BALLARD AND BOSCH 17 страница

She heard talking from the elevator alcove and looked down the hallway to see Nuccio and Spellman, the arson guys from the Fire Department, cross the hall and go through the main door to RHD. They, too, were early—unless Olivas had given them a different start time for the meeting.

Ballard stepped through another door, which led into the opposite end of the squad room. She headed down the main aisle, passing more historical posters and some movie posters until she reached the Homicide Special unit and the War Room. She entered, hoping that Nuccio and Spellman were the first to arrive and that she could talk to them before Olivas and his men got there.

But it didn’t work out that way. She knocked once and entered the War Room, only to find the same five men who had been there last time sitting in exactly the same positions. That included Olivas. They were in mid-discussion, which ceased the moment she opened the door. Since everybody was at least fifteen minutes early, Ballard took that as confirmation that Olivas had given the men an earlier start time, perhaps to discuss what to do about her inclusion in the case before she arrived. She assumed that would largely mean Olivas directing the other investigators to keep her at arm’s length. It would be something she needed to redirect.

“Ballard,” Olivas said. “Have a seat.”

He pointed to a seat at the end of the rectangular table. It would put her opposite him, with the two LAFD guys to her right and the two RHD guys, Drucker and Ferlita, to her left. On the table was a murder book with very few pages in it and a few other files, one of them thicker than the murder book.

“We were just talking about you and how we’re going to work this,” Olivas said.

“Really?” Ballard said. “Before I got here—nice. Any conclusions?”

“Well, for starters, we know we have you out there in Hollywood working the late show, so trolling for witnesses is still important. I know you did a couple sweeps out there already, but people in that world come and go. It would be good to hit that strip again.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, we were just getting started.”

“Well, could we start then with an update on where we are on the investigation? What happened with the bottle I gave you guys?”

“Good idea. Scrapyard, why don’t you summarize where things are?”

Drucker looked surprised that he had drawn the request from Olivas. He opened a file on the table in front of him and reviewed a few things in it, probably to gather his thoughts, before speaking.

“Okay, on the bottle,” he said. “We took it into latents as suggested and they did get a twelve-point match to a thumbprint off the victim, Edison Banks. So we are good there. We went out last night to find the bottle collector you got it from, to reinterview him and see if there was anything else to glean from him now that we have confirmation on the bottle. Unfortunately, we didn’t find him and—”

“What time were you out there?” Ballard asked.

“About eight,” Drucker said. “We looked around for an hour, couldn’t find him.”

“I don’t think he gets back to his squat till later,” Ballard said. “I’ll find him tonight.”

“That would be great,” Drucker said.

There was an awkwardness to the conversation, an acknowledgment that the men were doing what they should have done from the start—bringing in the expert on the dark hours of Hollywood.

“Were there other prints on the bottle?” Ballard asked.

Drucker flipped a page of the report in front of him.

“Yes,” he said. “We got a palm print. We matched it to the liquor license belonging to Marko Linkov, who operates the Mako store where we believe the bottle was originally sold. We spoke to him and watched the video you told us about. So we are up to speed there.”

“So it was the woman in the video?” Ballard said.

“We traced her plate—‘one for you, two for me’—and it turns out that plate was stolen off a same-make and -model Mercedes earlier that day. Our working conclusion is that the woman bought the bottle and gave it to our victim. Whether that was part of the plan to kill him, we don’t know. We have so far not been able to identify her.”

“What about the ATM? She got cash from there.”

“She used a counterfeit card with a legit number and PIN belonging to a seventy-two-year-old man living in Las Vegas, Nevada.”

“Did the ATM have a camera? Did you get a clear shot of her?”

“You watched the store video,” Ferlita said. “She put her hand over the camera. She knew just where it was.”

“No picture,” Drucker added.

Ballard did not respond. She sat back in her chair and considered all the new information. The complexity of the mystery woman’s actions was very suspicious and raised more questions.

“I don’t get it,” she finally said.

“Get what?” Olivas asked.

“I’m assuming this woman is the suspect,” she said. “Stolen plate, stolen ATM card. But for what reason? Why didn’t she buy the bottle somewhere else, where it would never be connected?”

