Michael Connelly (113 page)

To his left was a glass counter with two men behind it. One was a big man, there to keep the peace; the other was smaller,
older, there to take the money. Bosch knew by the way they looked at him and the skin stretched tight around their eyes that
they had made him as soon as he had come in. He walked over and put one of the Polaroids on the counter.

“I am trying to ID her. Heard she worked in video, do you recognize her?”

The small guy leaned forward and looked while the other guy didn’t move.

“Looks like a fucking cake, man,” the small guy said. “I don’t know any cakes. I eat cakes.”

He looked back at the big guy and they exchanged clever smiles.

“So you don’t recognize her. What about you?”

“I say what he says,” the big guy said. “I eat cakes, too.”

This time they laughed out loud and probably had to restrain themselves from exchanging a high five. The small guy’s eyes
sparkled behind rose-tinted glasses.

“Okay,” Bosch said. “Then I’ll just look around. Thanks.”

The big guy stepped forward and said, “Just keep your gun covered, man, we don’t want to excite the patrons.”

The big guy’s eyes were dull and he set out a five-foot zone of body odor. A duster, Bosch thought. He wondered why the small
guy didn’t fire his ass.

“No more excited than they are,” Bosch said.

He turned from the counter to the two walls of shelves that were lined with hundreds of video boxes for sale or rent. There
were a dozen men, including the secret agent, looking. Appraising the scene and the number of video boxes, Bosch somehow was
reminded of how he once had read all the names on the Vietnam War Memorial wall while on a case. It had taken several hours.

The video wall proved to be less time consuming. Skipping the gay and black performer videos he scanned each box for a face
like the concrete blonde’s or the name Maggie. The videos were in alphabetical order and it took him nearly an hour to get
to the T’s. A face on the box of a video called
Tails from the Crypt
caught his eye. There was a nude woman lying in a coffin on the front. She was blonde and had an upturned nose like the plaster
face in the box. He turned the box over and there was another photo of the actress, on her hands and knees with a man pressed
up behind her. Her mouth was slightly open and her face was turned back toward her sex partner.

It was her, Bosch knew. He looked at the credits and saw that the name fit. He took the empty video box to the counter.

“’Bout time,” said the small guy. “We don’t allow loitering here. The cops give us a hard time on that.”

“I want to rent this.”

“Can’t, it’s already rented. See, the box is empty.”

“She in anything else you know of?”

The small guy took the box and looked at the photographs.

“Magna Cum Loudly, yeah. I don’t know. She was just getting started and then dropped out. Probably married a rich guy, lots
of them do.”

The big guy stepped over to look at the box and Bosch stepped back, out of his odor zone.

“I’m sure they do,” he said. “What else was she in?”

“Well,” the small guy said, “she had just made her way out of the loops and then, pfffft, she’s gone.
Tails
was her first top billing. She did a fabulous two-way in
Whore of the Roses
and that’s what got her started. Before that it was just the loops.”

Bosch went back to the W’s and found the box for
Whore of the Roses
. It also was empty and there were no photos of Magna Cum Loudly on it. Her name was last billing on the credits. He went
back to the small guy and pointed to the
Tails from the Crypt
box.

“What about the box, then? I’ll buy it.”

“We can’t sell you just the box because then how do we display the video when it comes back? We don’t sell many boxes here.
Guys want stills, they buy magazines.”

“What’s the price of the whole video? I’ll buy it. When the renter brings it back you can hold it for me and I’ll come pick
it up. How much?”

“Well,
Tails
is popular. We’re going with a $39.95 price tag but for you, Officer, I’ll give our law enforcement discount. Fifty bucks.”

Bosch said nothing to that. He had the cash and paid it. “I want a receipt.”

After the purchase was completed, the small guy put the video box in a brown paper bag.

“You know,” he said, “Maggie Cum Loudly is still on a couple of our loops in the back. You might want to check it out.”

He smiled and pointed to a sign on the wall behind him.

“We have a no-exchange policy, by the way.”

Bosch smiled back.

“I’ll check it out.”

“Hey, by the way, what name you want us to hold this video under when it comes back in?”

“Carlo Pinzi.”

It was the name of the Outfit’s L.A. capo.

“Very fucking funny, Mr. Pinzi, we’ll do that.”

Bosch went through the curtain into the back rooms and was almost immediately met by a woman wearing high heels, a black G-string
and an ice-cream man’s coin changer on a belt, nothing else. Her large silicone-perfected breasts were dotted by unusually
small nipples. Her dyed blonde hair was short and she had too much makeup around her glassy brown eyes. She looked like she
was either nineteen or thirty-five.

“Do you want a private encounter or change for the video booths?” she asked.

Bosch took out his now thin fold of cash and gave her two dollars for quarters.

“Can I keep a dollar for myself? I don’t get paid nothin’, just tips.”

Bosch gave her another dollar and took his eight quarters to one of the small curtained booths where the occupied light wasn’t
on.

“Let me know if you need anything in there,” the woman in the G-string called after him.

She was either too stoned or too stupid or both not to have made him as a cop. Bosch waved her away and pulled the curtain
shut behind him. The space he had was about the size of a phone booth. There was a glass viewing window through which he could
see a video screen. Displayed on the screen was a directory of twelve different videos he could select from. It was all video
now, though they were still called loops, after the 16mm film loops that ran over and over again in the first peep machines.

There was no chair but there was a small shelf with an ashtray and a Kleenex box on it. Used tissues were littered on the
floor and the booth smelled like the industrial disinfectant they used in the coroner’s vans. He put all eight quarters in
the coin slot and the video picture came on.

