Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

Edgar was silent the whole way there. He had taken the vandalism of the patrol car personally. Bosch didn’t mind the silence, though. He used the time to think about Eleanor. He felt guilty because deep down and despite his love for her, he knew that he was feeling a growing relief that their relationship was coming to a head, one way or the other.

“This is it,” Edgar said.

He pulled the car to the curb and they scanned the lot. It was about an acre and bordered on both sides by apartment buildings with banners announcing move-in bonuses and financing. They didn’t look like places where people would want to live unless they had no choice. The whole neighborhood had a rundown and desperate feel.

Bosch noticed two old black men sitting on crates in the corner of the lot, under a sprawling and shade-giving eucalyptus tree. He opened the file he’d brought with him and studied the map that charted the location of the body. He estimated that it was less than fifty feet from where the two men were now sitting. He turned pages in the file until he found the incident report which named the two witnesses who reported finding the body.

“I’m getting out,” he said. “I’m going to go talk to those guys.”

He got out and Edgar did, too. They crossed the lot nonchalantly and approached the two men. As they got closer, Bosch saw sleeping bags and an old Coleman camp stove. Parked against the trunk of the eucalyptus were two supermarket carts filled with clothing, bags of aluminum cans and assorted junk.

“Are you men Rufus Gundy and Andy Mercer?”

“Depends on who’s doin’ the askin’.”

Bosch showed his badge.

“I wanted to ask a few questions about the body you guys found here last year.”

“Yeah, what took you so long?”

“Are you Mr. Gundy or Mr. Mercer?”

“I’m Mercer.”

Bosch nodded.

“Why do you say we took so long? Weren’t you interviewed by detectives when you found the body?”

“We was interviewed, but not by no detectives. Some wet-eared patrol boy akst us what we knew.”

Bosch nodded. He pointed to the sleeping bags and the camp stove.

“You guys live here?”

“We runnin’ a piece of bad luck. We just stayin’ till we on our feet again.”

Bosch knew there was nothing in the incident report about the two men living on the lot. The report said they were passing through the lot, looking for cans, when they came across her body. He thought about this and realized what had happened.

“You were living here then, weren’t you?”

Neither of them answered.

“You didn’t tell the cops that because you thought you might get run off.”

Still no reply.

“So you hid your sleeping bags and your stove and called it in. You told that patrol officer that you were just passing through.”

Finally, Mercer spoke.

“If’n you’re so smart, how come you ain’t chief yet?”

Bosch laughed.

“Because they’re smart enough not to make me chief. So, tell me something, Mr. Mercer and Mr. Gundy. If you two were sleeping here during nights back then, you probably would’ve found that body a lot sooner if it had been here the whole time she was missing, right?”

“Most likely,” Gundy said.

“So somebody probably dumped that body the night before you found it.”

“Could be,” Gundy said.

“Yeah, I’d say that was so,” Mercer added.

“With you two sleeping, what, forty, fifty feet away?”

This time they didn’t verbally agree. Bosch stepped over and dropped into a catcher’s squat so he was on their eye level.

“Tell me what you men saw that night.”

“We didn’t see nothin’,” Gundy said adamantly.

“But we heard things,” Mercer said. “Heard things.”

“What things?”

“A car pull up,” Mercer said. “A door open, then a trunk. We heard somethin’ heavy hit the ground. Then the trunk closed and the door, then the car drive off.”

“You didn’t even look?” Edgar asked quickly. He had stepped over and was leaning down, hands on his knees. “A body gets dumped there fifty feet away and you don’t look?”

“No, we don’t look,” Mercer retorted. “People be dumpin’ their garbage and whatnot in the field most every night. We never look. We keep our heads down. In the morning we look. We got some nice items time to time from what people throw away. We always wait till mornin’ to check out what they throw.”

Bosch nodded that he understood and hoped Edgar would leave the men alone.

“And you never told all of this to the cops?”

“Nope,” Mercer and Gundy said in unison.

“What about anybody else? You ever told it to somebody who could verify this has been the true story all along?”

The men thought about it. Mercer was shaking his head no when Gundy nodded yes.

“The only one we told was Mr. Elias’s man.”

Bosch glanced at Edgar and then back at Gundy.

“Who’s that?”

“His man. The investigator. We told him what we told you. He said Mr. Elias was gonna use us in court one day. He said Mr. Elias would be takin’ care of us.”

“Pelfry?” Edgar asked. “Was that his name?”

“Could be,” Gundy said. “I don’t know.”

Mercer didn’t say anything.

“You guys read the paper today?” Bosch asked. “See any TV news?”

“On what TV?” Mercer asked.

Bosch just nodded and stood up. They didn’t even know Elias was dead.

“How long ago was that when Mr. Elias’s man talked to you?”

“Be about a month,” Mercer said. “Somewhere around that.”

Bosch looked at Edgar and nodded that he was done. Edgar nodded back.

“Thanks for your help,” Bosch said. “Can I buy you guys some dinner?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his money. He gave each man a ten. They thanked him politely and he walked away.

As they sped north on Western to Wilshire, Bosch started riffing on what the information from the two homeless men meant.

“Harris is clear,” he said excitedly. “That’s how Elias knew. Because the body was moved. It was dumped there three days after she was dead. And Harris was in custody when it was moved. The best alibi in the world. Elias was going to bring those two old guys into court and put the lie to the LAPD.”

“Yeah, but hold on, Harry,” Edgar said. “It doesn’t clear Harris completely. It could just mean he had an accomplice. You know, who moved the body while he was in lockup.”

“Yeah, then why dump it so close to his apartment and further implicate him? I don’t think there’s an accomplice. I think it was the real killer. He read in the paper or saw on TV that they had Harris as a suspect and he moved the body to his neighborhood, to be another nail in Harris’s coffin.”

“What about the fingerprints? How did Harris’s prints get into that nice mansion in Brentwood? Are you goin’ along with them being planted by your buddy Sheehan and his team?”

“No, I’m not. There’s an explanation. We just don’t know it yet. It’s what we ask Pel – ”

There was a loud explosion as the rear window shattered and glass blasted through the car. Edgar momentarily lost control and the car swerved into the oncoming lanes. There was a chorus of angry horns as Bosch reached over and yanked the wheel right, bringing the car back across the yellow lines.

“What the fuck?” Edgar cried as he finally got the car under control and put on the brakes.

“No!” Bosch yelled. “Keep going, keep going!”

Bosch grabbed the radio out of the recharge slot on the floor and depressed the transmit button.

“Shots fired, shots fired! Western and Olympic.”

He held the button down as he looked over the backseat and out over the trunk. His eyes scanned the rooftops and windows of the apartment buildings two blocks back. He saw nothing.