The Dark Hours (15 page)

It seemed that every time Ballard dropped deeply into a dream, she was pulled out by the buzz of her cell phone, and it was EMT Single making good on his promise to check in on her. This cycle continued through the night into Sunday morning, when he finally said that it was safe for her to sleep uninterrupted.

“You mean now that the sun is up I can get a good night’s sleep?” she asked.

“I thought this would be your normal schedule,” Single said. “You do work the night shift, right?”

“I’m just giving you a hard time. Thank you for checking on me. It means a lot.”

“Anytime. Your next concussion, call me.”

She ended the call with a smile on her face despite the headache behind her eyes. She got up, wobbled as she got her footing, and went into the bathroom. After splashing cold water on her face, she looked closely at herself in the mirror. She saw bluish shadows under her eyes but the dilation of her pupils seemed to be back to normal, at least compared to what it had been when she got home the night before. She then thought of EMT Single’s keyhole pupil and smiled again.

It was 8 a.m. and she was still tired after the repeatedly
interrupted sleep cycle. She stayed in her sweats and got back into bed, thinking she would doze for a little while longer. She knew there was a lot to do but she needed to be rested and ready for her next shift that night. She closed her eyes and soon all of that was forgotten.

In her dream, Ballard could breathe underwater. There was no need to charge to the surface for air. No burning in her lungs. She looked up through the blue to the sun, its rays penetrating the water with warmth and comfort. She twirled onto her back and moved languidly in the current, looking up and realizing that the sun was shaped like an acorn and was not the sun at all.

The phone’s buzz seemed to wake her as soon as she had shut her eyes, but as she reached for it, she saw the time was 3:50 and that she had been asleep for nearly eight hours. The call was from Bosch.

“Have you gotten my messages?”

“No. What? What happened? You called?”

“No, I texted. There’s a memorial service for Javier Raffa today.”

“Shit, when? Where?”

“It starts in ten minutes at St. Anne’s on Occidental.”

Ballard knew that wasn’t far from her. She put Bosch on speaker so she could scroll through her missed texts and emails. There were three from Bosch and one from her lieutenant. One of the emails that had come in was from Bobbi Klein, the first victim of the Midnight Men. The others were not important.

“I don’t know how I slept through all of — I got a concussion last night.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. Are you at the memorial?”

“I’m here but I didn’t go in. I think I’d stick out. I’ve got a
good spot and I’m watching people arrive. I think Hoyle is here. At least there’s one white guy that I think is him.”

“Okay, I’m on my way. Thanks for the wake-up.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.”

Ballard quickly dressed and headed down to the garage. Her car was there because she had disregarded EMT Single’s orders and driven herself home after checking out with the watch lieutenant the night before.

She took Hillhurst all the way to Beverly and then over to Occidental. She found a spot at the curb a half block away and called Bosch.

“I’m here. Are you still in place?”

“I’m here.”

“Okay, I’m going to go in. I’ll see if we can talk to the widow after.”

“Sounds good.”

“Anybody else of note arrive?”

“There’s a lot of obvious bangers, tattooed to the ears. You want me to go in with you?”

“No, I’ll be fine. Do you think it’s worth following Hoyle, if it was Hoyle you saw?”

“I don’t know. Where’s he going to go on a Sunday night? He’s probably just here for appearances. There might be suspicions if he didn’t show — you know what I mean?”

“Yeah. But wait till the widow Raffa finds out what’s going on.”

“You’re going to tell her in there?”

“No, I’ll wait. Okay, I’m going now.”

Ballard disconnected and exited her car. She walked up the street and followed a few stragglers arriving late. She hurried to follow them in and use them as cover. The memorial was in a chapel to the side of the main church. That made it too crowded
to enter and Ballard stood in the hallway outside with the stragglers. There were speakers in the ceiling, so she heard the testimonials and tearful memories from friends and co-workers as well as a hymn sung by the crowd. The hymn and most of the testimonials were in Spanish. Ballard understood enough to know that many people were lamenting that Javier Raffa had left the violent life to raise a family and run a business, yet in the end, violence still found him and took it all away.

