Angels Flight (11 page)

“I can live with that,” Bosch said.

He called everybody into a huddle. He noticed Fuentes was smoking and tried not to think about his own desire for a cigarette.

“Okay, we’ve got the search warrants,” he said. “This is how we’re gonna split it up. Edgar, Fuentes and Baker, you three take the apartment. I want Edgar on lead. The rest of us will go to the office. You guys on the apartment, I also want you to arrange for interviews of all the doormen in the building. All shifts. We need to find out as much about this guy’s routines and personal life as we can. We’re thinking there may be a girlfriend somewhere. We need to find out who that was. Also, on the key chain there is a key to a Porsche and a Volvo. My guess is Elias drove the Porsche and it’s probably in the parking garage at the apartment building. I want you to take a look at that, too.”

“The warrants don’t specify a car,” Dellacroce protested. “Nobody told me about a car when I was sent to work up the warrants.”

“Okay, then just find the car, check it out through the windows and we’ll get a search warrant if you see something and think it is necessary.”

Bosch was looking at Edgar as he said this last part. Edgar almost imperceptibly nodded, meaning that he understood that Bosch was telling him to find the car and to simply open it and search it. If anything of value to the investigation was found, then he would simply back out, get a warrant and they would act as if they had never been in the car in the first place. It was standard practice.

Bosch looked at his watch and wrapped it up.

“Okay, it’s five-thirty now. We should be done with the searches by eight-thirty max. Take anything that even looks of interest and we’ll sift through it all later. Chief Irving has set up the command post for this investigation in the conference room next to his office at Parker. But before we go back there, I want to meet everybody right back here at eight-thirty.”

He pointed up to the tall apartment building overlooking Angels Flight.

“We’ll canvass this building then. I don’t want to wait until later, have people get out for the day before we can get to them.”

“What about the meeting with Deputy Chief Irving?” Fuentes asked.

“That’s set for ten. We should make it. If we don’t, don’t worry about it. I’ll take the meeting and you people will proceed. The case comes first. He’ll go along with that.”

“Hey, Harry?” Edgar said. “If we get done before eight-thirty, all right if we get breakfast?”

“Yes, it’s all right, but I don’t want to miss anything. Do not hurry the search just so you can get pancakes.”

Rider smiled.

“Tell you what,” Bosch said. “I’ll make sure we have doughnuts here at eight-thirty. If you can, just wait until then. Okay, so let’s do it.”

Bosch took out the key ring they had taken from the body of Howard Elias. He removed the keys to the apartment and the Porsche key and gave them to Edgar. He noted that there were still several keys on the ring that were unaccounted for. At least two or three would be to the office and another two or three for his home in Baldwin Hills. That still left four keys and Bosch thought about the voice he had heard on the answering machine. Maybe Elias had keys to a lover’s home.

He put the keys back in his pocket and told Rider and Dellacroce to drive cars down the hill and over to the Bradbury. He said he and Chastain would take the train down and walk over, making a check of the sidewalks Elias would have covered between his office building and the lower Angels Flight terminus. As the detectives broke up and headed toward their assignments, Bosch went to the station window and looked in on Eldrige Peete. He was sitting on the chair by the cash register, earplugs in place and his eyes closed. Bosch rapped gently on the window but the train operator was startled anyway.

“Mr. Peete, I want you to send us down once more and then you can close up, lock up and go home to your wife.”

“Okay, whatever you say.”

Bosch nodded and turned to head to the train, then he stopped and looked back at Peete.

“There’s a lot of blood. Do you have someone who is going to clean up the inside of the train before it opens tomorrow?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get that. I’ve got a mop and bucket back here in the closet. I called my supervisor. Before you got here. He said I gotta clean Olivet up so she’s ready to go in the morning. We start at eight Satadays.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay, Mr. Peete. Sorry you have to do that.”

“I like to keep the cars clean.”

“Also, down at the bottom, they left fingerprint dust all over the turnstile. It’s nasty stuff if you get that on your clothes.”

“I’ll get that, too.”

Bosch nodded.

