Майкл Коннелли - Dark Sacred Night

Ballard nodded.

“You know what I was thinking about, Harry? I was thinking about all the cases that would never get solved if you were gone. You still have work to do.”

“I guess. Maybe.”

“I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Ballard disconnected and rolled off the bed. She started getting ready to go see her dog.

Bosch was waiting in front of the SFPD headquarters when Ballard pulled up in her van. He eyed the boards on the roof racks as he approached and opened the door. Ballard noticed that the bruise under his eye was now a deep purple and he had a row of butterfly sutures on his upper left cheek.

Bosch got in and checked out the back of the van while pulling his seatbelt over his shoulder.

“Is this like a Scooby-Doo van or something?” he asked. “The surfboards and stuff?”

“No,” Ballard said. “But I thought if I brought my city ride, our guy might see it and rabbit before the interview.”

“You have a point.”

“Besides, it saved me having to go into the station. I called to check on the ZooToo murder book and it hasn’t landed yet. On Saturdays they cut the courier runs in half.”

“‘ZooToo’?”

“It was the name of the tattoo shop where the murder went down.”

“Got it.”

“So, do you think it was wise to be standing out front of the police station like that?”

“If you’re not safe at a police station, then where are you safe? Anyway, how do you want to handle this guy?”

Ballard had been thinking about that for the thirty minutes it took her to get from Hollywood to San Fernando.

“This guy isn’t going to know what this is about,” she said. “So I’m thinking we identify ourselves upfront and draw him in with the Good Samaritan play.”

“‘Good Samaritan play’?” Bosch said.

“Come on, you must’ve done it a million times. Make the guy think he’s helping the police. Draw him in and lock in his story, then turn it upside down. He goes from hero to zero.”

Bosch nodded.

“Got it,” he said. “We always called that the rope a dope.”

“Same thing,” Ballard said.

They discussed the play further as Ballard drove across the north end of the Valley toward Canoga Park, the community where more than half of the world’s legally sanctioned pornography production was located.

They arrived at Beatrice Beaupre’s unmarked warehouse twenty-five minutes before Kurt Pascal was due. Beaupre opened the studio door. She was black with startling green eyes that Ballard thought were probably contacts. The short dreadlocks were new since Ballard had last seen her. She looked past Ballard at Bosch and frowned.

“You didn’t tell me you were bringing somebody,” she said.

“This is my partner on the case,” Ballard said. “Detective Harry Bosch.”

Bosch nodded but remained quiet.

“Well, just as long as we’re clear,” Beaupre said. “I run a business here and I don’t want any trouble. To me, a man means trouble. We already have one coming in, so you, Harry Bosch, you chill out.”

Bosch held his hands up in surrender.

“You’re the boss,” he said.

“Damn right,” Beaupre said. “Only reason I’m doing this and putting my neck out is because your partner saved my skinny ass from death’s door last year. I owe her and I’m going to pay up today.”

Bosch looked at Ballard with a raised eyebrow.

“She saves more people than John the Baptist,” he said.

The joke fell on deaf ears with Beaupre but Ballard stifled a laugh.

They walked past the door to the room Ballard remembered as being Beaupre’s office and continued down a hall, passing a framed poster for a movie called Operation Desert Stormy, which depicted porn star Stormy Daniels straddling a missile in a bathing suit. Ballard scanned the credits for Beaupre’s name but didn’t see it.

“Was that one of your movies?” she asked.

“I wish,” Beaupre said. “All of Stormy’s flicks are in big-time demand. I put the poster up for appearances, you know. Doesn’t hurt if people think you have a part of that action.”

They entered a room at the end of the hallway that was carpeted and had a stripper pole on a one-foot-high stage. There were several folding chairs lined against one wall.

“This is where we do casting,” Beaupre said. “But most of the time it’s for the women. Men, we go off reels and reps. But I figure this is where you should talk to the guy. If he shows.”

“Do you have reason to think he won’t?” Bosch asked.

“It’s a flaky business,” Beaupre said. “People are unreliable. I don’t know anything about this guy. He could be a flake and a no-show. He could be right smack on time. We’ll see. Now I got a question. Am I supposed to be in here with you all?”

“No, that’s not necessary,” Ballard said. “If you can send him back here when he arrives, we’ll take it from there.”

“And no blowback on me, right?” Beaupre said.

“No blowback on you,” Ballard said. “We have you covered.”

“Good,” Beaupre said. “I’ll be in my office. The intercom buzz will go to me and then I’ll bring him to you.”

She left the room, closing the door behind her.

Ballard looked at Bosch and tried to gauge what he was thinking about the setup. She couldn’t read him and was about to ask if he wanted to change the interview plan, when Beaupre stuck her head in through the doorway.

“Imagine that, this guy’s an early bird,” she said. “You two ready?”

Ballard nodded at Bosch and he nodded back.

“Bring him in,” he said.

Ballard looked around at the room. She quickly started moving chairs, putting two side by side and facing a third in the center.

“I wish we had a table,” she said. “It will feel weird without a table.”

“It’s better without one,” Bosch said. “He can’t hide his hands. They tell a lot.”

Ballard was thinking about that when the door opened again and Beaupre led Kurt Pascal in.

“This is Kurt Pascal,” she said. “And this is Renée and... is it Harry?”

“Right,” Bosch said. “Harry.”

Both Ballard and Bosch shook Pascal’s hand and Ballard signaled him to the single chair. He was wearing baggy polyester workout pants and a red pullover hoodie. He was shorter than Ballard had expected and the baggy clothes camouflaged his body shape. His long brown hair was streaked with a slash of red dye and tied up in a topknot.

Pascal hesitated before sitting down.

“You want me to sit or do you want to see my stuff?” he asked.

He hooked his thumbs into the elastic band of his pants.

“We want you to sit,” Ballard said.

She and Bosch both waited for Pascal to sit first, then Ballard sat down. Bosch remained on his feet, leaning his hands on the back of the empty folding chair so he could cut off any move Pascal made toward the room’s door.

“Okay, I’m sitting,” Pascal said. “What do you want to know?”

Ballard pulled her badge and held it up to him.

“Mr. Pascal, Ms. Beaupre doesn’t know this but we’re not really movie producers,” she said. “I’m Detective Ballard, LAPD, and this is my partner, Detective Bosch.”

“What the fuck?” Pascal said.

He started to stand. Bosch immediately took his hands off his chair and stood straight, ready to keep Pascal from the door.

“Sit down, Mr. Pascal,” Ballard ordered. “We need your help.”

Pascal froze. It seemed to be the first time in his life that anyone had asked him for help.

He then slowly sat back down.

“What’s this about?” he asked.

“We’re trying to find a man — a dangerous man — and we think you might be able to help,” Ballard said. “You have a past association with him.”