“Who knows?” Nuccio said.

“It’s like she wanted to be seen but not identified,” Ballard said. “There’s a psychology there.”

“Fuck her psychology,” Drucker said. “We just need to find her.”

“I’m just saying, if we understand her, maybe it helps find her,” Ballard said.

“Whatever,” Drucker said.

Ballard let him have his moment before pressing on.

“Okay, what else?” she said.

“Isn’t that enough?” Ferlita said. “We’ve had the case two days and most of that was spent catching up to you.”

“And you wouldn’t have what you have if not for me,” Ballard said. “What about the victim and the probate case? Is that a copy of the file?”

She pointed to the thick file on the table next to Drucker.

“It is,” he said. “We’ve gone through it a couple times and haven’t found anything that links up to this. One of those cases where you feel it in your gut but there’s no evidence of anything.”

“Can I take that, then?” Ballard asked. “I’ll give it a read while I’m in the car tonight watching for the bottle man. Then I’ll be as up to date on this as everybody else.”

Drucker turned to Olivas for approval.

“Of course,” Olivas said. “We’ll make you a copy. Knock yourself out.”

“Has anybody talked to the Banks family?” Ballard asked.

“We’re going down to San Diego today to interview the brother,” Drucker said.

“Want to come?” Ferlita asked, a baiting tone in his voice.

“I’ll pass,” Ballard said. “I’m sure you two can handle it.”

BOSCH

Bosch spent Wednesday morning gathering files for a follow-up meeting scheduled with Clayton Manley. The attorney had called the day before and reported that the firm’s litigation committee had agreed to take on Bosch’s case on a commission basis. Bosch pulled all the records that he had kept from the missing-cesium case from a box where he stored documents from the most important cases of his career—most solved, some not.

He then picked up his phone, made a call, and left a message canceling a physical therapy session for his knee that had been scheduled for that morning. He knew his therapist would take the cancellation out on him when he arrived for the next session. He could already feel the pain from that.

When his phone buzzed two minutes later he guessed it would be his therapist saying he would be charged for the session anyway, since he had canceled on the day of. But the call turned out to be Mickey Haller.

“Your boy the clay man called like you said he would.”

“Who?”

“Clayton Manley. His e-mail is ‘clayman at Michaelson & Mitchell.’ He asked me to send the pension stuff ’cause he’s taking on your wrongful-death case. You told him you were actually dying?”

“I may have, yes. So you’re cooperating? He left me a message wanting to meet today. This must be why.”

“You told me to cooperate, I’m cooperating. You’re not going to let him file something, are you?”

“It won’t get that far. I’m just trying to get inside that place.”

“And you’re not telling me why?”

Bosch got a call-waiting beep. He checked his screen and saw it was Ballard.

“You don’t need to know yet,” he told Haller. “And I have a call coming in that I should take. I’ll check in about all of this later.”

“All right, bro—”

Bosch clicked over to the other call. It sounded like Ballard was in a car.

“Renée.”

“Harry, what do you have going today? I want to talk to you about something. Another case.”

“I have an eleven o’clock meeting downtown. After that I have time. Are you headed to the beach now?”

“Yes, but I’ll sleep a few hours and then we can meet after your thing. How about lunch?”

“Musso’s just hit a hundred years old.”

“Perfect. What time?”

“Let’s make it one-thirty in case my thing runs long. You’ll get more sleep.”

“See you there.”

She disconnected and Bosch went back to work on his own case, putting together a carefully constructed file he would give Clayton Manley. He left the house at ten and headed toward his downtown appointment, knowing from his call with Manley the day before that he was in play at Michaelson & Mitchell.

Bosch had noted four things during his earlier visit to Manley. One was that in a firm that had at least two floors of lawyers, Manley’s office, as remote as it seemed to be at the end of the hallway, was just doors away from the offices of the firm’s two founding partners. There had to be a reason for that, especially in light of the embarrassing run-in Manley had had with Judge Montgomery. That kind of public chastisement and humiliation would usually result in an order to clear out your desk and be gone by the end of the day. Instead, Manley maintained a position close to the firm’s top two seats of power.

