Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

ONE of the men from IAD was a Latino named Raymond Fuentes. Bosch sent him along with Edgar to the address on Catalina Perez’s identification cards to notify her next of kin and to handle the questions about her. It was most likely the dead-end part of the investigation – it seemed apparent that Elias was the primary target – and Edgar tried to protest. But Bosch cut him off. The explanation he would share privately with Edgar later was that he needed to spread the IAD men out in order to give him better control of things. So Edgar went with Fuentes. And Rider was sent with a second IAD man, Loomis Baker, to interview Eldrige Peete at Parker Center and then bring him back to the scene. Bosch wanted the train operator at the scene to go over what he had seen and to operate the train as he had before discovering the bodies.

That left Bosch, Chastain and the last IAD man, Joe Dellacroce. Bosch dispatched Dellacroce to Parker Center as well, to draw up a search warrant for Elias’s office. He then told Chastain that the two of them would go to Elias’s home to make the death notification to his next of kin.

After the group split up, Bosch walked to the crime scene van and asked Hoffman for the keys found on the body of Howard Elias. Hoffman looked through the crate he had placed his evidence bags in and came out with a bag containing a ring with more than a dozen keys on it.

“From the front pants pocket, right side,” Hoffman said.

Bosch studied the keys for a moment. There seemed to be more than enough keys for the lawyer’s home, office and cars. He noticed that there was a Porsche key on the ring as well as a Volvo key. He realized that when the investigators finished the current crop of tasks, one assignment he would have to make would be to put someone on locating Elias’s car.

“Anything else in the pockets?”

“Yeah. In the left front he had a quarter.”

“A quarter.”

“Costs a quarter to ride Angels Flight. That’s probably what that was for.”

Bosch nodded.

“And in the inside coat pocket was a letter.”

Bosch had forgotten that Garwood had mentioned the letter.

“Let’s see that.”

Hoffman looked through his crate again and came up with a plastic evidence bag. Inside it was an envelope. Bosch took it from the crime scene tech and studied it without removing it. The envelope had been addressed to Elias’s office by hand. There was no return address. On the left lower corner the sender had written PERSONAL amp; CONFIDENTIAL. Bosch tried to read the postmark but the light was bad. He wished he still carried a lighter.

“It’s your neck of the woods, Harry,” Hoffman said. “Hollywood. Mailed Wednesday. He probably got it Friday.”

Bosch nodded. He turned the bag over and looked at the back of the envelope. It had been cleanly cut open along the top. Elias or his secretary had opened it, probably at his office, before he had put it into his pocket. There was no way of knowing if the contents had been examined since.

“Anybody open it?”

“We didn’t. I don’t know what happened before we got here. I understand that the first detectives saw the name on there and then recognized the body. But I don’t know if they actually looked at the letter.”

Bosch was curious about the contents of the envelope but knew it wasn’t the right time or place to open it.

“I’m going to take this, too.”

“You got it, Harry. Let me just get you to sign it out. And the keys, too.”

Bosch waited while Hoffman got a chain-of-evidence form out of his kit. He squatted down and put the envelope and keys into his briefcase. Chastain came over, ready to leave the scene.

“You want to drive or you want me to?” Bosch said as he snapped his case closed. “I’ve got a slick. What have you got?”

“I still have a plain jane. Runs like dogshit but at least I don’t stand out like dogshit on the street.”

“That’s good. You got a bubble?”

“Yes, Bosch, even IAD guys have to respond to calls now and then.”

Hoffman held a clipboard and pen out to Bosch and he signed his initials next to the two pieces of crime scene evidence he was taking with him.

“Then you drive.”

They started walking across California Plaza to where the cars were parked. Bosch pulled his pager off his belt and made sure it was running properly. The battery light was still green. He hadn’t missed any pages. He looked up at the tall towers surrounding them, wondering if they could possibly interfere with a page from his wife, but then he remembered the page from Lieutenant Billets had come through earlier. He clipped the pager back to his belt and tried to think about something else.

Following Chastain’s lead they came to a beat-up maroon LTD that was at least five years old and about as impressive-looking as a Pinto. At least, Bosch thought, it isn’t painted black and white.

“It’s unlocked,” Chastain said.

Bosch went to the passenger side door and got in the car. He got his cell phone out of his briefcase and called the central dispatch center. He asked for a Department of Motor Vehicles run on Howard Elias and was given the dead man’s home address as well as his age, driving record and the plate numbers of the Porsche and Volvo registered in his and his wife’s names. Elias had been forty-six. His driving record was clean. Bosch thought that the lawyer was probably the most cautious driver in the city. The last thing Elias probably ever wanted to do was draw the attention of an LAPD patrol cop. It made driving a Porsche seem almost a waste.

“Baldwin Hills,” he said after closing the phone. “Her name is Millie.”

Chastain started the engine, then plugged the flashing emergency light – the bubble – into the lighter and put it on the dashboard. He drove the car quickly down the deserted streets toward the 10 Freeway.

Bosch was silent at first, not sure how to break the ice with Chastain. The two men were natural enemies. Chastain had investigated Bosch on two different occasions. Both times Bosch was grudgingly cleared of any wrongdoing, but only after Chastain was forced to back off. It seemed to Bosch that Chastain had a hard-on for him that felt close to a vendetta. The IAD detective seemed to take no joy in clearing a fellow cop. All he wanted was a scalp.

“I know what you are doing, Bosch,” Chastain said once they got onto the freeway and started west.

Bosch looked over at him. For the first time he considered how physically similar they were. Dark hair going gray, full mustache beneath dark brown-black eyes, a lean, almost wiry build. Almost mirror images, yet Bosch had never considered Chastain to be the kind of physical threat that Bosch knew he projected himself. Chastain carried himself differently. Bosch had always carried himself like a man afraid of being cornered, like a man who wouldn’t allow himself to be cornered.

“What? What am I doing?”

“You’re thinning us out. That way you have better control.”

He waited for Bosch to reply but only got silence.

“But eventually, if we’re going to do this thing right, you are going to have to trust us.”

After a pause, Bosch said, “I know that.”

Elias lived on Beck Street in Baldwin Hills, a small section of upper-middle-class homes south of the 10 Freeway and near La Cienega Boulevard. It was an area known as the black Beverly Hills – a neighborhood where affluent blacks moved when they did not wish to have their wealth take them out of their community. As Bosch considered this he thought that if there was anything that he could like about Elias, it was the fact that he didn’t take his money and move to Brentwood or Westwood or the real Beverly Hills. He stayed in the community from which he had risen.