The Harry Bosch Novels Vol I Part 18

Their names were Art Franklin and Gene Delgado. They both had Los Angeles addresses. In Vietnam, they spent their tours in Saigon a.s.signed to separate MP units. Not the emba.s.sy unit that Meadows was attached to. But, still, they were in the city. Both of them had been discharged in 1973. But as with Meadows, they stayed on in Vietnam as civilian military advisers. They were there until the end, April 1975. There was no question in Bosch's mind. All three men - Meadows, Franklin and Delgado - knew each other before they met at Charlie Company in Ventura County.

Stateside after 1975, Franklin got jammed up on a series of robberies in San Francisco and went away for five years. He went down on a federal rap of bank robbery in Oakland in 1984 and was at TI at the same time as Meadows. He was paroled to Charlie Company two months before Meadows left the program. Delgado was strictly a state offender; three pops for burglaries in L.A., for which he was able to get by on county lockup time, then an attempted bank robbery in Santa Ana in 1985. He was able to plead in state court under an agreement with federal prosecutors. He went up to Soledad, getting out in 1988 and arriving at Charlie Company three months ahead of Meadows. He left Charlie Company a day after Franklin arrived.

"One day," Wish said. "This means all three were together there at Charlie Company only one day."

Bosch looked at their photos and the accompanying descriptions. Franklin was the larger one. Six foot, 190, dark hair. Delgado was lean, fivesix and 140. Dark hair, too. Bosch stared at the photos of the big man and the small man, and was thinking about the descriptions of the men in the Jeep that had dumped Meadows's body.

"Let's go see Sharkey," he said after a while.

He called Home Street Home and was told what he knew they were going to tell him: Sharkey was gone. Bosch tried the Blue Chateau and a tired old voice told him that Sharkey's crew had moved out at noon. His mother hung up on Bosch after she determined he was not a customer. It was near seven. Bosch told Wish they would have to go back to the street to find him. She said she'd drive. They spent the next two hours in West Hollywood, mostly in the Santa Monica Boulevard corridor. But there was no sign of Sharkey or his motorbike locked to a parking meter. They flagged down a few sheriff's cruisers and told them who they were looking for, but not even the extra eyes helped. They parked at the curb by the Oki Dog, and Bosch was thinking that maybe the boy had gone back to his mother's house and she had hung up the phone to protect him.

"You want to take a ride up to Chatsworth?" he asked.

"As much as I'd like to see this witch you told me Sharkey has for a mother, I was thinking more along the lines of calling it a day. We can find Sharkey tomorrow. How about that dinner we didn't have last night?"

Bosch wanted to get to Sharkey, but he also wanted to get to her. She was right, there was always tomorrow.

"Sounds good to me," he said. "Where you feel like going?"

"My place."

Eleanor Wish lived in a rent-controlled townhouse she subleased two blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. They parked at the curb in front, and as they went in she told Bosch that although she lived close by, if he wanted to actually see the ocean he had to walk out onto her bedroom balcony, lean over and look sharply to the right down Ocean Park Boulevard. A slice of the Pacific could then be seen between two condominium towers that guarded the sh.o.r.eline. From that angle, she mentioned, he could also see into her next-door neighbor's bedroom. The neighbor was a has-been television actor turned small-time dope dealer who had a never-ending procession of women through the bedroom. It kind of took away from the view, she said. She told Bosch to have a seat in the living room while she got dinner started. "If you like jazz, I have a CD over there I just bought but haven't had time to listen to," she said.

