Trunk Music (31 page)

“Who died?” Bosch asked.

Irving ignored the question. When Bosch’s eyes traveled across the table to his left and up to Billets’s face, the lieutenant glanced away.

“Detective, we need to ask you some questions pertaining to your investigation of the Aliso case,” Irving said.

“What are the charges?” Bosch responded.

“There are no charges,” Irving replied calmly. “We need to clear some things up.”

“Who are these people?”

Irving introduced the four strangers. Bosch had been right, they were feds: John Samuels, an assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to the organized crime strike force, and three FBI agents from three different field offices. They were John O’Grady from L.A., Dan Ekeblad from Las Vegas and Wendell Werris from Chicago.

Nobody offered to shake Bosch’s hand, nobody even nodded. They just stared at Bosch with looks that transmitted their contempt for him. Since they were feds, their dislike of the LAPD was standard issue. Bosch still couldn’t figure out what was going on here.

“Okay,” Irving said. “We’re going to get some things cleared up first. I’m going to let Mr. Samuels take it from here.”

Samuels wiped a hand down his thick black mustache and leaned forward. He was in the chair at the opposite end of the table from Bosch. He had a yellow legal tablet on the table in front of him but it was too far away for Bosch to be able to read what was on it. He held a pen in his left hand and used it to hold his place in his notes. Looking down at the notes, he began.

“Let’s start with your search of Luke Goshen’s home in Las Vegas,” Samuels said. “Exactly who was it who found the firearm later identified as the weapon used in the killing of Anthony Aliso?”

Bosch narrowed his eyes. He tried looking at Billets again, but her eyes were focused on the table in front of her. As he scanned the other faces, he caught the smirk on Chastain’s face. No surprise there. Bosch had hooked up with Chastain before. He was known as Sustained Chastain by many in the department. When departmental charges are brought against an officer, an Internal Affairs investigation and Board of Rights hearing result in one of two findings: the allegations are either sustained or ruled unfounded. Chastain had a high ratio of sustained to unfounded cases — thus the departmental moniker which he wore like a medal.

“If this is the subject of a departmental investigation, I think I’m entitled to representation,” Bosch said. “I don’t know what this is about but I don’t have to tell you people anything.”

“Detective,” Irving said. He slid a sheet of paper across the table to Bosch. “That is a signed order from the chief of police telling you to cooperate with these gentlemen. If you choose not to, you will be suspended without pay forthwith. And you’ll be assigned your union rep then.”

Bosch looked down at the letter. It was a form letter and he had received them before. It was all part of the department’s way of backing you into the corner, to the point that you had to talk to them or you didn’t eat.

“I found the gun,” Bosch said without looking up from the order. “It was in the master bathroom, wrapped in plastic and secreted between the toilet tank and the wall. Somebody said the mobsters in
The Godfather
did that. The movie. But I don’t remember.”

“Were you alone when you supposedly found the weapon there?”

“Supposedly? Are you saying it wasn’t there?”

“Just answer the question, please.”

Bosch shook his head in disgust. He didn’t know what was going on but it was looking worse than he had imagined.

“I wasn’t alone. The house was full of cops.”

“Were they in the master bathroom with you?” O’Grady asked.

Bosch just looked at O’Grady. He was at least ten years younger than Bosch, with the clean-cut looks the bureau prized.

“I thought Mr. Samuels was going to handle the questioning,” Irving said.

“I am,” Samuels said. “Were any of these cops in that bathroom with you when you located this weapon?”

“I was by myself. As soon as I saw it, I called the uniform in the bedroom in to take a look before I even touched it. If this is about Goshen’s lawyer making some beef to you people about me planting the gun, it’s bullshit. The gun was there, and besides, we’ve got enough on him without the gun. We’ve got motive, prints…why would I plant a gun?”

“To make it a slam dunk,” O’Grady said.

Bosch blew out his breath in disgust.

“It’s typical of the bureau to drop everything and come after an L.A. cop just because some sleezeball gangster drops a dime. What, are they givin’ annual bonuses now if you guys nail a cop? Double if it’s an L.A. cop? Fuck you, O’Grady. Okay?”

“Yeah, fuck me. Just answer the questions.”

“Then ask them.”

