Michael Connelly: Lost Light

The phone’s screen showed that I had messages waiting. I called to pick them up and listened to four messages left through the night by Keisha Russell, the Times reporter. She started out very cool and concerned about my well-being and wanting to talk to me at my convenience to make sure I was okay. By the third message her voice had taken on a high-pitched urgency, and in the fourth she demanded that I make good on our deal in which I promised to talk to her if anything happened with what I was working on.

“Something’s obviously happened now, Harry. You’ve got four on the floor on Woodrow Wilson. Call me like you promised me you would.”

“Yes, dear,” I said as I erased the message.

The last message was from Alexander Taylor, the box office champion. There was a proprietary tone to his voice. He wanted me to know that this story was his.

“Mr. Bosch, I see you are all over the news. I am assuming that the nastiness on the hill last night is related to my heist. There were four robbers; the news says there are four dead men on your property. I want you to know that the offer I made still stands. But I’ll double it. One hundred thousand as an option on the story. The back end is open to negotiation and we can talk about that when I hear back from you. I will give you my assistant’s private number. Call me back. I’ll be waiting.”

He gave a number but I didn’t bother writing it down. I thought about the money for all of five seconds and then erased the message and closed the phone.

As I walked into the restaurant I wondered about what constituted circumstances beyond my control and what Lindell had said at the end of the interview in North Hollywood. I thought about fighting monsters and what had been said about me and to me in the past, and what I had said to Peoples in that restaurant booth just a few nights earlier. I wondered if a subtle slide into the abyss was any different from the kind of swan dive Milton had taken.

I knew I would have to think about this and the motives behind my actions of the last ten hours. But I soon decided it would have to keep. There was still a mystery to solve and as soon as I refueled I was going after it.

I sat at the counter and ordered the number two special without looking at a menu. The waitress with the wide hips poured my coffee and was about to put the order in at the kitchen window when somebody took the stool next to me and said, “I’ll have coffee, too.”

I recognized the voice and turned and saw Keisha Russell smiling at me as she put her bag down on the floor between us. She had followed me down the hill.

“I should’ve known.”

“Harry, if you don’t want to be followed all you have to do is return your calls.”

“I just got your messages five minutes ago, Keisha.”

“Well, now you don’t have to call me back.”

“I’m not talking to you. Not yet.”

“Harry, your house is like a war zone. Bodies all over. Are you all right?”

“I’m sitting here, aren’t I? I’m all right. But I still can’t talk to you. I don’t know how this is going to play out and I’m not going to say anything that shows up in the paper and might be at odds with the official line. That’s suicide.”

“You mean you don’t want to tell me the truth just in case what they put out isn’t.”

“Keisha, you know me. I will talk to you when I can. Why don’t you let me have my coffee and eat in peace now?”

“Just answer one question. It’s not even a question. Just confirm for me that whatever happened up there is related to what you called me about. About Martha Gessler.”

I shook my head in frustration. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to shake her without giving her something.

“Actually, I can’t confirm that, and that’s the truth. But, look, if I give you something that will help you, will you let me be until there is a time I can talk about it?”

Before she answered, the waitress slid a plate in front of me. I looked down at a short stack of buttered pancakes with a fried egg and two pieces of bacon forming an X on top. She then put down a small pitcher of maple syrup. I grabbed it and started pouring syrup over everything.

“My God,” Russell said. “You eat that and I’m not sure there will ever be a time you can talk about it. You are killing yourself, Harry.”

I looked up at the waitress, who was standing there writing up my check. I gave her a what-are-you-going-to-do smile and shrugged.

“Are you paying for her coffee?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She put the bill down on the counter and walked away. I looked at Russell.

“Why don’t you say that louder next time?”

“Sorry, Harry, but I don’t want you to get fat and old and ugly. You’re my bud. I want you around.”

I saw through all of that. She hid her motives the way the bartenders I’d seen the night before hid their nipples.

“Do we have a deal? I give you something and you hit the road, leave me alone?”

She took a sip from her free coffee and smiled.

“Deal.”

“Go pull your clips on the Angella Benton case.”

She narrowed her eyes. She didn’t remember it.

“You didn’t do much with it at first, then it blew up big when it was connected to the movie set heist over on Selma. Eidolon Productions? Ring a bell?”

She almost came off her stool.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said a little too loud. “The four on the floor are those guys?”

“Not quite. Three of them are those guys. Plus the one they took to the hospital.”

“Then who is the fourth?”

“I gave you what I’m giving you, Keisha. I’m going to eat now.”

I turned to my plate and started cutting my food up.

“This is so cool!” she said. “This is going to be big.”

As if four bodies in the Cahuenga Pass wasn’t already big. I took my first bite and the syrup hit me like a sugar bullet.

“Great,” I said.

She reached down to her bag and started getting up.

“I’ve gotta go, Harry. Thanks for the coffee.”

“One last thing.”

I took another bite and turned to her and started talking with my mouth full.

“Check out Los Angeles Magazine seven months ago. They did this story on these four guys who own all the hot bars in Hollywood. It called them the kings of the night crawlers. Check it out.”

Her eyes widened.

“You’re kidding.”

“No, check it out.”

She leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. She had never done that before, when I carried a badge.

“Thanks, Harry. I’ll call you.”

“I bet you will.”

I watched her glide quickly through the restaurant and out. I turned back to my plate. The egg had been over easy and cutting it up had made a mess of things. But at that moment it tasted like the best thing I had ever eaten.

Finally alone, I considered the question Kiz Rider had raised during the interview about how the style of the Marty Gessler disappearance was so different from the massacre at Nat’s. I was now sure Rider was right. The crimes had been designed, if not carried out, by different perpetrators.

“Dorsey,” I said out loud.

Maybe too loud. A man three stools down turned and looked at me until I turned and stared him back to his coffee cup.

Most of my records and notes were in the house and not attainable. I had the murder book in the Mercedes but it contained nothing from the Gessler case. From memory I worked on the details of the FBI agent’s disappearance. The car left at the airport. The use of her credit card up near the desert to buy more gas than her car could hold. I tried to fit these facts under the new heading of Dorsey. It was hard to make it work. Dorsey had been working crimes from one side of the law for nearly thirty years. He was too smart, he had seen too much, to leave a trail like that.