David ed. - Face Off (2014) Anthology

You’re in for a real treat.

So let the face-offs begin.

David Baldacci

June 2014

DENNIS LEHANE

VS. MICHAEL CONNELLY

On paper it seemed like a cool idea. Bring Patrick Kenzie and Harry Bosch together in a short story for a good cause. But Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly quickly realized that it was easier said than done. Both characters are rooted in the verisimilitude of the places they live and the jobs they carry out. They’re fictional, sure, but their creators had worked hard to ensure that neither ever made a false move. In short, Harry Bosch and Patrick Kenzie live or die with readers on the basis of their believability. No gimmick short story—good cause or not—could be allowed to mess with that.

So how would these two iconic characters come together?

Most important, who would come to whom?

Would Bosch go east to Kenzie’s Boston, or would Boston come to LA?

It seemed from the start the natural thing would be to send Bosch east. In the most recent Bosch books Harry works for the LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit, a cold case squad that, by its nature, involves travel. When people think they’ve gotten away with murder, part of that getaway is moving away. Since many of Bosch’s investigations have led him out of town, it was decided. Bosch would go to Boston and, while on a case, would cross paths with Kenzie.

Michael started the story in Los Angeles, formulating a crime and a case that Bosch would work several years after it occurred. He would trace a suspect to Boston, travel there to observe, and surreptitiously gather a DNA sample from a discarded coffee cup or a tossed cigarette butt. Once there, he’d cross the radar of Patrick Kenzie, who was working his own investigation, only for different reasons.

Michael wrote the first six pages of the story and a few more containing potential angles of exploration. He e-mailed the package to Dennis, suggesting he add another six pages or so and finish the story. Quick and easy. They’d be done, then back to work on their own stuff in a few days.

Michael waited for a reply.

Then, he waited some more.

A few days turned into a few weeks.

He finally dummied up an e-mail saying he’d had Internet issues and just wanted to see if his start of the story had been received. When Dennis responded it was with a finished tale, adding twenty more pages, evolving the plot from the shorthand to the complex and humorous.

So here it is, the first face-off.

Red Eye

2005

AS A PRACTICE, HARRY BOSCH did his best to Stay out of Tunnels but as he came out of Logan Airport, a tunnel was unavoidable—either the Ted Williams or the Sumner, take your pick. The rental car’s GPS chose the Williams, so Harry drove down and deep under Boston Harbor. The traffic backed up at the bottom and then completely stopped as Bosch realized that the timing of his red-eye flight from LA had landed him in the heart of morning rush hour.

Of course, the tunnel was much bigger and wider and was well lit in comparison to the tunnels of his past and those of his dreams. He was also not alone in his predicament. The passage was wall to wall with cars and trucks—a river of steel under the river of water, only one of them flowing at the moment. But a tunnel is a tunnel and soon the chest-tightening feeling of claustrophobia took hold. Bosch started to sweat and impatiently honked the horn of his rental in impotent protest. This apparently only served to identify him as an outsider. The locals didn’t honk, they did not rail against that which they could not change.

Eventually, traffic started moving and he finally emerged, lowering his window to let in the fresh air. He made a mental note to find a map and then chart a way back to the airport that did not include going through a tunnel. Too bad the car’s GPS didn’t have a NO TUNNELS setting. He would have to find his way back to the airport on his own.

The LAPD’s Open-Unsolved Unit’s travel protocol called for Bosch to check in with the local authorities immediately upon arrival in another city. In this case that would be the District E-13 offices of the Boston Police Department in Jamaica Plain. This was the district that included the address Bosch had for Edward Paisley, the man whose DNA Bosch had come to take—surreptitiously or not.

Bosch, however, often trampled on the official cold case protocol. He usually followed his own protocol, which involved getting the lay of the land first and maybe putting an eye on his quarry—then going in to meet and greet the local constabulary.

Bosch planned to check out Paisley’s address, maybe get a first look at him, and then check into the room at Courtyard by Marriott he had reserved on Expedia. He might even take a short nap after check-in, to make up for the lost sleep on the flight out. In the early afternoon he would go to District E-13 and tell the captain or major in charge that he was in from LA on a fifteen-year-old cold case murder. He would then most likely be paired with a division detective who had fallen from favor with command staff. Squiring around a visiting detective following a lead on a 1990 cold case was not a choice assignment.

TWO NIGHTS BEFORE, AT A bar on warren Street in Roxbury, Dontelle Howe had asked Patrick Kenzie, “You got kids?”

Patrick half nodded, a bit confused on how to answer. “One on the way.”

“When?”

“Any day now.”

Dontelle Howe smiled. He was a trim black man in his early thirties, with close-cropped dreads and clothes so crisp you could smell the starch from two rooms away. “First?”

Patrick nodded.

“Ain’t you a little old?” Dontelle took another dainty sip from the one brandy he allowed himself every weeknight. Weekends, he’d assured Patrick, he could drink his weight in Henney, but weeknights and Sundays he kept his limit at one because every morning he drove a bus full of forty-five children from their homes all over the city to Dearborn Middle School in Roxbury, about two blocks from the bar where he’d agreed to meet Patrick after work.

“A little old?” Patrick checked himself in the bar mirror—a little grayer, okay, a little heavier, fine, a little less on top than he would have hoped, sure, but not bad for forty. Particularly forty years lived as hard as he’d lived his. Either that, or he was bullshitting himself, which was just as likely. “You don’t look like you’ll be auditioning for any boy bands yourself, Dontelle.”

“But I already got two in grade school. Time they’re in college and me and the woman are kicking it somewhere in Florida, I’ll be your age.”

Patrick chuckled and drank some beer.

Dontelle Howe’s voice grew deeper, more somber. “So no one’s looking for her? Still? ”

Patrick made a metza-metza motion with his hand. “Police think it’s a custody thing. Father’s a real piece of shit, and no one can find him. No one can find her, either, so they think it’s a case of one-plus-one equals she’ll turn up.”

“But she’s twelve, man.”

“She” was Chiffon Henderson, a seventh-grader Dontelle Howe picked up every morning from the Bromley-Heath housing projects in Jamaica Plain and dropped off nine hours later in the same spot. Three nights ago, Chiffon had left her bedroom in the back of the unit she shared with two sisters and her mother. The leaving wasn’t in dispute; the question of whether it had been voluntary was. She’d exited through a window. No signs of struggle or forced entry, though her mother had told police that Chiffon often left her window open on a mild night even though she’d been warned a thousand times not to. The police were focusing on Chiffon’s father, Lonnie Cullen, a deadbeat dad four times over to four different households, who hadn’t checked in with his parole officer this past weekend and couldn’t be found at his last known address. There was also some talk that Chiffon may have started seeing a boy who lived in one of the other buildings in the projects, though no one knew his name or much about him.