Lost Light (14 page)

“Tell you what,” I said. “I think I’ll leave your laptop here and just come back with the memory card when I want to look at it. I don’t want to risk all your equipment. I like to travel light, anyway.”

“Whatever suits you. But the beauty of this setup is the immediacy. You can pull the card and watch it in your car right outside the guy’s house if you want. Why come all the way back here?”

“I don’t think there’s that kind of urgency. I’ll leave the laptop and bring you back the card, okay?”

“Whatever.”

Andre put the clock back in its cushioned box, then shook my hand and left the office, taking the laptop with him but leaving me the toolbox along with the clock. I looked at Burnett. It was time to go.

“He looks like he’s more than helping you.”

“Andre’s the heart of this place.”

He gestured toward the wall of framed memorabilia.

“I bring the clients in, impress them, sign them up. Andre’s the one who gets it done. He figures out the needs and gets it done.”

I nodded and stood up.

“You want to charge me something for this?” I said, holding up the box with the clock in it.

Biggar smiled.

“Not if you bring it back.”

Then his face turned serious.

“It’s the least I can do for Lawton Cross.”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing the feeling.

We shook hands and I went out, carrying the clock and the toolbox, hoping the hidden camera would be the piece of equipment that would show me the world wasn’t as bad as I thought it could be.

 

F
rom Biggar & Biggar I drove back to the Valley, taking the Sepulveda Pass and catching the first brutal wave of rush hour. It took me almost an hour just to get to Mulholland Drive. At that point I jumped off the freeway and drove west along the crest of the mountains. I watched the sun drop behind Malibu and leave a burning sky in its trail. At the low angles the sun often reflected off the smog caught in the bowl of the Valley and turned it brilliant shades of orange and pink and purple. It was like some sort of reward for putting up with having to breathe the poisoned air every day. This evening it was mostly a smooth orange color with wisps of white mixed in. It was what my ex-wife used to call a Creamsicle sky when she watched sunsets off the back deck of the house. She had a descriptive label for each one and that always made me smile.

The memory of her on the deck seemed like such a long time ago and such a different part of my life. I thought about what Roy Lindell had said about seeing her in Las Vegas. He knew I had been asking about her even though I told him I hadn’t. If not a day then at least not a week went by that I didn’t think about going out there, finding her and asking for another chance. A chance of making a go of it on her terms. I had no job holding me to L.A. anymore. I could go where I wanted. This time I could go to her and we could live there together in the city of sin. She could still be free to find what she needed on the blue felt poker tables of the city’s casinos. And at the end of each day she could come home to me. I could do whatever came up. There would always be something in Vegas for a person with my skills.

One time I had packed a box, put it in the back of the Benz and had gotten as far as Riverside before the familiar fears started rising in my chest and I pulled off the freeway. I ate a hamburger at an In-N-Out and then headed back home. I didn’t bother unpacking the box when I got there. I put it on the floor in the bedroom and took out the clothes I had packed as I needed them over the next two weeks. The empty box was still there on the floor, ready for the next time I wanted to pack it and make that drive.

The fear. It was always there. Fear of rejection, fear of unrequited hope and love, fear of feelings still below the surface in me. It was all mixed in the blender and poured smooth as a milkshake into my cup until it was filled to the very edge. So full that if I were to move even a step it would spill over the sides. Therefore I couldn’t move. I stood paralyzed. I stayed home and lived out of a box.

I’m a believer in the single-bullet theory. You can fall in love and make love many times but there is only one bullet with your name etched on the side. And if you are lucky enough to be shot with that bullet then the wound never heals.

Roy Lindell might have had Martha Gessler’s name on a bullet. I don’t know. What I do know is that Eleanor Wish had been my bullet. She had pierced me through and through. There were other women before and other women since but the wound she left was always there. It would not heal right. I was still bleeding and I knew I would always bleed for her. That was just the way it had to be. There is no end of things in the heart.

 

O
n the way into Woodland Hills I made a quick stop at a Vendome Liquors and then headed to the house on Melba Avenue. I didn’t call ahead. With Lawton Cross I knew the chances were always good he’d be at home.

Danielle Cross answered the door after three knocks, and her already strained face took on a deeper scowl when she saw it was me.

“He’s sleeping,” she said, holding her body tightly in the door’s opening. “He’s still recovering from yesterday.”

“Then wake him up, Danny, because I need to talk to him.”

“Look, you can’t just barge in here. You’re not a cop anymore. You have no right.”

“Do you have the right to decide who he does and doesn’t see?”

That seemed to stall her anger a little bit. She looked down at the toolbox in one hand and the box I had under my arm.

“What is all of that?”

“I got him a gift. Look, Danny, I need to talk to him. People are going to be coming to see him. I have to talk to him about it so he’ll be ready.”

She relented. Without further word she stepped back and opened the door wide. She signaled me in with an outstretched arm and I stepped over the threshold. I found my way to the bedroom.

Lawton Cross was asleep in his chair, his mouth open and a spill of medicinal-looking drool curved down his cheek. I didn’t want to look at him. He was too much of a reminder of what could happen. I put the toolbox and the clock box down on the bed. I went back to the door and closed it, making sure it banged in the jamb loud enough to hopefully startle Cross awake. I didn’t want to have to touch him to wake him up.

When I turned back to the chair I noticed his eyes flutter and then go still at half mast.

“Hey, Law? It’s me, Harry Bosch.”

I noticed the green light on the monitor on the bureau and moved behind the chair to turn it off.

“Harry?” he said. “Where?”

I came back around the chair and looked down on him with a frozen smile on my face.

