Michael Connelly - Trunk Music

“And you never called him there?” Rider asked.

“Rarely. Not at all this time.”

“Was it business or pleasure that took him there?” Bosch asked.

“He always told me it was both. He said he had investors to see. But it was an addiction. That’s what I believed. He loved to gamble and could afford to do it. So he went.”

Bosch nodded but didn’t know why.

“This last time, when did he go?”

“He went Thursday. After leaving the studio.”

“You saw him last then?”

“Thursday morning. Before he went to the studio. He left for the airport from there. It’s closer.”

“And you had no idea when to expect him back.”

He said it as a statement. It was out there for her to challenge if she wanted to.

“To be honest, I was just beginning to wonder tonight. It usually doesn’t take long for that place to separate a man from his money. I thought it was a little long, yes. But I didn’t try to track him down. And then you came.”

“What did he like to play over there?”

“Everything. But poker the most. It was the only game where you weren’t playing against the house. The house took a cut, but you were playing against the other players. That’s how he explained it to me once. Only he called the other players schmucks from Iowa.”

“Was he always alone over there, Mrs. Aliso?”

Bosch looked down at his notebook and acted as if he was writing something important and that her answer wasn’t. He knew it was cowardly.

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Did you ever go with him at all?”

“I don’t like to gamble. I don’t like that city. That city is a horrible place. They can dress it up all they want, it’s still a city of vices and whores. Not just the sexual kind.”

Bosch studied the cool anger in her dark eyes.

“You didn’t answer the question, Mrs. Aliso,” Rider said.

“What question?”

“Did you ever go to Las Vegas with him?”

“At first, yes. But I found it boring. I haven’t been in years.”

“Was your husband in any kind of serious debt?” Bosch asked.

“I don’t know. If he was, he didn’t tell me. You can call me Veronica.”

“You never asked if he was getting into trouble?” Rider asked.

“I just assumed that he would tell me if he was.”

She turned the hard dark eyes on Rider now, and Bosch felt a weight lift off him. Veronica Aliso was challenging them to disagree.

“I know this probably makes me some kind of a suspect, but I don’t care,” she said. “You have your job to do. It must be obvious to you that my husband and I…let’s just say we coexisted here. So as to your questions about Nevada, I couldn’t tell you whether he was a million up or a million down. Who knows, he could’ve beaten the odds. But I think he would have bragged about it if he had.”

Bosch nodded and thought about the body in the trunk. It didn’t seem like that of a man who had beaten any odds.

“Where did he stay in Las Vegas, Mrs. Aliso?”

“Always at the Mirage. I do know that. You see, not all of the casinos have poker tables. The Mirage has a classy one. He always said that if I needed to call, call there. Ask for the poker pit if there is no answer in the room.”

Bosch took a few moments to write this down. He found that often silence was the best way to get people to talk and reveal themselves. He hoped Rider realized that he was leaving holes of silence in the interview on purpose.

“You asked if he went there alone.”

“Yes?”

“Detectives, in the course of your investigation I believe you will undoubtedly learn that my husband was a philanderer. I ask only one thing of you, please do your best to keep that information from me. I simply don’t want to know.”

Bosch nodded and was silent a moment while he composed his thoughts. What kind of woman wouldn’t want to know, he wondered. Maybe one who already did. He looked back at her and their eyes connected again.

“Aside from gambling, was your husband in any other kind of trouble as far as you know?” he asked. “Work-related, financial?”

“As far as I know he wasn’t. But he kept the finances. I could not tell you what our situation is at the moment. When I needed money I asked him, and he always said cash a check and tell him the amount. I have a separate account for household expenses.”

Without looking up from the notebook, Bosch said, “Just a few more and we’ll leave you alone for now. Did your husband have any enemies that you know of? Anybody who would want to harm him?”

“He worked in Hollywood. Back stabbing is considered an art form there. Anthony was as skilled at it as anyone else who has been in the industry twenty-five years. Obviously that means there could always be people who were unhappy with him. But who would do this, I don’t know.”

“The car…the Rolls-Royce is leased to a production company over at Archway Studios. How long had he worked there?”

“His office was there, but he didn’t work for Archway per se. TNA Productions is his…was his own company. He simply rented an office and a parking spot on the Archway lot. But he had about as much to do with Archway as you do.”

“Tell us about his production company,” Rider said. “Did he make films?”

“In a manner of speaking. You could say he started big and ended small. About twenty years ago he produced his first film. The Art of the Cape. If you saw it, you were one of the few. Bullfight movies are not popular. But it was critically acclaimed, played the film festival circuit and then the art houses and it was a good start for him.”

She said that Aliso had managed to make a couple more films for general release. But after that his production and moral values steadily declined, until he was producing a procession of exploitative dreck.

“These films, if you want to call them that, are notable only for the number of exposed breasts in them,” she said. “In the business, it’s called straight-to-video stock. In addition to that Tony was quite successful in literary arbitrage.”

“What is that?”

“He was a speculator. Mostly scripts, but he did manuscripts, books on occasion.”

“And how would he speculate on them?”

“He’d buy them. Wrap up the rights. Then when they became valuable or the author became hot, he’d go to market with them. Do you know who Michael St. John is?”

The name sounded familiar but Bosch could not place it. He shook his head. Rider did the same.

“He’s one of the screenwriters of the moment. He’ll be directing studio features within a year or so. He’s the flavor-of-the-month, so to speak.”

“Okay.”

“Well, eight years ago when he was in the USC film school and was hungry and was trying to find an agent and trying to catch the attention of the studios, my husband was one of the vultures who circled overhead. You see, my husband’s films were so low-budget that he’d get students to shoot them, direct them, write them. So he knew the schools and he knew talent. Michael St. John was one he knew had talent. Once when he was desperate, he sold Anthony the rights to three of his student screenplays for two thousand dollars. Now, anything with St. John’s name on it goes for at least six figures.”

“What about these writers, how do they take this?”

“Not well. St. John was trying to buy his scripts back.”

“You think he could have harmed your husband?”

“No. You asked me what he did and I told you. If you are asking who would kill him, I don’t know.”

Bosch jotted a couple of notes down.

“You mentioned that he said that he saw investors when he went to Las Vegas,” Rider said.

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us who they were?”