After forty-five minutes, the ceremony ended and the immediate family left the chapel first to form a receiving line outside the door. Ballard hung back and watched from one of the archways that lined the walkway that ran down the side of the church.

She soon saw Javier Raffa’s silent partner, Dr. Dennis Hoyle, emerge in the line from the chapel. Ballard recognized him from the studio photos on his family dentistry website. He was all angles: thin, sharp shoulders and elbows. He had graying hair and a salt-and-pepper goatee.

Ballard realized this might be the best time to talk to him, when he least expected to be questioned by the police. She quickly texted Bosch her plan and then watched when it was Hoyle’s turn to go down the family line. It was clear he was meeting them for the first time, even the widow. He hugged none of them and gave the widow a two-handed sympathy grasp. He leaned forward to say something to her or possibly identify himself, but Ballard’s read on the widow’s facial expression and body language was that she had no idea who he was.

Javier Raffa’s son, Gabriel, was at the end of the receiving line. Hoyle simply nodded once and gave the young man a hang-in-there clap on the shoulder, then headed away with a look of pure relief on his face. Ballard used her arm to hold her jacket closed over the badge on her belt. She let Hoyle pass by and then turned to follow him.

As Hoyle headed toward the street, Ballard could see Bosch standing out on the sidewalk. He was wearing a suit, just in case he needed to go into the memorial service. But the suit also worked for what they were about to do.

Ballard followed Hoyle out and picked up speed to catch up. Bosch positioned himself in the middle of the sidewalk, slowing Hoyle down as he decided which way to go.

“Dr. Hoyle?” Ballard said.

Hoyle spun around as if shocked that anyone in this part of town would know him by name.

“Uh, yes?” he said.

Ballard pulled her jacket open to show the badge as well as her gun holstered on her hip.

“I’m Detective Ballard with the LAPD. This is my colleague Harry Bosch.”

She gestured to Bosch, who was now behind Hoyle. The dentist whipped back to look at Bosch and then forward again at Ballard.

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m investigating the murder of Javier Raffa,” Ballard said. “I would like to ask you a few questions, if you have the time.”

“Me?” Hoyle said. “Why would you want to ask me questions?”

“Well, for starters, you were his partner, were you not?”

“Well, yes, but I don’t know anything about what happened. I mean, I wasn’t even there.”

“That’s okay. We need to be thorough and talk to anybody who knew him. If you were his partner, you must have known him pretty well.”

“It was a business investment, that’s all.”

“Okay, that’s good to know. Where are you parked? Maybe we should get away from the church and talk.”

“Um, I’m over here but I — ”

“Lead the way.”

Hoyle drove a four-door Mercedes and by coincidence had parked right behind Bosch’s old Jeep. Neither Bosch nor Ballard mentioned this, because it would possibly put cracks in the charade that Bosch was an LAPD detective. When they got to Hoyle’s car, he pulled the remote key from his pocket and unlocked the doors. He then turned to Ballard and Bosch.

“You know, right now is not a good time to talk,” he said. “I’ve just been to my friend’s memorial and I’m kind of emotional about it. I just want to go home. Can we — ”

“How did you know?” Ballard interrupted.

“How did I know he was dead?” Hoyle said. “It was in the paper — online.”

Ballard paused for a moment in case Hoyle sputtered out something else. He didn’t.

“No, I mean how did you know he was looking for a partner?” she said. “An investor. Somebody to buy him out of the gang.”

For a second, Hoyle’s eyes widened. He was surprised by her knowledge.

“I … Well, I have advisers for this sort of thing,” Hoyle said.

“Really?” Ballard asked. “Who is that? I’d like to speak to them.”

“I told you, now is not a good time. Can I go?”

Ballard held her hands wide as if to say she wasn’t keeping him from leaving.

“So I can go?” Hoyle said.

“It would be better for you, Dr. Hoyle, if we cleared some of this up now,” Ballard said.

“Cleared up what? You just said I could go.”

“No, I said it would be better for you to talk to us right now, right here. I don’t think you want us coming by your office, do you?”

Hoyle flung the door of his car open and it promptly swung back closed. Exasperated, he opened it again and held it.

“I’ve done nothing wrong and you are harassing me!”

He jumped in the car and slammed the door. He fired up the engine and took off from the curb, driving by Ballard and Bosch.

