“What about the Cronyns?” he asked. “I assume they’re going for a one-for-one deal, right?”
“Probably,” she said. “She walks and he takes the hit. He’ll get disbarred but then he’ll just prop her up. Everyone will know that if you hire her, you hire him.”
“And that’s it? No jail time? The guy used the law to try to break a killer out of prison. Death row, no less. He gets a slap on the wrist?”
“Well, last I heard, they were still in jail because Houghton won’t set bail till tomorrow. Anyway, it’s early in negotiations, Harry. But Spencer still isn’t talking, and the only one who is talking is Borders. When your one and only witness is a murderer on death row, you don’t have a case you want to take to a jury. This is going to come down to plea agreements all around, and maybe Cronyn goes to jail, maybe not. Truth is, they’re more interested in nailing Spencer because he was inside the wire. He betrayed the department.”
Bosch nodded. He understood the thinking on Spencer.
“The department’s management team has already moved in,” Soto said. “They’re revamping the whole booking-and-retrieving process so that something like this can never happen again.”
Bosch moved to the wooden railing and leaned his elbows down. It was still at least an hour from sundown. The 101 freeway down in the pass was clogged in both directions. But there were very few sounds of horns. Drivers in L.A. seemed resigned to a fate of waiting in traffic without the kind of impotent cacophony of horns that Bosch always seemed to hear in other cities he’d visited. He always thought his deck gave him a unique angle on that distinctive L.A. trait.
Soto joined him at the railing and leaned down next to him.
“I didn’t really come up here to talk about the case,” she said.
“I know,” Bosch said.
She nodded. It was time to get to it.
“A really good detective who used to mentor me taught me to always follow the evidence. That’s what I thought I was doing with this thing. But somewhere I got manipulated or I took a wrong turn and I ended up where the evidence told me something my heart should have known was flat-out wrong. For that I’m truly sorry, Harry. And I always will be.”
“Thank you, Lucia.”
Bosch nodded. He knew she could have easily blamed it all on Tapscott. He was the senior detective in the partnership and he called the final shots on case decisions. Instead, she put it all on herself. She took the weight. That took guts and that took a true detective. Bosch had to admire her for it.
Besides, how could he hold anything against Soto when he had heard in his own daughter’s voice a worry that it all might be true, that Harry had fixed a case against an innocent man?
“So…,” Lucia asked. “Are we good again, Harry?”
“We’re good,” Bosch said. “But I sure hope people read the paper tomorrow.”
“Fuck anybody who still has a doubt after today.”
“I’ll go with that.”
Soto straightened up. She had said what she’d come to say and was ready to go home. Soon she would be in the iron ribbon of traffic he was staring down at.
She poured the remainder of her bourbon into Bosch’s glass.
“I gotta go.”
“Okay. Thanks for coming here to talk. Means a lot, Lucia.”
“Harry, if you need anything or there’s anything I can do for you, I owe you. Thanks for the booze.”
She headed for the open slider. Bosch turned and leaned back against the railing.
“There is, actually,” he said. “Something you could do.”
She stopped and turned around.
“Daisy Clayton,” he said.
She shook her head, not getting it.
“Am I supposed to know that name?”
Bosch shook his head and stood straight.
“No. She was a murder victim from before you ever made it to homicide. But you’re on cold cases. I want you to pull the file and work it.”
“Who was she?”
“She was a nobody, and nobody cared. That’s why her case is still open.”
“I mean who was she to you?”
“I never knew her. She was only fifteen years old. But there’s somebody out there who took her and used her and then threw her away like trash. Somebody evil. I can’t work the case because it’s Hollywood. Not my turf anymore. But it is yours.”
“You know what year?”
“Oh-nine.”
Soto nodded. She had what she needed, at least to pull the case and review it.
“Okay, Harry, I’m on it.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll tell you what I know when I know it.”
“Good.”
“See you, Harry.”
“See you, Lucia.”
42
After showering and changing into street clothes, Bosch went to the closet next to the front door and pulled the fireproof box off the shelf. He used a key to open it. It contained old legal documents, including birth certificates and his discharge papers from the U.S. Army. Bosch kept his wedding ring in the box as well as his two Purple Hearts, and the two life-insurance policies that listed his daughter as beneficiary.
There was also a faded color photo of Bosch and his mother. It was the only photograph of her he had, so he had always wanted to keep it safe rather than display it. He looked at it now for a few moments, this time his eyes drawn to his own image at eight years old rather than to his mother’s. He studied the hopefulness in the boy’s face and wondered where it had gone.
He put the photo to the side and dug further into the strongbox until he found what he was looking for.
It was an old sock stuffed with a rubber-banded roll of money. Without pulling it out of the sock now or counting it, Bosch shoved it into the side pocket of his jacket. The roll of money was the earthquake fund, mostly large bills he had been accumulating slowly—a twenty here and a fifty there—since the last big earthquake in 1994. In L.A., nobody wanted to be stuck without cash when the big one hit. ATMs would be knocked off-line and banks would be closed in a time of civic catastrophe. Cash would be king and Bosch had been planning accordingly for over twenty years. By his estimate, there was close to ten thousand dollars in the sock.
