Michael Connelly - Angels Flight

“No… I’m somewhere else.”

She didn’t want to tell him where and that hurt.

“Is there a number I can call you at?”

“I’m not sure how long I’m going to be here. I just wanted to call and make sure you were okay.”

“Me? Don’t worry about me. Are you okay, Eleanor?”

“I’m fine.”

Bosch didn’t care about Vascik anymore.

“Do you need anything? What about your car?”

“No. I’m fine. Now that I’m here I’m not worried about the car.”

There was a long moment of silence. Bosch heard one of the electronic sounds that he had once heard somebody call digital bubbles.

“Well,” he finally said, “can we talk about this?”

“I don’t think this is a good time. Let’s think about things for a couple of days and then we’ll talk. I’ll call you, Harry. Be careful.”

“Do you promise? To call?”

“I promise.”

“Okay, Eleanor. I’ll wait.”

“Good-bye, Harry.”

She hung up before he could say good-bye. Bosch stood there next to the couch for a long time, thinking about her and what had happened to them.

The phone rang while still in his hand.

“Yes?”

“Detective Bosch? I got a message to call you.”

“Mr. Vascik?”

“Yes. From Triple A Process. My boss Shelly said you – ”

“Yes, I called.”

Bosch sat down on the couch and pulled a notebook onto his thigh. He took a pen out of his pocket and wrote Vascik’s name on the top of a page. Vascik sounded young and white to him. He had some Midwest in his voice.

“How old are you, Steve?”

“I’m twenty-five.”

“You been with Triple A very long?”

“A few months.”

“Okay, last week, on Thursday, you served paper on an LAPD detective named John Chastain, do you remember that?”

“Sure. He didn’t want to be served. Most cops I’ve done don’t really care. They’re used to it.”

“Right. That’s what I wanted to ask you about. When you say he didn’t want to be served, what do you mean exactly?”

“Well, the first time I tried to serve him he refused to take the subpoena and walked away. Then when – ”

“Wait a minute, go back. When was the first time?”

“It was Thursday morning. I went to the lobby at Parker Center and had the cop at the desk call him and tell him to come down. I didn’t say what it was for. It said on the paper he was IAD so I just said I was a citizen with something for him that he needed. He came down and when I said who I was he just backed off and went back to the elevator.”

“What you’re saying is that it was like he knew you had a subpoena and even what case it was?”

“Right. Exactly.”

Bosch thought about what he had read in Elias’s last notebook. His feuding with a source named “Parker.”

“Okay, then what?”

“Well, then I went and did some other jobs and I came back about three-thirty and watched the employee lot at Parker. I saw him come out to go home, I guess, and I cut between some cars and ducked down and sort of came up just as he was opening his door. I had my spiel all worked out and told him he was served and said the case number and all of that. He still wouldn’t take the paper but that didn’t matter because under California law all you – ”

“Right, I know. You can’t refuse a subpoena once you have been advised that it is a legal, court-ordered subpoena. So what did he do?”

“Well, first he scared the shit out of me. He put his arm under his coat like he was going for his gun or something.”

“Then what?”

“Then he sort of stopped. I guess he thought about what he was doing. He relaxed a little bit but he still wouldn’t take the paper. He told me to tell Elias to fuck off. He got in his car and started pulling out. I knew he was served so I just put the paper under his windshield wiper. He drove off with it like that. I don’t know what happened to it after that. Could’ve blown off but it doesn’t matter. He was legally served.”

Bosch thought for a moment while Vascik went on about the intricacies of process serving. He finally cut him off.

“Did you know Elias got killed Friday night?”

“Yes, sir. Sure. He was our client. We did all his cases.”

“Well, did you ever think to call the department after he was killed and tell someone about this thing with Chastain?”

“I did,” Vascik answered defensively. “I called.”

“You called? Who’d you call?”

“I called Parker Center and said I had information. I was transferred to an office and told the guy who answered who I was and that I had some information. He took my name and number and said someone would call me back.”

“Nobody ever did?”

“No, somebody called in like five minutes. Maybe less. Right away. I told him.”

“When was this?”

“Sunday morning. I was out climbing all day Saturday. Up at Vasquez Rocks. I didn’t hear about Mr. Elias until I read the Times on Sunday morning.”

“Do you remember the name of the cop you told this to?”

“I think his name was Edgar but I don’t know if that was his first or last name.”

“What about the person who took your call in the first place? Did he give a name?”

“I think he said his name but I forget it. But he did say he was an agent. So maybe it was an FBI guy.”

“Steve, think for a minute. What time did you make this call and when did Edgar call you back? Do you remember?”

Vascik was quiet while he thought about it.

“Well, I didn’t get up till about ten ’cause my legs were killing me from the climb. I then kind of lazed around and read the paper. It was all over the front page, so I probably read it right after the sports. And then I called. So maybe about eleven. Thereabouts. And then that Edgar guy called back pretty quick.”

“Thanks, Steve.”

Bosch clicked the phone off. He knew there was no way Edgar had taken a call at Parker Center on Sunday morning at eleven. Edgar had been with Bosch all Sunday morning and most of the rest of the day. And they were on the road, not working out of Parker. Someone had used his partner’s name. A cop. Someone inside the investigation had used Edgar’s name.

He looked up Lindell’s cell phone number and called. Lindell still had it turned on and he answered.

“It’s Bosch. You remember Sunday morning, after you and your people came into the case, you spent most of the morning in the conference room with the files, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Who was answering the phones?”

“Me mostly. A couple of the others.”

“Did you take a call from a guy said he was a process server?”

“Sounds familiar. But we were getting lots of calls that morning. Reporters and people thinking they knew something. People threatening the cops.”

“A process server named Vascik. Steve Vascik. He said he had some information that might be important.”

“Like I said, it’s familiar. What about it, Bosch? I thought this case was over.”

“It is. I’m just checking some loose ends. Who’d you give the call to?”

“I gave those kind of calls – you know, info off the street – to the IAD guys. To keep them busy.”

“Which one did you give the process server to?”

“I don’t know, probably Chastain. He was in charge of that group. He might’ve taken it or told one of the others to call the guy back. See, Irving set up some shitty phones in there. We couldn’t transfer one to the other and I wanted the main line free. So we took numbers and passed them on.”

“Okay, thanks, man. Have a nice night.”

“Hey, what is – ”

Bosch disconnected before he had to answer any questions. He thought about the information from Lindell. He believed there was a high probability that the call from Vascik had been routed to Chastain himself, who then called back – probably taking the message to his own office for privacy – and posed as Edgar.