With his legs still feeling the pain of his run up the slope two nights before, Bosch didn’t want to walk up three flights of stairs. He found a freight elevator with a pull-down door and rode to the fourth floor at a turtle’s pace. The elevator was the size of his living room and he felt self-conscious about riding up alone and wasting what must have been an enormous amount of energy to move the platform. It was obviously a design element left over from the building’s early incarnation as a cardboard factory.
The top floor was quartered into four live-work lofts accessible off an industrial gray lobby. The lower half of the door to 4-D was plastered with cartoon stickers obviously placed haphazardly by a small person—Vibiana’s son, Harry assumed. Above this was a card with posted hours when Vibiana Veracruz would receive patrons and viewers of her art. On Wednesdays those hours were from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and that put Bosch fifteen minutes early. He considered just knocking on the door, since he was not there with the purpose of seeing her art. But he was also hopeful that he could somehow take a measure of the woman before he decided how to tell her she might be heir to a fortune with more zeroes attached to it than she could imagine.
While he was deciding what to do he heard someone coming up the stairs next to the elevator shaft. A woman soon appeared, carrying a frozen coffee drink in one hand and a key in the other. She wore overalls and had a breathing mask down around her neck. She looked surprised to see a man waiting at her door.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” Bosch said.
“Can I help you?”
“Uh, are you Vibiana Veracruz?”
He knew it was her. There was a clear resemblance to Gabriela in the Coronado Beach photos. But he pointed at the door to 4-D as if he had to back up his presence with the posted hours.
“I am,” she said.
“Well, I’m early,” he said. “I didn’t know your hours. I was hoping to look at some of your work.”
“That’s okay. You’re close enough. I can show you around. What’s your name?”
“Harry Bosch.”
She looked like she recognized the name and Bosch wondered if her mother had found a way to contact her after promising she wouldn’t attempt to.
“That’s a famous artist’s name,” she said. “Hieronymus Bosch.”
Bosch suddenly realized his mistake.
“I know,” he said. “Fifteenth century. It’s actually my full name.” She used a key to unlock her door. She looked back at him over her shoulder.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“You had some strange parents.”
She opened the door.
“Come on in,” she said. “I only have a few pieces here at the moment. There’s a gallery over on Violet that has a couple more and then there are a couple out at Bergamot Station. How did you hear about me?”
Bosch hadn’t prepared a story, but he knew Bergamot Station was a conglomeration of galleries housed in an old rail station in Santa Monica. He had never been there but quickly adopted it as a cover.
“Uh, I saw your pieces at Bergamot,” he said. “I had some business downtown this morning and thought I would see what else you have.”
“Cool,” Veracruz said. “Well, I’m Vib.”
She reached out a hand and they shook. Her hand was rough and callused.
The loft was quiet as they entered and Bosch assumed her son was in school. There was a sharp smell of chemicals that reminded Bosch of the fingerprint lab, where they used cyanoacrylate to fume objects and raise prints.
She gestured to her right and behind Bosch. He turned and saw that the front space of the loft was used as her studio and gallery. Her sculptures were large and Bosch could see how the freight elevator and the twenty-foot ceilings here gave her freedom to go big. Three finished pieces sat on wheeled pallets so they could easily be moved. Movie night on Friday would probably be in this space after the sculptures were moved out of the way.
There was also a work area with two benches and racks of tools. A large block of what looked like foam rubber was on a pallet and it appeared that an image of a man was emerging from a sculpting process.
The finished pieces were multi-figure dioramas made of pure white acrylic. All were variations on the nuclear family: mother, father, and daughter. The interaction of the three was different in each sculpture but in each the daughter was looking away from her parents and had no clearly defined face. There were nose and brow ridges but no eyes or mouth.
One of the dioramas showed the father as a soldier with several equipment packs but no weapon. His eyes were closed. Bosch could see a resemblance to the photos he had seen of Dominick Santanello.
Bosch pointed to the diorama with the father as soldier figure.
“What is this one about?” he asked.
“What is it about?” Veracruz repeated. “It’s about war and the destruction of families. But I don’t really think my work needs explanation. You absorb it and you feel something or you don’t. Art shouldn’t be explained.”
Bosch just nodded. He felt he had blundered with his question.
“You probably notice that this one is the companion piece to the two you saw at Bergamot,” Veracruz said.
Bosch nodded again but in a more vigorous manner as if to communicate that he knew what she was talking about. Her saying so, however, made him want to go to Bergamot and see the other two.
He kept his eyes on the sculptures and walked further into the room to see them from different angles. Bosch could tell that it was the same girl in all three pieces, but her ages were different.
“What are the ages of the girl?” he asked.
“Eleven, thirteen, and fifteen,” Veracruz said. “Very observant.”
