Lost Light (27 page)

I nodded.

“Who are these people? Are they . . . you know?”

“Legitimate? Yes, Harry, very. They’re businessmen. Microsoft men. From Seattle. I met them when they were out here playing. So far I’ve made them money. With the way the stock market’s been, they’d rather invest in me. They’re happy and so am I.”

“Good.”

I thought about the money Alex Taylor had offered me. And then there was the reward offered on the heist case. If I solved it, got back some of the money and somehow qualified for the reward, I could be her backer. It was a pipe dream. I wondered if she would even take my money.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked. “You look so concerned.”

“Nothing. I was just thinking about the case for a second. Something I want to ask the insurance investigator tomorrow.”

The waiter brought the check and I paid after getting my AmEx card back from Eleanor. We left and got the car and I checked to make sure the suitcase was still in the back. We drove over to the Bellagio, a short distance that took a long time because of the traffic. I grew nervous as we got closer because I didn’t know what was going to happen when we got there. I checked my watch. It was almost ten.

“What time do you play?”

“I like to start around midnight.”

“Why do you like to play through the night? What’s wrong with the day?”

“The real players come out at night. The tourists go to bed. There’s more money on the table.”

We rode in silence for a little bit and she eventually continued as though there had been no pause.

“Plus, I like coming out at the end of the night and seeing the sun coming up. Something about it, like you’re just happy you survived another day or something.”

Inside the Bellagio we went to the VIP desk and picked up a card key that had been left under Eleanor’s name. It was that simple. She led me to the elevator like she had been in it a hundred times and we went up to a suite on the twelfth floor. It was the nicest hotel room I had ever seen, with a living room and a bedroom and a view that looked down on the signature lighted fountains in the front pond.

“This is nice. You must know some people.”

“I’m getting a rep. I play here three or four nights a week and it’s starting to draw people. High rollers who want to play me. They know that here, and they don’t want me to play anywhere else.”

I nodded and turned to her.

“I guess things are really going well for you.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“I guess . . .”

I didn’t finish. She walked over to me and stood in front of me.

“You guess what?”

“I don’t know what I was going to ask. I guess I wanted to know what was missing. Are you with somebody now, Eleanor?”

She drew closer. I could feel her breath.

“You mean am I in love with somebody? No, Harry, I’m not.”

I nodded and she spoke again before I could.

“Do you still believe in that thing you told me? About the single-bullet theory.”

I nodded without hesitation and looked into her eyes. She leaned forward, her head against my chin.

“What about you?” I asked. “Do you still believe what that poet said, that there is no end of things in the heart?”

“Yes, I believe it. Always.”

I raised her chin with my hand and kissed her. Soon our arms were around each other and her hand was on the back of my neck pulling me toward her. I knew we were going to make love. And I knew for a moment what it meant to be the luckiest man in Las Vegas. I pulled away from her lips and just hugged her to my chest.

“All I want in this world is you,” I whispered.

“I know,” she whispered back.

 

O
n the flight back to Los Angeles I tried to refocus on the case. But it was a fruitless effort. I had spent a good part of the night watching Eleanor win several thousand dollars from five men at a table down in the Bellagio poker room. I had never watched her play at any length before. It is fair to say she embarrassed the other players, cleaning out all but one of them, and even he was left with only a single stack of chips by the time she cashed out five racks of her own. She was a cold, hard player who was as impressive as she was mysterious and beautiful. I spent my life learning to read people. But I never read anything off of her while she was playing. There was not a tell anywhere in her game as far as I could see.

But when she was finished with those men she was also finished with me. Outside the poker room she told me she was tired and had to go. She said I couldn’t go with her. She didn’t even offer me a ride to the airport. It was a short good-bye. We parted with a kiss as lacking in passion as our moments in the suite above had seemingly been full of it. We parted without promises of rejoining or of even calling each other again. We just said good-bye and I watched her walk away through the casino.

I got to the airport on my own. But once on the plane I couldn’t let it go. I tried opening the murder book but it did me no good. I kept thinking about the mysteries. Not the good moments, the smiles and the memories and the making love. I thought about our abrupt departure and how she had skillfully avoided the question when I’d asked if she was with somebody. She’d said she wasn’t in love but that didn’t really answer the question. I thought about why she had wanted me to stay in a hotel room and why she wouldn’t open her car’s trunk. On the front page of the murder book I wrote down her license plate number from memory. After doing it I felt like I had in some way betrayed her and I then crossed it out. But even as I did this I knew I could not cross it out in my memory.

 

T
he investigative offices of Global Underwriters were in a six-story black box on Colorado about six blocks from the ocean. When I got there the secretary who guarded entrance to the office of Sandor Szatmari looked at me as though I had just ridden the elevator down from the moon.

“Didn’t you get the message?”

“What message?”

“I left a message for you after getting your number from Mr. Scaggs’s office. Mr. Szatmari had to cancel your appointment this morning.”

“What happened, somebody die?”

She looked slightly insulted by my brashness. Her voice took on a tone of impatience.

“No, in reviewing his schedule for the day he decided he did not have the time to fit you in.”

“So he’s here?”

“He cannot see you. I’m sorry you didn’t get the message. I thought there was something wrong with the number I got, but I
did
leave a message.”

“Please tell him I’m here. Tell him I didn’t get the message because I was out of town. I flew in for this meeting. I’d still like to see him. It’s important.”

Now she looked annoyed. She lifted the phone to make the call but then thought better of it and hung up. She got up and walked down a hallway off to the side of the waiting room so she could deliver the message in person. A few minutes later she came back and sat down. She took her time in delivering the news to me.

