Michael Connelly - The Concrete Blonde

“All right,” he said as the other four convened around the table and surveyed its contents. “What have we got? Number one, are we confident Mora is not our man?”

Rollenberger looked around the room and his eyes stopped on Bosch.

“What do you think, Bosch?”

“You heard my story. He denied it and what was on the last tape before he made me erase it doesn’t fit with the Follower. Looked completely consensual, though the boy and girl with him were obviously underage. He isn’t the Follower.”

“Then what is he?”

“Somebody with problems. I think he got bent by staying too long in vice and started making his own flicks.”

“Was he selling them?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. No evidence of that here. He didn’t go very far in hiding himself in the tape I saw. I think it was just his own stuff. He wasn’t in it for money. It was something deeper.”

No one said anything, so Bosch continued.

“My guess is that he made our tail sometime after we set up on him and began getting rid of the evidence. Tonight he was probably playing around with the tail, trying to figure what we were on him for. He got rid of most of the evidence, but if you put somebody on that phone book, my bet is you’ll put it together. Some of those listings with only a first name. You track them and you’ll probably find some of the kids he used in his videos.”

Sheehan made a move to pick up the phone book.

“Leave it,” Rollenberger said. “If anybody continues this it will be Internal Affairs.”

“How they going to do that?” Bosch asked.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s all fruit of the poison tree. The search, everything. All of it’s illegal. We can’t move against Mora.”

“And we can’t let him carry a badge, either,” Rollenberger said testily. “The man should be in jail.”

The following silence was broken by the sound of Mora’s hoarse but loud voice from upstairs. He had somehow slipped the gag.

“Bosch! Bosch! I wanna deal, Bosch. I’ll give-” he began coughing “-I’ll give him to you, Bosch. You hear me! You hear me!”

Sheehan headed toward the stairs, which began in the alcove outside the dining room. He said, “This time I’ll make it so tight the fuck will strangle.”

“Wait a minute,” Rollenberger ordered.

Sheehan stopped at the archway leading to the alcove.

“What’s he saying?” Rollenberger said. “Who will he give?”

He looked at Bosch, who shrugged his shoulders. They waited, Rollenberger looking up at the ceiling, but Mora was silent.

Bosch stepped over to the table and picked up the phone book. He said, “I think I’ve got an idea.”

The odor of Mora’s sweat filled the room. He sat on the floor, his hands cuffed behind him and to the work-out machine. The towel that had been wrapped around his mouth and taped had slipped down to his neck so that it looked like a cervical collar. The front of it was damp with spittle and Bosch guessed that Mora had loosened it by working his jaw up and down.

“Bosch, unhook me.”

“Not yet.”

Rollenberger stepped forward.

“Detective Mora, you have problems. You’ve-”

“You’ve got problems. You’re the one. All of this is illegal. How you going to explain this? Know what I’m going to do? I’m going to hire that bitch Money Chandler and sue the department for a million dollars. Yeah, I’ll-”

“Can’t spend a million dollars in jail, Ray,” Bosch said.

He held up Mora’s phone book so that the vice cop could see it.

“This gets dropped off at Internal Affairs and they’ll make a case. All those names and numbers, there’s gotta be somebody that would talk about you. Somebody underage probably. Think we’re giving you a hard time? Wait until IAD takes over. They’ll make a case, Ray. And they’ll make it without tonight’s search. That will just be your word against ours.”

Bosch saw a quick movement in Mora’s eyes and he knew he had struck bone. Mora was afraid of the names in the book.

“So,” Bosch said, “what deal did you have in mind, Ray?”

Mora looked away from the book, first to Rollenberger and then to Bosch and then back to Rollenberger.

“You can make a deal?”

“I have to hear it first,” Rollenberger said.

“Okay, this is the deal. I walk and I give you the Follower. I know who it is.”

Bosch was immediately skeptical but said nothing. Rollenberger looked at him and Bosch shook his head once.

“I know,” Mora said. “The Peeping Tom I told you about. That was no bullshit. I got the ID today. It fits. I know who it is.”

Now Bosch took him more seriously. He folded his arms in front of his body, threw a quick glance at Rollenberger.

“Who?” Rollenberger said.

“What’s the deal first?”

Rollenberger stepped to the window and parted the curtains. He was turning it over to Bosch, who took a step forward and squatted like a baseball catcher in front of Mora.

“This is the deal. It is offered only this one time. Take it or let the chips fall where they may. You give the name to me and your badge to Lieutenant Rollenberger. You resign immediately from the department. You agree not to sue the department or any of us individually. In exchange, you walk.”

“How do I know you’ll-”

“You don’t. And how do we know that you’ll keep your end? I hang on to the phone book, Ray. You try to fuck us and it goes to IAD. Do we have a deal?”

Mora stared at him without speaking a long moment. Finally, Bosch got up and turned to the door. Rollenberger headed that way, too, and said, “Unhook him, Bosch. Take him to Parker and book him on assault on a police officer, unlawful sex with a minor, pandering, anything you can think-”

“We gotta deal,” Mora blurted. “But I’ve got no insurance.”

Bosch turned back to look at him.

“That’s right, you don’t. The name?”

Mora looked from Bosch to Rollenberger.

“Unhook me.”

“The name, Mora,” Rollenberger said. “This is it.”

“It’s Locke. The fucking shrink. You assholes, you put the finger on me and the whole time he’s the one pushing the buttons.”

Bosch was jolted but in that same moment he began immediately to see how it could be. Locke knew the Dollmaker’s program, he fit the Follower’s profile.

“He was the Tom?”

“Yeah, it was him. Got’m ID’d by a producer today. He went around saying he was writin’ a book so he could get close to the girls. Then he killed them, Bosch. The whole time he’s been playing doctor with you, Bosch, he’s been out there… killing.”

Rollenberger turned to Bosch and said, “What do you think?”

Bosch left the room without answering. He went down the stairs and trotted out the door to his car. Locke’s book was on the back seat where Bosch had left it the day he bought it. As he headed back into the house with it he noticed that the first etchings of dawn’s light were in the sky.

On Mora’s dining room table, Bosch opened the book and began leafing through it until he came to a page marked Author’s Note. In the second paragraph, Locke wrote, “The material for this book was gathered over the course of three years from interviews with countless adult film performers, many of whom requested that they remain anonymous or be identified only by their stage names. The author wishes to thank them and the film producers who granted him access to the sets and production offices at which these interviews were conducted.”

The mystery man. Bosch realized Mora could be right that Locke was the man whom the video performer Gallery had reported as a suspect when she called the original task force tip number four years earlier. Bosch next flipped to the index of the book and ran his fingers down the names. Velvet Box was listed. So were Holly Lere and Magna Cum Loudly.