Michael Connelly (120 page)

The bike didn’t fit. Bosch tried to look in but the curtains were drawn, leaving only a three-inch band of darkness he could
not see beyond. He knocked on the door and as was his practice, stepped to the side. A Mexican woman with what looked like
an eight-month pregnancy beneath her faded pink bathrobe answered the door. Behind the small woman Bosch could see a young
boy sitting on the living room floor in front of a black-and-white TV tuned to a Spanish language channel.

“Hola,”
Bosch said.
“Señor Tom Cerrone aquí?”

The woman stared at him with frightened eyes. She seemed to close in on herself, as if to get smaller before him. Her arms
moved up from her side and closed over her swollen belly.

“No migra,”
Bosch said.
“Policía. Tomás Cerrone. Aquí?”

She shook her head no and began to close the door. Bosch put his hand out to stop it. Struggling with his Spanish he asked
if she knew Cerrone and where he was. She said he only came once a week to collect the mail and the rent. She moved back a
step and gestured to the card table where there was a small stack of mail. Bosch could see an American Express bill on top.
Gold Card.

“Teléfono? Necesidad urgente?”

She looked down from his eyes and her hesitation told him she had a number.

“Por favor?”

She told him to wait and she left the doorway. While she was gone the boy sitting ten feet inside the door turned from the
TV — Bosch could see it was some kind of game show — and looked at him. Bosch felt uncomfortable. He looked away, into the
courtyard. When he looked back the boy was smiling. He had his hand up and was pointing a finger at Bosch. He made a shooting
sound and giggled. Then the mother was back at the door with a piece of paper. There was a local phone number on it, that
was all.

Bosch copied it down in a small notebook he carried and then told her he would take the mail. The woman turned and looked
at the card table as if the answer to what she should do was sitting on it with the mail. Bosch told her it would be okay
and she finally lifted the stack and handed it to him. The frightened look was in her eyes again.

He stepped back and was going to walk away when he stopped and looked back at her. He asked how much the rent was and she
told him it was one hundred dollars a week. Bosch nodded and walked away.

Out on the street he walked down to a pay phone that was in front of the next apartment complex. He called the downtown communications
center, gave the operator the phone number he had just gotten and said he needed an address. While he waited he thought about
the pregnant woman and wondered why she stayed. Could things be worse back in the Mexican town she came from? For some, he
knew, the journey here was so difficult that returning was out of the question.

As he was flipping through Cerrone’s mail, one of the hitchhikers walked up to him. She wore an orange tank top over her surgically
augmented breasts. Her cutoff jeans were cut so high above the thighs that the white pockets hung out below. In one of the
pockets he could see the distinctive shape of a condom package. She had the gaunt, tired look of a strawberry — a woman who
would do anything, anytime, anywhere to keep crack in her pipe. Factoring in her deteriorated appearance, he put her age at
no more than twenty. To Bosch’s surprise, she said, “Hey, darling, looking for a date?”

He smiled and said, “You’re going to have to be more careful than that, you want to stay out of the cage.”

“Oh, shit,” she said and turned to walk away.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Don’t I know you? Yeah, I know you. It’s …what’s your name, girl?”

“Look, man, I’m not talking to you and I’m not blowing you, so I gotta go.”

“Wait. Wait. I don’t want anything. I just thought, you know, that we’d met. Aren’t you one of Tommy Cerrone’s girls? Yeah,
that’s where I met you.”

The name put a slight stutter in her step. Bosch let the phone dangle by its cord and caught up to her. She stopped.

“Look, I’m not with Tommy anymore, okay? I gotta go to work.”

She turned from him and put her thumb out as a wave of southbound traffic started by.

“Wait a minute, just tell me something. Tell me where Tommy is these days. I need to get with him on something.”

“On what? I don’t know where he is.”

“A girl. You remember Becky? Couple years ago. Blonde, liked red lipstick, had a set like yours. She mighta used the name
Maggie. I want to find her and she was working for Tom. You remember her?”

“I wasn’t even around then. And I haven’t seen Tommy in four months. And you are full of shit.”

She walked off and Bosch called after her, “Twenty bucks.”