“If he thinks that was harassment, he hasn’t seen anything yet,” Ballard said.

Bosch stood next to her and they watched the Mercedes drive north on Occidental.

“Did I come on too strong?” Ballard asked.

“He thinks so,” said Bosch.

“Fuck ’im.”

“He’s probably calling his partners right now. Did you want that?”

“I wanted them to know I’m here.”

Ballard and Bosch went back to the church to see if the family was finished with the procession of well-wishers. There was no one at the door of the chapel. Ballard looked inside and saw the widow and the daughters but not the son, Gabriel.

“I need to find Gabriel so he can translate if needed,” she said. “Stay here in case they start to leave.”

“I’ll stall them,” Bosch said.

Ballard went back down the hallway and looked through the double doors leading to the larger cathedral. She saw Gabriel sitting in a pew by himself. She entered and quietly walked down the center aisle. Gabriel was using a penknife to scratch something into the wooden bench. It said “GOD S,” and she didn’t think after the last three days that he was working on the word “SAVES.”

“Gabriel,” she said. “Stop.”

He was so badly startled that he dropped the knife and it clattered to the marble floor. Ballard could see smeared tears on his face.

“Look,” she said. “I know what has happened to your family is horrible. If you want to help do something about it, help me talk to your mother. Come.”

She stepped back into the aisle. He hesitated, then started to reach down for his knife.

“Give me that,” Ballard said. “You don’t need it, and it will only get you into trouble. Let’s go talk to your mother.”

Gabriel came out of the pew and handed her the knife. He walked with his head down all the way to the chapel. Ballard folded the knife closed and put it in her pocket.

“What was done to your father wasn’t right,” Ballard said. “But he got out of the street life and that’s what he wanted for you. Don’t let him down, Gabriel.”

“I won’t,” Gabriel said.

“You told me the other night that your father had a partner — a white guy from Malibu. Did he come to the memorial today?”

“I think so. He was the white guy, right?”

“I don’t know, Gabriel. I’m asking you. Do you know his name?”

“No, I don’t remember it. I only saw him one time when he came to the shop.”

Bosch was waiting outside the door of the chapel. He nodded to Ballard, indicating that the rest of the family was still inside.

Ballard and Gabriel entered. Bosch followed but hung back by the door. Ballard reintroduced herself to the family and said she needed to ask some questions. She said Gabriel had volunteered to translate if necessary. The mother was named Josefina and she agreed to talk to Ballard. She looked as if the tears of the last days had left permanent lines on her brown face. She had the look that Ballard had seen a hundred times before on women whose men were taken by violence — the look that asks, How do I live? How do I take care of my family?

“First, I want to assure you that we are doing everything we can to find out who did this to Javier,” Ballard began, speaking slowly. “We have some leads that we are following and hopefully they
will bring us to an arrest. I can’t tell you everything we’re doing, so some of my questions might seem strange. I just ask you to be patient and to know the information you provide is important. Do you understand, or would you like Gabriel to translate?”

“I understand, yes,” Josefina said.

“Good. Thank you. Let me start with what we asked the other night at the hospital. Do you know of anyone who wanted to harm Javier?”

“No. Who would do this? Javier was good man.”

“Did he say anything recently about angry customers or employees?”

“No. Everybody happy. It was a happy place.”

“Did Javier have a will?”

Josefina’s face showed confusion. Ballard looked at Gabriel, trying to think of how to explain. Bosch called from the back of the chapel.

“Ultimo testamento.”

Ballard looked back at him and nodded, realizing he’d had many such conversations in his years as a homicide detective. She looked back at Josefina, who spoke to her son in Spanish.

“She doesn’t know,” Gabriel said.

“Did he have a lawyer?” Ballard asked.
“Abogado?”

“Sí, sí, sí,”
Josefina said.
“Dario Calvente es su abogado.”

Ballard nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. “We’re going to call on him and he may ask you for permission to talk to us.”

Gabriel translated and Josefina nodded.

“Did Mr. Calvente come today?”

Josefina nodded.

“Did you know your husband’s business partner?” Ballard asked.

“No,” Josefina said.

“Was he here today? Dr. Hoyle?”

