“Gun!” Lindell yelled. “Everybody in! Everybody in!”
He jerked the car into gear and slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The car jerked forward and started screaming toward the limo. But Bosch knew there was nothing they could do. They were too far away. He watched the scene unfold with a grim fascination, as if he were watching a slow-motion scene from a Peckinpah movie.
Powers began firing both guns, the shells ejecting and arcing away over both his shoulders as he stepped toward the limo. Felton made an attempt to go inside his jacket for his own gun but he was cut down in the fusillade, the first to drop. Then Veronica, standing perfectly still, facing her killer and making no move to run or shield herself, was hit and went down, dropping to the pavement, where Bosch couldn’t see her because the limo blocked his view.
Powers kept coming and firing. The driller dropped his toolbox, raised his hands and started stepping backward away from the line of fire. Powers apparently ignored him. Bosch couldn’t tell if he was shooting at Veronica’s fallen body or into the open door of the limo. The limo took off, its tires spinning at first without purchase before it finally started to move, the rear door still open. But almost immediately, its driver failed to negotiate the left turn in the parking lane and the big car crashed into a row of parked cars. The driver jumped out and started running in the direction of the bagel shop.
Powers seemed to pay the fleeing driver no mind. He had reached the spot where Felton had fallen to the ground. He dropped Bosch’s gun on the police captain’s chest and reached down for the bag, which was on the ground next to Felton’s hand.
It seemed that Powers did not realize the bag was empty until he had actually picked it up off the ground and held it. And as he was making this discovery, the doors of the van behind him were opened and four agents carrying shotguns were coming out. The agent in the T-shirt was coming around the side of the Cadillac, the handgun he had hidden in the engine compartment now pointed at Powers.
A squealing tire from one of the approaching bureau cars drew Powers’s attention away from the empty duffel bag. He dropped it and turned on the five agents behind him. He raised both his hands again, though he only had one gun this time.
The agents opened fire and Bosch watched as Powers was literally lifted off the ground by the force of the impact and onto the front hood of a full-sized pickup truck that probably belonged to a bank customer. Powers landed on his back. His hand lost its grip on the remaining gun and it clattered off the hood to the ground. As loud as the eight seconds of shooting had been, the silence that followed the gun falling to the ground seemed even louder.
Powers was dead. Felton was dead. Giuseppe Marconi, aka Joseph Marconi, aka Joey Marks, was dead—his body sprawled and awash in blood on the soft leather seats in the back of his limousine.
When they got to Veronica Aliso, she was alive but dying. She had been hit with two rounds in the upper chest, and the bubbles in the froth of blood in her mouth indicated her lungs had been shredded. While the FBI agents ran about securing and containing the scene, Bosch and Rider went to Veronica.
Her eyes were open but losing their moisture. They were moving all around as if searching for someone or something that wasn’t there. Her jaw started to work and she said something but Bosch couldn’t hear. He crouched down over her and turned his ear to her mouth.
“Can you . . . get me ice?” she whispered.
Bosch turned and looked at her. He didn’t understand. She started to speak again and he turned his ear to her mouth again.
“. . . the pavement . . . so hot. I . . . I need ice.”
Bosch looked at her and nodded.
“It’s coming. It’s coming. Veronica, where’s the money?”
He bent over her, realizing that she was right, the pavement was now burning the palms of his hands. He could barely make out her words.
“At least they don’t . . . they don’t get it.”
She started coughing then, a deep wet cough, and Bosch knew her chest was full of blood and it wouldn’t be long before she drowned. He couldn’t think of what to do or say to this woman. He realized they were probably his own bullets in her and that she was dying because they had fucked up and let Powers get away. He almost wanted to ask her to forgive him, to say she understood how things could go so wrong.
He looked away from her and across the lot. He could hear sirens approaching. But he had seen enough gunshot wounds to know she wasn’t going to need the ambulance. He looked back down at her. Her face was very pale and going slack. Her lips moved once more and he bent to listen. This time her voice was no more than a desperate rasp in his ear. He could not understand her words and he whispered in her ear to say it again.
“. . . et my gergo . . .”
He turned his head to look at her, the confusion in his eyes. He shook his head. An annoyed expression crossed her face.
“Let,” she said clearly, using the last of her strength. “Let . . . my daughter go.”
Bosch kept his eyes locked on hers as that last line ran through his mind. Then, without thinking about it, he nodded once to her. And as he watched, she died. Her eyes lost their focus and he could tell she was gone.
Bosch stood up and Rider studied his face.
“Harry, what did she say?”
“She said . . . I’m not sure what she said.”
Bosch, Edgar and Rider stood leaning against the trunk of Lindell’s car, watching as a phalanx of FBI and Metro people continued to descend on the crime scene. Lindell had ordered the entire shopping center closed and marked off with yellow tape, a move that prompted Edgar to comment, “When these guys throw a crime scene, they really throw a crime scene.”
Each of them had already given a statement. They were no longer part of the investigation. They were merely witnesses to the event and now observers.
