“I hope so,” Bosch said, stepping to the counter directly across from the man. “Do you sell watches by Audemars Piguet?”
“Audemars Piguet,” the man said, pronouncing it quite differently than Bosch had. “We are not a dealer. But on occasion we sell AP watches through estate sales. We had two last year but they sold. They’re collector’s items and they go quickly when we get them.”
“So they would have been used.”
“We prefer to say estate owned.”
“Got it. Estate owned. You know, now that you mention it, I think I was in here last year and saw one. It was a ladies’ watch? Was that back in December when you had it?”
“Uh, yes, I believe so. That was the last one we had.”
“A Royal Oak, right?”
“Actually, the model was a Royal Oak Offshore. Are you a collector, sir?”
“A collector? In a way, yeah. So I have a friend. Vincent Harrick? You know him? He was the one who bought that AP watch back in December, right?”
The man looked suspicious and confused at the same time.
“I’m not at liberty to discuss our clients, sir. Is there a watch here that we do have that I can show you?”
He gestured with his arm across the glass top of the counter. Bosch looked at him without answering. There was something off. As soon as Bosch mentioned Harrick and the watch bought in December, the man seemed to grow nervous. He had made a furtive glance behind him at the door to the back room.
Bosch decided to push things a bit and to gauge the man’s reactions.
“So who died?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” the man replied, his voice almost shrill.
“To have an estate sale, somebody’s gotta die, right?”
“No, that is not always the case. We have people who decide for whatever reason to sell their jewelry collections. Their watches. These are considered estates.”
He turned slightly and looked back at the door again.
“Is Mr. Grant back there?” Bosch asked.
“Who?”
“Nelson Grant. Is he back there?”
“There is no Nelson Grant. It’s just a name on a sign. My father made it up when he opened the store. People would have trouble pronouncing our name.”
“Is your father back there?”
“No, no one is back there and my father retired long ago. My brother and I run the shop. What exactly is this all about?”
“It’s about a murder. What is your name, sir?”
“I don’t have to give you my name. I’m going to have to ask you to leave now, sir, if you are not interested in making a purchase.”
Bosch smiled.
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Please go.”
Bosch saw a plastic business card holder on the glass top of the case to his right. He calmly walked over to it and picked off the top card in the stack. There were two names on it. The brothers. He read them out loud.
“Peter and Paul Nguyen. Did I pronounce that right? Like you can’t win ’em all?”
“Yes. Please leave now.”
“I can see why the old man went with Grant. Are you Peter or Paul?”
“Why do you need to know this?”
“Well, because I’m conducting an investigation.”
Bosch pulled his wallet out and produced his LAPD identification card. When he held it up to the man, he kept it clipped between his fingers, with the finger on the front strategically placed over the word RETIRED. He had practiced this move in front of the mirror over the bureau in his bedroom.
“Okay, what about a badge?” the man said. “Don’t you have a badge?”
“I don’t need a badge to ask you a few simple questions—if you are willing to cooperate.”
“Whatever will get this over with the quickest.”
“Good. Okay, so which is it, Peter or Paul?”
“Peter.”
“Okay, Peter, take a look at this.”
Bosch opened the photo archive on his phone. He quickly pulled up the photo of Lexi Parks he had taken from one of the Times stories on the murder. He held it up to Nguyen.
“Do you recognize this woman? Had she been in this store in the early part of this year?”
Nguyen shook his head as if totally lost.
“Do you know how many people have been in this store since the beginning of the year?” he asked. “And I’m not even here every minute of every day. My brother and I have employees. Your question is impossible to answer.”
“She was murdered.”
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the store.”
“She called here four days before she was murdered. Back in February.”
The man seemed to freeze and his mouth formed an O as he remembered something.
“What?” Bosch asked.
“I remember now,” the man said. “The Sheriff’s Department called about that. A detective called and she asked about that woman who was killed and the phone call.”
“Was her name Schmidt? What did you tell her?”
“I can’t remember the caller’s name. I had to check with my brother, who was on duty here the day they were talking about. He said the woman who called asked about how to get her watch fixed and he told her to look up the brand online and make contact with them. We don’t do watch repairs. We strictly just sell.”
Bosch stared at him. He thought he was either lying or had been lied to by his brother. The call to the shop came after Lexi Parks had called the Audemars Piguet repair center in Las Vegas. It seemed unlikely that she would call to ask about how to get her watch repaired. She called for another reason and this guy and his brother were hiding it.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked. “I need to talk to him.”
“He’s on vacation,” the counter man said.
“Till when?”
“Until he comes back. Look, we did nothing wrong here. Paul answered the phone and told her what to do.”
“That’s a lie, Peter, and we both know it. When I figure out why you’re lying I’ll be back. That is, unless you want to save yourself some trouble and tell me the whole story now.”
