Trunk Music (18 page)

“Let’s see, we think he also has a piece of some of the brothels up north. Then he’s got the usual, your standard loan-sharking and fencing operations. He runs a book and has the street tax on almost anything that moves in town. You know, the escort services, peep shows, all of that. He’s the king. He can’t go in any of the casinos ’cause he’s in the commission’s black book but it doesn’t matter. He’s the king.”

“How does he have a betting book in a town where you can walk into any casino and bet on any game, any race, anywhere?”

“You gotta have money to do that. Not with Joey. He’ll take your bet. And if you are unlucky enough to lose, then you better come up with the money quick or you’re one sorry motherfucker. Remember how he got his name. Well, suffice it to say his employees carry on the tradition. See, that’s how he gets his hooks into people. He gets them to owe him and then they have to give him a piece of what they have, whether it’s a company that makes paint in Dayton or something else.”

“Maybe a guy who makes cheap movies in L.A.”

“Yeah, like that. That’s how it works. They open up to him or they get two broken knees or worse. People still disappear in Vegas, Bosch. It might look like it’s all volcanoes and pyramids and pirate ships on the outside, but on the inside it’s still dark enough for people to disappear in.”

Bosch reached over and turned the air up a notch. The sun was already all the way up and the desert was beginning to bake.

“This is nothing,” Iverson said. “Wait till about noon. If we’re out here then, forget about it. We’ll be over one-ten easy.”

“What about Joey’s air of legitimacy?”

“Yeah, well, like I said, he’s got holdings all over the country. Pieces of the legitimate world he got through these various scams. He also reinvests. He cleans up all the cash he’s pulling out of his various enterprises and then puts it into legit stuff, even charities. He’s got car dealerships, a country club on the east side, a goddamn wing of a hospital named after one of his kids who died in a swimming pool. His picture gets in the paper at ribbon cuttings, Bosch. I tell you, we’ve either got to fucking take the guy down or give him the key to the city and I don’t know which would be more appropriate.”

Iverson shook his head.

After a few minutes of silence they were there. Iverson pulled into a county fire station and drove around back, where there were several more detective cars and several men standing around them holding paper cups of coffee. One of them was Captain Felton.

Bosch had forgotten to take a bulletproof vest with him from Los Angeles and had to borrow one from Iverson. He was also given a plastic raid jacket that said LVPD in bright yellow letters across the chest when it was zipped closed.

They were standing around Felton’s Taurus, going over the plan and waiting for the uniform backup. Execution of the warrant was going to be done by Vegas rules, the captain said. That meant at least one uniform team had to be there when they kicked the door.

By this time Bosch had already had his “friendly” exchange with Felton. The two had gone into the fire station to get Bosch some coffee, and Bosch had given the police captain an earful for the way he had handled the discovery that the prints Bosch had brought with him belonged to Lucky Luke Goshen. Felton feigned contrition and told Bosch he’d be involved in calling the shots from that moment on. Bosch had to back down after that. He’d gotten what he wanted, at least in the captain’s words. Now he just had to watch that Felton walked the talk.

Besides Felton and Bosch, there were four others standing around the car. They were all from Metro’s Organized Crime Unit. It was Iverson and his partner, Cicarelli, and then another pair, Baxter and Parmelee. The OCU was part of Felton’s domain in the department, but it was Baxter who was running the show. He was a black man who was balding, with gray hair lightly powdered around the sides of his head. He was heavily muscled and had a countenance that said I want no hassles. He seemed to Bosch to be a man accustomed to both the violent and violence. There was a difference.

Luke Goshen’s home was known to them. From their banter Bosch figured that they had watched the place before. It was about a mile further west from the station, and Baxter had already made a drive-by and determined that Goshen’s black Corvette was in the carport.

“What about a warrant?” Bosch asked.

He could just envision the whole thing getting kicked out of court because of a warrantless entry into the suspect’s house.

“The prints were more than enough for a warrant to search the premises and arrest your man,” Felton said. “We took it to a judge first thing this morning. We also had our own information, which I think Iverson told you about.”

“Look, his prints were on the guy but it doesn’t mean he did it. It doesn’t make a case. We’re acting too quickly here. My guy was put down in L.A. I’ve got nothing putting Luke Goshen there. And your own information? That’s a joke. You’ve got an anonymous call, that’s it. It doesn’t mean shit.”

They all looked at Bosch as if he had just belched at the debutante ball.

“Harry, let’s get another cup,” Felton said.

“I’m fine.”

