Michael Connelly - Trunk Music

Bosch nodded.

“Were you watching Tony last Friday night?” Bosch asked.

“No. That was just coincidence that we ended up at the same table. It was because he was waiting to go to the high-stakes table. I actually hadn’t done anything for them in a month or so, other than pay the weekly tax, until…Terry…”

Her voice trailed off. They were finally at the point of no return.

“Until Terry what, Eleanor?”

She looked toward the fading horizon. The lights across the Valley were coming on and the sky was pink neon mixed with gray paint. Bosch kept his eyes on her. She spoke while still watching the end of the day.

“Quillen came to my apartment after you took me home from Metro. He took me to the house where you found me. They wouldn’t tell me why and they told me not to leave. They said nobody would get hurt if I just did what I was told. I sat around that place for two days. They only put the handcuffs on me that last night. It was like they knew you’d be coming then.”

She let a beat of silence follow. It was there if Bosch wanted to use it but he didn’t say a word.

“I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that the whole thing was something less than an abduction.”

She looked back down at her hands now.

“And that’s obviously why you didn’t want us to call out Metro,” Bosch said quietly.

She nodded.

“I don’t know why I didn’t tell you everything before. I’m really sorry, Harry. I…”

Now Bosch felt his own words sticking in his throat. Her story was understandable and believable. He even felt for her and understood that she was in her own bottomless pit. He saw how she had believed she had no choices. What he couldn’t see, and what hurt him, was why she couldn’t tell him everything from the start.

“Why couldn’t you tell me, Eleanor?” he managed to get out. “I mean right away. Why didn’t you tell me that night?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wanted…I guess I hoped it would just go away and you would never have to know.”

“Then why are you telling me now?”

She looked right at him.

“Because I hated not telling you everything…and because while I was there at that house I heard something that you need to know now.”

Bosch closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Harry. Very sorry.”

He nodded. He was, too. He washed his hands over his face. He didn’t want to hear this but knew he had to. His mind raced, jumping between feelings of betrayal and confusion and sympathy. One moment his thoughts were of Eleanor and the next they were on the case. They knew. Someone had told Joey Marks about Eleanor and him. He thought of Felton and Iverson, then Baxter and every cop he had seen at Metro. Someone had fed Marks the information and they used Eleanor as bait for him. But why? Why the whole charade? He opened his eyes and looked at Eleanor with a blank stare.

“What was it that you heard and that I need to know?”

“It was the first night. I was kept in that back room, where the TV was, where you came and got me. I was kept in there and the Samoans were there, in and out. But from time to time there were people in other parts of the house. I heard them talking.”

“Gussie and Quillen?”

“No, Quillen left. I know his voice and it wasn’t him. And I don’t think it was Gussie. I think it was Joey Marks and someone else, probably the lawyer, Torrino. Whoever it was, I heard the one man call the other Joe at one point. That’s how come I think it was Marks.”

“Okay. Go on, what did they say?”

“I couldn’t hear all of it. But one man was telling the other, the one he called Joe, what he had learned about the police investigation. About the Metro side of things, I think. And I heard the one called Joe get very angry when he was told the gun had been found at Luke Goshen’s house. And I remember his words. Very clearly. He was yelling. He said, ‘How the hell did they find the gun there when we didn’t do the goddamned hit?’ And then he said some more things about the cops planting the gun and he said, ‘You tell our guy that if this is some kind of shakedown, then he can fuck off, he can forget it.’ I didn’t hear much after that. They lowered their voices and the first guy was just trying to calm the other guy down.”

Bosch stared at her for a few moments, trying to analyze what she had overheard.

“Do you think it was a show?” he asked. “You know, put on for your benefit because they figured you’d turn around and tell me what you heard?”

“I did at first, and that’s another reason I didn’t tell you this right away,” she said. “But now I’m not so sure. When they first took me, when Quillen was driving me out there and I was asking a lot of questions, he wouldn’t answer them. But he did say one thing. All he would tell me was that they needed me for a day or two to run a test on somebody. He would explain no further. A test, that’s all he said.”

“A test?”

Bosch looked confused.

“Listen to me, Harry. I’ve done nothing but think about this since you got me out of there.”

She held up a finger.

“Let’s start with what I overheard. Let’s say it was Joey Marks and his lawyer, and let’s say it wasn’t a show but what they said was true. They didn’t put the hit on Tony Aliso, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Look at it from their perspective. They had nothing to do with this, but one of their in-close guys gets picked up for it. And from what they hear from their source in Metro, it’s looking like a slam-bang case. I mean, the cops have fingerprints and the murder weapon found right there in Goshen’s bathroom. Joey Marks has to be thinking either it’s all been planted by the cops or maybe Goshen went and did this on his own for some unknown reason. Either way, what do you think his immediate concern would be?”

“Damage control.”

“Right. He has to figure out what is going on with Goshen and what’s the damage. But he can’t because Goshen has gone and gotten himself his own attorney. Torrino has no access to him. So what Joey does instead is he and Torrino set up a test to see if the reason Goshen’s gotten his own attorney is because he’s going to talk.”

“Make a deal.”

“Right. Now, let’s say that from their source in Metro they know that the lead cop on the case has a relationship with someone they know of and have their hooks in. Me.”

“So they just take you to the safe house and wait. Because they know that if I find out where the safe house is and show up to get you, or if I call up Metro and say I know where you are, then they know Goshen is the only one who could have told me. It means he’s talking. That was the test Quillen was talking about. If I don’t show, they’re cool. It means Goshen is standing up. If I do show up, then they know they’ve got to get to Goshen in Metro right quick and put a hit on him.”

“Right, before he can talk. That’s how I figured it, too.”

“So that would mean that Aliso wasn’t really a hit-at least by Marks and his people-and that they had no idea Goshen was an agent.”

She nodded. Bosch felt the surge of energy that comes with making a huge step through the murky darkness of an investigation.

“There was no trunk music,” he said.

“What?”

“The whole Las Vegas angle, Joey Marks, all of that, it was all a diversion. We went completely down the wrong path. It had to be engineered by someone very close to Tony. Close enough to know what he was doing, to know about the money washing, and to know how to make his killing look mob connected. To pin it on Goshen.”

She nodded.

“And that’s why I had to tell you everything. Even if it meant we…”

Bosch looked at her. She didn’t finish the line and neither did he.