The second thing he had noticed was that Manley apparently did not have a personal secretary or a clerk—at least not one sitting outside his office. There was no law firm staff at all in that hallway. Harry assumed that the doors he had passed to the offices of Mitchell and Michaelson led to large suites, each with its own set of clerks and secretaries guarding the entrances to the throne rooms. There had to be a reason Manley had none of that, but Bosch was more interested in how that could affect his plans for the meeting at eleven.

The last two things Bosch had noted during his first visit were that Manley’s office appeared to have neither a private bathroom nor a printer in plain view. His conclusion was that Manley most likely relied on a secretarial or law-clerk pool somewhere else in the offices, as well as a printer used by lesser members of the firm.

Not until he was on the 101 heading south did he remember he was supposed to call Mickey Haller back. He put his cell phone on speaker when he made the call. His Jeep had been manufactured about two decades before there was anything known as Bluetooth.

“Bosch, you dog.”

“Sorry about cutting you off before.”

“No problem and you didn’t have to call back. I said my piece.”

“Well, I wanted to ask you something. Did Manley ask you why you recommended him to me?”

“Matter of fact, he did.”

“And?”

“I can barely hear you, man. You need to get a car that’s quiet on the inside and has a digital sound system.”

“I’ll think about it. What did you tell Manley about recommending him to me?”

“I told him that what you wanted to do was really outside my wheelhouse. I also told him I thought he got a bad shake from Judge Montgomery that time. I said there is no call to embarrass a fellow lawyer, no matter what the cause. So I sent you over there because it looked like a case that could get him some positive attention. All that good?”

“All that was perfect.”

“I don’t know exactly what you’re up to, bro, but I hope you aren’t going to dump me for this guy. Because the truth is, I could run circles around him—backward.”

“I know that, bro, and that’s not the play. We’ll be back on track soon. Just trust me with this.”

“I had the file from the pension case messengered over to him. Make sure when all is said and done that I get it back.”

“Will do.”

Twenty minutes later Bosch was on the suede couch in the waiting room at Michaelson & Mitchell. He had a file full of documents on his lap. He had gotten there early so he could again take the measure of the place, check faces of lawyers and personnel, see who was going up and down the winding staircase. He opened his phone, pulled up the general number of the law firm, and waited.

There was a buzz and the young man behind the reception counter took a call. Bosch heard him say, “I’ll walk him back.”

The receptionist removed his telephone headset and started around the counter. Bosch pushed the Call button on his phone.

“I’ll take you back now,” the young man said. “Would you like a bottle of water or something else?”

“No, I’m good,” Bosch said.

Bosch got up to follow. Almost immediately there was the sound of the phone buzzing at the reception desk. The receptionist looked back at his station, a pained expression on his face.

“I know the way,” Bosch said. “I can make it on my own.”

“Oh, thank you,” the young man said.

He peeled off to go back to the phone and Bosch rounded the staircase and headed down the hall to Clayton Manley’s office. He pulled out his phone and ended the call.

The offices with names on the doors were all on the left side. These were on the outside of the building, with windows overlooking Bunker Hill. There were two unmarked doors on the right side of the hallway. As Bosch headed toward Manley’s office, he opened each of these, knowing that if he surprised someone in an office he could just say he was lost. But the first room was a small break room with a coffee maker and a half-size, under-counter refrigerator with a glass door displaying designer waters and sodas.

He moved to the next room down and found a supply room with a large copy machine next to a bank of shelves containing paper, envelopes, and files. There was also an emergency exit door.

Bosch quickly stepped in and assessed the printer. He made the easiest move to disable it, reaching behind it and unplugging the power cord. The cooling fan and digital screen went dead.

He quickly returned to the hallway, walked down to Manley’s office, and knocked once politely on the door before entering. Manley stood up behind his desk.

“Mr. Bosch, come on in.”

“Thank you. I brought the documents you asked for—from the radiation case.”