He walked over to the stereo, which was stacked on shelves next to a set of bookcases, and picked up the new disk. It was Rollins's Falling in Love with Jazz, Falling in Love with Jazz, and inside Harry smiled because he had it at home. It was a warm connection. He opened the case, put the music on and began to look around the living room. There were pastel throw rugs and light-colored coverings on the furniture. Architectural books and home magazines were spread on a gla.s.s-topped coffee table in front of a light-blue couch. The place was very neat. A framed cross-st.i.tch canvas on the wall next to the front door said Welcome To This Home. Small letters st.i.tched in its corner said EDS 1970, and Bosch wondered about the last letter. and inside Harry smiled because he had it at home. It was a warm connection. He opened the case, put the music on and began to look around the living room. There were pastel throw rugs and light-colored coverings on the furniture. Architectural books and home magazines were spread on a gla.s.s-topped coffee table in front of a light-blue couch. The place was very neat. A framed cross-st.i.tch canvas on the wall next to the front door said Welcome To This Home. Small letters st.i.tched in its corner said EDS 1970, and Bosch wondered about the last letter.

He made another one of those psychic connections with Eleanor Wish when he turned around and looked at the wall above the couch. Framed in black wood was a print of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks Nighthawks. Bosch didn't have the print at home but he was familiar with the painting and from time to time even thought about it when he was deep on a case or on a surveillance. He had seen the original in Chicago once and had stood in front of it studying it for nearly an hour. A quiet, shadowy man sits alone at the counter of a street-front diner. He looks across at another customer much like himself, but only the second man is with a woman. Somehow, Bosch identified with it, with that first man. I am the loner, he thought. I am the nighthawk. The print, with its stark dark hues and shadows, did not fit in this apartment, Bosch realized. Its darkness clashed with the pastels. Why did Eleanor have it? What did she see there?

He looked around the rest of the room. There was no TV. There was just the music on the stereo and the magazines on the table and the books on the lawyer's shelves against the wall across from the couch. He stepped over and looked through the gla.s.s panes and browsed the collection. The top two shelves were mostly high-brow book-of-the-month offerings descending into crime fiction by writers like Crumley and Willeford and others. He had read some of them. He opened the gla.s.s door and pulled out a book called The Locked Door The Locked Door. He'd heard of the book but had never seen it to buy. He opened the cover to see how old it was and he solved the mystery of the last letter on the needlework. On the first page, printed in ink, it said Eleanor D. Scarletti - 1979. She must have kept her husband's name after the divorce, Bosch thought. He put the book back and closed the case.

The books on the bottom two rows of the bookcase ranged from true crime to historical studies of the Vietnam War to FBI manuals. There was even an LAPD homicide investigation textbook. Many of these books Bosch had read. One of them he was even in. It was a book the Times Times reporter Bremmer had written about the so-called Beauty Shop Slasher. A guy named Harvard Kendal, the slasher killed seven women in one year in the San Fernando Valley. They were all beauty shop owners or employees. He cased the shops, followed the victims home and killed them by cutting their throats with a sharpened nail file. Bosch and his partner at the time connected Kendal through a license plate number the seventh victim had written on a pad in the salon the night before she was murdered. They never figured out why she had done it, but the detectives suspected she had seen Kendal watching the shop from his van. She wrote the tag number down as a precaution but then didn't take the precaution of not going home alone. Bosch and his partner traced the tag to Kendal and found out he had spent five years in Folsom for a series of beauty shop arsons near Oakland in the 1960s. They later discovered his mother had worked as a manicurist in a beauty shop when he was a boy. She had practiced her craft on young Kendal's nails, and the shrinks figured he never got over it. Bremmer had gotten a best-seller out of it. And when Universal made a movie of the week out of it, the studio paid Bosch and his partner for the use of their names and technical a.s.sistance. The money doubled when a cop series spun off the movie. His partner quit the department and moved to Ensenada. Bosch stayed on, investing his stake in the stilt house on the hill that looked down on the studio that paid him the money. Bosch always found an unexplainable symbiosis in that. reporter Bremmer had written about the so-called Beauty Shop Slasher. A guy named Harvard Kendal, the slasher killed seven women in one year in the San Fernando Valley. They were all beauty shop owners or employees. He cased the shops, followed the victims home and killed them by cutting their throats with a sharpened nail file. Bosch and his partner at the time connected Kendal through a license plate number the seventh victim had written on a pad in the salon the night before she was murdered. They never figured out why she had done it, but the detectives suspected she had seen Kendal watching the shop from his van. She wrote the tag number down as a precaution but then didn't take the precaution of not going home alone. Bosch and his partner traced the tag to Kendal and found out he had spent five years in Folsom for a series of beauty shop arsons near Oakland in the 1960s. They later discovered his mother had worked as a manicurist in a beauty shop when he was a boy. She had practiced her craft on young Kendal's nails, and the shrinks figured he never got over it. Bremmer had gotten a best-seller out of it. And when Universal made a movie of the week out of it, the studio paid Bosch and his partner for the use of their names and technical a.s.sistance. The money doubled when a cop series spun off the movie. His partner quit the department and moved to Ensenada. Bosch stayed on, investing his stake in the stilt house on the hill that looked down on the studio that paid him the money. Bosch always found an unexplainable symbiosis in that.

