Michael Connelly - Lost Light

Still feeling lucky from Vegas I decided to let the vibe ride and dropped down Fairfax to Third and pulled into the farmer’s market to grab something to eat.

The market was another remake job I had stayed away from. There was a new parking garage and open-air people center built next to the old clapboard market with its comforting combination of good, cheap food and kitsch. I think I liked it better when you could just pull into a parking space next to the newsstand but I had to admit they had done it right. It was the old and new sitting side by side and getting along. I walked through the new section, past the department stores and the biggest bookstore I had ever seen and into the old. Bob’s Donuts was still there and every other place that I remembered. It was crowded. People were happy. It was too late in the day for a doughnut so I picked up a BLT and change for a dollar at the Kokomo Café and ate the sandwich in one of the old-time phone booths that they had left in place next to the Dupar’s. I called Roy Lindell first and caught him eating at his desk.

“What do you have?”

“Tuna on rye with pickles.”

“That’s sick.”

“Yeah, what do you have?”

“BLT. Double-smoked bacon from Kokomo’s.”

“Well, that beats me all to hell. What do you want, Bosch? Last time I saw you, you wanted nothing to do with me. In fact, I thought you went to Vegas.”

“I did go but I’m back. And things are smoothing out now. You could say I’ve come to an understanding with your pals on the ninth floor. You want back in on this thing or you want to pout about it?”

“You got something?”

“Maybe. Not much more than a feeling at the moment.”

“What do you want from me?”

I shoved my sandwich wrapper off the murder book and opened it to get the information I needed.

“See what you can come up with on a guy named Linus Simonson. Thirty-one-year-old white male. He owns a club in town.”

“What’s it called?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“That’s great. You want me to pick up your dry cleaning while I’m at it?”

“Just run the name. You’ll get a hit or you won’t.”

I gave him Simonson’s birthdate and the address listed in the murder book, although I had a feeling it was old.

“Who is he?”

I told him about Simonson’s former work at BankLA and about him being shot during the movie set heist.

“The guy was a victim. You think he set it up and told his guys to shoot him in the ass?”

“I don’t know.”

“And what’s he got to do with Marty Gessler?”

“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Probably nothing. But I just want to check him out. Something doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Okay, you keep having the hunches and I’ll do the legwork, Bosch. Anything else?”

“Look, if you don’t want to do it, just say so. I’ll get somebody else to -”

“Look, I said I’ll do it, and I will. Anything else?”

I hesitated but not for too long.

“Yeah, one other thing. Can you run a plate for me?”

“Give it to me.”

I gave him the number I had gotten off the car Eleanor had been driving. It was still in my memory and I figured it would stay there until I checked it out.

“Nevada?” Lindell asked, suspicion obvious in his voice. “This have to do with your trip to Vegas or this thing over here?”

I should have known. Lindell was a lot of things but stupid wasn’t one of them. I had already opened the door. I had to step inside.

“I don’t know,” I lied. “But could you just get me the registration on it?”

If the car, as I suspected, was registered in someone other than Eleanor’s name, I could make up a story about thinking I had been followed and Lindell would never know the difference.

“All right,” the FBI agent said. “I gotta go. Call me later.”

I hung up and that was that. Guilt washed around me like the waves hitting the pylons under the pier. I might be able to fool Lindell with the request but not myself. I was running a check on my former wife. I wondered if I was capable of doing anything lower.

Trying not to dwell on it, I picked up the receiver and dumped more change into the phone. I called Janis Langwiser and realized as I waited for her to answer that I might be about to answer the question I had just posed to myself.

Langwiser’s secretary said she was on a phone call and she would have to call me back. I said I wasn’t reachable but would call back in fifteen minutes. I hung up and walked around the market, spending the most time in a small store that sold only hot sauce, hundreds of different brands of it. I wasn’t sure when I would use it because I rarely cooked at home anymore, but I bought a bottle of Gator Squeezins because I liked the place and I needed more change for the call back.

Next stop was the bakery. Not to buy, just to look. When I was a kid and my mother was still around, she used to take me to the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings. What I remember most was watching through the bakery window when the cakemaker would dress the cakes people ordered for birthdays and holidays and weddings. He would make grand designs on the top of each cake, squeezing the icing through a funnel, his thick forearms covered in flour and sugar.

My mother usually had to hold me up at the window so I could see the top of the cake being decorated. Sometimes she would think I was watching the cakemaker but I was really watching her in the reflection of the window, trying to figure out what was wrong.

When she would grow tired of holding me up she’d go grab a chair from the nearby restaurant seating area-what they now call a food court in the malls-and I would stand on that. I used to look at the cakes and imagine what parties they would go to and how many people were going to be there. It seemed like those cakes could only go to happy places. But I could tell that when the baker was icing a wedding cake, it made my mother sad.

The bakery and the cakemaker’s window were still there. I stood in front of the glass with my bag of hot sauce, but there was no baker there. I knew it was too late in the day. The cakes were made early each day so they would be ready for pickup or delivery for birthday parties and weddings and anniversaries and things like that. On the rack next to the window I looked at the selection of stainless steel funnel tips the baker could use to make various designs and flowers out of icing.

“No use waiting. He’s done for the day.”

I didn’t need to turn. In the reflection of the window, I saw an old lady walking by behind me. It made me think of my mother again.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think you are right.”

The second time I went into the phone booth and called Langwiser she was available and picked up right away.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Good, you scared me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You told Roxanne that you couldn’t be reached. I thought maybe you were in a cell or something.”

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t think about that. I’m just not using the cell phone still.”

“You think they are still listening?”

“I don’t know. Just precautions.”

“So is this just your daily check-in?”

“Sort of. I’ve got a question, too.”

“I’m listening.”

Maybe it was because of the way I hadn’t told Lindell the whole truth or because of the way checking out Eleanor made me feel, but I decided not to run a play on Langwiser. I decided to simply play the cards I had.

“A few years ago your firm handled a case. The attorney was James Foreman and the client was BankLA.”

“Yes, the bank’s a client. What was the case? I wasn’t here a few years ago.”