“Have a seat and let me just send this e-mail. It’s actually to Mr. Haller, thanking him for the docs he sent relating to your pension arbitration.”

“Okay, good. How was he to deal with?”

Manley typed a few words onto his screen and hit the Send button.

“Mr. Haller?” he asked. “He was fine. Seemed pleased to help. Why? Was there something I missed?”

“No, no, I just didn’t know whether he was second-guessing, you know, passing on the case.”

“I don’t think so. He seemed eager to help and messengered over everything he had. Let me see what you have there. I also have a contract and power of attorney for you to sign.”

Bosch handed the file across the desk. It was almost an inch thick and he had padded it with non-pertinent reports from the case in which he had gotten dosed with cesium years before. Manley made a cursory flip through the file, stopping once to look at one of the documents that had randomly caught his attention.

“This is great stuff,” he finally said. “It will be very helpful. We just need to formalize our agreement that I’m representing you on a commission basis and I will take it from here. You’ll have the power and might of this entire firm behind you. We’ll sue the bastards.”

Manley smiled at the final cliché.

“Uh, that’s great,” Bosch said. “But … you can call me paranoid but I don’t want to leave that file here. It’s the only evidence I have of what happened to me. Is there any chance you could make copies and I keep the originals?”

“I don’t see why not,” Manley said without hesitation. “Let me give you the contract to read over and sign and I’ll go get this copied.”

“Sounds good.”

Manley looked around on his desk until he found a thin file. He opened it and handed Bosch a three-page agreement under the Michaelson & Mitchell letterhead. He then pulled a pen out of a holder on his desk and put it down in front of Bosch.

“And I’ll be right back,” Manley said.

“I’ll be here,” Bosch said.

“Can I get you something? Water? Soda? Coffee?”

“Uh, no, I’m fine.”

Manley got up from his desk and left the office with Bosch’s file. He left the door to the room open a foot. Bosch quickly got up and went to the door to watch Manley go down the hall to the copy room. He listened while Manley loaded the stack of documents, then cursed when he realized the machine was dead.

Now was the moment. Bosch knew that Manley would either come back to his office, inform Bosch of the copy trouble, and summon a clerk to do the copying, or he would go off further into the office complex in search of another copier.

Bosch saw Manley emerge from the copy room, head down and focused on the documents he was carrying. He quickly went back to his seat in front of the desk. He was holding and reading the contract when Manley stuck his head in the door.

“We’re having trouble with the copier over on this side,” he said. “It will take me a few extra minutes to get this done. You okay?”

“No worries,” Bosch said. “I’m fine.”

“And nothing to drink?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

Bosch held up the contract as if to say it would keep him busy.

“Back soon,” Manley said.

Manley left and Bosch heard his footsteps going down the hall. He quickly got up, quietly closed the door to the office, and went back to the desk, this time going behind it to Manley’s seat. He checked his watch first to time Manley’s absence, then did a quick survey of the top of the desk. Nothing caught his eye, but the computer screen was still active.

He looked at the desktop on the screen and saw a variety of files and documents, including one that said BOSCH STUFF. He opened it and found that it contained notes from his first meeting with Manley. He read these quickly and determined it was an accurate accounting of their conversation. He closed the file and looked at the labeling of others on the desktop. He saw nothing that drew his attention.

He checked his watch and then rolled the chair back from the desk so he could get quicker access to the keyed file drawers on either side of the footwell. One of them had the key in the lock. Bosch turned it and opened the drawer. It contained file folders of different colors, most likely color-coded in some way. He walked his fingers through them to the files labeled with M names, but found no file on Montgomery.

He checked his watch. Manley had been gone two minutes already. He pulled the key out of the drawer and used it to unlock the other one. He went through the same procedure here and this time found a file marked MONTGOMERY. He pulled it quickly and flipped through it. It was as thick as the file he had given Manley to copy. It appeared to be documents from Manley’s ill-fated defamation lawsuit against the judge—the face-saving measure that had been destined to fail from the beginning.

