Michael Connelly - Trunk Music

“Oh, and one other thing we found.” Bosch reached down and brought the box up. “This was in the attic with the Christmas stuff.”

He dumped the contents of the box on the table and the stacks of cash tumbled every which way, some falling to the floor. Bosch shook the box to make sure it had all come out and then dropped it to the floor. He looked at Powers. His eyes were wild, darting over the thick bundles. Bosch knew he had him. And he also knew in his gut that he had Veronica Aliso to thank for that.

“Now, personally, I don’t think you are this stupid,” Bosch said quietly. “You know, to keep the pictures and all this cash right in your house. Of course, I’ve seen crazier things in my time. But if I was betting, I’d bet that you didn’t know all of this was there because you didn’t put it there. But, hey, either way it works fine for me. We’ve got you and we’ll clear this one, that’s all I care about. It would be nice to grab her, too, but that’s okay. We’ll need her for you. With the photos and her story and all the other stuff we’ve talked about here, I think we got you for the murder easy. There’s also lying-in-wait to tack on. That makes it a special circumstances case, Powers. You’re looking at one of two things. The needle or LWP.”

He pronounced the last acronym el-wop, knowing that any cop, just as any criminal in the system, would know it meant life without parole.

“Anyway,” Bosch continued, “I guess I’ll go get that phone brought in here so you can call your lawyer. Better make it a good one. And none of those grandstanders from the O.J. case. You need to get yourself a lawyer who does his best work outside of the courtroom. A negotiator.”

He stood up and turned to the door. With his hand on the knob he looked back at Powers.

“You know, I feel bad, Powers. You being a cop and all, I was sort of hoping you’d catch the break instead of her. I feel like we’re hitting the wrong person with the hammer. But I guess that’s life in the big city. Somebody’s got to be hit with it.”

He turned back to the door and opened it.

“Bitch!” Powers said with a quiet forcefulness.

Then he whispered something under his breath that Bosch couldn’t hear. Bosch looked back at him. He knew enough not to say a word.

“It was her idea,” Powers said. “All of it. She conned me and now she’s conning you.”

Bosch waited a beat but there was nothing else.

“Are you saying you want to talk to me?”

“Yeah, Bosch, have a seat. Maybe we can work something out.”

At nine Bosch sat in the lieutenant’s office, Billets behind the desk, bringing her up to date. He had an empty Styrofoam cup in his hand, but he didn’t drop it in the trash can because he needed something to remind him that he needed more coffee. He was beat tired and the lines beneath his eyes were so pronounced they almost hurt. His mouth tasted sour from all the coffee and cigarettes. He’d eaten nothing but candy bars in the last twenty hours and his stomach was finally protesting. But he was a happy man. He had won the last round with Powers and in this kind of battle the last round was the only one that mattered.

“So,” Billets said, “he told you everything?”

“His version of it,” Bosch said. “He lays everything on her and that’s to be expected. Remember, he thinks she’s in the other room laying everything on him. So he’s making her out to be the big bad black widow, like he never had an impure thought in his life until he ran across her.”

He brought the cup up to his mouth but then realized it was empty.

“But once we get her in here and she knows he’s talking, we’ll probably get her version,” he said.

“When did Jerry and Kiz leave?”

Bosch looked at his watch.

“About forty minutes ago. They should be back with her any time.”

“Why didn’t you go up to get her?”

“I don’t know. I figured I took Powers, they should have her. Spread it around, you know?”

“Better be careful. You keep acting like that and you’ll lose your rep as a hardass.”

Bosch smiled and looked down into his cup.

“So what’s the gist of his story?” Billets asked.

“The gist is pretty much how we figured it. He went up there to take a burglary report that day and it went from there. He says she put the moves on him and next thing you know they had a thing going. He started taking more and more patrol swings through the neighborhood and she was stopping by his bungalow in the mornings after Tony went to work or while he was in Vegas. The way he describes it, she was reeling him in. The sex was good and exotic. He was hooked up pretty good.”

“Then she asked him to tail Tony.”

“Right. That first trip Powers took to Vegas was a straight job. She asked him to tail Tony. He did and he came back with a bunch of photos of Tony and the girl and a lot of questions about who Tony was meeting with over there and why. He wasn’t stupid. He could tell Tony was into something. He says Veronica filled him in, knew every detail, knew all the OC guys by name. She also told him how much money was involved. That was when the plan came together. She told Powers that Tony had to go, that it would be just them afterward, them and a lot of money. She told him Tony had been skimming. Skimming off the skim. For years. There was at least a couple million in the pot plus whatever they took off Tony when they put him down.”

Bosch stood up and continued the story while pacing in front of her desk. He was too tired to sit for very long without being overcome with fatigue.

“Anyway, that was what the second trip was for. Powers went over and watched Tony one more time. It was research. He also tailed the guy Tony made the pickups from. Luke Goshen, who he obviously had no idea was an agent. They decided Goshen would be the patsy and worked out the plan to make it look like a mob hit. Trunk music.”

“It’s pretty complicated.”

“Yeah, that it is. He says the planning was all hers, and I kind of think he might be telling the truth there. You ask me, Powers is smart but not that smart. This whole thing was Veronica’s plan and he became a willing player. Only she had a backdoor built into it that Powers didn’t know about.”

“He was the backdoor.”

“Yeah. She set him up to take the fall, but only if we got too close. He said he’d given her a key to his place. It’s a bungalow over on Sierra Bonita. She must’ve gone over there sometime this week, shoved the photos under the mattress and stuck the box of money in the attic. Smart woman. Nice setup. When Jerry and Kiz get her in here, I know just what she’ll say. She’s going to say it was all him, that he became infatuated with her, that they had an affair and that she broke it off. He went ahead and knocked off her husband. When she realized what had happened, she couldn’t say anything. He forced her to go along with it. She had no choice. He was a cop and he told her he could pin it all on her if she didn’t go along.”

“It’s a good story. In fact, it still might work with a jury. She could walk on this.”

“Maybe. We still have some things to do.”

“What about the skim?”

“Good question. Nothing like the kind of money he’s talking about showed up on Aliso’s bank accounts. Powers said she said it was in a safe deposit box but she never told him where. It’s got to be somewhere. We’ll find it.”

“If it exists.”

“I think it does. She planted a half million in Powers’s place to put him in the frame. That’s a lot of money to spend on setting him up, unless you happen to have a couple million more stashed someplace. That’s what we-”

Bosch looked through the glass into the squad room. Edgar and Rider were walking toward the lieutenant’s office. Veronica Aliso was not with them. They came into the office with urgent looks on their faces and Bosch knew what they were going to say.