"I read that book before your name ever came up in this. It wasn't part of the research."

Eleanor had come out of the kitchen with two gla.s.ses of red wine. Harry smiled.

"I wasn't going to accuse you of anything," he said. "Besides, it isn't about me. It's about Kendal. The whole thing was luck, anyway. But they still made a book and TV show about it. Whatever it is in there, it smells good."

"You like pasta?"

"I like spaghetti."

"That's what we're having. I made a big pot of sauce Sunday. I love to spend an entire day in the kitchen, not thinking about anything else. I find it's good therapy for stress. And it lasts and lasts. All I have to do is warm it up and boil some noodles."

Bosch sipped his wine and looked around some more. He still hadn't sat down but was feeling very comfortable with her. A smile played across his face. He gestured toward the Hopper print. "I like it. But why something so dark?"

She looked at the print and crinkled her brow as if this were the first time she had considered it.

"I don't know," she said. "I've always liked that painting. Something there grabs me. The woman is with a man. So that isn't me. So I guess if it's anyone, it would be the man sitting with his coffee. All alone, kind of watching the two that are together."

"I saw it in Chicago once," Bosch said. "The original. I was out there on an extradition and had about an hour to kill until I could pick up the body. So I went into the Art Inst.i.tute and it was there. I spent the whole hour looking at it. There's something about it - like you said. I can't remember the case or who I was bringing back here. But I remember that painting."

They sat at the table talking for nearly an hour after the food was gone. She told him more about her brother and her difficulty getting over the anger and loss. Eighteen years later she was still working it out, she said. Bosch told her that he was still working things out, too. He still dreamed of the tunnels from time to time, but more often he battled insomnia instead. He told her how mixed up he was when he got back, how thin the line was, the choice, between what he had done afterward and what Meadows did. It could have been different, he said, and she nodded, seeming to know that was true.

Later, she asked about the Dollmaker case and his fall from Robbery-Homicide. It was more than curiosity. He sensed that something important rode on what he told her. She was making a decision about him.

"I guess you know the basics," he began. "Somebody was strangling women, mostly prost.i.tutes, then painting over their faces with makeup. Pancake, red lipstick, heavy rouge on the cheeks, sharp black eyeliner. The same thing every time. The bodies were bathed, too. But we never said it looked like he was making them into dolls. Some a.s.shole - I think it was a guy named Sakai over at the coroner's - leaked that the makeup was the common denominator. Then this Dollmaker stuff started playing in the press. I think Channel 4 was the first to come up with that name. It took off from there. To me, it looked more like a mortician's work. But the truth is we weren't doing too good. We didn't have a handle on the guy until he was into double figures.

"Not much physical evidence. The victims were all dumped in random locations, all over the Westside. We knew from fiber evidence on a couple of the bodies that the guy probably wore a rug or some kind of hair disguise, fake beard or something. The women that were taken off the stroll, we were able to isolate times and places of their last trick. We went to the hourly motels and got nothing. So we figured the guy was picking them up in a car and then taking them somewhere else, maybe to his home or some kind of safe place he used as a killing pad. We started watching the Boulevard and other hot spots the pros work, and we must've busted up three hundred tricks before we got the break. This wh.o.r.e name of Dixie McQueen calls up the task force one morning, early, and says she just escaped from the Doll-maker and is there a reward if she gives him up. Well, we were getting calls like that every week. I mean, eleven murdered women and people are coming out of the woodwork with clues that aren't really clues. It's panic city."