Bosch noticed that the inside flap of the file had several handwritten names, numbers, and e-mails on it. With no time to think about what these might mean, he pulled out his phone and took a photo of the inside flap and the table-of-contents page opposite. He then closed the file and slid it back into the drawer. He closed and locked the drawer and transferred the key back to its original position.

He checked his watch. Three and a half minutes had gone by. Bosch had given Manley over a hundred pages to copy, and had placed in the middle of the package two pages that were stapled together and would cause a delay if they jammed a copier. But Bosch couldn’t count on that. He thought he had two minutes more at the most.

He went back to the computer and pulled up Manley’s e-mail account. Bosch’s eyes ran down the list of senders and then the words in the subject boxes. Nothing was of interest. He did an e-mail search of the name Montgomery by subject but no messages came up.

He then closed the e-mail page and went back to the home screen. In the Finder application he searched the name Montgomery again, this time coming up with a folder. He quickly opened it and found it contained nine files. He checked his watch. There was no way he could risk looking through them all. Most were simply labeled MONTGOMERY plus a date. All the dates were before the date of the defamation suit, so Bosch took these to be prep files. But one file was titled differently: it said simply TRANSFER.

Bosch opened TRANSFER and it contained only a thirteen-digit number, followed by the initials G.C. and nothing else. The mystery of it intrigued him. He took a photo of it as well.

As Bosch closed the folder, he heard the ding of a new e-mail from the computer. He opened Manley’s e-mail account and saw that the new message had an address that included the name Michaelson and the subject header Your new “client.”

Bosch knew he was out of time, and that if he opened the e-mail it would be marked as read. It could tip Manley to what he had been doing. But the quote marks around the word client got the best of him. He opened the e-mail. It was from Manley’s boss, William Michaelson.

You fool. Your client is working on the Montgomery case. Stop all activity with him. Now.

Bosch was stunned. Without thinking more than a second about it, he deleted the message. He then went to the Trash folder and deleted it from there as well. He closed the e-mail account, moved the desk chair back into place, and crossed to the door to reopen it. Just as he swung the door in a foot, Manley arrived with the file and his copies of the documents.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

“Yeah, to look for you,” Bosch said.

“Sorry, the machine jammed. Took longer than I thought. Here are your originals.”

He handed Bosch a stack of documents. He held the copies in his other hand and headed toward his desk.

“Did you sign the contract?”

“Just about to.”

“Everything in order?”

“Seems so.”

Bosch came back to the desk but didn’t sit down. He took the pen off the table and scribbled a signature on the contract. It wasn’t his name but it was hard to tell what name it was.

Manley moved around behind his desk and was about to sit down.

“Have a seat,” he said.

“Actually, I have another appointment, so I need to go,” Bosch said. “After you’ve looked at all of that stuff, why don’t you just give me a call and let’s discuss next steps?”

“Oh, I thought we had more time. I wanted to talk about bringing in a video team and going through the story with you.”

“You mean in case I die before we get to court?”

“Actually, it’s just the latest vogue in negotiations: have the victim tell his own story instead of the lawyer. When you have a good story—like you do—it gives them a real taste of what to expect in court. But we’ll set that up for next time. Let me walk you out.”

“No worries,” Bosch said. “I know my way out.”

A few moments later Bosch was headed down the hallway. As he passed the door that said WILLIAM MICHAELSON on the frosted glass, it opened and a man was standing there. He looked to be about sixty years old, with a graying fringe of hair and the paunch of a relaxed and successful businessman. He stared at Bosch as he went by. And Bosch stared right back at him.

The Musso & Frank Grill had outlasted them all in Hollywood and still packed them in for lunch and dinner every day in its two high-ceilinged rooms. It had an old-world elegance and charm that never changed, and a menu that kept that spirit as well. Most of its waiters were ancient, its martinis were burning cold and came with a sidecar on ice, and its sourdough bread was the best south of San Francisco.

Ballard was already seated in a semicircular booth in the “new room,” which was only seventy-four years old compared with the hundred-year-old “old room.” She had documents from a file spread in front of her and it reminded Bosch of how he had reviewed the Montgomery file. Bosch slid into the booth from her left.

“Hey.”

“Oh, hey. Let me clear some of this stuff out of the way.”

