Michael Connelly - Lost Light

I closed the door to the phone booth even though I knew it would quickly get hot in the tiny cubicle.

“I don’t know what it was called but the other party’s name was Linus Simonson. He worked for the bank as an assistant to the vice president. He took a bullet in the shoot-out during the movie set heist.”

“Okay. I remember somebody was wounded and somebody was killed but I don’t remember the names.”

“He was the wounded. The dead guy was Ray Vaughn, chief of security for the bank. Simonson lived. In fact, he only took a round in the ass. Probably a ricochet, if I remember the way the shooting team worked it out.”

“So he then sued the bank?”

“I’m not sure if it went that far. The point is he was out on medical for a while and then decided he didn’t want to come back. He got a lawyer and started making noise about the bank being liable for putting him in a position where he was in harm’s way.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“Even though he volunteered to be there. He had helped put the money together and then volunteered to baby-sit it during the movie shoot.”

“Well, it still was probably actionable. He could make a case for volunteering under duress or -”

“Yeah, I know all of that. I’m not worried about whether he had a case or not. He apparently did, because the bank settled and James Foreman handled it.”

“Okay, so where is this going? What is your question?”

I reopened the door of the booth so I could get some fresh air.

“I want to know what he settled for. How much did he get?”

“I’ll call Jim Foreman right now. You want to hold?”

“Uh, it’s not that simple. I think there was a confidentiality agreement.”

There was silence from her and I actually smiled while I waited. It had felt good to just come out with what I wanted.

“I see,” Langwiser finally said. “So you want me to violate that by finding out what he got.”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“What other way is there to put it?”

“I’m working this thing and he’s come up. Simonson. And it would just help me a lot if I knew how big a chunk of cash the bank gave him. It would help me a lot, Janis.”

Again my words were met with a long silence.

“I’m not going to go snooping through files in my own firm,” she finally said. “I’m not going to do anything that could get me in the shit. The best thing I can do is just go to Jim and ask him and see what he says.”

“Okay.”

It was better than I thought I would get.

“The wedge I have is that BankLA remains a client. If you are saying that this guy Simonson might have been part of this heist which lost the bank two million and its chief of security, then he might be inclined.”

“Hey, that’s good.”

I had thought of that angle but wanted her to come to it. I started to get jazzed. I thought maybe she’d be able to get what I needed from Foreman.

“Don’t get excited, Harry. Not yet.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see what I can do and then I’ll call you. And don’t worry, if I have to leave a message on your home number it will be in code.”

“Okay, Janis, thanks.”

I hung up and left the booth. On the way back through the market in the direction of the parking garage I passed the cake window and was surprised to see that the baker was there. I stopped for a minute and watched. It must have been a last-minute order because it looked like the cake had been taken out of one of the inside display cabinets. It was already iced. The man behind the window was just putting on flowers and lettering.

I waited until he wrote the message. It was pink writing on a field of chocolate. It said, Happy Birthday, Callie! I hoped it was another cake going to a happy place.

Jocelyn Jones worked in a branch bank on Santa Monica at San Vicente. In a county for decades known as the bank robbery capital of the world she was in about as safe a location as was possible. Her branch was right across the street from the sheriff’s department’s West Hollywood station.

The branch was a two-story art deco job with a curving façade with large round windows along its second level. Inside, the tellers’ counter and new-accounts desks were on the first floor and the executive offices upstairs. I found Jones up there in an office with a porthole that looked over the sheriff’s compound to the Pacific Design Center, known locally as the Blue Whale because from some angles its blue-sheathed façade looked like the tail of a humpback protruding from the ocean.

Jones smiled and invited me to sit down.

“Mr. Scaggs told me you would be coming by and that it was all right to talk to you. He said you were working on the robbery.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m glad it hasn’t been forgotten about.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m not sure. I’m sort of retracing a lot of steps that were taken before. So it might be repetitive but I’d just like to hear you talk about your part in it. I’ll ask questions if I come up with any.”

“Well, there isn’t a whole lot for me to tell. I mean, I wasn’t there like Linus and poor Mr. Vaughn were. I was mostly around the money before it was transported. I was an assistant at that time to Mr. Scaggs. He’s been my mentor with the company.”

I nodded and smiled like I thought it was all nice. I was moving slowly, the plan being to gradually steer her in the direction I wanted to go.

“So you worked on the money. You counted it, packaged it, got it ready. Where was that?”

“At the downtown center. We were in a vault the whole time. The money came in to us from the branches and we did everything right there without ever leaving. Except, you know, at the end of the day. It took about three, three and a half days to get everything ready. Mostly waiting for it to come in from the branches.”

“When you say ‘us,’ you mean Linus…”

I opened the murder book on my lap as if to check a name I didn’t recall.

“Simonson,” she said for me.

“Right, Linus Simonson. You worked on this together, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Was Mr. Scaggs his mentor, too?”

She shook her head and slightly blushed, I think, but it was hard to tell because she was very dark-skinned.

“No, the mentoring program is a minority program. I should say ‘was.’ They suspended it a year ago. Anyway, Linus is white. He grew up in Beverly Hills. His father owned a bunch of restaurants and I don’t think he needed a mentor.”

I nodded.

“Okay, so you and Linus were in there for three days putting all of this money together. You also had to record serial numbers off the bills, right?”

“Yes, we did that, too.”

“How was that done?”

She didn’t answer for a moment as she tried to remember. She swiveled slowly back and forth in her chair. I watched a sheriff’s helicopter land on the roof of the station across Santa Monica.

“What I remember is that it was supposed to be random,” she said. “So we just took bills out of the bricks at random. I think we had to get about a thousand numbers and record them. That took a long time, too.”

I leafed through the murder book until I found a copy of the currency report she and Simonson had put together. I unsnapped the binder’s rings and removed the report.

“According to this you recorded eight hundred of the bills.”

“Oh, okay. Eight hundred, then.”

“Is this the report?”

I handed it to her and she studied it, looking at each page and her signature at the bottom of the last page.

“It looks like it but it’s been four years.”