She stopped and came back.

“For what?”

“An address. I’m not bullshitting. I want to talk to him.”

“Well, give it.”

He took the money out of his wallet and gave it to her. It occurred to him that Van Nuys Vice might be watching him from somewhere
around here and wondering why he was giving a hooker a twenty.

“Try the Grandview,” she said. “I don’t know the number or anything but it’s on the top floor. You can’t tell’m I sent ya.
He’ll fuck me up.”

She walked away putting the money in one of the flapping pockets. He didn’t have to ask her where the Grandview was. He watched
her cut in between two apartment buildings and disappear, probably going to get a rock. He wondered if she had told the truth
and why he could find it in himself to give her money but not the woman in apartment six. The police operator had hung up
by the time he got back to the pay phone.

Bosch redialed and asked for her and she gave him the address that went with the phone number he’d gotten. Suite P-1, the
Grandview Apartments, on Sepulveda in Sherman Oaks. He had just wasted twenty bucks on crack cocaine. He hung up.

In the car, he finished looking through the mail. Half of it was junk mail, the rest credit card bills and mailers from Republican
candidates. There was also a postcard invitation to an Adult Film Performers Guild awards banquet in Reseda the following
week.

Bosch opened the American Express bill. The illegality of this did not concern him in the least. Cerrone was a criminal who
was lying to his probation officer. There would be no complaint from him. The pimp owed American Express $1855.05 this month.
The bill was two pages, and Bosch noticed two billings for airline flights to Las Vegas and three billings from Victoria’s
Secret. Bosch was familiar with Victoria’s Secret, having studied the mail-order lingerie catalog at Sylvia’s on occasion.
In one month, Cerrone had ordered nearly $400 in lingerie by mail. The money paid by the poor woman who rented the apartment
Cerrone was using as a front for a probation address was basically subsidizing the lingerie bills of Cerrone’s whores. It
angered Bosch, but it gave him an idea.

• • •

The Grandview Apartments were the ultimate California ideal. Built alongside a shopping mall, the building afforded its tenants
the ability to walk directly from their apartment into the mall, thereby cutting out the heretofore required middle ground
for all Southern California culture and interaction: the car. Bosch parked in the mall’s garage and entered the outer lobby
through the rear entrance. It was an Italian marble affair with a grand piano in its center that was playing by itself. Bosch
recognized the song as a Cab Calloway standard, “Everybody That Comes to My Place Has to Eat.”

There was a directory and a phone on the wall by the security door that led to the elevators. The name next to P-1 was Kuntz.
Bosch took it to be an inside joke. He lifted the phone and pushed the button. A woman answered and he said, “UPS. Gotta package.”

“Uh,” she said. “From who?”

“Um, it says, I can’t read the writing — looks like Victor’s secretary or something.”

“Oh,” she said and he heard her giggle. “Do I have to sign?”

“Yes, ma’am, I need a signature.”

Rather than buzz him in, she said she would come down. Bosch stood at the glass door for two minutes waiting before he realized
the scam wouldn’t work. He was standing there in a suit and had no package in his hand. He turned his back to the elevator
just as the polished chrome doors began to part.

He took a step toward the piano and looked down as if he was fascinated by it and didn’t notice the elevator’s arrival. From
behind him he heard the security door start to open and he turned around.

“Are you UPS?”

She was blonde and stunning even in her blue jeans and pale blue Oxford shirt. Their eyes met and right away Bosch knew she
knew it was a scam. She immediately tried to close the door but Bosch got there in time and pushed his way through.

“What are you doing? I —”

Bosch clamped a hand over her mouth because he thought she was about to scream. Covering half her face accentuated the fright
in her eyes. She didn’t seem as stunning to Bosch anymore.

“It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you, I just want to talk to Tommy. Let’s go up.”

He slowly pulled his hand back and she didn’t scream.

“Tommy’s not there,” she said in a whisper, as if to signal her cooperation.

“Then we can wait.”

He gently pushed her toward the elevator and punched the button.