Samuels nodded as if Bosch had scored a point and moved his pen a half inch down his pad.

“Do you know,” he asked, “did any other police officer enter that bathroom before you entered to search it and subsequently found the gun?”

Bosch tried to remember, picturing the movements of the Metro cops in the room. He was sure no one had gone into the bathroom other than to take a quick look to make sure no one was in there hiding.

“I don’t know for sure about that,” he said. “But I doubt it. If somebody did go in, there wasn’t enough time to plant the gun. The gun was already there.”

Samuels nodded again, consulted his legal pad and then looked at Irving.

“Chief Irving, I think that’s as far as we want to take it for the moment. We certainly appreciate your cooperation in this matter and I expect we’ll be talking again soon.”

Samuels made a move to stand up.

“Wait a minute,” Bosch said. “That’s it? You’re just going to get up and leave? What the fuck is going on here? I deserve an explanation. Who made the complaint, Goshen’s lawyer? Because I’m going to make a complaint right back at him.”

“Your deputy chief can discuss this with you, if he chooses to.”

“No, Samuels. You tell me. You’re asking the questions, now you answer a few.”

Samuels drummed his pen on his pad for a moment and looked at Irving. Irving opened his hands to show it was his choice. Samuels then leaned forward and looked balefully at Bosch.

“If you insist on an explanation, I’ll give you one,” he said. “I’m limited, of course, in what I can say.”

“Jesus, would you just tell me what the hell is going on?”

Samuels cleared his throat before going on.

“About four years ago, in a joint operation involving the FBI offices in Chicago, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, the strike force instituted what we called Operation Telegraph. Personnel-wise it was a small operation but it had a large goal. Our goal was Joseph Marconi and the remaining tentacles of the mob’s influence in Las Vegas. It took us more than eighteen months but we managed to get someone inside. An agent on the inside. And in the two years since that was accomplished, that agent was able to rise to a level of prominence in Joseph Marconi’s organization, one in which he had the intended target’s complete confidence. Conservatively, we were four to five months from closing the operation and going to a grand jury to seek indictments for more than a dozen high-ranking members of the Cosa Nostra in three cities, not to mention an assortment of burglars, casino cheats, bust-out artists, cops, judges, lawyers and even a few Hollywood fringe players such as Anthony N. Aliso. This is not to mention that, largely through the efforts of this undercover agent and the wiretaps authorized with probable cause gathered through him, we now have a greater understanding of the sophistication and reach of organized crime entities such as Marconi’s.”

Samuels was talking as if he were addressing a press conference. He let a moment pass as he caught his breath. But he never took his eyes off Bosch.

“That undercover agent’s name is Roy Lindell. Remember it, because he’s going to be famous. No other agent was underground for so long and with such important results. You notice that I said
was
. He’s no longer under, Detective Bosch. And for that we can thank you. The name Roy used undercover was Luke Goshen. Lucky Luke Goshen. So I want to thank you for fucking up the end of a wonderful and important case. Oh, we’ll still get Marconi and all the others with what Roy’s good work got us, but now it’s all been marred by a…by you.”

Bosch felt anger backing up in his throat but tried to remain calm and he managed to speak in an even voice.

“Your suggestion then is — no, your accusation is — that I planted that gun. Well, you are wrong about that. Dead wrong. I should be angry and offended, but given the situation I understand how you made the mistake. But instead of pointing at me, maybe you folks ought to take a look at your man Goshen or whatever the hell his name is. Maybe you should question whether you left him under too long. Because that gun wasn’t planted. You —”

“Don’t you dare!” O’Grady blurted out. “Don’t you dare say a word about him. You, you’re nothing but a fucking rogue cop! We know about you, Bosch, all your baggage. This time you went too far. You planted evidence on the wrong man this time.”

“I take it back,” Bosch said, still calm. “I am offended. I am angry. So fuck you, O’Grady. You say I planted the gun, prove it. But first I guess you gotta prove that I was the one who put Tony Aliso in his trunk. Because how the hell else would I have the gun to plant?”

“Easy. You could’ve found it there in the bushes off the goddamned fire road. We already know you searched it by yourself. We —”

“Gentlemen,” Irving interjected.

“— will put you down for this, Bosch.”

“Gentlemen!”