“Well, thanks for your help tonight. We appreciate it.”

“Tonight? Hell, it’s morning a’ready.”

Peete smiled.

“I guess you’re right. Good morning, Mr. Peete.”

“Yeah, not if you ask them two that were on the train.”

Bosch started away and then once more came back to the man.

“One last thing. This is going to be a big story in the papers. And on TV. I’m not telling you what to do but you might want to think about taking your phone off the hook, Mr. Peete. And maybe not answering your door.”

“I gotcha.”

“Good.”

“I’m gonna sleep all day, anyway.”

Bosch nodded to him one last time and got on the train. Chastain was already on one of the benches near the door. Bosch walked past him and again went down the steps to the end where Howard Elias’s body had fallen. He was careful again not to step in the pooled and coagulated blood.

As soon as he sat down the train began its descent. Bosch looked out the window and saw the gray light of dawn around the edges of the tall office buildings to the east. He slumped on the bench and yawned deeply, not bothering to raise a hand to cover his mouth. He wished he could turn his body and lie down. The bench was hard, worn wood but he had no doubts that he would quickly fall into sleep and that he would dream about Eleanor and happiness and places where you did not have to step around the blood.

He dropped the thought and brought his hand up and all the way into the pocket of his jacket before he remembered there were no cigarettes to be found there.

Chapter 10

T
HE Bradbury was the dusty jewel of downtown. Built more than a century before, its beauty was old but still brighter and more enduring than any of the glass-and-marble towers that now dwarfed it like a phalanx of brutish guards surrounding a beautiful child. Its ornate lines and glazed tile surfaces had withstood the betrayal of both man and nature. It had survived earthquakes and riots, periods of abandonment and decay, and a city that often didn’t bother to safeguard what little culture and roots it had. Bosch believed there wasn’t a more beautiful structure in the city — despite the reasons he had been inside it over the years.

In addition to holding the offices for the legal practice of Howard Elias and several other attorneys, the Bradbury housed several state and city offices on its five floors. Three large offices on the third floor were leased to the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division and used for holding Board of Rights hearings — the disciplinary tribunals police officers charged with misconduct must face. The IAD had leased the space because the rising tide of complaints against officers in the 1990s had resulted in more disciplinary actions and more BORs. Hearings were now happening every day, sometimes two or three running at a time. There was not enough space for this flow of misconduct cases in Parker Center. So the IAD had taken the space in the nearby Bradbury.

To Bosch, the IAD was the only blemish on the building’s beauty. Twice he had faced Board of Rights hearings in the Bradbury. Each time he gave his testimony, listened to witnesses and an IAD investigator — once it had been Chastain — report the facts and findings of the case, and then paced the floor beneath the atrium’s huge glass skylight while the three captains privately decided his fate. He had come out okay after both hearings and in the process had come to love the Bradbury with its Mexican tile floors, wrought-iron filigree and suspended mail chutes. He had once taken the time to look up its history at the Los Angeles Conservancy offices, and found one of the more intriguing mysteries of Los Angeles: the Bradbury, for all its lasting glory, had been designed by a $5-a-week draftsman. George Wyman had no degree in architecture and no prior credits as a designer when he drew the plans for the building in 1892, yet his design would see fruition in a structure that would last more than a century and cause generations of architects to marvel. To add to the mystery, Wyman never again designed a building of any significance, in Los Angeles or anywhere else.

It was the kind of mystery Bosch liked. The idea of a man leaving his mark with the one shot he’s given appealed to him. Across a whole century, Bosch identified with George Wyman. He believed in the one shot. He didn’t know if he’d had his yet — it wasn’t the kind of thing you knew and understood until you looked back over your life as an old man. But he had the feeling that it was still out there waiting for him. He had yet to take his one shot.

Because of the one-way streets and traffic lights Dellacroce and Rider faced, Bosch and Chastain got to the Bradbury on foot before them. As they approached the heavy glass doors of the entrance, Janis Langwiser got out of a small red sports car that was parked illegally at the curb out front. She was carrying a leather bag on a shoulder strap and a Styrofoam cup with the tag of a tea bag hanging over the lip.