The special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office was on the scene directing the investigation. The bureau had brought in a motor home that had four separate interview rooms in it and agents were taking statements in them from witnesses to the shooting. The bodies were still there, now covered in yellow plastic on the pavement and in the limo. That splash of bright color made for good video for the news helicopters circling overhead.
Bosch had been able to pick up pieces of information from Lindell on how things stood. The ID number on the Cadillac in which Powers had hidden for at least the four hours it was under observation by the FBI was traced to an owner in Palmdale, California, a desert town northeast of Los Angeles. The owner was already on file with the bureau. He was a white supremacist who had held antigovernment rallies on his land the last two Independence Days. He was also known to have sought to contribute to the defense funds of the men charged with bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City two years before. Lindell told Bosch that the SAIC had ordered an arrest warrant for the owner on charges of conspiracy to commit murder for his role in helping Powers. It had been a nice plan. The trunk of the Caddy was lined with a thick carpet and several blankets. The chain and padlock used to hold it closed could be unhooked from the inside. Through rusted-out spots on the fenders and trunk it had been possible for Powers to watch and wait for the right moment to come out, guns ready.
The driller, who it turned out was indeed Maury Pollack, was only too happy to cooperate with the agents. He was just happy he wasn’t one of the ones wearing a yellow plastic blanket. He told Lindell and the others that Joey Marks had picked him up that morning, told him to wear a working-man’s outfit and to bring his drill. He didn’t know what the situation was because there was little talking in the limo on the ride over. He just knew the woman was scared.
Inside the bank Veronica Aliso had presented a bank officer with a copy of her husband’s death certificate, his will and a court order issued Friday in Las Vegas Municipal Court granting her, as sole heir to Anthony Aliso, access to his safe deposit box. Access was approved and the box was drilled because Mrs. Aliso said she had not been able to
locate her husband’s key.
The trouble was, Pollack said, when he drilled the box open, they found it was empty.
“Can you imagine that?” Lindell said as he related this information to Bosch. “All of this for nothing. I was hoping to get my hands on that two mil. Of course, we’d’ve split it with L.A. Right down the middle, Bosch.”
“Right,” Bosch said. “Did you look at the records? When was the last time Tony went into his box?”
“That’s another thing. He was just in on Friday. Like twelve hours before they killed him, he went in and cleared the box. He must’ve had a premonition or something. He knew, man. He knew.”
“Maybe.”
Bosch thought about the matchbook from Las Fuentes that he had found in Tony’s room at the Mirage. Tony didn’t smoke but he remembered the ashtrays at the house where Layla had grown up. He decided that if Tony had cleared his box out on that Friday and eaten at Las Fuentes while he was here, the only likely reason he would have ended up with matches from the restaurant in his room was that he had been at the restaurant with someone who needed them.
“Now the question is, where’s the money?” Lindell said. “We can seize it if we can find it. Ol’ Joey’s not going to need it.”
Lindell looked over at the limo. The door was still open and one of Marconi’s legs stuck out from under the yellow plastic. A powder blue pants leg, a black loafer and white sock. That was all Bosch could see of Joey Marks now.
“The bank people, are they cooperating or do you need a warrant for every move you make?” Bosch asked.
“No, they’re on board. The manager’s in there shaking like a leaf. Not every day you get a massacre outside your front door.”
“Then ask them to check their records and see if there’s a box in there under the name Gretchen Alexander.”
“Gretchen Alexander? Who’s that?”
“You know her, Roy. It’s Layla.”
“Layla? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? You think he’d give that bimbo two million duckets while he goes off and gets himself killed?”
“Just check, Roy. It’s worth a shot.”
Lindell went off toward the bank doors. Bosch looked at his partners.
“Jerry, you going to want your gun back? We should tell them now so they don’t destroy them or file them away forever.”
“My gun?”
Edgar looked at all of the yellow plastic with a pained look on his face.
“No, Harry, I don’t think so. That piece is haunted now. I don’t ever want it back.”
“Yeah,” Bosch said. “I was thinking the same thing.”
Bosch brooded about things for a while and then heard his name being called. He turned and saw Lindell beckoning him from the door of the bank. He headed over.
“Bingo,” Lindell said. “She’s got a box.”
They walked back into the bank and Bosch saw several agents conducting interviews with the branch’s stunned employees. Lindell led him to a desk where the branch manager sat. She was a woman of about thirty with brown curly hair. The nameplate on her desk said Jeanne Connors. Lindell picked up a file that was on her desk and showed it to Bosch.
“She has a box here and she made Tony Aliso a signatory on it. He pulled the box at the same time he pulled his own on the Friday before he got nailed. You know what I’m thinking? I think he emptied his and put it all in hers.”
“Probably.”
Bosch was looking at the safe deposit entry records in the file. They were handwritten on a three-by-five card.
“So,” Lindell said, “what we do is we get a warrant for her box and drill the sucker—maybe get Maury out there to do it, since he’s being so cooperative. We seize the money and the federal government is that much ahead. You guys’d get a split, too.”
Bosch looked at him.
“You can drill it, if you’ve got the probable cause, but there isn’t going to be anything in it.”
Bosch pointed to the last entry on the box card. Gretchen Alexander had pulled the box herself five days earlier—the Wednesday after Tony Aliso was killed. Lindell stared at it a long moment before reacting.