“I don’t know.”

It was clear to Ballard that Josefina knew little about Javier’s business dealings and that she needed to talk to the lawyer for clarity on things like the will, insurance, and records pertaining to the partnership.

“Josefina, did you know that Javier had to pay his way out of the Las Palmas gang?” Ballard asked.

Josefina nodded and seemed to take a moment to compose her answer. She spoke in Spanish and Gabriel translated.

“We could not have a family if he was doing these things with the gang,” he said.

“How much did he have to pay?” Ballard asked.

“Veinticinco,”
Josefina said.

“Twenty-five thousand?”

“
Sí.
Yes.”

“Okay. Where did he get that money?”

“El dentista.”

“His partner.”

“Sí.”

“How did he know the dentist? Who brought the dentist?”

Gabriel translated the question but there was no answer to translate back. Josefina shook her head. She didn’t know.

Ballard said that she would be in touch when she had something more to report on the investigation and asked Gabriel to translate for Josefina to make sure she understood. She and Bosch left then and walked to his car.

“Should we see if we can run down Dario Calvente, the
abogado
?” Ballard asked.

“It’s a Sunday,” Bosch said. “I doubt he’ll be in his office.”

“We can find him. Let’s take my car. I’ll bring you back afterward.”

“Perfect.”

Ballard googled the lawyer’s name on her phone and found his website. Before she got to the car, she was leaving a message on his office line. Like Cindy Carpenter’s attorney, Calvente’s website promised 24/7 service.

“I’ll run his DMV and get his home address if he doesn’t call back pretty quick,” she told Bosch.

They got into the Defender and almost immediately Ballard got a call with a blocked ID that she assumed was Calvente.

“Detective Ballard.”

“Ballard, are you ducking my calls?”

She recognized the voice of Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds.

“L-T, no. I, uh, was in a church so I had my phone off.”

“I know it’s Sunday, Ballard, but I didn’t think you were the church type.”

“It was a memorial for my homicide victim. I needed to speak to the family and, you know, see who showed up.”

“Ballard, you should not be working. You should be in the hospital.”

“I’m fine, Lieutenant. It was just a knock on the head.”

“Look, the overnight report said an EMT told you to go home. I don’t want this on an EMT, okay? I want you to go to an ER and get checked out before you do any more work.”

“I’m following a lead and I’m telling you, I’m — ”

“This is not a suggestion, Detective. This is an order. We are not going to risk anything with a head injury. Go to the ER and get checked out. Then call me back so I know.”

“Fine. I’ll finish up here and go.”

“Tonight, Detective. I want to hear from you tonight.”

“You got it, L-T.”

She disconnected and told Bosch about the order.

“Sounds like a smart move,” he said.

“You too now?” she said. “I’m fine and this will be a big waste of time.”

“You’re a cop. They’ll get you in quick.”

“Well, I’m not going to do it until I’m on duty. I’m not wasting my own time. And speaking of time, I’m not going to wait for this
abogado
to call back. Twenty-four-seven, my ass.”

She called the com center, identified herself and gave her serial number, then asked for a DMV check on Dario Calvente. She got lucky. There was only one that had a Los Angeles address. She thanked the operator and disconnected.

“Silver Lake,” she said. “You still want to go?”

“Let’s do it,” Bosch said.

It took them fifteen minutes to drive over. Calvente lived in a 1930s Spanish-style house across from the reservoir. They climbed a set of stone stairs to get to the front porch. There was a large picture window with a view of the lake, but it was covered with a sign that said black lives matter.

Ballard knocked on the door and had her badge off her belt and in her hand. The door was answered by a man of about forty whom Ballard recognized from the receiving line at the memorial. He still had his suit on but the tie was gone. He had a thick mustache and brown eyes as dark as Bosch’s.

“Mr. Calvente, LAPD,” Ballard said. “Sorry to bother you at home, but we left a message at your office and you didn’t return it.”

Calvente pointed at her.

“I saw you today,” he said. “At the memorial for Javier.”

“That’s right,” Ballard said. “My name is Renée Ballard and this is my colleague Harry Bosch. Josefina Raffa told us you were her husband’s attorney and we would like to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Calvente said. “I did some
work for Javier, yes, but it was in trade for work on my car. I wouldn’t call myself his lawyer per se.”