He guessed that the incomplete face on each had to do with abandonment, not knowing one’s origin, being one of the faceless and nameless. He knew what that was like.
“Very beautiful,” he said.
He meant it sincerely.
“Thank you,” she said.
“I didn’t know my father,” he said.
It startled him when it came out. It wasn’t part of his cover. The power of the sculptures made him say it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I only met him one time,” he said. “I was twenty-one and I had just come back from Vietnam.”
He gestured toward the war sculpture.
“I tracked him down,” he said. “Knocked on his door. I was glad I did it. He died soon after.”
“I supposedly met my father one time when I was a baby. I don’t remember it. He died soon after, too. He was lost in the same war.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m happy. I have a child and I have my art. If I can keep this place from falling into greedy hands, then all will be perfect.”
“You mean the building? It’s for sale?”
“It’s sold, pending the city’s approval to change it into residential. The buyer wants to cut every loft into two, get rid of the artists, and, get this, call it the River Arts Residences.”
Bosch thought for a long moment before responding. She had given him the opening.
“What if I told you there was a way to do that?” he asked. “Keep things perfect.”
When she didn’t answer, he turned and looked at her. Then she did speak.
“Who are you?” she asked.
37
Vibiana Veracruz was stunned to silence when Bosch told her who he was and what he was doing. He showed her his credentials as a state-licensed private investigator. He didn’t mention Whitney Vance by name but told her that he had tracked her through her father’s lineage and believed she and her son were the only two heirs by blood to an industrial fortune. It was she who brought up Vance, having seen media stories in the past few days about the passing of the billionaire industrialist.
“Is that who we’re talking about here?” she asked. “Whitney Vance?”
“What I
want to do is confirm the link genetically before we get into names,” Bosch said. “If you are open to it I would take a sample of your DNA through a saliva swab and turn it in to the lab. It should only take a few days, and if we get confirmation, you would have the opportunity to use the attorney I have working with me on this or to seek your own representation. That would be your choice.”
She shook her head as if still not comprehending and sat down on a stool she had pulled away from one of the workbenches.
“It’s just so hard to believe this,” she said.
Bosch remembered a television show from when he was a kid in which a man traveled the country and gave checks for one million dollars from an unknown benefactor to unsuspecting recipients. He realized he felt like that man. Only Bosch was handing out billions, not millions.
“It is Vance, isn’t it?” Vibiana said. “You haven’t denied it.”
Bosch looked at her for a long moment.
“Does it make a difference who it is?” he asked.
She stood up and came toward him. She gestured at the sculpture with the soldier.
“I read about him this week,” she said. “He helped build the helicopters. His company was part of the war machine that killed his own son. My father, who I never got to know. How could I take that money?”
Bosch nodded.
“I guess it would depend on what you did with it,” he said. “My lawyer called it change-the-world money.”
She looked at him but he could tell she was seeing something else. Maybe an idea that was planted by his words.
“All right,” she said. “Swab me.”
“Okay, but you have to understand something,” Bosch said. “There will be people with power involved in the corporations that currently hold this fortune. They will not be happy to part with it and may go to great lengths to stop it. Not only will your life be changed by the money, but you and your son will have to take measures to protect yourselves until the case runs its course. You will not be able to trust anyone.”
His words clearly gave her pause, as he wanted them to.
“Gilberto,” she said, thinking out loud. Then her eyes flashed toward Bosch. “Do they know you’re here?”
“I’ve taken precautions,” he said. “And I’ll give you a card. If you see anything unusual or feel any kind of threat, you can call me at any time.”
“It’s so surreal,” she said. “When I was coming up the steps today with my coffee, I was thinking about how I didn’t have enough money for resin. I haven’t sold any of my art in seven weeks and I have an arts grant but it just covers living for me and my son. So I’m sculpting my next piece but can’t get the material I need to wrap it and finish it. And then you were just standing there. And you had this crazy story about money and inheritance.”
Bosch nodded.
“So should we do the swab now?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “What do I do?”
“You just have to open your mouth.”
“I can do that.”
Bosch took a tube out of his inside coat pocket and unscrewed the cap. He removed the swab stick and stepped closer to Vibiana. Holding the stick with two fingers he wiped the swab end up and down the inside of her cheek, turning it to get a good sample. He then sealed the stick back in its tube.
“You usually do two—just in case,” he said. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead,” she said.
Bosch repeated the process. It seemed so intrusive to him, his hand so close to her mouth. But Vibiana seemed unfazed by it. He put the second swab back in its tube and sealed it.
“I took a swab from your mother on Monday,” he said. “It will be part of the analysis. They will want to identify her chromosomes and separate them from your father’s and grandfather’s.”
“You went down to San Diego?” she asked.
