Майкл Коннелли - The Night Fire [Harry Bosch - 22]

He disconnected the call and stood up.

“I gotta go, Bosch,” he said. “And it looks like you’re a day late and a dollar short.”

“What are you talking about?” Bosch asked.

“Clayton Manley just took a dive off an office tower in Bunker Hill. He’s splattered all over California Plaza.”

Bosch was momentarily stunned. Then for a quick moment he thought about the crow that had hit the mirrored glass in Manley’s office and then fallen down the side of the building.

“How do they know it was him?” he asked.

“Because he sent an adios e-mail to the whole firm,” Reyes said. “Then he went up and jumped.”

Reyes turned and walked away, heading back to the PAB to catch a ride with his partner.

Instead of sleeping, Ballard called the Las Vegas Metro number off the police report Laurie Lee Wells had provided. But she was surprised when the voice that answered said “OCI.”

Every law enforcement agency had its own glossary of acronyms, abbreviations, and shorthand references to specialized units, offices, and locations. Harry Bosch had once joked that the LAPD had a full-time unit dedicated to coming up with acronyms for its various units. But Ballard knew that generally OC meant Organized Crime , and what gave her pause was that the Wells report dealt with the theft of a wallet.

“OCI, can I help you?” the voice repeated.

“Uh, yes, I’m looking for Detective Tom Kenworth?” Ballard said.

“Please hold.”

She waited.

“Kenworth.”

“Detective, this is Detective Renée Ballard, Los Angeles Police Department. I’m calling because I’m wondering if you can help me with some information regarding a homicide case I’m investigating.”

“A homicide in L.A.? How can we help you from over here in Las Vegas?”

“You took a report last year from a woman named Laurie Lee Wells. Do you remember that name?”

“Laurie Lee Wells. Laurie Lee Wells. Uh, no, not really. Is she your victim?”

“No, she’s fine.”

“Your suspect?”

“No, Detective. Her wallet was stolen in Vegas at a place called the Devil’s Den and that resulted in her identity being stolen. Does any of this ring a bell yet?”

There was a long pause before Kenworth responded.

“Can I get your name again?”

“Renée Ballard.”

“And you said Hollywood.”

“Yes, Hollywood Division.”

“Okay, I’m going to call you back in about five minutes, okay?”

“I really need to get some information. This is a homicide.”

“I know that, and I will call you back. Five minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll give you my direct number.”

“No, I don’t want your direct number. If you’re legit, I’ll find you. Talk to you in five.”

He disconnected before Ballard could say anything else.

Ballard put the phone down and started to wait. She understood what Kenworth was doing — making sure he was talking to a real cop on a real case. She reread the Metro police report Laurie Lee Wells had given her. Less than a minute later she heard her name over the station intercom telling her she had a call on line 2. It was Kenworth.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Can’t be too careful these days.”

“You’re working organized crime, I get it,” Ballard said. “So, who stole Laurie Lee Wells’s identity?”

“Well, hold on a second, Detective Ballard. Why don’t we start with you telling me what you’re working on? Who’s dead and how did Laurie Lee Wells’s name come into it?”

Ballard knew that if she went first, Kenworth would control the flow of information going both ways. But it felt as though she had no choice. His callback and cagey manner told her that Kenworth wasn’t going to give until he got.

“We actually have two murders, one last year and the other last week,” she said. “Our victim last year was a superior-court judge who was stabbed while walking to the courthouse. Our victim last week was burned alive. So far, we’ve come up with two connections: the same law firm represented players likely involved in each of these seemingly unrelated cases — and then there’s the woman.”

“The woman?” Kenworth asked.

“We’ve got the same woman on video in the immediate vicinity of each crime scene. She’s wearing different wigs and clothing but it’s the same woman. In the first case, the judge’s murder, she was even corralled as a possible witness and identified herself to police as Laurie Lee Wells, giving the correct address of the Laurie Lee Wells who had her wallet and identity stolen in Las Vegas last year. Problem is, we went to that address and spoke to the real Laurie Lee Wells, and she’s not the woman on the video. She told us about what happened in Vegas and that’s what brings me to you.”

There was silence from Kenworth.

“You still there?” Ballard prompted.

“I’m here,” Kenworth said. “I was thinking. These videos, you have a clear shot of the woman?”

“Not really. She was clever about that. But we identified her by her walk.”

“Her walk.”

“She’s intoed. You can see it in both videos. Does that mean anything to you?”

“‘Intoed’? Nope. I don’t even know what it means.”

“Okay, then what can you tell me about the Laurie Lee Wells case? Have you identified the woman who took her identity? You work in organized crime. I have to assume her case has been folded into something bigger.”

“Well, we have some organized groups here who engage in identity theft on a large scale, so a lot of that comes through our office. But with the Wells case we took it because it fit with a location we’ve been looking at.”

“The Devil’s Den.”

Kenworth was silent, pointedly not confirming Ballard’s supposition.

“Okay, if you don’t want to talk about the Devil’s Den, then let’s talk about Batman,” Ballard said.

“‘Batman’?”

“Come on, Kenworth. Dominick Butino.”

“That’s the first time you’ve mentioned him. How is he part of this?”

“The law firm that connects all of this also repped Butino on a case over here. They won it. Let me just ask you, Detective, since you’re in OCI — have you ever heard of a woman hitter, maybe working for Butino or the Outfit?”

As was becoming routine, Kenworth didn’t answer right away. He seemed to have to carefully weigh every piece of information he eventually gave Ballard.

“It’s not that hard a question,” Ballard finally said. “You either have or you haven’t. Your hesitation suggests you have.”

“Well, yeah,” Kenworth said. “But it’s more rumor than anything else. We’ve picked up intel here and there about a woman who handles contracts for the Outfit.”

“What are the rumors?”

“We had a guy — a connected guy — come out here from Miami. He ended up dead in his suite at the Cleopatra. The casino surveillance cams showed him going up with a woman. The scene looked like a suicide — he sucked down a bullet. But the more we looked into it, the more we think it was a hit. But that was nine months ago and we haven’t gotten anywhere with it. It’s gone cold.”

“Sounds like our girl. I’d like to see the video.”

Kenworth gave that his usual pause.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Ballard prompted. “We can help each other here. If it’s the same woman, we have something big. Give me your e-mail and I’ll send you what we’ve got. You send me what you have. This is what cooperating police agencies do.”

“I think that will be all right,” Kenworth finally said. “But we don’t have her face. In a city of cameras, she seemed to know where every one of them was placed.”