Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

“You awake?” he whispered.

“Mmm-hmm.”

He waited a long moment.

“Where were you, Eleanor?”

“Hollywood Park.”

Bosch didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to accuse her of lying. Maybe Jardine, the security guy, had simply missed her during his survey of the video screens. He stared at the ceiling, wondering what to say next.

“I know that you called there looking for me,” Eleanor said. “I knew Tom Jardine in Las Vegas. He used to work at the Flamingo. He lied when you called. He came to me first.”

Bosch closed his eyes and remained silent.

“I’m sorry, Harry, I just didn’t want to have to deal with you then.”

“Deal with me?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not really, Eleanor. How come you didn’t answer my message when you got home?”

“What message?”

Bosch realized he had played the message back himself earlier. There wouldn’t have been a flashing light on the machine. She would not have heard the message.

“Never mind. When did you get home?”

She lifted her head off the pillow to look at the glowing numbers on the bedside clock.

“Couple hours ago.”

“How’d you do?”

He didn’t really care. He just wanted her to keep talking to him.

“All right. Came out a little ahead but I messed up. I missed a big one.”

“What happened?”

“I went with a long shot when I should’ve stuck with a sure thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was dealt a pair of aces but I also had four clubs – ace, three, four, five. So on the draw I broke the pair of aces. I discarded the ace of hearts and went for the deuce, the two of clubs to make the straight flush. They keep a progressive bonus pot going for a straight flush. It was up to about three thousand dollars. That’s what I was going for.”

“So what happened?”

“I didn’t get the deuce. I didn’t even get a club to make a flush. What I got was the ace of spades.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah, I threw down an ace only to get an ace. I stayed in with that but didn’t come close. Three tens won it – the pot was about three hundred. So if I had kept the ace of hearts I would have ended up with three aces and been the winner. I blew it. That’s when I left.”

Bosch didn’t say anything. He thought about the story and wondered if she was trying to say something else. Tossing the ace of hearts, aiming for the bigger pot, failing.

After a few minutes of silence, Eleanor spoke again.

“Were you out on a case? You hadn’t been in the bed. I could tell.”

“Yeah, I got a call out.”

“I thought you weren’t up on rotation.”

“It’s a long story and I don’t feel like talking about it. I want to talk about us. Tell me what’s going on, Eleanor. We can’t… this isn’t right. Some nights I don’t even know where you are or if you are all right. Something’s wrong or missing and I don’t know what it is.”

She turned and moved under the covers until she was next to him. She put her head down on his chest and brought her hand up to caress the scar on his shoulder.

“Harry…”

He waited but she didn’t say anything. She moved over on top of him then and started a gentle rocking motion with her hips.

“Eleanor, we need to talk about this.”

He felt her finger glide across his lips, telling him not to speak.

They made love slowly, Bosch’s mind a jumble of conflicting thoughts. He loved her, more than he had ever loved anyone. He knew she loved him in some way. Having her in his life had made him feel whole. But at some point he could tell that Eleanor had realized she did not have that feeling. For her there was something missing and the realization that they were on separate planes brought Bosch down as low as he had ever felt.

The feeling of doom had fallen upon the marriage then. During the summer he had caught a series of time-consuming investigations, including a case requiring him to make a week-long trip to New York. While he was gone she went to the poker room at Hollywood Park for the first time. It was out of the boredom of being left alone and the frustration at her lack of success in finding an acceptable job in Los Angeles. She had returned to the cards, doing what she had done when Bosch had found her, and it was at those blue felt tables that she found the thing that was missing.

“Eleanor,” he said when they were finished making love, his arms wrapped around her neck. “I love you. I don’t want to lose you.”

She smothered his mouth with a long kiss and then whispered, “Go to sleep, darling. Go to sleep.”

“Stay with me,” he said. “Don’t move away until I’m asleep.”

“I won’t.”

She held him tighter and he tried for the moment to let everything go. Just for a while, he decided. He would take it all up later. But for now he would sleep.

In a few minutes he was gone, deep into a dream in which he was riding Angels Flight up the tracks to the top of the hill. As the other car came down and passed, he looked in through the windows and saw Eleanor sitting alone. She wasn’t looking back at him.

Bosch awoke in a little over an hour. The room was darker, as the light from outside was no longer directly on the windows. He looked around and saw Eleanor was gone from the bed. He sat up and called her name, his voice reminding him of how he had answered the phone that morning.

“I’m here,” she called from the living room.

Bosch pulled on his clothes and left the bedroom. Eleanor was sitting on the couch, wearing the bathrobe he had bought for her at the hotel in Hawaii where they had gone after getting married in Las Vegas.

“Hey,” he said. “I thought… I don’t know.”

“You were talking in your sleep. I came out here.”

“What did I say?”

“My name, a few other things that didn’t make sense. Something about a fight. Angels fighting.”

He smiled and nodded and sat down in the chair on the other side of the coffee table.

“Flight, not fight. You ever been on Angels Flight in downtown?”

“No.”

“It’s two train cars. When one goes up the hill, the other goes down. They pass in the middle. I dreamed I was going up and you were in the car going down. We passed in the middle but you wouldn’t look at me… What do you think it means, that we’re going different ways?”

She smiled sadly.

“I guess it means you’re the angel. You were going up.”

He didn’t smile.

“I have to go back in,” he said. “This one’s going to take up my life for a while. I think.”

“You want to talk about it? Why were you called out?”

He ran the case down for her in about ten minutes. He always liked telling her about his cases. He knew it was a form of ego gratification, but sometimes she made a suggestion that helped or a comment that let him see something he had missed. It was many years since she had been an FBI agent. It was a part of her life that was a distant memory. But he still respected her investigative logic and skills.

“Oh, Harry,” she said when he was done telling the story. “Why is it always you?”

“It’s not always me.”

“Seems like it is. What are you going to do?”

“Same as I always do. I’m going to work the case. All of us are. There’s a lot there to work with – they just have to give us the time with it. It’s not going to be a quick turn.”

“I know you, they’ll throw every roadblock they can think of in front of you. It does no one any good to hook somebody up and bring them in on this. But you’ll be the one to do it. You’ll bring somebody in no matter if it makes every cop in every division despise you.”

“Every case counts, Eleanor. Every person. I despise people like Elias. He was a suckerfish – making his life off bullshit cases against cops just trying to do their jobs. For the most part, at least. Every now and then he had a legitimate case, I guess. But the point is nobody should get away with what they did. Even if it’s a cop who did it. It’s not right.”