Nguyen looked at him without answering. Bosch tried another tack.
“And if I have to drag your father into it, I will.”
“My father is dead. When he died, this business was shit. My brother and I, we built this.”
He made a sweeping move with his arm as if to encompass all the display cases and the glittering jewelry they held. Just then another customer stepped in through the glass door and casually moved to the display cases on the right. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. He started bending down over the glass so he could see the jewelry pieces better.
Bosch glanced at him and then back at Nguyen.
“I have a customer,” Nguyen said. “You must go now.”
Bosch reached into his pocket for a card. It was an old business card from when he was still with the LAPD. He had scratched out the number for the Open-Unsolved Unit and written in his cell number. He had also scribbled the word “retired” in barely legible script on the card in case it fell into the wrong hands and was used against him.
He put it down on the counter in front of Nguyen.
“Think about it,” he said “Have your brother call me before it gets too late.”
Bosch walked back to his car. He had gathered no reliable information inside the jewelry store but felt he had rattled a cage and gathered something possibly more important. Suspicion. He felt he was getting closer to the crossing, the place where Lexi Parks had tripped a wire that resulted in her death.
He sat behind the wheel without turning the ignition and thought about next moves. He picked up his coffee cup but then remembered he had finished it. For the first time he realized how free he was to follow his instincts and cast his net in whatever direction he wanted. With the department he had certainly employed his instincts. But there was always a lieutenan
t and sometimes a captain to be briefed and an approval needed. There were rules of procedure and rules of evidence. There was a partner and a division of labor. There was a budget and there was the constant, never abating knowledge that every move he made, every word he typed would be reviewed and possibly turned against him.
Bosch didn’t carry those burdens now and for the first time he understood and felt the change. His inner voice told him that that watch with a brand name he could not even pronounce correctly was at the center of the mystery here. Nguyen had acted so shifty in the jewelry store—his own turf and comfort zone—that the watch lead could not be ignored. Bosch considered waiting until his customer left and going back into the store to press Nguyen further, or possibly sitting on the street and watching to see if the other brother showed up. But then he decided to use the freedom he had to follow his instincts without permission or approval.
He started the Cherokee and pulled away from the curb.
28
Long got back into the car and surveyed Sunset Boulevard.
“Where’d he go?” he asked.
From behind the wheel Ellis pointed east.
“Probably back home,” he said. “What did Nguyen say?”
“Bosch asked about the watch and he asked about the phone call Parks made. Nguyen played dumb, said his brother dealt with it. But Bosch will definitely be back. This is getting serious, partner. He’s getting close.”
Ellis considered that. He still hadn’t started the car.
“What else?” he asked.
“He says that’s all,” Long said. “He was scared of me. If there was more, he would’ve given it up.”
Ellis was reaching to the ignition but let his hand drop.
“Where the fuck is his brother?”
“He says he doesn’t know. Thinks Mexico.”
“What did you hear when you got in there?”
“I just got the tail end. Bosch wasn’t buying what he was selling, that’s for sure. I’m thinking we need to close this thing down. Zip it up. This isn’t like the motorcycle guy—a precautionary move. Bosch is zeroing in.”
“We’d have to wait until the brothers are together. That Mexico story is bullshit.”
“What I was thinking. You want to wait?”
Silence filled the car when Ellis didn’t speak. Eventually Long pushed it.
“So, then when?”
“Check your phone. Where’d Bosch just go to?”
“You said probably back home.”
“Yeah, well, make sure.”
Long opened the app on his phone. It took him a few moments to locate Bosch.
“Actually, he’s going down La Cienega toward the ten.”
“He could be going anywhere.”
Ellis turned the key and started the car.
“So, what do we do about him?” Long asked. “We take him out, we end the problem.”
Ellis shook his head.
“Not that easy,” he said. “He has friends. And if Haller loses his second investigator on this, there’ll be questions. We don’t want that kind of heat.”
Ellis checked his mirror and was about to pull away from the curb.
“It’s going to come to a point,” Long said, “where we don’t have a choice.”
“Maybe,” Ellis said. “But we’re not there yet.”
He saw a familiar figure cross Sunset in the mirror.
“Good things come to those who wait,” he said. “There’s the brother.”
“Where?” Long asked.
“Behind us. Coming up to the shop. I knew it was a lie.”
Ellis turned off the ignition. Both brothers together changed things.
29
Bosch took La Cienega south from Sunset toward I-10. Along the way he stopped to gas up the Cherokee and soon after was fighting his way east on the freeway toward the glass-and-stone towers of downtown. He didn’t break free until he cleared the city’s center and got out to I-15, where he started heading north on a clear shot to Las Vegas. He had decided to follow the watch trail directly rather than by phone. Badge or no badge, he knew that the best way to get information was to ask for it in person. It’s easy to hang up a phone, much harder to close a door in someone’s face.