“It’s okay. It’s good to spread a case out, see what you got.”

“I know. I love it. But we’ve got to eat eventually.”

She stacked the reports in a crosshatch pattern so that the distinct piles she had been making wouldn’t get mixed up. She then put it all down next to her on the banquette.

“I thought you wanted to tell me about your case,” Bosch said.

“I do,” Ballard said. “But let’s eat first. I also want to hear about what you’ve been so busy with.”

“Probably not anymore. I think I just blew it.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I have a guy—a Bunker Hill lawyer. I think there’s a chance he had Montgomery hit. His alibi is just too perfect and there are a couple other things that don’t jibe. So I posed as a client and went in to see him, and they figured it out this morning. His boss did. So that’s the end of that angle.”

“What will you do now?”

“Don’t know yet. But just the fact that they got on to me about it makes me think I’m on the right track. I have to come up with something else.”

A waiter in a red half-jacket came over. He put down plates of bread and butter and asked if they were ready to order. Bosch didn’t need a menu and Ballard had one in front of her.

“I wish it was tomorrow,” Bosch said.

“How come?” Ballard asked.

“Thursday is chicken pot pie day.”

“Ooh.”

“I’ll have the sand dabs and an iced tea.”

The waiter wrote it down and then looked at Ballard.

“Are they good, the sand dabs?” Ballard asked Bosch.

“Not really,” Bosch said. “That’s why I ordered them.”

Ballard laughed and ordered the sand dabs and the waiter walked away.

“What are sand dabs?” Ballard asked.

“Really?” Bosch said. “It’s fish. Little ones that they bread and fry. Squeeze some lemon on them. You’ll like them.”

“What’s the lawyer’s motive—on your case?”

“Pride. Montgomery embarrassed him in open court, banned him from his courtroom for incompetence. The Times picked up on it and it went from there. He hit the judge with a half-assed defamation suit that got thrown out and made more news, which only put his reputation further down the toilet. His name is Manley. People started calling him UnManley.”

“And he’s still at a Bunker Hill law firm?”

“Yeah, his firm stuck with him. I think he’s gotta be related to somebody. He’s probably Michaelson’s son-in-law or something. They have him in a back office down a hallway where the big shots can keep an eye on him.”

“Wait a minute, ‘Michaelson’? Who is that?”

“He’s the one who found out I was working on the Montgomery case. Cofounder of the firm, Michaelson & Mitchell.”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah, I sort of saw an e-mail where he told my suspect what I was up to.”

“I don’t mean about that. I mean about this.”

She pulled the documents she had been working on back up onto the table and started separating the individual stacks. She leafed through one of the stacks until she found what she was looking for and handed it to Bosch. It was a legal motion with a court date stamp on it. Bosch wasn’t sure what he was looking for until Ballard tapped the top of the page and he saw the law firm letterhead: Michaelson & Mitchell.

“What is this?” he asked.

“It’s my case,” Ballard said. “My crispy critter from the other night. The coroner identified him and it turned out he was worth a small fortune. But he was a homeless drunk and probably didn’t know it. That was a motion filed by Michaelson & Mitchell last year trying to kick him out of the family trust because he had been MIA for like five years. His brother wanted him out of the money and hired Michaelson & Mitchell to get it done.”

Bosch read the front page of the stapled document.

“This is San Diego,” he said. “Why would the brother hire an L.A. firm?”

“I don’t know,” Ballard said. “Maybe they have an office down there. But it’s Michaelson whose name is on the pleading. It’s all over the case file I got from Olivas.”

“Did the brother get what he wanted?”

“No, that’s the point: he didn’t win. And a year later the missing brother gets melted in his tent with a rigged kerosene heater.”

Ballard spent the next ten minutes walking Bosch through the murder of Edison Banks Jr. All the while, Bosch tried to wrap himself around the fact that the Michaelson & Mitchell law firm was involved in both of their cases. Bosch didn’t believe in coincidences but he knew they happened. And here two detectives working different cases had just found a link between them. If that wasn’t a coincidence, he didn’t know what was.

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