Michael Connelly: Suicide Run: Three Harry Bosch Stories

Bosch pushed the phone across the table to him.

“Who you going to call?” Bosch asked.

This seemed to give Blitzstein pause.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know any criminal defense attorneys.”

Bosch looked up at the ceiling as if considering it.

“Let see… Johnnie Cochran’s dead. And Maury Swann’s in jail. There’s Dan Daly and Roger Mills. Those are good guys. There’s also Mickey Haller. I hear he’s back in business.”

“Haller. I’ve heard of him. He’s on the TV a lot, so he must be good.”

Bosch shrugged.

Blitzstein clicked a button on the phone and then punched in 411. He asked the directory assistance operator for Haller’s number. He then hung up without a thank-you and punched in Haller’s number. Someone answered and transferred him. There was a long silence before Blitzstein had the lawyer of his choice on the line. After a few minutes of short-sentence discussion he clicked off the phone.

“He’s on the way,” Blitzstein said. “He’ll get me out of here.”

“That shows a lot of confidence in somebody you’ve never met,” Bosch said.

“I have to have confidence in somebody. You people are trying to pin this on me.”

“We look for evidence and it takes us where it takes us. We aren’t looking to pin anything on anybody-unless they deserve it.”

“Got it.”

“Anyway, that’s all I’m saying. You asked for a lawyer and we can’t talk about the case anymore. Those are the rules.”

“Damn right. You can leave now.”

“Not quite. I have to stay with you until your lawyer gets here. Those are the rules, too. We’ve had a few people hurt themselves after we leave them alone. Then they try to blame us.”

“You know, that’s not a bad idea. Maybe I should pop myself in the eye and say you did it.”

“You try that and I’ll make sure you file the report from the hospital.”

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a long three minutes after that. Bosch studied Blitzstein and waited for the right moment. Finally, he began.

“You want more coffee?”

“No, it tasted like oil.”

Bosch nodded and let another thirty seconds go by.

“When did you start playing poker?”

Blitzstein shrugged.

“When I was a kid. My old man was a beer drunk who played with his drinking buddies in the garage a couple nights a week. I used to watch and he’d let me take his hand when he went to take a leak.”

“Starting early like that, you must’ve played a lot of games over the years.”

“Too many to remember.”

“I never played against my wife. Did you ever play against Tracey?”

“We tried to avoid it. Me and Trace knew each other too well. We knew the tells.”

Bosch nodded.

“I always wanted to go head-to-head against a pro,” he said. “What do you say?”

Blitzstein shook his head in confusion.

“What are you talking about?”

Bosch leaned forward across the table while pulling his money out of his pocket.

“You ever play liar’s poker?”

Blitzstein made a dismissive gesture with his left hand.

“Not since I was about thirteen.”

Bosch held up the bill he had traded Gunn for. He folded it in his hand so Blitzstein would be unable to read the serial number.

“Five sixes,” he said.

The object of liar’s poker was to predict the total number of specific letters or numbers in the serial numbers of all dollar bills in the game. If Blitzstein took the bait, it would be a total coming from only two bills. Five sixes was a high bid.

Blitzstein shook his head.

“I don’t play with amateurs.”

“With all those card rooms cutting you out, I would say that was all you had left to play with. Six sixes.”

“Jesus,” Blitzstein said in an exasperated tone.

“Come on, Mr. Pro. What’ve you got?”

“I’ve got an hour in this room with you and I think you’re going to drive me nuts.”

“Then I guess I win by default.”

Bosch started putting his money away. Blitzstein leaned forward.

“Just hold on, boy.”

He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his cash. He found a dollar bill and crunched it in his fist.

“You bid six sixes? Then I call without even looking. I know you’re bluffing. You’ve got a major tell.”

“Yeah, what is that?”

“You look away at the precise moment you should stare unflinchingly at your opponent.”

“Is that right?”

Blitzstein dropped his bill on the table and Bosch did likewise. Bosch had five sixes in his serial number. He carefully opened Blitzstein’s bill and it had one six. Bosch took both bills off the table.

He held Blitzstein’s up and smiled.

“I’m going to frame this!”

He put it into his shirt pocket, shoved his winning dollar bill into his pants pocket and smiled.

“Now I can tell people I beat a poker pro.”

“Yeah, I hope it makes you happy.”

This time Bosch stared unflinchingly at his opponent. And he saw Blitzstein’s tell. A quick moment where his confidence deserted him and he wondered if he had just stepped into a trap.

“It does make me happy,” Bosch said. “Very happy.”

Bosch and Gunn walked into the forensics lab on the fourth floor and asked the counterwoman if a lab rat named Ronald Cantor was working. They were in luck. Cantor was in the lab and they were buzzed through the gate.

Cantor was an SEM jockey. His job was to analyze collected evidence with a scanning electron microscope. The normal wait time for this particular analysis ranged from four to six months. But there were unofficial ways around this. Lab rats were given morning, lunch and afternoon breaks. What they did on those breaks was up to them. It was personal time. If they wanted, for example, they could take cases out of order and put the evidence on the SEM lens. It was all about the incentives to do so.

Ronald Cantor had an ongoing incentive when it came to Bosch. Five years earlier Bosch had solved the murder of his nine-year-old niece, who had been snatched from her front yard in Laurel Canyon by a man who asked her for help finding a lost dog. Though devastated by the loss of the young girl, the Cantor family was always grateful to Bosch, primarily because not only did he solve the case but he also saved them the agony of going through a trial. During the killer’s capture, Bosch had shot the man to death in a struggle for control of Bosch’s gun. Ever since that day, Bosch was gold when it came to getting case time on the scanning electron microscope.

“Ronnie, how are you?” Bosch said as he approached.

“Doing good, Harry. This your new partner?”

“For the day, you could say. Detective Gunn, this is Ronnie Cantor, SEM expert. Have you taken your morning break yet, Ronnie?”

“No, just beginning to think about some hot chocolate, actually.”

“Well, I got a little thing here I was hoping you’d take a look at real quick. We got a guy down in one of our rooms and we need to pull the trigger on him in the next hour. Keep him or kick him loose. You could help us out while I go down and get the hot chocolate.”

Cantor swiveled on his stool away from the lab table where he was working and looked directly at Bosch.

“What have you got?” he asked.

With two fingers Bosch pulled Blitzstein’s dollar bill out of his shirt pocket and held it out.

“Shit,” Cantor said. “You’ve been carrying it in your pocket?”

“Just a couple minutes. It’s been in our suspect’s pocket and he just handled it. I’m looking for anything and everything. GSR, blood, anything. We think he killed his wife this morning but we’re having a hard time making the jump from thinking to knowing. He’s got a big-time lawyer heading our way as we speak.”