She was right. Cerrone wasn’t there. But Bosch didn’t have to wait long. He had barely had time to check on the opulent furnishings
of the two-bedroom, two-bath and loft apartment with private roof garden when the man arrived.

Cerrone stepped through the front door,
Racing Forum
in hand, just as Bosch stepped into the living room from the balcony that overlooked Sepul-veda and the crowded Ventura Freeway.

Cerrone initially smiled at Bosch but then the face became blank. This often happened to Bosch with crooks. He believed it
was because the crooks often thought they recognized him. And it was true they probably did. Bosch’s picture had been in the
paper and on TV several times in the last few years, including once this week. Harry believed that most crooks who read the
papers or watched the news looked closely at the pictures of the cops. They probably thought it gave them an added advantage,
someone to look out for. But instead it bred familiarity. Cerrone had smiled as though Bosch was a long-lost friend, then
he realized it was probably the enemy, a cop.

“That’s right,” Bosch said.

“Tommy, he made me bring him up,” the girl said. “He called on the —”

“Shut up,” Cerrone barked. Then, to Bosch, he said, “If you had a warrant, you wouldn’t be here alone. No warrant, get the
fuck out.”

“Very observant,” Bosch said. “Sit down. I have questions.”

“Fuck you and the questions you rode in on. Get out.”

Bosch sat down on a black leather couch and took out his cigarettes.

“Tom, if I go, it’s to go see your PO and see about getting you revoked for this address scam you’re playing. The probation
department frowns on cons telling them they live one place when they actually live somewhere else. Especially when one’s a
dump and one’s the Grandview.”

Cerrone threw the
Forum
across the room at the girl. “See?” he said. “See the shit you got me in?”

She seemed to know better than to say anything. Cerrone folded his arms and stood in the living room but he wasn’t going to
sit down. He was a well-built guy gone to fat. Too many afternoons at Hollywood or Del Mar, sipping cocktails and watching
the ponies.

“Look, what do you want?”

“I want to know about Becky Kaminski.”

Cerrone looked puzzled.

“You remember, Maggie Cum Loudly, the blonde with the tits you probably had her enlarge. You were bringing her up through
the video business, doin’ some outcall work on the side, and then she disappeared on you.”

“What about her? That was a long time ago.”

“Twenty-two months and three days, I am told.”

“So what? She turned up and is saying some shit about me, it don’t matter. Take it to court, man. We’ll see —”

Bosch jumped up off the couch and slapped him hard across the face, then pushed him over a black leather chair onto the floor.
Cerrone’s eyes immediately went to the girl’s, which told Bosch that he had complete control of the situation. The power of
humiliation sometimes was more awesome than a gun held to the head. Cerrone’s face was a bright red all over.

Bosch’s hand stung. He bent over the fallen man and said, “She didn’t turn up and you know it. She’s dead and you knew it
when you made the missing person report. You were just covering your ass. I want to know how you knew.”

“Look, man, I didn’t have any —”

“But you knew she wasn’t coming back. How?”

“I just had a hunch. She didn’t turn up for a couple days.”

“Guys like you don’t go to the police on hunches. Guys like you, they get their place broken into, they don’t even call the
cops. Like I said, you were just covering your ass. You didn’t want to get blamed ’cause you knew she wasn’t coming back alive.”

“Awright, awright, it was more than a hunch. Okay? It was the guy. I never saw him but his voice and some of the things he
said. It was familiar, you know? Then after I sent her and she didn’t come back, it dawned on me. I remembered him. I had
sent him somebody else once and she ended up dead.”

“Who?”

“Holly Lere. I can’t remember her real name.”

Bosch could. Holly Lere was the porno name of Nicole Knapp. The seventh victim of the Dollmaker. He sat back down on the couch
and put a cigarette in his mouth.

“Tommy,” the girl said, “he’s smoking.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said to her.

“Well, you said no smoking in here except on the bal —”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Nicole Knapp,” Bosch said.

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“You knew the cops said the Dollmaker got her?”

“Yeah, and I always thought that until Becky disappeared and I remembered this guy and what he said.”

“But you didn’t tell anybody. You didn’t call the cops.”

“It’s like you said, man, guys like me, we don’t call.”