Michael Connelly - Trunk Music

“Okay, thanks.”

“I called your office today to let you know but you weren’t there. I didn’t know you were coming here. We’ll keep an eye out for it.”

“Thanks, Hank. I gotta go.”

Bosch started walking away but Meyer kept talking.

“No problem. Thank you. We look forward to opportunities to cooperate with and hopefully help our law enforcement brethren.”

Meyer smiled broadly. Bosch looked back at him and felt like he had a weight tied to his leg. He couldn’t get away from him. Bosch just nodded and kept going, trying to remember the last time he had heard the phrase law enforcement brethren. He was almost across the lobby when he glanced back and saw that Meyer was still behind him.

“One more thing, Detective Bosch.”

Bosch stopped but lost his patience.

“Hank, what? I’ve got to get out of here.”

“It will just take a second. A favor. I assume your department will go to the press with this arrest. I’d appreciate it if you kept any mention of the Mirage out of it. Even our help, if you don’t mind.”

“No problem. I won’t say a word. Talk to you later, Hank.”

Bosch turned and walked away. It was unlikely the Mirage would have been mentioned in any press release anyway, but he understood the concern. Guilt by association. Meyer was mixing public relations with casino security. Or maybe they were the same thing.

Bosch got to the car just as Edgar came out, carrying his bulletproof vest in his hand. The valet looked at Bosch balefully. Bosch took out a five and handed it to him. It didn’t do much to change his disposition. Then Bosch and Edgar jumped in the car and took off.

The safe house Goshen told Bosch about looked deserted when they drove by. Bosch pulled the car to a stop a half block away.

“I still don’t know about this, Harry,” Edgar said. “We should be calling in Metro.”

“I told you. We can’t. Marks has to have somebody inside Metro. Or else he wouldn’t have known to snatch her in the first place. So we call Metro, he finds out and she’s dead or moved somewhere else before Metro even makes a move. So we go in and we call Metro afterward.”

“If there is an afterward. Just what the hell are we going to do? Go in blasting? This is cowboy shit, Harry.”

“No, all you’re going to do is get behind the wheel, turn the car around and be ready to drive. We might have to leave in a hurry.”

Bosch had hoped to use Edgar as a backup but after he’d told him the situation on the way over, it was clear that Edgar wasn’t going to be solid. Bosch went to plan B, where Edgar was simply a wheel man.

Bosch opened his door and looked back at Edgar before getting out.

“You’re going to be here, right?”

“I’ll be here. Just don’t get killed. I don’t want to have to explain it.”

“Yeah, I’ll do my best. Let me borrow your cuffs and pop the trunk.”

Bosch put Edgar’s cuffs into his coat pocket and went to the trunk. At the trunk, he took out his vest and put it on over his shirt and then put his coat back on to hide his holster. He pulled up the trunk liner and lifted up the spare tire. Below it was a Glock 17 pistol wrapped in an oily rag. Bosch popped the clip on it, checked the top bullet for corrosion and then put the weapon back together. He put it in his belt. If there was going to be any shooting on this mission, he wasn’t going to use his service gun.

He came up alongside the driver’s window, saluted Edgar and headed down the street.

The safe house was a small concrete-block-and-plaster affair that blended in with the neighborhood. After jumping a three-foot fence, Bosch took the gun from his belt and held it at his side as he walked along the side of the house. He saw no light emitted from any of the front or side windows. But he could hear the muffled sound of television. She was here. He could feel it. He knew Goshen had told the truth.

When he got to the rear corner, he saw there was a pool in the backyard as well as a covered porch. There was a concrete slab with a satellite dish anchored to it. The modern Mafia crash pad, Bosch thought. You never knew how long you’d have to hole up, so it was good to have five hundred channels.

The backyard was empty but as Bosch turned the corner he saw a lighted window. He crept down the back of the house until he was close. The blinds were drawn on the window, but by getting close and looking between the cracks he could see them in there. Two huge men he immediately assumed were the Samoans. And Eleanor. The Samoans sat on a couch in front of a television. Eleanor sat on a kitchen chair next to the couch. One wrist and one ankle were handcuffed to the chair. Because the shade of a floor lamp was in the way, he could not see her face. But he recognized her clothes as those she had worn on the day they had dragged her into Metro. The three of them were sitting there watching a rerun of a Mary Tyler Moore show. Bosch felt the anger building in his throat.

Bosch crouched down and tried to think of a way to get her out of there. He leaned his back against the wall and looked across the yard and the shimmering pool. He got an idea.

After taking one more glimpse through the blinds and seeing that no one had moved, Bosch went back to the corner of the house to the slab where the satellite dish sat. He put his gun back in his belt, studied the equipment for a few moments and then simply used two hands to turn the dish out of alignment and point its focus toward the ground.

It took about five minutes. Bosch figured most of this must have been spent with one or the other of the Samoans fiddling with the TV and trying to get the picture back. Finally, an outdoor floodlight came on, the back door opened and one of them stepped out onto the porch. He wore a Hawaiian shirt as big as a tent and had long dark hair that flowed over his shoulders.

When the big man got to the dish, he clearly wasn’t sure how to proceed. He looked at it for a long moment, then came around to the other side to see if this afforded him a better angle. He now had his back to Bosch.

Bosch stepped away from the corner of the house and came up behind the man. He placed the muzzle of the Glock against the small of the man’s back, though even the small of his back wasn’t small.

“Don’t move, big man,” he said in a low, calm voice. “Don’t say a word, ’less you want to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair with your piss sloshing around in a bag.”

Bosch waited. The man did not move and said nothing.

“Which are you, Tom or Jerry?”

“I’m Jerry.”

“Okay, Jerry, we’re going to walk over to the porch. Let’s go.”

They moved to one of two steel support beams that held up the porch roof. Bosch kept the gun pressed against the man’s shirt the whole time. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out Edgar’s cuffs. He handed them around the girth of the man and held them up.

“Okay, take ’em. Cuff yourself around the beam.”

He waited until he heard both cuffs click, then came around and checked them, clicking them tightly around the man’s thick wrists.

“Okay, that’s good, Jerry. Now, do you want me to kill your brother? I mean I could just walk in there and waste him and get the girl. That’s the easy way. You want me to do it that way?”

“No.”

“Then do exactly what I tell you. If you fuck up, he dies. Then you die ’cause I can’t afford to leave a witness. Got it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, without saying his name, because I don’t trust you, just call to him and ask if the picture’s back on the TV. When he says no, tell him to come out here and help. Tell him she’ll be fine, she’s handcuffed. Do it right, Jerry, and everybody lives. Do it wrong and some people aren’t going to make it.”