“Yes. I went by Chicano Park and then over to her apartment. Is that where you grew up?”
“Yes. She’s still in the same place.”
“I showed her a photo. It was of you on that day you met your father. He’s not in it because he was the one who took it.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“I don’t have it with me but I’ll get it to you.”
“So she knows about this. The inheritance. What did she say?”
“She doesn’t know the details. But she told me where to find you and said it was your choice.”
Vibiana didn’t respond. She seemed to be thinking about her mother.
“I’m going to go now,” Bosch said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something.”
He handed her one of the cheap business cards he’d had printed with his name and number, then turned toward the door.
Bosch made his way back to his car, which he had left parked in a lot near the courthouse before his appointment at the D.A.’s Office. As he walked he repeatedly checked his perimeter for surveillance. He saw nothing and soon he was back to the rented Cherokee. He opened the rear hatch of the SUV and flipped up the rug liner in the back. He lifted the lid of the spare tire and tools compartment and removed the padded envelope he had put there that morning.
Closing up the back, he got in behind the wheel and opened the padded envelope. It contained the swab tube provided by Whitney Vance and marked W-V. It also contained two tubes collected from Gabriela Lida marked G-L. With a Sharpie marker he wrote V-V on the side of the two tubes containing the swabs he had just collected from Vibiana.
He put the extra tubes from Vibiana and her mother into his coat pocket and repackaged the envelope so it contained one swab from each of the principals. He put the envelope down on the seat next to him and called Mickey Haller.
“I have the granddaughter’s sample,” he said. “Where are you?”
“In the car,” Haller said. “The Starbucks in Chinatown, parked under the dragons.”
“I’ll be there in five. I have hers, her mother’s, and Vance’s with me. You can take the package to the lab.”
“Perfect. They opened probate today in Pasadena. So I want to get this going. Need confirmation before we make a move.”
“On my way.”
The Starbucks was at Broadway and Cesar Chavez. It took Bosch less than five minutes to shoot over and then spot the Lincoln at a red curb under the twin-dragon gateway to Chinatown. Bosch parked behind Haller’s car, put on the flashers, and got out. He walked up and got in through the door behind the driver. Haller was in the opposite seat with his laptop computer open on a fold-down desk. Bosch knew he was stealing Wi-Fi from the Starbucks.
“There he is,” the lawyer said. “Boyd, why don’t you go in and get us a couple lattes. You want anything, Harry?”
“I’m good,” Bosch said.
Haller handed a twenty-dollar bill over the seat and the driver got out of the car without a word and closed the door. Bosch and Haller were alone now. Bosch handed the package across the seat to him.
“Guard it with your life,” Bosch said.
“Oh, I will,” Haller said. “I’m going to take it in straight from here. Going with CellRight if that’s okay with you. They are close, reliable, and AABB accredited.”
“If you’re okay with them, I’m okay with them. How will this work now?”
“I get this in today, and we will probably hear yea or nay by Friday. Comparing grandparent to grandchild, we’re talking about a twenty-five percent passage of chromosomes. That’s a lot for them to work with.”
“What about the stuff from Dominick?”
“We wait on that. Let’s see what the swabs get us first.”
“Okay. And have you looked at the probate filing yet?”
“Not yet, but I’ll get it by the end of the day. I did hear that they’re saying the decedent had no blood heirs.”
“So what do we do?”
“Well, we wait for confirmation from CellRight, and if we get that, then we put our package together and seek an injunction.”
“Which does
what?”
“We ask the court to stop the distribution of the estate. We say, ‘Hold on a minute, we have a valid heir and a holographic will and the means of proving authenticity.’ Then we brace ourselves for the onslaught.”
Bosch nodded.
“They’ll come after us,” Haller said. “You, me, the heir, everybody. Make no mistake, we’re all fair game. They’ll try to make us out as charlatans. You can count on that.”
“I warned Vibiana,” Bosch said. “But I don’t think she understood how relentless they might be.”
“Let’s see how the DNA comes back. If it’s what we think and she’s the heir, then we’ll circle the wagons and get her ready. We’ll probably have to move her and hide her.”
“She’s got a kid.”
“The kid too, then.”
“She needs a big space for her work.”
“Her work might need to be put on hold.”
“Okay.”
Bosch didn’t think that would go over well.
“I told her what you said about it being change-the-world money,” he said. “I think that’s what pulled her in.”
“Does every time.”
Haller bent down to look through the windows and see if his driver was waiting to get back behind the wheel. There was no sign of him.
“I heard in the CCB that you filed on the dungeon master,” Haller said.
“Don’t call him that,” Bosch said. “Makes it sound like a joke, and I know the woman he had down there in that place. She’s going to be dealing with the aftermath for a long time.”