Michael Connelly - The Last Coyote

“Who was having the party?”

“I don’t remember. I don’t know if I even knew whose party it was.”

Something about the way she answered bothered Bosch. Her tone had changed and it came across as almost a rehearsed answer.

“Are you sure don’t remember?”

“Of course, I’m sure.” Katherine stood up. “I think I’m going to get some water now.”

She took his glass to refill and left the room again. Bosch realized that his familiarity with the woman, his emotion in seeing her again after so long, had blocked most of his investigative instincts. He had no feel for the truth. He could not tell whether there was more to what she was telling him or not. He decided he had to somehow steer the conversation back to the party. He thought she knew more than she had said all those years ago.

She came back with two glasses filled with ice water and placed his back down on the cork coaster. Something about the way she was so careful about putting the glass down gave him a knowledge about her that had not come through in her spoken words. It was simply that she had worked hard to attain the level she was at in life. That position and the material things it brought with it-like glass coffee tables and plush carpets-meant a lot to her and were to be taken care of.

She took a long drink from her glass after sitting down.

“Let me tell you something, Harry,” she said. “I didn’t tell them everything. I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell them everything. I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“I became afraid on the day they found her. You see, I’d gotten a call that morning. Before I even knew what had happened to her. It was a man, but a voice I didn’t recognize. He told me if I said anything I would be next. I remember, he said, ‘My advice to you, little lady, is to get the hell out of Dodge.’ Then, of course, I heard the police were in the building and had gone to her apartment. Then I heard she was dead. So I did what I was told. I left. I waited about a week until the police said they were done with me, then I moved to Long Beach. I changed my name, changed my life. I met my husband down there and then years later we moved here…You know, I’ve never been back to Hollywood, not even to drive through. It’s an awful place.”

“What was it that you didn’t tell Eno and McKittrick?”

Katherine looked down at her hands as she spoke.

“I was afraid, you see, so I didn’t tell everything…but I knew who she was going to see there, at the party. We were like sisters. Lived in the same building, shared clothes, secrets, everything. We talked every morning, had our coffee together. We had no secrets between us. And we were going to go to the party together. Of course, after that…after Johnny hit me, she had to go alone.”

“Who was she going to meet there, Katherine?” Bosch prompted.

“You see that is the right question but the detectives never asked that. They only wanted to know whose party it was and where it was. That didn’t matter. What was important was who was she going to meet there and they never asked that.”

“Who was it?”

She looked away from her hands and to the fireplace. She stared at the cold, blackened logs left from an old fire the way some people stare mesmerized by a burning fire.

“It was a man named Arno Conklin. He was a very important man in the-”

“I know who he was.”

“You do?”

“His name came up in the records. But not that way. How could you not tell the cops this?”

She turned and looked at him sharply.

“Don’t you look at me that way. I told you I was scared. I’d been threatened. And they wouldn’t have done anything with it anyway. They were bought and paid for by Conklin. They wouldn’t go near him on just the word of a…call girl who didn’t see anything but knew a name. I had to think of myself. Your mother was dead, Harry. There was nothing I could do about it.”

He could see the sharp edges of anger in her eyes. He knew it was directed at him but more toward herself. She could list all her reasons out loud but inside Bosch thought she paid a price every day for not having done the right thing.

“You think Conklin did it?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that she’d been with him before and there was never anything violent. I don’t know the answer to that.”

“Any idea now who called you?”

“No, none.”

“Conklin?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know his voice anyway.”

“Did you ever see them together, my mother and him?”

“Once, at a dance at the Masonic. I think it was the night they met. Johnny Fox introduced them. I don’t think Arno knew…anything about her. At least, then.”

“Could it have been Fox who called you?”

“No. I would’ve recognized his voice.”

Bosch thought a moment.

“Did you ever see Fox again after that morning?”

“No. I avoided him for a week. It was easy because I think he was hiding from the cops. But after that I was gone. Whoever called me, he put the fear of God in me. I left town for Long Beach the day the cops said they were done with me. Packed one suitcase and took the bus…I remember, your mother had some of my clothes in her apartment. Things that she had borrowed. I didn’t even bother to try to get them. I just took what I had and left.”

Bosch was silent. He had nothing else to ask.

“I think about those days a lot, you know,” Katherine said. “We were in the gutter, your mother and I, but we were good friends and we had fun in spite of it all.”

“You know, all my memories…you’re in a lot of them. You were always there with her.”

“We had a lot of laughs in spite of everything,” she said wistfully. “And you, you were the highlight of it all. You know, when they took you away from her, it nearly killed her right then…She never stopped trying to get you back, Harry. I hope you know that. She loved you. I loved you.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“But after you were gone, she wasn’t the same. Sometimes I think what happened to her was sort of inevitable. Sometimes I think it was like she had been heading toward that alley for a long time beforehand.”

Bosch stood up, looking at the sorrow in her eyes.

“I better go. I’ll let you know what happens.”

“I’d like that. I’d like to stay in touch.”

“I’d like that, too.”

He headed toward the door knowing that they wouldn’t stay in touch. Time had eroded the bond between them. They were strangers who shared the same story. On the outside step he turned and looked back at her.

“The Christmas card you sent. You wanted me to look into this back then, didn’t you?”

She brought out the faraway smile again.

“I don’t know. My husband had just died and I was taking stock, you know? I thought about her. And you. I’m proud of how I turned out, Little Harry. So I think about what there could have been for her and you. I’m still mad. Whoever did this should…”

She didn’t finish but Bosch nodded.

“Good-bye, Harry.”

“You know, my mother, she had a good friend.”

“I hope so.”

BACK IN HIS car Bosch took his notebook out and looked at the list.

Conklin

McKittrick & Eno

Meredith Roman

Johnny Fox

He drew a line through Meredith Roman’s name and studied those left on it. He knew that the way he had ordered the names was not the same order in which he would attempt to interview them. He knew that before he could approach Conklin, or even McKittrick and Eno, he needed more information.

He took his phone book out of his coat pocket and his portable from his briefcase. He dialed the Department of Motor Vehicles law enforcement line in Sacramento and identified himself to the clerk as Lieutenant Harvey Pounds. He gave Pounds’s serial number and asked for a license check on Johnny Fox. After checking his notebook, he gave the appropriate date of birth. As he did this he ran the numbers and figured that Fox was now sixty-one years old.