"I remember," Wish said.

"But Dixie was different. I was working the late s.h.i.+ft in the task force offices that day and I caught the call. I went and talked to her. She told me that this john she'd picked up on Hollywood near Spa Row, you know, near the Scientology mansion, took her to this garage apartment in Silver Lake. She said that while the guy was getting naked she wanted to use the toilet. So she goes in and while she's running the water she looks through the cabinet below the sink, probably to see if there is anything worth lifting. But she sees all these little bottles and compacts and all this women's stuff. She looks at it all and she just puts it all together. Just like that. Bingo; this has to be the guy. So she gets a case of total creeps and bails out. She comes out of the bathroom and the guy's in the bed. She just hauls a.s.s through the front door.

"The thing is, we hadn't put out all the stuff about the makeup. Or, actually, the a.s.shole that was the media leak didn't put out everything. See, we knew that the guy was keeping the victims' stuff. They were found with their purses but there were no cosmetics - you know, lipstick, compacts, things like that. So when Dixie told me about what was in the bathroom cabinet she got my attention. I knew she was legit.

"And that is the point where I screwed up. It was 3 A.M. A.M. by the time I was done talking to Dixie. Everybody on the task force had gone home and I was left there thinking that this guy might realize Dixie made him and clear out. So I went there alone. I mean, Dixie went with me to show me the place, but then she never left the car. Once we were there, I saw a light on above the garage, which was behind this rundown house off of Hyperion. I called for patrol backup, and while I'm waiting I see the guy's shadow going back and forth across the window. Something tells me he is getting ready to bug out and take all the stuff from the cabinet with him. And we had no evidence from the eleven bodies. We needed the stuff that was in the bathroom cabinet. The other consideration was, what if he has someone up there? You know, a replacement for Dixie. So I went up. Alone. You know the rest." by the time I was done talking to Dixie. Everybody on the task force had gone home and I was left there thinking that this guy might realize Dixie made him and clear out. So I went there alone. I mean, Dixie went with me to show me the place, but then she never left the car. Once we were there, I saw a light on above the garage, which was behind this rundown house off of Hyperion. I called for patrol backup, and while I'm waiting I see the guy's shadow going back and forth across the window. Something tells me he is getting ready to bug out and take all the stuff from the cabinet with him. And we had no evidence from the eleven bodies. We needed the stuff that was in the bathroom cabinet. The other consideration was, what if he has someone up there? You know, a replacement for Dixie. So I went up. Alone. You know the rest."

Wish said, "You went in without a warrant and shot him when he was reaching under the pillow on the bed. You later told the shooting team that you believed it was an emergency situation. There had been enough time for him to go out and get another prost.i.tute. You said that gave you the authority to come through the door without a warrant. You said you fired because you believed the suspect was reaching for a weapon. It was one shot, upper torso from fifteen or twenty feet, if I remember the report. But the Doll-maker was alone, and under the pillow was only his toupee."

"Only his rug," Bosch said. He shook his head like a Monday-morning quarterback. "The shooting team cleared me. We connected him to two of the bodies through the hair from the toupee, and the makeup in the bathroom was traced to eight of the victims. There was no doubt. It was him. I was clear, but then the shooflies started in on it. A Lewis and Clarke expedition. They ran down Dixie and got her to sign a statement saying she told me beforehand that he put his hair under the pillow. I don't know what they used against her, but I can imagine. IAD's always had a hard-on for me. They don't like anybody who's not a hundred percent part of the family. Anyway, the next thing I know they are bringing departmental charges against me. They wanted to fire me and take Dixie to a grand jury to get criminal charges. It was like there was blood in the water and two fat white sharks."

He stopped there but Eleanor continued. "The IAD detectives misjudged things, though, Harry. They didn't realize that public opinion would be with you. You were known in the newspapers as the cop who broke the Beauty Shop Slasher and Dollmaker cases. A character in a TV show. They couldn't take you down without a lot of public scrutiny and embarra.s.sment for the department."

