Майкл Коннелли - Christmas Even [Short story]

The Three Kings Pawnshop on Hollywood Boulevard had been burglarized three times in two years. The criminal methods of each break-in were similar, so the Los Angeles Police Department suspected that the same thief was responsible. But the thief was careful to never leave a fingerprint. No arrests were ever made and no stolen property was recovered. Nikolai Servan, the Russian immigrant who owned the store, was left to wonder about the justice system of his adopted country.

On the day before Christmas of this year, Servan unlocked the rear door of the pawnshop, entered and found that his business had been victimized a fourth time. He also discovered that the burglar was still inside. It was this discovery that ultimately brought Detective Harry Bosch and his partner, Jerry Edgar, to the pawnshop. For the burglar was dead.

When the two homicide detectives arrived they were greeted by Detective Eugene Braxton from the burglary squad. He had investigated the previous burglaries at Three Kings and had gotten there first because Servan had his business card taped to the side of the telephone. When the shop owner came to work that morning and found the dead burglar behind the jewelry case, he didn’t dial 911. He dialed Braxton.

“Deck the halls, Harry,” Braxton said by way of greeting. “We’ve got one less burglar in the world. And that makes my Christmas merry already.”

Bosch nodded and looked at Servan, who was seated on a tall stool on the other side of the counter. He was about 50 with black hair thinning on the top. He had a lot of muscle that was going soft. Braxton made introductions and then Bosch asked that Servan be escorted outside while the death investigation proceeded.

Bosch moved to the area behind the glass jewelry counter. Sprawled on the floor in this close space was the body. He was a white man dressed head-to-toe in black. All except for the right hand — it was not gloved like the left hand was. Bosch crouched like a baseball catcher next to the body and studied it without touching anything. A knit ski mask had been pulled down over the face. Bosch noted that the eyes were open and the lips were pulled back despite the teeth being closed together lightly. He spoke without looking up.

“You know this guy, Brax?”

“I took a look, but I didn’t recognize him,” Braxton said.

Bosch took a pair of latex gloves out of his pocket, blew them up like balloons to make them go on easier and then slipped them on. He tried to roll the body a little to check for wounds and the missing glove. He didn’t find either.

He lifted the bare hand and studied it, trying to figure out why there w as no glove. He noticed a discoloration on the pad of the thumb, a brownish-yellow line. There was a matching line of discoloration on the index finger. Using both hands he placed the thumb and finger together. The two marks matched in alignment.

Bosch carefully placed the hand on the floor and moved down to the feet. He removed the right shoe, a black leather athletic style with black rubber sole, and peeled off the black sock. On the heel of the dead man’s fool was a circular discoloration that was brown at its center, tapering outward in yellow.

“Over here.”

It was Edgar. He was behind another display case on the other side of the shop. Bosch stood up and walked over. Edgar crouched and pointed beneath the case.

“Under the case. I don’t know if it’s a match, but there’s a glove.”

Bosch got down on his hands and knees next to the display case, reached under and pulled out the glove.

“Looks the same,” he said.

“If it does not fit, you must acquit,” said Edgar.

Bosch looked at him.

“Johnnie Cochran,” Edgar said. “You know, the O.J. gloves.”

“Right.”

Bosch stood up and looked into the case. It held two shelves lighted from inside and contained high-end items such as small jade sculptures, gold and silver pillboxes, cigarette cases and other ornate and bejeweled trinkets.

Bosch stepped away from the case and surveyed the shop. Other than the two display cases there was mostly junk, the property of financially desperate people willing to part with almost anything in exchange for cash.

“Brax,” Bosch said, “where’s the entry?”

Braxton signaled him toward the back and led the way. Bosch and Edgar followed. They came to a rear room that was used as an office and for storage. Gravel and other debris were scattered on the floor They all looked up. There was a hole roughly cut in the ceiling. It was two feet wide and there was blue sky above.

“It’s a composite roof,” Braxton said. “No big thing cutting through. A half hour maybe.”

“The roof the entry point in the other three hits?” Bosch asked.

Braxton shook his head.

“He hit the back door the first two times and then the roof. This is the second time through the roof.”

“You think it was the same guy all three times?”

“Wouldn’t doubt it. That’s what they do. Hit the same places over and over. Especially a place like this. A lot of immigrants come here. Russians mostly. They pawn the stuff they brought with them from the homeland. Jade. Gold. Small, expensive stuff. Burglars love that shit, man. That case where you found the glove? It’s all in there. That’s what the guy came in for I don’t know why he ended up behind the jewelry case.”

The three detectives continued to huddle for a moment to discuss their initial impressions, Bosch’s theory on what had happened to the burglar and to set a case strategy. It was decided that Edgar would stay and assist the crime-scene teams. Bosch and Braxton would handle Servan and the next-of-kin notification.

As soon as the medical examiner’s investigator rolled a set of prints off the burglar’s exposed hand, Bosch and Braxton headed back to Hollywood Division along with Nikolai Servan.

Bosch scanned the prints into the computer and sent them downtown to the print lab at Parker Center. He then conducted a formal taped interview with Servan. Though the pawnbroker added nothing new to what he had told them in his shop, it was important for Bosch to lock down his story on tape.

By the time he was done with the interview he had a message waiting from a print technician. The latents were matched by computer to a 39-year-old ex-convict by the name of Montgomery George Kelman, who was on parole for a burglary conviction. It took Bosch three calls to locate Kelman’s parole officer and to obtain the dead man’s current address.

“Saddle up,” Bosch said to Braxton after hanging up.

Kelman’s address was an apartment on Los Feliz near Griffith Park. Bosch’s knock was answered by a young woman in shorts and a long-sleeve turtle-neck. She was thin to the point of being gaunt. A junkie. She abruptly collapsed into the fetal position on the couch when they gave her the bad news about Kelman. While Braxton attempted to console her and gather information from her at the same lime, Bosch took a quick look around the one-bedroom apartment. As he expected, there was no obvious sign that the premises belonged to a burglar. This apartment was the front — the place where the parole agent visited and Kelman kept the semblance of a law-abiding life. Bosch knew that any active burglar with a parole tail would keep a separate and secret place for his tools and swag.

As he turned to leave the bedroom Bosch saw a saxophone propped on a stand in the corner by the door. He recognized from its size that it was a tenor. He stepped over and lifted it into his hands. It looked old but well cared for. It was polished brass, with a buffing cloth pushed down into the mouth. Bosch had never played the saxophone, had never even tried, but the instrument’s sound was the only music that had ever been able to truly light him up inside.