“Hey, I thought we said an hour,” she said good-naturedly.

Bosch looked at his watch. It was an hour and ten minutes since they had talked.

“So you’re a lawyer, sue me,” he said, smiling.

He introduced Chastain and gave Langwiser a more detailed rundown on the investigation. By the time he was finished, Rider and Dellacroce had parked their cars in front of Langwiser’s car. Bosch tried the doors to the building but they were locked. He got out the key ring and hit the right key on the second try. They entered the atrium of the building and each of them involuntarily looked up, such was the beauty of the place. Above them the atrium skylight was filled with the purples and grays of dawn. Classical music played from hidden speakers. Something haunting and sad but Bosch couldn’t place it.

“Barber’s ‘Adagio,’ ” Langwiser said.

“What?” Bosch said, still looking up.

“The music.”

“Oh.”

A police helicopter streaked across the skylight, heading home to Piper Tech for change of shift. It broke the spell and Bosch brought his eyes down. A uniformed security guard was walking toward them. He was a young black man with close-cropped hair and startling green eyes.

“Can I help you people? The building’s closed right now.”

“Police,” Bosch said, pulling out his ID wallet and flipping it open. “We’ve got a search warrant here for suite five-oh-five.”

He nodded to Dellacroce, who removed the search warrant from his coat pocket once again and handed it to the guard.

“That’s Mr. Elias’s office,” the guard said.

“We know,” Dellacroce said.

“What’s going on?” the guard asked. “Why do you have to search his place?”

“We can’t tell you that right now,” Bosch said. “We need you to answer a couple questions, though. When’s your shift start? Were you here when Mr. Elias left last night?”

“Yeah, I was here. I work a six-to-six shift. I watched them leave about eleven last night.”

“Them?”

“Yeah, him and a couple other guys. I locked the door right after they went through. The place was empty after that — ’cept for me.”

“Do you know who the other guys were?”

“One was Mr. Elias’s assistant or a whatchamacallit.”

“Secretary? Clerk?”

“Yeah, clerk. That’s it. Like a young student who helped him with the cases.”

“You know his name?”

“Nah, I never asked.”

“Okay, what about the other guy? Who was he?”

“Don’t know that one.”

“Had you seen him around here before?”

“Yeah, the last couple nights they left together. And a few times before that I think I saw him going or coming by hisself.”

“Did he have an office here?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Was he Elias’s client?”

“How would I know?”

“A black guy, white guy?”

“Black.”

“What did he look like?”

“Well, I didn’t get a real good look at him.”

“You said you’ve seen him around here before. What did he look like?”

“He was just a normal-looking guy. He . . .”

Bosch was growing impatient but wasn’t sure why. The guard seemed to be doing the best he could. It was routine in police work to find witnesses unable to describe people they had gotten a good look at. Bosch took the search warrant out of the guard’s hand and handed it back to Dellacroce. Langwiser asked to see it and began reading it while Bosch continued with the guard.

“What’s your name?”

“Robert Courtland. I’m on the waiting list for the academy.”

Bosch nodded. Most security guards in this town were waiting for a police job somewhere. The fact that Courtland, a black man, was not already in the academy told Bosch that there was a problem somewhere in his application. The department was going out of its way to attract minorities to the ranks. For Courtland to be wait-listed there had to be something. Bosch guessed he had probably admitted smoking marijuana or didn’t meet the minimum educational requirements, maybe even had a juvenile record.

“Close your eyes, Robert.”

“What?”

“Just close your eyes and relax. Think of the man you saw. Tell me what he looks like.”

Courtland did as he was told and after a moment came up with an improved but still sketchy description.

“He’s about the same height as Mr. Elias. But he had his head shaved. It was slick. He got one of them soul chips, too.”

“Soul chip?”

“You know, like a little beard under his lip.”

He opened his eyes.

“That’s it.”

“That’s it?” Bosch said in a friendly, cajoling tone. “Robert, how’re you going to make it into the cops. We need more than that. How old was this guy?”