"Someone reached down from above them and put a stop to the grand jury move," Bosch said. "They had to settle for a suspension and my demotion to Hollywood homicide."

Bosch had his fingers on the stem of his empty wine gla.s.s and was absent-mindedly turning the gla.s.s on the table.

"Some settlement," he said after a while. "And those two IAD sharks are still swimming around out there, waiting for the kill."

They sat silently for a while then. He was waiting for her to ask the question she had asked once before. Had the wh.o.r.e lied? She never asked it, and after a while she just looked at him and smiled. And he felt as if he had just pa.s.sed the test. She started gathering the plates off the table. Bosch helped her in the kitchen and when the work was done, they stood close, drying their hands on the same dish towel, and lightly kissed. Then, as if following the same secret signals, they pressed themselves against each other and kissed with the kind of hunger lonely people have.

"I want to stay," Bosch said after momentarily breaking away.

"I want you to stay," she said.

Arson's stoned eyes were s.h.i.+ny and reflected the neon night. He sucked hard on the Kool and held the precious smoke in. The cigarette had been dipped in PCP. A smile cracked across his face as the jet streams of smoke escaped his nostrils. He said, "You're the only shark I ever heard of being used as bait. Get it?"

He laughed and took another deep drag before handing the cigarette to Sharkey, who waved it away because he'd had enough. Mojo took it then.

"Yeah, I'm getting tired of this s.h.i.+t," Sharkey said. "You take a turn for once."

"Chill out, man, you're the only one can get away with it, man. Mojo and me, man, we just don't play the part good as you. Besides, we got our part. You ain't big enough to pound these f.a.ggots."

"Well, whyn't we do the 7-Eleven again?" Sharkey said. "I don't like this not knowing who it is. I like it at the 7-Eleven. We pick our meat, they don't pick me."

"No way," Mojo spoke up then. "We go back there, we don't know if that last guy reported it to the sheriff's or not. We have to stay clear a there awhile. They're probly watching the place from the same parking lot we did."

Sharkey knew they were right. He just thought that being out on Santa Monica on the queer stroll was getting too close to the real thing. Next thing, he guessed, the two dopers will not feel like charging in. They'll want him to go through with it, get the money that way. That was when he would split these guys, he knew.

"Okay," he said, stepping off the curb. "Don't f.u.c.k me up."

He started to cross the street. Arson yelled after him, "BMW or better!"

As if I need to be told, Sharkey thought. He walked a half block toward La Brea and then leaned against the door of a closed print shop. He was still a half block from Hot Rod's, an adult bookstore that offered twenty-five-cent all-male peeps. But he was close enough to catch the eye of somebody walking out. If the eye was looking. He looked back the other way and saw the glow of the joint in the darkness of the driveway where Arson and Mojo sat on their bikes.

Sharkey hadn't been standing there ten minutes when a car, a new Grand Am, pulled to the curb and the electric window glided down. Sharkey was going to blow this one off, remembering BMW or better, until he saw the glint of gold and stepped closer. His adrenaline kicked up a notch. The wrist the driver had draped over the steering wheel was adorned with a Rolex Presidential. If it was real, Arson knew where they could get $3,000 for it. A grand apiece, not to mention what else the meat might have at home or in his wallet. Sharkey looked the man over. The guy looked like a straight, a businessman. Dark hair, dark suit. Mid-forties, not too big. Sharkey might even be able to take him alone. The man smiled at Sharkey and said, "Hey, howya doin'?"

"Not bad. What's up?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just out for a ride. You want to take a ride?"

"Where to?"

"No place special. I know a place we can go. Be alone."

"You got a hundred dollars on you?"

"No, but I've got fifty dollars for night baseball."

"Pitching or catching?"

"I'm a pitcher. And I brought my own glove."

Sharkey hesitated and glanced toward the driveway where he had seen the glow from the Kool. It was gone now. They must be ready to move. He looked back at the watch.

