behind her. And from it, as if propelled by the same taut steel, jumped Powers. In a loud, wild-animal voice that Bosch heard clearly and would never forget, Powers yelled one word as he hit the ground.
“Veronica!”
As she, Felton and the driller turned to the origin of the sound, Powers raised his hands, both of them holding weapons. In that instant Bosch saw the glint of his own gun, the satin-finished Smith & Wesson, in the killer cop’s left hand.