The Harry Bosch Novels Vol Ii Part 55

"You ever done this before?"

"No. But I grew up in South L.A. A lot of drive-bys. I was around when people got the news."

Bosch nodded.

"Not to belittle that experience, but this is different. What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe."

Bosch pushed the lighted b.u.t.ton again. He could hear the bell sound from inside the house. He looked at Rider and could tell she was about to ask a question, when the door was opened by a woman.

"Mrs. Aliso?" Bosch asked.

"Yes?"

"Mrs. Aliso, I'm Detective Harry Bosch with the LAPD. This is my partner, Detective Kizmin Rider. We need to speak with you concerning your husband."

He held out his badge wallet and she took it from his hand. Usually, they didn't do that. Usually, they recoiled from it or looked at it like it was some strange and fascinating object not to be touched.

"I don't under-"

She stopped when the sound of a phone ringing began somewhere behind her in the big house.

"Would you excuse me a moment. I have to-"

"That's probably Nash at the gate. He said he had to call ahead, but there was a lineup of cars behind us. I guess we beat him here. We need to come in to talk to you, ma'am."

She stepped back in and opened the door wide for him. She looked about five to ten years younger than her husband had been. She was maybe forty, attractive, with dark straight hair and a trim build. She wore a lot of makeup on a face Bosch guessed had been sculpted at times by the surgeon's knife. Still, through the makeup she looked tired, worn. He could see her face was flushed pink, as though she might have been drinking. She wore a light blue dress that showed off her legs. They were tan and the muscles still taut. Bosch could see she had been considered very beautiful at one time but was sliding into that stage when a woman believes her beauty may be leaving- even if it isn't. Maybe that was why she had all the makeup on, Bosch guessed. Or maybe it was because she was still expecting her husband to show up.

Bosch closed the door after they entered and they followed the woman into a large living room with an incongruous mix of modern prints on the walls and French antiques on the thick white carpet. The phone was still ringing. She told Bosch and Rider to sit down and then walked through the living room into another hallway, which she crossed to what looked like a den. He heard her answer the phone, tell Nash that the delay was all right and hang up.

She came back into the living room then and sat on a couch with a muted flower print. Bosch and Rider took nearby chairs with a matching pattern. Bosch took a quick look around and saw no photographs in frames. Only the artwork. It was always one of the first things he looked for when he had to quickly judge a relations.h.i.+p.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't get your name."

"Veronica Aliso. What about my husband, Detective? Is he hurt?"

Bosch leaned forward in his chair. No matter how many times he did this, he never got used to it and he was never sure he was doing it the right way.

"Mrs. Aliso ... I am very sorry, but your husband is dead. He was the victim of a homicide. I am sorry to have to tell you this."

He watched her closely and she said nothing at first. She instinctively crossed her arms in front of her and brought her face down in a pained grimace. There were no tears. Not yet. In his experience, Bosch had seen them come either right away- as soon as they opened the door and saw him and knew- or much later, when it sank in that the nightmare was reality.

"I don't ... How did this happen?" she asked, her eyes staring down at the floor.

"He was found in his car. He'd been shot."

"In Las Vegas?"

"No. Here. Not far. It looks like he was coming home from the airport when ... when he was somehow stopped by somebody. We're not sure yet. His car was found off Mulholland Drive. Down by the Bowl."

He watched her a little more. She still had not looked up. Bosch felt a sense of guilt pa.s.s over him. Guilt because he was not watching this woman with sympathy. He had been in this place too many times for that. Instead, he watched her with an eye for false mannerisms. In these situations his suspicion outweighed his compa.s.sion. It had to.

"Can I get you anything, Mrs. Aliso?" Rider asked. "Water? Do you have coffee? Do you want something stronger?"

"No. I'm fine. Thank you. It's just a terrible shock."

"Do you have any children in the house?" Rider asked.

"No, we ... no children. Do you know what happened? Was he robbed?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Bosch said.

"Of course... . Can you tell me, was there much pain?"

"No, there was no pain," Bosch said.

He thought of the tears welled in Tony Aliso's eyes. He decided not to tell her about that.

"It must be hard, your job," she said. "Telling people this sort of thing."

He nodded and looked away. For a moment he thought of the old squad room joke about the easiest way to do next-of-kin notification. When Mrs. Brown opens the door, you say, "Are you the widow Brown?"

He looked back at the widow Aliso.

"Why did you ask if it happened in Las Vegas?"

"Because that was where he was."

"How long was he supposed to be there?"

"I don't know. He never scheduled it with a return. He always bought open-ended tickets so he could come back when he wanted to. He always said he'd be back when his luck changed. For the worse."

"We have reason to believe he came back to Los Angeles on Friday night. His car wasn't found until this evening. That's two days, Mrs. Aliso. Did you try to call him in Las Vegas during that time?"

"No. We usually didn't speak when he was over there."

"And how often was it that he went?"

"Once or twice a month."

"For how long each time?"

"Anywhere from two days to once he spent a week. Like I said, it all depended on how he was doing."

"And you never called him there?" Rider asked.

"Rarely. Not at all this time."

"Was it business or pleasure that took him there?" Bosch asked.