"That's cool," he said, and got in the car.

The car headed west past the alley driveway. Sharkey held himself from looking, but he thought he heard the revving and popping sound of their bikes. They were following.

"Where we going?" he asked. "Uh, I can't go home with you, my friend. But I know a place we can go. n.o.body will bother us."

"Cool."

They stopped at the light at Flores, which made Sharkey think of the guy from the other night. They were near his place. Arson was. .h.i.tting harder, it seemed. This would have to stop soon or they would kill someone. He hoped the man with the Rolex would give it up peaceably. There was no telling what those two would do. Stoked on PCP, they would be ready for battle and blood.

Suddenly the car lurched through the intersection. Sharkey noticed the light was still red.

"What's going on?" he said sharply.

"Nothing. I'm tired of waiting, is all."

Sharkey thought there would be nothing suspicious about looking back now. He turned and saw only cars waiting back at the intersection. No motorbikes. Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, he thought. He felt a dampness beginning on his scalp and the first tremblings of fear. The car turned right after Barnie's Beanery and up the hill to Sunset. Then they went east to Highland and the man with the Rolex steered north again.

"Have we been together before?" the man asked. "You seem familiar. I don't know, maybe we've just seen each other around."

"No, I've never - I don't think so."

"Look at me."

"What?" Sharkey said, startled by the question and the man's sharp tone. "Why?"

"Look at me. You know me? Have you seen me before?"

"What is this, a credit card commercial? I said no, man."

The man turned the car off the street into the east parking lot of the Hollywood Bowl. It was deserted. He drove quickly and without saying another word to the darkened north end. Sharkey thought, If this is your quiet little spot, then that ain't no real Rolex you got on your wrist, pal.

"Hey, what are we doing, man?" Sharkey said. He was thinking of a way to bail out of this. He was pretty sure Arson and Mojo, stoned as they were, were lost. He was alone with this guy and he wanted to scratch it.

"The bowl is closed," Rolex said. "But I got a key to the dressing rooms, see? We just take the tunnel under Cahuenga and then near where it comes up, there is a little walkway we take back around. There won't be anyone around. I work there. I know."

For a moment, Sharkey considered trying to take the guy alone, then decided he couldn't do it. Unless there was a way of taking him by surprise. He would see. The man turned the car engine off and opened his door. Sharkey opened his own door, got out and looked across the dark expanse of the empty parking lot. He was looking for the two lights of the motor-bikes, but there weren't any. I'll take this guy out on the other side, he decided. He would make his move. Either hit and run, or just run.

They headed toward the sign that said Pedestrian Expressway. There was a concrete outbuilding with an open doorway and then stairs. As they walked down the whitewashed steps, the man with the Rolex put his hand on Sharkey's shoulder and then clamped it on the back of his neck in a fatherly manner. Sharkey could feel the cold metal of the watch's wristband.

The man said, "You sure we don't know each other, Sharkey? Maybe seen each other?"

"No, man, I'm telling you, I haven't been with you."

They were about halfway through the tunnel when Sharkey realized he hadn't told the man his name.

PART V

THURSDAY, MAY 24

It had been a long time for him. And in Eleanor's bedroom, Harry Bosch was clumsy in the way of a man who is overly self-conscious and out of practice. As with most first times he had had, it wasn't good. She directed him with her hands and whispers. And afterward he felt like apologizing but didn't. They held each other and lightly dozed, the smell of her hair in his face. The same apple scent he had encountered in his kitchen the night before. Bosch was infatuated with her and wanted to breathe the smell of her hair every minute. After a while he kissed her awake and they made love again. This time he needed no directions and she didn't need her hands. When they were done, Eleanor whispered to him, "Do you think you can be alone in this world and not be lonely?"

He didn't answer at first, and she said, "Are you alone or are you lonely, Harry Bosch?"

He thought about that for some time, while her fingers gently traced the tattoo on his shoulder.

"I don't know what I am," he finally whispered. "You get so used to things the way they are. And I've always been alone. I guess that makes me lonely. Until now."