“Do you know if he had another lawyer?”

“No, I don’t think so. This is why he asked me if I could help.”

“And when was this?”

“Oh, a few months ago. My wife, she had an accident and I had the car towed to Javier’s. When he found out I was a lawyer, he asked me to do some work.”

“What was the work? Can you tell us?”

“There was privilege involved but it was a contract he had signed. He wanted to know how to dissolve a partnership.”

“Was this for his business?”

Calvente looked past them and out at the reservoir. He canted his head back and forth as if weighing whether to answer. Then he looked at Ballard and nodded his head once.

“Were you able to help him?” Ballard asked.

“Contract law is not my specialty,” Calvente said. “I told him that I saw no place in the contract that I thought he could attack. And I told him he should seek a second opinion from a contract attorney. I asked if he wanted a referral and he said no. And for this he gave me a discount on the repairs of our car. That was it.”

“Do you remember, was the partner named Dennis Hoyle?”

“I think that was the name but I can’t be sure. It’s been a few months.”

“Did he tell you anything about why he wanted to break the contract?”

“He just said it was not a good situation, because he had long ago paid off a debt to this man but he had to keep paying him out of the profits. I remember the contract had no termination. It was a full partnership for the life of the business.”

“What was Hoyle’s stake in the business?”

“I think twenty-five percent.”

“If this review was all you did for him, why did you go to the memorial today?”

“Well, I, uh, wanted to express my condolences to the family and say I was available for anything they might need. In a legal capacity, of course.”

“How did you know, by the way, that he had been the victim of a homicide?”

“I saw the memorial scheduled at the church when I attended this morning. I did not know it was a homicide until I was there today. It was a terrible thing for the family.”

Ballard turned to Bosch to see if he had any questions that she had missed. He shook his head and she looked back at Calvente.

“Thank you, Mr. Calvente,” she said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“You’re welcome,” Calvente said.

Bosch took the steps down to the street slowly. Ballard had to wait for him. When he reached the sidewalk, he whispered under his breath.

“Ambulance chaser. He barely knows the guy and he goes to his memorial?”

“Yeah. You ever see that Sidney Lumet movie
The Verdict
?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t go to a lot of movies anymore.”

“It’s an old one with Paul Newman. I went through a Paul Newman phase. Anyway, he’s a lawyer — a drunk, actually — and he tries to drum up business by going to funerals and passing out business cards.”

Bosch looked back up at the house.

“This guy must go to a lot of funerals,” he said.

“Well, what he gave us was good,” Ballard said. “Javier wanted out of the contract. There’s a motive in that.”

“There is. But Hoyle’s going to be protected by the contract. Calvente said it was legit. We still need to find the factor man and hope he leads us to the man with the Walther P-twenty-two.”

“Tonight I’ll go back to Gang Intel. They had a snitch who told them years ago that Javier bought his way out of Las Palmas. I think it was a woman. They wouldn’t give me her name before but I’ll make them give it to me now. She might know who set him up with Hoyle.”

“That sounds like a plan.”

Fifteen minutes later Ballard had just dropped Bosch at his car and was on her way to the ER at Hollywood Presbyterian when she got a call from EMT Single.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Actually, I’m on my way to the ER,” she said.

“Oh, no, what’s happening?”

“Nothing, I’m fine. My boss won’t let me go back to work tonight unless I get a clean bill from the ER. I told him a very good EMT had cleared me today but they’re making me go anyway.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I was about to invite you to a firehouse dinner.”

“Wow, I’ve never had an invitation like that before. What are you guys having?”

“All kinds of stuff. Grilled cheese, chili. I think somebody dropped off a couple of apple pies. We’ve got some salad, some corn on the cob.”

“Well, I’d take a salad and grilled cheese.”

“Ooh, it sounds like we’ve got a veggie on our hands.”

“Just no red meat anymore.”

“Not a problem, but I thought you’re going to the ER.”

“I’d rather come for dinner and go to the ER on company time.”

“Well, come on over. Dinner’s in thirty-five minutes. Unless we catch a call and go out on a run.”