The Last Coyote Part 23

"Nah, I don't need to hold it."

Bosch stepped closer and ran his finger along the slick skin of the fish. He could almost see himself in the reflection of its scales. He nodded to McKittrick and the fish was thrown back into the water. For several seconds it remained motionless, about two feet below the surface. Post-traumatic stress syndrome, Bosch thought. Finally, the fish seemed to come out of it and darted down into the depths. Bosch put the hook through one of the eyelets on his pole and put the pole back in its pipe. He was done fis.h.i.+ng. He got another beer out of the cooler.

"Hey, you want a sandwich, go ahead," McKittrick said.

"No. I'm fine."

Bosch wished the fish hadn't interrupted them.

"You were saying that you guys got the call from Conklin."

"Yeah, Arno. Only I had it wrong. The request for a meeting was only for Claude. Not me. Eno went alone."

"Why only Eno?"

"I never knew and he acted like he didn't know, either. I just a.s.sumed it was because he and Arno had a prior relations.h.i.+p of some kind."

"But you don't know what."

"No. Claude Eno was about ten years older than me. He'd been around."

"So what happened?"

"Well, I can't tell you what happened. I can only tell you what my partner said happened. Understand?"

He was telling Bosch that he didn't trust his own partner. Bosch had known that feeling himself at times and nodded that he understood.

"Go ahead."

"He came back from the meeting saying Conklin asked him to lay off Fox because Fox was clear on this case and Fox was working as an informant on one of the commando investigations. He said Fox was important to him and he didn't want him compromised or roughed up, especially over a crime he didn't commit."

"How was Conklin so sure?"

"I don't know. But Eno told me that he told Conklin that a.s.sistant DA's, no matter who they are, didn't decide whether someone was clear or not for the police, and that we weren't backing off until we talked to Fox for ourselves. Faced with that, Conklin said he could deliver Fox to be interviewed and fingerprinted. But only if we did it on Conklin's turf."

"Which was...?"

"His office in the old courthouse. That's gone now. They built that big square thing right before I left. Horrible-looking thing."

"What happened in the office? Were you there for that?"

"Yeah, I was there but nothing happened. We interviewed him. Fox was there with Conklin, so was the n.a.z.i."

"The n.a.z.i?"

"Conklin's enforcer, Gordon Mittel."

"He was there?"

"Yup. I guess he was sort of watching out for Conklin while Conklin was watching out for Fox."

Bosch showed no surprise.

"Okay, so what did Fox tell you?"

"Like I said, not much. At least, that's how I remember it. He gave us an alibi and the names of the people who could verify it. I took his prints."

"What'd he say about the victim?"

"He said pretty much what we'd already heard from her girlfriend."

"Meredith Roman?"

"Yeah, I think that's it. He said she went to a party, was hired as kind of a decoration to be on some guy's arm. He said it was in Hanc.o.c.k Park. He didn't have the address. He said he had nothing to do with setting it up. That didn't make sense to us. You know, a pimp not knowing where...not knowing where one of his girls was. It was the one thing we had and when we started leaning on him about it, Conklin stepped in like a referee."

"He didn't want you leaning on him."

"Craziest thing I ever saw. Here was the next DA-everybody knew he was going to run. Here he was taking this b.a.s.t.a.r.d's side against us...Sorry about that b.a.s.t.a.r.d comment."

"Forget it."

"Conklin was trying to make it seem like we were out of line, while all the time this big-piece-of-s.h.i.+t Fox was sitting there smiling with a toothpick in the side of his mouth. It's what, thirty-somethin' years ago and I can still remember that toothpick. Galled the Jesus out of me. So to make a long story short, we never did get to brace him on having set up the date she went on."

The boat rocked on a high wake and Bosch looked around and didn't see any other boat. It was weird. He looked out across the water and for the first time realized how different it was from the Pacific. The Pacific was a cold and forbidding blue, the Gulf a warm green that invited you.

"We left," McKittrick continued. "I figured we'd have another shot at him. So we left and started to work on his alibi. It turned out to be good. And I don't mean it was good because his own witnesses said it was. We did the work. We found some independent people. People that didn't know him. As I remember it, it was rock solid."

"You remember where he was?"

"Spent part of the night in a bar over there on Ivar, place a lot of the pimps hung around. Can't remember the name of it. Then later he drove out to Ventura, spent most of the rest of the night in a card room until he got a phone call, then he split. The other thing about this was that it didn't smack of an alibi set up for this particular night. This was his routine. He was well known in all of these places."

"What was the phone call?"

"We never knew. We didn't know about it until we started checking his alibi and somebody mentioned it. We never got to ask Fox about it. But to be honest, we didn't care too much at that point. Like I said, his alibi was solid and he didn't get the call until later in the morning. Four, five o'clock. The vic-your mother had been dead a good long while by then. TOD was midnight. The call didn't matter."

Bosch nodded but it was the kind of detail he would not have left open if it had been his investigation. It was too curious a detail. Who calls a poker room that early in the morning? What kind of call would make Fox up and leave the game?

"What about the prints?"

"I had 'em checked anyway and they didn't match those on the belt. He was clean. The dirtbag was clear."

Bosch thought of something.

"You did check the prints on the belt against the victim's, right?"

"Hey, Bosch, I know you highfalutin' guys think you're the cat's a.s.s now but we were known for having a brain or two back in those days."