“Jesus, you think she cleared it out?”
“Yeah, Roy, I do.”
“She’s gone, isn’t she? You’ve been looking for her, haven’t you?”
“She’s in the wind, man. And I guess so am I.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I gave my statement, I’m clear. I’ll see you, Roy.”
“Yeah, okay, Bosch.”
Bosch headed to the door of the bank. As he opened it, Lindell came up behind him.
“But why’d he put it all in her box?”
He was still holding the box card and staring at it as if it might suddenly answer all his questions.
“I don’t know but I’ve got a guess.”
“What’s that, Bosch?”
“He was in love with her.”
“Him? A girl like that?”
“You never know. People can kill each other for all kinds of reasons. I guess they can fall in love with each other for all kinds of reasons. You gotta take it when it comes, no matter if it’s a girl like that or . . . someone else.”
Lindell just nodded and Bosch stepped through the door.
Bosch, Edgar and Rider took a cab to the federal building and picked up their car. Bosch said he wanted to stop by the house in North Las Vegas where Gretchen Alexander had grown up.
“She isn’t going to be there, Harry,” Edgar said. “Are you kidding?”
“I know she won’t be there. I just want to talk to the old lady for a minute.”
He found the house without getting lost and pulled into the driveway. The RX7 was still there and didn’t look like it had moved.
“This will only take a minute, if you want to stay in the car.”
“I’ll go in,” Rider said.
“I’ll stay and keep the AC going,” Edgar said. “In fact, I’ll drive the first leg, Harry.”
He got out as Bosch and Rider exited and came around and took Bosch’s place behind the wheel.
Bosch’s knock on the front door was answered quickly. The woman had heard or seen the car and was ready.
“You,” she said, looking through the two-inch crack she had allowed in the door. “Gretchen still isn’t here.”
“I know, Mrs. Alexander. It’s you I want to talk to.”
“Me? What on earth for?”
“Would you please let us in? It’s hot out here.”
She opened the door with a resigned look on her face.
“Hot in here, too. I can’t afford to put the thermostat lower than eighty.”
Bosch and Rider entered and moved into the living room. He introduced Rider and all three of them sat down. This time Bosch sat on the edge of the sofa, remembering how he had sunk in last time.
“All right, what’s this about? Why do you want to talk to me?”
“I want to know about your granddaughter’s mother,” Bosch said.
The old woman’s mouth went slack and Bosch could tell Rider wasn’t much less confused.
“Her mother?” Dorothy asked. “Her mother’s long gone. Didn’t have the decency to see her own child through. Never mind her mother.”
“When did she leave?”
“Long time ago. Gretchen wasn’t even out of diapers. She just left me a note saying good-bye and good luck. She was gone.”
“Where’d she go?”
“I have no earthly idea and I don’t want to know. Good riddance, is what I say. She turned her back on that beautiful little girl. Didn’t have the decency to ever call or even send for a picture.”
“How did you know she was even alive?”
“I didn’t. She could be dead all these years for all I know or care.”
She was a bad liar, the type who got louder and indignant when she lied.
“You know,” Bosch said. “She sent you money, didn’t she?”
The woman looked sulle
nly down at her hands for a long moment. It was her way of confirming his guess.
“How often?”
“Once or twice a year. It wasn’t near enough to make up for what she did.”
Bosch wanted to ask how much would have been enough but let it go.
“How did the money come?”
“Mail. It was in cash. I know it came from Sherman Oaks, California. That was always the postmark. What does this have to do with anything now?”
“Tell me your daughter’s name, Dorothy.”
“She was born to me and my first husband. My name was Gilroy back then and that was hers.”
“Jennifer Gilroy,” Rider said, repeating Veronica Aliso’s true name.
The old woman looked at Rider with surprise but didn’t ask how she knew.
“We called her Jenny,” she said. “Anyway, you see, when I took over with Gretchen I was remarried and had a new name. I gave it to Gretchen so the kids at school wouldn’t bother her about it. Everybody always thought I was her momma and that was fine with the both of us. Nobody needed to know diff’rent.”
Bosch just nodded. It had all come together now. Veronica Aliso was Layla’s mother. Tony Aliso had gone from the mother to the daughter. There was nothing else to ask or say. He thanked the old woman and touched Rider on the back so that she would go through the door first. Out on the front step, he paused and looked back at Dorothy Alexander. He waited until Rider was a few steps toward the car before speaking.
“When you hear from Layla—I mean, Gretchen—tell her not to come home. Tell her to stay as far away from here as she can.”
He shook his head.
“She shouldn’t ever come home.”
The woman didn’t say anything. Bosch waited a couple moments while looking down at the worn welcome mat. He then nodded and headed to the car.
Bosch took the backseat behind Edgar, Rider sat in the front. As soon as they were in the car and Edgar was backing out of the driveway, Rider turned around and looked at Bosch.
“Harry, how did you ever put that together?”
“Her last words. Veronica’s. She said, ‘Let my daughter go.’ I just sort of knew then. There’s a resemblance there. I just didn’t place it before.”