Besides that, he needed to think and to grind things down. He knew that the wide-open spaces of the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas would help him open his mind to the nuances and possibilities of the investigation. This was why he always preferred driving over flying to the gambling mecca in the Nevada desert.
Halfway across, he decided to call Haller. He had not seen or heard from him since their walk among the tombstones. The call went to message and Bosch reported that he was on his way to Vegas and had time to talk.
Twenty minutes later Haller called back, saying he had just gotten out of a hearing on an unrelated case.
“Vegas?” he said. “What’s in Vegas?”
“Not sure,” Bosch said. “Sort of following a flier. If it amounts to anything, you’ll be the first I let know.”
“Couldn’t you just call over there? That’s a four-hour drive.”
“You can always just call—if you know who to call. But sometimes your gut tells you to drive.”
“Very Zen, Harry.”
“No, more like Homicide one-oh-one.”
Bosch was passing through Primm at the Nevada border. He’d be at his destination in an hour.
“So what’s happening with the video from the cemetery?” he asked.
“Got a pro working on it today,” Haller said. “Anything I get, you get.”
“Okay.”
“Your little do-si-do at the murder house has landed. The sheriffs complained to the DA, and the DA complained to the judge on this thing. I gotta go see him in chambers today to explain my actions.”
“Shit. Sorry about that. You want me there? I’ll turn around.”
“I don’t want you anywhere near there. In fact, I’m glad you’ll be in Vegas. There’s my excuse. I’ll be able to handle it. I know the judge. Former defense lawyer, so he’ll be sympathetic to my plight. I’ll tell him I just can’t get good help these days.”
Bosch smiled. He was sure Haller was smiling, too.
“Yeah, tell him I didn’t know what I was doing, that I’m new at this.”
“Definitely.”
They went off case then and talked about their daughters and graduation. Haller proposed giving the girls a joint gift, a cruise up the west coast of Canada to Alaska, where they could dogsled on glaciers while getting to know each other better before rooming together at Chapman in the fall. Bosch felt blindsided because he had not even been thinking about a graduation gift. He hadn’t realized there should be one.
He ultimately agreed to the cruise idea and Haller said he would handle it. He had a travel agent he worked with. They signed off then and Bosch went back to thoughts about the case and prepping for his destination.
It had been a long time since Bosch had come to Vegas on a case and he found that once again the city had redefined itself with new casinos, traffic patterns, and shopping meccas. The Audemars Piguet shop and service center was located in a new shopping center on the strip. It was part of a massive glass complex of casinos and hotels and commercial and residential structures that dwarfed everything around it. The whole thing had been built since the last time Bosch had been in the city. He circled the project twice—a journey of fifteen minutes because of traffic—before finding an entrance to a parking garage. Soon afterward he was walking through a mall lined with the most upscale collection of shops he had ever seen in one location, including Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
The Audemars Piguet shop was all dark-wood-and-glass cases where watches were displayed on individual pedestals. There was a security man, complete with Secret Service–style earbud, posted at the entrance. He wore a suit nicer than anything Bosch had ever owned. A woman who looked like she was dressed for the opera sat behind a reception desk and welcomed Bo
sch with a sincere smile. She knew better than to judge Bosch by his blue jeans and corduroy sport jacket. Vegas gamblers often chose to hide wealth behind a rumpled facade. Bosch had the facade, at least. He felt lucky that the cuff of his jacket was just long enough to hide that he wore a Timex on his right wrist.
“Is there a different entrance for the service center?” Bosch asked.
“No, this is our showroom as well as our service center,” the woman said cheerfully. “Are you here to pick up a watch?”
“Not exactly. I’m wondering, is there a service manager I could speak to? I need to ask about a watch that came here for repairs earlier this year.”
The woman’s eyebrows rose at forty-five-degree angles as she frowned.
“Let me get Mr. Gerard for you,” she said.
She stood up and disappeared through a doorway behind her station. Bosch spent the waiting time looking at the various displays, all the while feeling the eyes of the security guy on the back of his neck.
“Sir?”
Bosch turned and saw a man standing by one of the counters. He wore a suit and tie and had a full beard—maybe to make up for the loss of hair on top—and glasses with a pull-down magnifier over the left lens.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes,” Bosch said. “I want to make an inquiry about a watch I believe was sent to you for repair earlier this year.”
“I’m not sure I understand. Are you the owner?”
He spoke with an accent Bosch could not readily identify. Something European. Maybe Swiss, maybe German.
“No, I’m not the owner. I’m an investigator from Los Angeles and I am trying to locate the watch and find out the details surrounding it.”
“This is very unusual. Are you the police?”
“I just retired from the Los Angeles police. I have been asked to look into this matter. It involves a murder.”