He put the other items back into the box, taking one last look at the mother-and-son photo. He had no recollection of posing for the shot or where it had been taken. It was a professional shot with a white—now yellowed—background. Maybe young Harry had tagged along with her when she had gotten head shots for her efforts to be cast as a movie extra. Maybe she then paid the photographer a little more for a quick photo with her son.
Bosch drove up the hill to Mulholland and then followed the snake to Laurel Canyon Boulevard, which dropped him down the north side into the Valley. As soon as he got bars on his phone, he called Bella Lourdes on her cell. He expected that she would be off duty and home by now. Still, she answered right away.
“Harry, I was going to call you, but I thought maybe you’d be out celebrating.”
“Oh, you mean the case? No, no celebration. Just glad it’s over.”
“I’ll say. Well, I was also going to call to tell you they ID’d the other Russian off his prints. You know how you were calling him Igor for the sake of keeping all the parties straight when you were telling the story?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the guy’s name actually was Igor. I mean, what are the chances?”
“Probably pretty good if you’re Russian.”
“Anyway, Igor Golz—G-O-L-Z—age thirty-one. Interpol had him as another member of the Bratva and longtime associate of Sluchek’s. They met in a Russian prison and probably came over here together.”
“Well, I guess that wraps things up on the farmacia case, huh?”
“I was nailing down the paperwork today. You back in tomorrow, now that your court thingy is over?”
“Yeah, my thingy’s over and I’ll be in tomorrow.”
“Sorry, you
know what I mean. It’ll be nice to have you back around.”
“Listen, I was calling to ask you something. The other day you mentioned that you had been around addicts, including someone in your own family. Do you mind if I ask who that was?”
“Yeah, my sister. Why do you want to know?”
“Is she all right now? I mean, not addicted?”
“As far as we know. We don’t see her that much. Once she got clean, she didn’t really want to be around the people who saw her at the low points, you know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“She stole like crazy from my parents. Me too.”
“That’s what happens.”
“So we saved her but consequently we lost her. At least in a good way. She lives up in the Bay Area, and like I said, she’s supposedly four years sober and clean.”
“That part’s great. How did you get her clean?”
“Well, we didn’t actually do it. It was rehab.”
“Which one did you use? That’s why I’m calling. I need to get somebody into a place and I don’t know where to start.”
“Well, there’s the fancy ones that cost a fortune and those that don’t. You get what you pay for as far as creature comforts, but my sister was basically on the streets. So the place we got her into was like heaven. A room and a bed, you know? It was a mixture of circle jerks and private sessions with the shrinks. A piss test every day.”
“Where was it? What was it called?”
“It was called the Start. It was over there in Canoga Park. Four years ago it was like twelve hundred a week. There was no insurance, so we all chipped in. It’s gotta be more now. The opioid thing has made it hard to find a bed in some of these places.”
“Thanks, Bella. I’m going to check it out.”
“See you tomorrow at the station?”
“I’ll be there.”
Bosch was on the 101, transitioning north to the 405. He could see the plume of smoke from the brewery up ahead.
He called directory assistance and was connected to the Start. After being put on hold twice he was finally speaking to someone called the director of placement. She explained that the facility specialized in treating opioid addiction and that they did not reserve beds, choosing to work strictly on a first-come, first-served basis. At the moment, there were three beds open in the forty-two-bed facility.
Bosch asked about pricing and learned that the weekly all-inclusive fee had jumped more than fifty percent in four years to $1,880, paid in advance with a recommended four-week minimum of treatment. Bosch was reminded of Jerry Edgar’s sermon about the crisis being too big to shut down because everybody was making money on it.
Bosch thanked the director of placement and disconnected. Five minutes later he was pulling into the Road Saints compound. This time there were several motorcycles parked about the front yard and he wondered if he had stumbled into the monthly membership meeting. Before getting out of the Jeep, he called Cisco to see if he had arrived at the wrong time.
“No, man, I’ll come out and bring you in. Wednesdays are always big here for some reason. I don’t even know why.”
Bosch was leaning against the Jeep when Cisco came out.
“So how’s she doing?” he asked.
“Uh, resentful as ever,” Cisco said. “But I think that’s a good sign. I remember Mick Haller came by to visit me when I was in day four or five. I told him through the door that he could take his job and shove it up his ass. ’Course, a week later I had to ask him to pull it out of his ass and give it back to me.”
Bosch laughed.
“So have you heard about this place over in Canoga Park called the Start?” he asked.
“Yeah, the rehab,” Cisco said. “I’ve heard of it. But I don’t really know anything about it.”
“I heard from somebody that it was good. It got results for them. It costs about two grand a week, so it better.”
“That’s a lot of bread.”