“I talked to Mr. Szatmari,” she said. “He’ll try to get you in as soon as he can.”

“Thank you. That’s nice of him and nice of you.”

There was a couch and a coffee table with a spread of outdated magazines on it. I had brought the murder book with me, mostly as a prop, so I could impress Szatmari with it and the access it showed I had. I sat down on the couch and spent the time waiting by leafing through it and rereading some of the reports. Nothing new hit me but I was becoming well versed in the facts of the case. This was important because I knew it would help when I sifted through new information to not have to check the murder book every time.

A half hour went by and then the secretary’s phone buzzed and she got the word to send me in.

Szatmari was a solidly built man in his midfifties. He looked more like a salesman than an investigator but the walls of his office were hung with commendations and handshake photos testifying to his success as one. He pointed me to a chair in front of his cluttered desk and spoke as he wrote something down on a report.

“I’m busy, Mr. Bosch. What can I do for you?”

“Well, like I told you yesterday on the phone, I’m working one of your cases. I thought maybe we could share some information, see if one of us has gone down a road the other hasn’t.”

“Why should I share with you?”

Something was wrong. He was predisposed not to like me before I had even set foot in his office. I wondered if somehow Peoples had talked to him about me. Maybe Szatmari had called the LAPD or the bureau to check me out and got the word not to cooperate. Maybe that was why the appointment had been canceled.

“I don’t get this,” I said. “Is something wrong? It’s called solving the case, that’s why maybe we should share information.”

“And how about you? Would you share with me? How much of the reward do you give to me?”

I nodded. Now I got it. The reward.

“Mr. Szatmari, you have it wrong. You have me wrong.”

“Sure. Have reward, will travel. I see your kind all the time. Come in here, wanting information, maybe make some big bucks.”

His accent became more pronounced as he got worked up. I flipped open the murder book and found the black-and-white photocopies of the murder scene photos. I tore the page with Angella Benton’s hands on it out of the book and slapped it down on his desk.

“That’s why I’m doing this. Not the money. Her. I was there that day. I was a cop. I’m retired now but I was on this case until they took me off it. That probably cuts me out of any reward, okay?”

Szatmari studied the grainy copy of the photo. He then looked at the binder on my lap. He then finally looked at me.

“I remember you now. Your name. You were the one who hit one of the robbers with a round.”

I nodded.

“I was there that day, but since we never found the robbers it’s not known for sure who hit who.”

“Come on, eight rent-a-cops and an LAPD veteran. It was you.”

“I think so.”

“You know, I tried to talk to you back then. Interview you. But the department stonewalled me.”

“How come?”

“They’d do anything they could to keep other investigations and investigators out of the picture. They’re like that over there.”

“I know. I remember.”

He smiled and leaned back in his seat.

“And now here you are, wanting cooperation from me. Ironic, eh?”

“Very.”

“Is that the investigative file? Let me see it, please.”

I handed the heavy binder across his desk. He put it down and flipped back to the front section and started leafing through the reports until he came to the original offense report. The homicide. He worked a finger down the page until he came to my name in the block marked “I/O” for investigating officer. He then closed the murder book but didn’t hand it back.

“Why now? Why do you investigate this?”

“Because I just retired and it’s one of the ones that won’t let go.”

He nodded that he understood.

“Our investigation, you understand, was in regard to the money, not the woman.”

“It’s all the same thing, you ask me.”

“Our investigation is no longer active. The money is gone by now. Split up, spent. Without the possibility of recovery. There are other cases.”

“The money’s been written off,” I said, “but she hasn’t been. Not by me, not by those who knew her.”

“
Did
you know her?”

“I met her that day.”

He nodded again, seeming to understand what that meant. He straightened the corners on a stack of files on his desk.

“Did it ever go anywhere?” I asked. “Did you get close to anything?”

He took a long time answering.

“No, not really. Only dead ends on this one.”

“When did you put it aside?”

“I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

“Where’s your file on it?”

“I cannot give you my file. It is against company policy.”

“Because of the reward thing, right? The company doesn’t allow you to cooperate with unofficial investigations if there’s a reward.”

“It can lead to collusion,” he said, nodding. “Also, there is the legal jeopardy. I don’t have the luxury of the protections the police have. If my investigative notes and summaries were to become public, I’d be left open to possible lawsuits.”

I tried to think for a minute about how to play this. Szatmari seemed to be holding something back and whatever it was might be in the file. I think he wanted to give it to me but wasn’t sure how.

“Take a look at the photocopy again,” I said. “Look at her hands. Are you a religious man, Mr. Szatmari?”

Szatmari looked at the photo of Angella Benton’s hands again.

“Sometimes I am religious,” he said. “Are you?”

“Not really. I mean, what is religion? I don’t go to church, if that’s what it is. But I think about religion and I think I have something like it inside. A code is like religion. You have to believe it. You have to practice it. The thing is, look at her hands, Mr. Szatmari. I remember when I saw her down on the tile and saw how her hands were . . . I sort of took it as a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“I don’t know. A sign of something. Like religion. That’s why this is one of the cases that didn’t go away.”

“I understand.”

“Then pull out the file and put it on your desk,” I said as if giving instruction to someone in a hypnotic trance. “Then go get a cup of coffee or have a smoke. And take your time. I’ll wait for you right here.”

Szatmari looked at me for a long moment and then reached down to what I guess was a file drawer in the desk. He finally took his eyes off me so he could pull the right file. He brought it up—it was a thick one—and put it down on the desk. He then pushed back his chair and got up.