It was two women on a bed kissing and massaging each other. It took Bosch only a few seconds to eliminate them as possibly
being the girl on the video box. He began pushing the channel button and the picture jumped from coupling to coupling — heterosexual,
homosexual, bisexual — his eyes lingering only long enough to determine whether the woman he was looking for was there.

She was on the ninth loop. He recognized her from the video box he had bought. Seeing her in motion also helped convince him
that the woman who used the name Magna Cum Loudly was the concrete blonde. In the video she lay on a couch on her back, biting
one of her fingers while a man knelt between her legs on the floor and rhythmically ground his hips into hers.

Knowing this woman was dead, had died violently, and standing there watching her submit to another kind of violence affected
him in a way he was unsure he even understood. Guilt and sorrow welled up as he watched. Like most cops, he had spent a stint
in vice. He had also seen some of the films of the two other adult film actresses who were killed by the Dollmaker. But this
was the first time this uneasiness had hit him.

On the video, the actress took the finger out of her mouth and began to moan loudly, living up to her billing. Bosch fumbled
with the sound knob and turned it down. But he could still hear her, her moans turned into shouts, from videos in other booths.
Other men were watching the same show. It made Bosch feel creepy knowing the video had drawn the interest of different men
for different reasons.

The curtain behind him rustled and he heard someone move behind him into the booth. At the same moment he felt a hand move
up his thigh to his crotch. He reached into his jacket for his gun as he turned but then saw it was the coin changer.

“What can I do for you, darling?” she cooed.

He pushed her arm away from him.

“You can start by getting out of here.”

“C’mon, lover, why look at it on TV when you can be doing it? Twenty bucks. I can’t go lower. I have to split it with the
management.”

She was pressed against him now and Bosch couldn’t tell if it was his breath or hers that was lousy with cigarettes. Her breasts
were hard and she was pushing them against his chest. Then suddenly she froze. She had felt the gun. Their eyes held each
other for a moment.

“That’s right,” Bosch said. “If you don’t want to go for a ride to the cage, get out of here.”

“No problem, Officer,” she said.

She parted the curtain and was gone. Just then the screen went back to the directory. Bosch’s two dollars were up.

As he walked out, he heard Magna Cum Loudly yelling in false joy from the other booths.

On the ride on the freeway to the next valley, he tried to imagine that life. He wondered what hope she might still have had
and still nurtured and protected like a candle in the rain, even as she lay there on her back with distant eyes turned toward
the stranger inside her. Hope must have been the only thing she had left. Bosch knew that hope was the lifeblood of the heart.
Without it there was nothing, only darkness.

He wondered how the two lives — killer’s and victim’s — had crossed. Maybe the seed of lust and murderous desire had been
planted by the same loop Bosch had just seen. Maybe the killer had rented the video Bosch had just paid fifty dollars for.
Could it have been Church? Or was there another out there? The box, Bosch thought, and pulled off at the next exit, Van Nuys
Boulevard in Pacoima.

He pulled to the curb and took the video box out of the brown paper bag the small guy had provided. He turned the light on
in the car and studied every surface of the box, reading every word. But there was no copyright date that would have told
him when the tape was made, whether it had been made before or after Church’s death.

He got back on the Golden State, which took him north into the Santa Clarita Valley. After exiting on Bouquet Canyon Road
he wound his way through a series of residential streets, past a seemingly endless line of California custom homes. On Del
Prado, he pulled to the curb in front of the house with the Ritenbaugh Realty sign out front.

Sylvia had been trying to sell the house for more than a year, without luck. When he thought about it, Bosch was relieved.
It kept him from facing a decision about what he and Sylvia would do next.

Sylvia opened the door before he reached it.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“What do you have?”

“Oh, it’s something from work. I’ve gotta make a couple calls in a while. Did you eat?”

He bent down and kissed her and moved inside. She had on the gray T-shirt dress she liked to wear around the house after work.
Her hair was loose and down to her shoulders, the blonde highlights catching the light from the living room.

“Had a salad. You?”

“Not yet. I’ll fix a sandwich or something. I’m sorry about this. With the trial and now this new case, it’s …well, you know.”

“It’s okay. I just miss you. I’m sorry about how I acted on the phone.”

She kissed him and held him. He felt at home with her. That was the best thing. That feeling. He had never had it before and
he would forget it at times when he was away from her. But as soon as he was back with her it was there.

She took him by the hand into the kitchen and told him to sit down while she made him a sandwich. He watched her put a pan
on the stove and turn on the gas. Then she put four strips of bacon in the pan. While they cooked, she sliced a tomato and
an avocado and laid out a bed of lettuce. He got up, took a beer from the fridge and kissed her on the back of the neck. He
stepped back, annoyed that the memory of the woman grabbing him in the booth intruded on the moment. Why had that happened?

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

She put two slices of sunflower bread into the toaster and took the bacon out of the pan. A few minutes later she put the
sandwich in front of him at the table and sat down.

“Who do you have to call?”

“Jerry Edgar, maybe a guy at Ad-Vice.”

“Ad-Vice? She was porno? This new victim?”

Sylvia had once been married to a cop and she made leaps of thought like a cop. Bosch liked that about her.

“Think so. I have a line on her. But I’ve got court, so I want to give it to them.”

She nodded. He never had to tell her not to ask too much. She always knew just when to stop.

“How was school today?”

“Fine. Eat your sandwich. I want you to hurry up and make your calls because I want us to forget about court and school and
your investigation. I want us to open some wine, light some candles and get in bed.”