O’Grady closed his mouth and everyone looked at Irving.

“This is getting out of hand. I’m ending this meeting. Suffice it to say, an internal investigation will be conducted and —”

“We are doing our own investigation,” Samuels said. “Meantime, we have to figure out how to salvage our operation.”

Bosch looked at him incredulously.

“Don’t you understand?” he said. “There is no operation. Your star witness is a murderer. You left him in too long, Samuels. He turned, became one of them. He killed Tony Aliso for Joey Marks. His prints were on the body. The gun was found in his house. Not only that, he’s got no alibi. Nothing. He told me he spent all night in the office, but I know he wasn’t there. He left and he had time to get over here, do the job and get back.”

Bosch shook his head sadly and finished in a low voice.

“I agree with you, Samuels. Your operation is tainted now. But not because of me. It was you who left the guy in the oven too long. He got cooked. You were his handler. You fucked up.”

This time Samuels shook his head and smiled sadly. That was when Bosch realized the other shoe hadn’t dropped. There was something else. Samuels angrily flipped up the top page of his pad and read a notation.

“The autopsy concludes time of death was between eleven
P.M.
Friday and two
A.M
. Saturday. Is that correct, Detective Bosch?”

“I don’t know how you got the report, since I haven’t seen it myself yet.”

“Was the death between eleven and two?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have those documents, Dan?” Samuels asked Ekeblad.

Ekeblad took several pages folded lengthwise from the inside of his jacket and handed them to Samuels. Samuels opened the packet and glanced at its contents and then tossed it across the table to Bosch. Bosch picked it up but didn’t look at it. He kept his eyes on Samuels.

“What you have there are copies of a page from an investigative log as well as an interview report prepared Tuesday morning by Agent Ekeblad here. There are also two sworn affidavits from agents Ekeblad and Phil Colbert, who will be with us here shortly. What you’ll find if you look at those is that on Friday night at midnight, Agent Ekeblad was sitting behind the wheel of his bureau car in the back parking lot at Caesar’s, just off Industrial Road. His partner Colbert was there next to him and in the back seat, Agent Roy Lindell.”

He waited a beat and Bosch looked down at the papers in his hands.

“It was Roy’s monthly meeting. He was being debriefed. He told Ekeblad and Colbert that just that night he had put four hundred and eighty thousand dollars cash from Marconi’s various enterprises into Anthony Aliso’s briefcase and sent him back to L.A. to have it put in the wash. He also, by the way, mentioned that Tony had been in the club drinking and got a little out of line with one of the girls. In his role as enforcer for Joey Marks and manager of the club, he had to get tough with Tony. He cuffed him once and jerked him around by his collar. This, I think, you might agree, would account for the fingerprints recovered from the deceased’s jacket and the antemortem facial bruising noted in the autopsy.”

Bosch still refused to look up from the documents.

“Other than that, there was a lot to talk about, Detective Bosch. Roy stayed for ninety minutes. And there is no fucking way in the world he could have gotten to Los Angeles to kill Tony Aliso before two
A.M
., let alone three
A.M
. And just so you don’t leave here thinking all three of these agents were involved in the murder, you should know that the meeting was monitored by four additional agents in a chase car also parked in the lot for security reasons.”

Samuels waited a beat before delivering his closing argument.

“You don’t have a case. The prints can be explained and the guy you said did it was sitting with two FBI agents three hundred and fifty miles away when the shooting went down. You’ve got nothing. No, actually, that’s wrong. You do have one thing. A planted gun, that’s what you’ve got.”

As if on cue the door behind Bosch opened and he heard footsteps. Keeping his eyes on the documents in front of him, Bosch didn’t turn around to see who it was until he felt a hand grip his shoulder and squeeze. He looked up into the face of Special Agent Roy Lindell. He was smiling, standing next to another agent who Bosch assumed was Ekeblad’s partner, Colbert.

“Bosch,” Lindell said, “I owe you a haircut.”

Bosch was dumbfounded to see the man he had just locked up standing there but quickly assimilated what had happened. Irving and Billets had already been told about the meeting in the parking lot behind Caesar’s, had read the affidavits and believed the alibi. They had authorized Lindell’s release. That was why Billets had asked for the booking number when Bosch had returned her page.