Michael Connelly - The Wrong Side of Goodbye

The loft was quiet as they entered and Bosch assumed her son was in school. There was a sharp smell of chemicals that reminded Bosch of the fingerprint lab, where they used cyanoacrylate to fume objects and raise prints.

She gestured to her right and behind Bosch. He turned and saw that the front space of the loft was used as her studio and gallery. Her sculptures were large and Bosch could see how the freight elevator and the twenty-foot ceilings here gave her freedom to go big. Three finished pieces sat on wheeled pallets so they could easily be moved. Movie night on Friday would probably be in this space after the sculptures were moved out of the way.

There was also a work area with two benches and racks of tools. A large block of what looked like foam rubber was on a pallet and it appeared that an image of a man was emerging from a sculpting process.

The finished pieces were multi-figure dioramas made of pure white acrylic. All were variations on the nuclear family: mother, father, and daughter. The interaction of the three was different in each sculpture but in each the daughter was looking away from her parents and had no clearly defined face. There were nose and brow ridges but no eyes or mouth.

One of the dioramas showed the father as a soldier with several equipment packs but no weapon. His eyes were closed. Bosch could see a resemblance to the photos he had seen of Dominick Santanello.

Bosch pointed to the diorama with the father as soldier figure.

“What is this one about?” he asked.

“What is it about?” Veracruz repeated. “It’s about war and the destruction of families. But I don’t really think my work needs explanation. You absorb it and you feel something or you don’t. Art shouldn’t be explained.”

Bosch just nodded. He felt he had blundered with his question.

“You probably notice that this one is the companion piece to the two you saw at Bergamot,” Veracruz said.

Bosch nodded again but in a more vigorous manner as if to communicate that he knew what she was talking about. Her saying so, however, made him want to go to Bergamot and see the other two.

He kept his eyes on the sculptures and walked further into the room to see them from different angles. Bosch could tell that it was the same girl in all three pieces, but her ages were different.

“What are the ages of the girl?” he asked.

“Eleven, thirteen, and fifteen,” Veracruz said. “Very observant.”

He guessed that the incomplete face on each had to do with abandonment, not knowing one’s origin, being one of the faceless and nameless. He knew what that was like.

“Very beautiful,” he said.

He meant it sincerely.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I didn’t know my father,” he said.

It startled him when it came out. It wasn’t part of his cover. The power of the sculptures made him say it.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I only met him one time,” he said. “I was twenty-one and I had just come back from Vietnam.”

He gestured toward the war sculpture.

“I tracked him down,” he said. “Knocked on his door. I was glad I did it. He died soon after.”

“I supposedly met my father one time when I was a baby. I don’t remember it. He died soon after, too. He was lost in the same war.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m happy. I have a child and I have my art. If I can keep this place from falling into greedy hands, then all will be perfect.”

“You mean the building? It’s for sale?”

“It’s sold, pending the city’s approval to change it into residential. The buyer wants to cut every loft into two, get rid of the artists, and, get this, call it the River Arts Residences.”

Bosch thought for a long moment before responding. She had given him the opening.

“What if I told you there was a way to do that?” he asked. “Keep things perfect.”

When she didn’t answer, he turned and looked at her. Then she did speak.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Vibiana Veracruz was stunned to silence when Bosch told her who he was and what he was doing. He showed her his credentials as a state-licensed private investigator. He didn’t mention Whitney Vance by name but told her that he had tracked her through her father’s lineage and believed she and her son were the only two heirs by blood to an industrial fortune. It was she who brought up Vance, having seen media stories in the past few days about the passing of the billionaire industrialist.

“Is that who we’re talking about here?” she asked. “Whitney Vance?”

“What I want to do is confirm the link genetically before we get into names,” Bosch said. “If you are open to it I would take a sample of your DNA through a saliva swab and turn it in to the lab. It should only take a few days, and if we get confirmation, you would have the opportunity to use the attorney I have working with me on this or to seek your own representation. That would be your choice.”

She shook her head as if still not comprehending and sat down on a stool she had pulled away from one of the workbenches.

“It’s just so hard to believe this,” she said.

Bosch remembered a television show from when he was a kid in which a man traveled the country and gave checks for one million dollars from an unknown benefactor to unsuspecting recipients. He realized he felt like that man. Only Bosch was handing out billions, not millions.

“It is Vance, isn’t it?” Vibiana said. “You haven’t denied it.”

Bosch looked at her for a long moment.

“Does it make a difference who it is?” he asked.

She stood up and came toward him. She gestured at the sculpture with the soldier.

“I read about him this week,” she said. “He helped build the helicopters. His company was part of the war machine that killed his own son. My father, who I never got to know. How could I take that money?”

Bosch nodded.

“I guess it would depend on what you did with it,” he said. “My lawyer called it change-the-world money.”

She looked at him but he could tell she was seeing something else. Maybe an idea that was planted by his words.

“All right,” she said. “Swab me.”

“Okay, but you have to understand something,” Bosch said. “There will be people with power involved in the corporations that currently hold this fortune. They will not be happy to part with it and may go to great lengths to stop it. Not only will your life be changed by the money, but you and your son will have to take measures to protect yourselves until the case runs its course. You will not be able to trust anyone.”

His words clearly gave her pause, as he wanted them to.

“Gilberto,” she said, thinking out loud. Then her eyes flashed toward Bosch. “Do they know you’re here?”

“I’ve taken precautions,” he said. “And I’ll give you a card. If you see anything unusual or feel any kind of threat, you can call me at any time.”

“It’s so surreal,” she said. “When I was coming up the steps today with my coffee, I was thinking about how I didn’t have enough money for resin. I haven’t sold any of my art in seven weeks and I have an arts grant but it just covers living for me and my son. So I’m sculpting my next piece but can’t get the material I need to wrap it and finish it. And then you were just standing there. And you had this crazy story about money and inheritance.”

Bosch nodded.

“So should we do the swab now?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “What do I do?”

“You just have to open your mouth.”

“I can do that.”

Bosch took a tube out of his inside coat pocket and unscrewed the cap. He removed the swab stick and stepped closer to Vibiana. Holding the stick with two fingers he wiped the swab end up and down the inside of her cheek, turning it to get a good sample. He then sealed the stick back in its tube.