"He always told me it was both. He said he had investors to see. But it was an addiction. That's what I believed. He loved to gamble and could afford to do it. So he went."

Bosch nodded but didn't know why.

"This last time, when did he go?"

"He went Thursday. After leaving the studio."

"You saw him last then?"

"Thursday morning. Before he went to the studio. He left for the airport from there. It's closer."

"And you had no idea when to expect him back."

He said it as a statement. It was out there for her to challenge if she wanted to.

"To be honest, I was just beginning to wonder tonight. It usually doesn't take long for that place to separate a man from his money. I thought it was a little long, yes. But I didn't try to track him down. And then you came."

"What did he like to play over there?"

"Everything. But poker the most. It was the only game where you weren't playing against the house. The house took a cut, but you were playing against the other players. That's how he explained it to me once. Only he called the other players schmucks from Iowa."

"Was he always alone over there, Mrs. Aliso?"

Bosch looked down at his notebook and acted as if he was writing something important and that her answer wasn't. He knew it was cowardly.

"I wouldn't know."

"Did you ever go with him at all?"

"I don't like to gamble. I don't like that city. That city is a horrible place. They can dress it up all they want, it's still a city of vices and wh.o.r.es. Not just the s.e.xual kind."

Bosch studied the cool anger in her dark eyes.

"You didn't answer the question, Mrs. Aliso," Rider said.

"What question?"

"Did you ever go to Las Vegas with him?"

"At first, yes. But I found it boring. I haven't been in years."

"Was your husband in any kind of serious debt?" Bosch asked.

"I don't know. If he was, he didn't tell me. You can call me Veronica."

"You never asked if he was getting into trouble?" Rider asked.

"I just a.s.sumed that he would tell me if he was."

She turned the hard dark eyes on Rider now, and Bosch felt a weight lift off him. Veronica Aliso was challenging them to disagree.

"I know this probably makes me some kind of a suspect, but I don't care," she said. "You have your job to do. It must be obvious to you that my husband and I ... let's just say we coexisted here. So as to your questions about Nevada, I couldn't tell you whether he was a million up or a million down. Who knows, he could've beaten the odds. But I think he would have bragged about it if he had."

Bosch nodded and thought about the body in the trunk. It didn't seem like that of a man who had beaten any odds.

"Where did he stay in Las Vegas, Mrs. Aliso?"

"Always at the Mirage. I do know that. You see, not all of the casinos have poker tables. The Mirage has a cla.s.sy one. He always said that if I needed to call, call there. Ask for the poker pit if there was no answer in the room."

Bosch took a few moments to write this down. He found that often silence was the best way to get people to talk and reveal themselves. He hoped Rider realized that he was leaving holes of silence in the interview on purpose.

"You asked if he went there alone."

"Yes?"

"Detectives, in the course of your investigation I believe you will undoubtedly learn that my husband was a philanderer. I ask only one thing of you, please do your best to keep that information from me. I simply don't want to know."

Bosch nodded and was silent a moment while he composed his thoughts. What kind of woman wouldn't want to know, he wondered. Maybe one who already did. He looked back at her and their eyes connected again.

"Aside from gambling, was your husband in any other kind of trouble as far as you know?" he asked. "Work-related, financial?"

"As far as I know he wasn't. But he kept the finances. I could not tell you what our situation is at the moment. When I needed money I asked him, and he always said cash a check and tell him the amount. I have a separate account for household expenses."

Without looking up from the notebook, Bosch said, "Just a few more and we'll leave you alone for now. Did your husband have any enemies that you know of? Anybody who would want to harm him?"

"He worked in Hollywood. Back stabbing is considered an art form there. Anthony was as skilled at it as anyone else who has been in the industry twenty-five years. Obviously that means there could always be people who were unhappy with him. But who would do this, I don't know."

"The car ... the Rolls-Royce is leased to a production company over at Archway Studios. How long had he worked there?"

"His office was there, but he didn't work for Archway per se. TNA Productions is his ... was his own company. He simply rented an office and a parking spot on the Archway lot. But he had about as much to do with Archway as you do."

"Tell us about his production company," Rider said. "Did he make films?"

"In a manner of speaking. You could say he started big and ended small. About twenty years ago he produced his first film. The Art of the Cape. The Art of the Cape. If you saw it, you were one of the few. Bullfight movies are not popular. But it was critically acclaimed, played the film festival circuit and then the art houses and it was a good start for him." If you saw it, you were one of the few. Bullfight movies are not popular. But it was critically acclaimed, played the film festival circuit and then the art houses and it was a good start for him."

She said that Aliso had managed to make a couple more films for general release. But after that his production and moral values steadily declined, until he was producing a procession of exploitative dreck.

"These films, if you want to call them that, are notable only for the number of exposed b.r.e.a.s.t.s in them," she said. "In the business, it's called straight-to-video stock. In addition to that Tony was quite successful in literary arbitrage."

"What is that?"

"He was a speculator. Mostly scripts, but he did ma.n.u.scripts, books on occasion."

"And how would he speculate on them?"

"He'd buy them. Wrap up the rights. Then when they became valuable or the author became hot, he'd go to market with them. Do you know who Michael St. John is?"

The name sounded familiar but Bosch could not place it. He shook his head. Rider did the same.