"Sorry."

"There were a few prints on the buckle that were the victim's. That's it. The rest were definitely the killer's because of their location. We got good direct lifts and partials on two other spots where it was clear the belt had been grasped by the full hand. You don't hold a belt that way when you're putting it on. You hold it that way when you're putting it around someone's neck."

They were both silent after that. Bosch couldn't figure out what McKittrick was telling him. He felt deflated. He had thought that if he got McKittrick to open up, the old cop would point the finger at Fox or Conklin or somebody. But he was doing none of that. He really wasn't giving Bosch anything.

"How come you remember so many details, Jake? It's been a long time."

"I've had a long time to think about it. When you finish up, Bosch, you'll see, there'll always be one. One case that stays with you. This is the one that stayed with me."

"So what was your final take on it?"

"My final take? Well, I never got over that meeting at Conklin's office. I guess you had to be there but it just...it just seemed that the one that was in charge of that meeting was Fox. It was like he was calling the shots."

Bosch nodded. He could see that McKittrick was struggling for an explanation of his feelings.

"You ever interview a suspect with his lawyer there jumpin' in and out of the conversation?" McKittrick asked. "You know, 'Don't answer this, don't answer that.' s.h.i.+t like that."

"All the time."

"Well, it was like that. It was like Conklin, the next DA for Chrissake, was this s.h.i.+theel's lawyer, objecting all the time to our questions. What it came down to was that if you didn't know who he was or where we were, you'd've sworn he was working for Fox. Both of them, Mittel, too. So, I felt pretty sure Fox had his hooks into Arno. Somehow he did. And I was right. It was all confirmed later."

"You mean when Fox died?"

"Yeah. He got killed in a hit and run while working for the Conklin campaign. I remember the newspaper story on it didn't say nothin' about his background as a pimp, as a Hollywood Boulevard hoodlum. No, he was just this guy who got run down. Joe Innocent. I tell ya, that story must've cost Arno a few dollars and made a reporter a little richer."

Bosch could tell there was more so he said nothing.

"I was in Wils.h.i.+re d.i.c.ks by then," McKittrick continued. "But I got curious when I heard about it. So I called over to Hollywood to see who was on it. It was Eno. Big surprise. And he never made a case on anybody. So that about confirmed what I was thinking about him, too."

McKittrick stared off across the water to where the sun was getting low in the sky. He threw his empty beer can at the bucket. It missed and bounced over the side into the water.

"f.u.c.k it," he said. "I guess we should head in."

He started reeling in his line.

"What do you think Eno got out of all of this?"

"I don't know exactly. He might've just been trading favors, something like that. I'm not saying he got rich, but I think he got something out of the deal. He wouldn't do it for nothing. I just don't know what it was."

McKittrick started taking the rods out of the pipes and stowing them on hooks along the sides of the stern.

"In 1972 you checked the murder book out of archives, how come?"

McKittrick looked at him curiously.

"I signed the same checkout slip a few days ago," Bosch explained. "Your name was still on it."

McKittrick nodded.

"Yeah, that was right after I put in my papers. I was leaving, going through my files and stuff. I'd hung on to the prints we took off the belt. Kept the card. Also hung on to the belt."

"Why?"

"You know why. I didn't think it would be safe in that file or in the evidence room. Not with Conklin as DA, not with Eno doing him favors. So I kept the stuff. Then a bunch of years went by and it was there when I was cleaning s.h.i.+t out and going to Florida. So right before I decided to punch out, I put the print card back in the murder book and went down and put the belt back in the evidence box. Eno was already in Vegas, retired. Conklin had crashed and burned, was out of politics. The case was long forgotten. I put the stuff back. I guess maybe I hoped someday somebody like you would take a look at it."

"What about you? Did you look at the book when you put the card back?"

"Yeah, and I saw I had done the right thing. Somebody had gone through it, stripped it. They pulled the Fox interview out of it. Probably was Eno."

"As the second man on the case you had to do the paper, right?"

"Right. The paperwork was mine. Most of it."

"What did you put on the Fox interview summary that would have made Eno need to pull it?"

"I don't remember anything specific, just that I thought the guy was lying and that Conklin was out of line. Something like that."

"Anything else you remember that was missing?"

"Nah, nothing important, just that. I think he just wanted to get Conklin's name out of it."

"Yeah, well, he missed something. You'd noted his first call on the Chronological Record. That's how I knew."

"Did I? Well, good for me. And here you are."

"Yeah."

"All right, we're heading in. Too bad they weren't really biting today."

"I'm not complaining. I got my fish."

McKittrick stepped behind the wheel and was about to start the engine when he thought of something.

"Oh, you know what?" He moved to the cooler and opened it. "I don't want Mary to be disappointed."

He pulled out the plastic bags that contained the sandwiches his wife had made.

"You hungry?"

"Not really."

"Me neither."

He opened the bags and dumped the sandwiches over the side. Bosch watched him.

"Jake, when you pulled out that gun, who'd you think I was?"

McKittrick didn't say anything as he neatly folded the plastic bags and put them back in the cooler. When he straightened up, he looked at Bosch.

"I didn't know. All I knew was that I thought I might have to take you out here and dump you like those sandwiches. Seems like I've been hiding out here all my life, waiting for them to send somebody."