“Right here, man. You awake now?”

“Yeah . . . mmm ’wake.”

“Good. There’s some stuff I need to tell you. And I got you something.”

I went to the bed and started pulling the clock out of the box Andre Biggar had packed for me.

“Black Bush?”

His voice was alert now. Once again I regretted my choice of words to him. I came back into his field of vision holding the clock up.

“I got you this clock for the wall. Now you’ll be able to tell the time when you need it.”

He blew a burst of air out through his lips.

“She’ll just take it down.”

“I’ll tell her not to. Don’t worry.”

I opened the toolbox and pulled out the hammer and a drywall nail from a plastic package that contained a variety of nails for different purposes. I surveyed the wall to the left of the television and picked a spot at center. There was an electrical outlet directly below. I held the nail up high on the wall and drove it halfway in with the hammer. I was hanging the clock when the door opened and Danny looked in.

“What are you doing? He doesn’t want a clock in here.”

I finished hanging the clock, lowered my hands and looked at her.

“He told me he did want a clock.”

We both looked at Law to settle it. His eyes flitted from his wife to me and then back again.

“Let’s try having a clock for a while,” he said. “I’d like to know the time of day so I know when my shows are coming on.”

“Fine,” she said in a clipped tone. “Whatever you want.”

She left the room, closing the door behind her. I leaned over and plugged the clock’s line into the outlet. Then I checked my watch and reached up to set the time and turn on the camera. When I was finished I put the hammer back into the toolbox and snapped the latch.

“Harry?”

“What?” I asked, though I knew what the question would be.

“Did you bring me some?”

“A little.”

I reopened the toolbox and took out the flask I had filled in the parking lot at the Vendome.

“Danny said you’re hung over. You sure?”

“’Course I’m sure. Give me a taste, Harry. I need it.”

I went through the same routine as the day before and then waited to see if he could tell I had watered down the whiskey.

“Ah, that’s the good stuff, Harry. Give me another, would you?”

I did and then I closed the flask, feeling somehow guilty about giving this broken man the one joy he seemed to have left in life.

“Listen, Law, I’m here to give you a heads-up. I think I sort of kicked over a can of worms with this thing.”

“What happened?”

“I tried to run down that agent you said had called Jack Dorsey about the currency numbers. You know, about the problem?”

“Yeah, I know. Did you find her?”

“No, Law, I didn’t. The agent was Martha Gessler. That ring a bell with you?”

His eyes moved across the ceiling as if that was where he kept his memory banks.

“No, should it?”

“I don’t know. She’s missing. She’s been missing for three years, since right about the time she called Jack.”

“Holy shit, Harry.”

“Yeah. So I kind of walked into that when I called up to try to track that call.”

“They’re going to come talk to me?”

“I don’t know. But that’s the heads-up. I think they might. Somehow, they’ve got this whole thing tied into a terrorism angle. It’s one of these post-September eleven crews running with it now. And I hear they like to kick ass and read the rule book later.”

“I don’t want them coming here, Harry. What did you start?”

“I’m sorry about that, Law. If they come, just let them ask their questions and you answer them the best you can. Get their names and tell Danny to call me after they leave.”

“I’ll try. I just want to be left alone.”

“I know, Law.”

I moved closer to his chair and held the flask up into his field of vision.

“You want more?”

“Does the pope shit in the woods?”

I poured a good slug into his mouth, then a chaser. I waited for it to go down and then work its way back up into his eyes. They seemed to glaze over.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“There are a few more questions I have for you. They sort of came to me after I talked to the bureau.”

“Like what?”

“Like about the phone call Jack got. The FBI says there was no record of Gessler calling about the currency list.”

“That’s simple. Maybe it wasn’t her. Like I said, I didn’t get a name from Jack. Or if I did it’s gone. I don’t remember it.”

“I’m pretty sure it was her. Everything else you described about it fits. She had a program like you described on her laptop. It went missing with her.”

“There you go. There probably was a record of her calling. It just disappeared with her.”

“I guess so. What about the time of the call? Can you remember anything more about that, about when it came in?”

“Ah, jeez, I don’t know, Harry. It was just one of those things. It was just a call. I’m sure Jack put it on the log.”

He was talking about the chronological log. Everything was always entered on the log. Or was supposed to be.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But I don’t have access to that. I’m on the outside, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“You told me you thought it was ten or so months into the case, remember? You said you were working other cases by then and Jack took over lead on Angella Benton. Her murder was May sixteenth of ’ninety-nine. Martha Gessler disappeared the following March nineteenth. That’s almost exactly ten months later.”

“So I remembered it right. What else you want from me?”

“It’s just that . . .”

I didn’t finish. I was trying to figure out what to ask and how to say it. Something wasn’t right about the chronology.

“It’s just what?”

“I don’t know. It seems to me if Jack had recently talked to this agent he would have said something about it when she went missing. It was a big story, you know? In the papers and on the TV every night. Is there any way the call could have come earlier? Closer to the beginning of the case? That way Jack might have forgotten about it and her by the time she hit the news.”

Cross didn’t say anything for a while as he considered this. I considered other possibilities, too, but kept hitting logic walls.

“Give me another shot of that stuff, would you, Harry?”

He tried to suck too much of it down and it backed up and burned his throat. When he spoke again his voice was hoarser than usual.

“I don’t think so. I think it was ten months.”

“Close your eyes for a second, Law.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just close your eyes and concentrate on that memory. Whatever it is that you have, that you’re keying on, concentrate on that.”

“You trying to hypnotize me, Harry?”

“I’m just trying to focus your thoughts, help you remember what Jack said.”

“It won’t work.”