“When Elizabeth is finished here, I want you to take her there, try to get her in. It’s first come, first served, but there are beds open now.”
“I think she’s going to need at least another day here, maybe two, before she gets cleaned up and can take that next step.”
“That’s fine. Whenever she’s ready.”
Bosch reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the sock containing the cash roll. He handed it to Cisco.
“Use this. It should get a month at that place. Maybe longer if she needs it.”
Cisco reluctantly took it.
“This is cash? You just want to give it to me?”
Cisco looked around the yard and through the fencing to the outside streets. Bosch realized how it might look to anyone watching.
“Shit, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Now Bosch looked around. He saw no sign of surveillance, but he probably wouldn’t have.
“No worries,” Cisco said. “For a good cause.”
“So, you’ll handle that?” Bosch asked. “You’ve been paying forward, backward, and sideways with this.”
“I don’t mind. We’re doing a good thing. You want to go in now?”
“You know what? I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t. If she’s going to get agitated, then she doesn’t need to see me. I don’t want to set her off.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, if she’s doing good, keep her doing good. I’m happy with that.”
Cisco tossed the sock up and then caught it.
“Let me guess,” he said. “Earthquake money?”
“Yeah,” Bosch said. “I thought, what the hell, put it to good use.”
“Yeah, but you know you just jinxed the whole city. As soon as you spend the earthquake money, the big one hits. Everybody knows that.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll just have to see. I’ll let you get back to it. Thanks, Cisco.”
“No, thank you. And someday I think she’ll be doing the thanking.”
“Not necessary now, not necessary then. Let me know how it goes with that other place if you get her in.”
“Will do.”
After driving away, Bosch cut west and went by the Start after Googling its location on his phone. He could tell it had once been a Holiday Inn or some other midrange hotel. It was now painted stark white. It looked clean and cared for—at least on the outside. He was happy with that.
He kept driving and started heading home. Almost the whole way he thought about his decision not to go in and visit Elizabeth Clayton. He wasn’t sure what that meant or what he was doing. She had tapped into a need he had to reach out and help someone, whether they welcomed his help or not. He was sure that if he sat down with a shrink for an hour—maybe his longtime LAPD counselor Carmen Hinojos—there would be a whole raft of psychological underpinnings to his actions. And the money. He had very specifically committed funds that would not upset any financial aspect of his life. So was there a sacrifice in that?
There had been a time when Bosch as a boy, obviously wanting to escape his life in youth halls and foster homes, had become fascinated with the great explorers who had discovered new lands and cultures. Men who had left their places and stations in life to find something new or to stand against something old, like slavery. As he traveled from one bed to another, the one thing he carried from place to place was a book about the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, who had done both. Bosch didn’t remember the title of the book anymore but he remembered many of the ideas the man espoused. Over time he had cemented them like a mason into his own belief system and they formed the brick foundation of who he was as both a detective and a man.
Livingstone had said sympathy was no substitute for action. That was an essential brick in Bosch’s wall. He had built himself as a man of action and, at the moment when the integrity of his life’s work had been called into question by a man on death row, he had chosen to turn his sympathy for Elizabeth Clayton into action. He understood that but was unsure
if anyone else would. They would see other motives. Elizabeth would as well, and that was why he had chosen not to see her.
He knew he had done what he needed to do and that he would probably never see her again.
It was only nine when he reached home, but Bosch was exhausted and looking forward to crashing into his bed for the first time in almost a week. He got in, checked the locks, and put the broomstick back into the track of the deck slider. He then walked down the hall, dropping his jacket and shirt on the floor as he went.
He finished getting undressed and crawled onto the bed, ready to completely succumb to sleep’s rehab and restoration. When he reached over to the clock so he could push the daily six a.m. alarm back a couple hours, he saw a folded envelope on the bed table. He unfolded it to find that it was addressed to him at the SFPD station.
He suddenly thought someone had been in the house and put the envelope there for him to find. Then his weary mind focused and he remembered placing the letter there three nights earlier. He had completely forgotten about it and had not slept in the bed since.
He decided the letter could wait until morning. He adjusted the alarm, turned off the light, and put his head between two pillows.
He lasted no more than thirty seconds. He pulled the top pillow away, reached up, and turned the light back on. He opened the envelope.
It contained a folded newspaper clip. It was a San Fernando Valley Sun story from almost a year earlier, reporting on the department’s renewed effort to find out what had happened to Esmerelda Tavares. Bosch had given the interview to a reporter for the local weekly, hoping to spawn feedback and possible information from the public. A few tips had come in but nothing of merit, nothing that panned out. And now a year later, this letter.
The clip was accompanied by a piece of white paper folded three times. In a handwritten scrawl it said,
I know what happened to Esme Tavares.
The note included the name Angela and a phone number with an 818 area code.
The Valley.
Bosch got up and reached for his phone.
43
Angela Martinez, the author of the note to Bosch, turned out to know exactly what had happened to Esmerelda Tavares because she was Esmerelda Tavares.