Michael Connelly - Trunk Music

“Harry Bosch,” Meachum said, leaning down to look in. “What it is, what it is?”

The first thing Bosch had noticed was that Meachum had gotten his teeth capped since he’d last seen him.

“Chuckie. Long time. This is my partner, Kiz Rider.”

Rider nodded and Meachum nodded and studied her a moment. Black female detectives were a rarity in his day, even though he hadn’t been off the job more than five years.

“So what’s shaking, Detectives? Why’d you want to go and pull me out of the hot tub?”

He smiled, showing off the teeth. Bosch guessed he knew that they had been noticed.

“We got a case. We want to take a look at the vic’s office.”

“It’s here? Who’s the stiff?”

“Anthony N. Aliso. TNA Productions.”

Meachum crinkled his eyes. He had the deep tan of a golfer who never misses his Saturday morning start and usually gets away for at least nine once or twice during the week.

“Doesn’t do anything for me, Harry. You sure he-”

“Look it up, Chuck. He’s here. Was.”

“All right, tell you what, park the car over in the main lot and we’ll go back to my office, grab a cup and look this guy up.”

He pointed toward a lot directly through the gate and Bosch did as instructed. The lot was almost empty and was next to a huge soundstage with an outside wall painted powder blue with puffs of white clouds. It was used for shooting exteriors when the real sky was too brown with smog.

They followed Meachum on foot to the studio security offices. Entering the suite, they passed by a glass-walled office in which a man in a brown Archway Security outfit sat at a desk surrounded by banks of video monitors. He was reading the Times sports page, which he quickly dropped into a trash can next to the desk when he saw Meachum.

Bosch saw that Meachum didn’t seem to notice because he had been holding the door open for them. When he turned, he casually saluted the man in the glass office and led Bosch and Rider back to his office.

Meachum slid in behind his desk and turned to his computer. The monitor screen depicted an intergalactic battle among assorted space ships. Meachum hit one key and the screen saver disappeared. He asked Bosch to spell Aliso’s name and he punched it into the computer. He then tilted the monitor so Bosch and Rider couldn’t see the screen. Bosch was annoyed by this but he didn’t say anything. After a few moments, Meachum did.

“You’re right. He was here. Tyrone Power Building. Had one of the little cubbyholes they rent to nonplayers. Three-office suite. Three losers. They share a secretary who comes with the rent.”

“How long’s he been here? That say?”

“Yeah. Almost seven years.”

“What else you got there?”

Meachum looked at the screen.

“Not much. No record of problems. He complained once about somebody dinging his car in the parking lot. Says here he drove a Rolls-Royce. Probably the last guy in Hollywood who hadn’t traded in his Rolls on a Range Rover. That’s tacky, Bosch.”

“Let’s go take a look.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you and Detective Riley go out there and grab a cup of joe while I make a call about that. I’m not sure what our procedure is for this.”

“First of all, Chuck, it’s Rider, not Riley. And second, we’re running a homicide investigation here. Whatever your procedures are, we are expecting you to allow us access.”

“You’re on private property here, buddy. You’ve got to keep that in mind.”

“I will.” Bosch stood up. “And when you make your call, the thing you should keep in mind is that so far the media haven’t gotten wind of any of this. I didn’t think it would be good to pull Archway into this sort of thing, especially since we don’t know for sure what’s involved here. You can tell whoever you’re calling that I’ll try to keep it that way.”

Meachum smirked and shook his head.

“Still the same old Bosch. Your way or the highway.”

“Something like that.”

While waiting, Bosch had time to gulp down a cup of lukewarm coffee from a pot that had been on a warmer in the outer office for the better part of the night. It was bitter, but he knew the cup he’d had at the station would not take him through the night. Rider passed on the coffee, instead drinking water from a dispenser in the hallway.

After nearly ten minutes Meachum came out of his office.

“Okay, you got it. But I’ll tell you right now that me or one of my people gotta be in there the whole time as observers. That going to be a problem for you, Bosch?”

“No problem.”

“Okay, let’s go. We’ll take a cart.”

On the way out he opened the door to the glass room and stuck his head in.

“Peters, who’s roving?”

“Uh, Serrurier and Fogel.”

“Okay, get on the air and tell Serrurier to meet us at Tyrone Power. He’s got keys, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, do it.” Meachum made a motion to close the door but stopped. “And Peters? Leave the sports page in the trash can.”

They took a golf cart to the Tyrone Power Building because it was on the other side of the lot from the security offices. Along the way Meachum waved to a man dressed entirely in black who was coming out of one of the buildings they passed.

“We’ve got a shoot on New York Street tonight, otherwise I’d take you through there. You’d swear you were in Brooklyn.”

“Never been,” Bosch said.

“Me neither,” Rider added.

“Then it doesn’t matter, unless you wanted to see them shooting.”

“The Tyrone Power Building will be just fine.”

“Fine.”

When they got there, another uniformed man was waiting. Serrurier. At Meachum’s instructions he first unlocked a door to reception area that served the three separate offices of the suite, then the door to the office Aliso had used. Meachum then told him to go back out on roving patrol of the studio.

Meachum’s calling it a closet was not too far off. Aliso’s office was barely large enough for Bosch, Rider and Meachum to stand in together without having to smell each other’s breath. It contained a desk with a chair behind it and two more close in front of it. Against the wall behind the desk was a four-drawer file cabinet. The left wall was hung with framed one-sheets advertising two classic films: Chinatown and The Godfather, both of which had been made down the street at Paramount. Aliso had countered these on the right wall with framed posters of his own efforts, The Art of the Cape and Casualty of Desire. There were also smaller frames of photos depicting Aliso with various celebrities, many of the shots taken in the same office with Aliso and the celebrity of the moment standing behind the desk smiling.

Bosch first studied the two posters. Each one carried the imprimatur along the top Anthony Aliso Presents. But it was the second poster, for Casualty of Desire, that caught his attention. The artwork beneath the title of the film showed a man in a white suit carrying a gun down at his side, a desperate look on his face. In larger scale, a woman with flowing dark hair that framed the image looked down on him with sultry eyes. The poster was a rip-off of the scene depicted in the Chinatown poster on the other wall. But there was something entrancing about it. The woman, of course, was Veronica Aliso, and Bosch knew that was one reason why.

“Nice-looking woman,” Meachum said from behind him.

“His wife.”

“I see that. Second billing. Only I never heard of her.”

Bosch nodded at the poster.

“I think this was her shot.”

“Well, like I said, nice-looking gal. I doubt she looks like that anymore.”

Bosch studied the eyes again and remembered the woman he had seen just an hour ago. The eyes were still as dark and gleaming, a little cross of light at the center of each.