“Let’s get one anyway.”

He put his arm on Bosch’s shoulder and led him back toward the station. Inside at the kitchen counter, where there was a coffee urn, Felton poured himself another cup before speaking.

“Look, Harry, you gotta go with this. This is a major opportunity for us and for you.”

“I know that. I just don’t want to blow it. Can’t we hold off on this until we’re sure of what we’ve got? It’s my case, Captain, and you’re still running the show.”

“I thought we had that all straightened out.”

“I thought we did, too, but I might as well be pissing in the wind.”

“Look, Detective, we’re going to go up the road and take this guy down, search his place and put him in a little room. I guarantee that if he isn’t your man, he’s going to give him to you. And he’s going to give us Joey Marks along the way. Now, come on, get with the program and get happy.”

He cuffed Bosch on the shoulder and headed back out to the lot. Bosch followed in a few moments. He knew that he was whining over nothing. You find somebody’s prints on a body, you bring him in. That’s a given. You sweat the details later. But Bosch didn’t like being a bystander. That was the real rub and he knew it. He wanted to run the show. Only out here in the desert, he was a fish out of water, flopping on the sand. He knew he should call Billets, but it was too late for her to do anything and he didn’t like the idea of telling her he had let this one get away from him.

The patrol car with the two uniforms was there when Bosch stepped out of the fire station and back into the oven.

“All right,” Felton said. “We’re all here. Mount up and let’s go get this fucker.”

They were there in five minutes. Goshen lived in a house that rose out of the scrubland on Desert View Avenue. It was a large house but not one that looked particularly ostentatious. The one thing that looked out of the ordinary was the concrete-block wall and gate that surrounded the half-acre property. The house was in the middle of nowhere but its owner needed to put a security wall around it.

They all stopped their cars on the shoulder of the road and got out. Baxter had come prepared. From the trunk of his Caprice he pulled out two stepladders that they would use to scale the wall next to the driveway gate. Iverson was the first to go over. When he got to the top of the wall, he put the other ladder in place on the other side but hesitated before climbing down into the front yard.

“Anybody see any dogs?”

“No dogs,” Baxter said. “I checked this morning.”

Iverson went down and the others followed him over. While he waited for his turn, Bosch looked around and could just see the neon demarcation of the Strip several miles to the east. Above this the sun was a neon red ball. The air had gone from warm to hot and was as dry and rough as sandpaper. Bosch thought of the cherry-flavored Chap Stick in his pocket that he had bought at the hotel gift shop. But he didn’t want to use it in front of the local boys.

After Bosch had scaled the wall and was approaching the house behind the others, he looked at his watch. It was now almost nine but the house seemed dead. No movement, no sound, no lights, nothing. Curtains were closed across every window.

“You sure he’s here?” Bosch whispered to Baxter.

“He’s here,” Baxter replied without lowering his voice. “I jumped the wall about six and touched the hood of the Vette. It was warm. He hadn’t been home long. He’s in there asleep, I guarantee it. Nine o’clock to this guy is like four in the morning for normal people.”

Bosch looked over at the Corvette. He remembered it from the night before. As he looked around further, he realized the confines within the walls of the compound were carpeted in lush, green grass. It must have cost a fortune to plant and another one to keep it watered. The property sat in the desert like a towel on the beach. Bosch was drawn from his wonder by the sound of Iverson hitting the front door with his foot.

With weapons drawn, Bosch and the others followed Iverson into the dark opening to the house. They went in screaming the usual identifiers —
Police!
and
Don’t Move!
— and quickly moved down a hallway to the left. Bosch followed the sharp slashes of light from their flashlights. Almost immediately he heard female screams and then a light came on in a room at the end of the hall.

By the time he got in there, he saw Iverson kneeling on a king-size bed, holding his Smith & Wesson short barrel six inches from the face of Luke Goshen. The big man Bosch had encountered the night before was wrapped in the bed’s black silk sheets and looked as calm about the situation as Magic Johnson used to look while shooting free throws with the game on the line. He even took the time to glance up at the ceiling to view the reflection of the scene in the mirror.

It was the women who weren’t calm. Two of them, both nude, stood on either side of the bed, oblivious to their nakedness but fully in the latter stages of fright. Finally, Baxter quieted them with a loud shout of “Shut up!”

It took a few moments for the silence to sink in. Nobody moved. Bosch never took his eyes off Goshen. He was the only danger in the room. He sensed that the other cops, who had branched off to search the house, had now moved into the room behind him along with the two uniform cops.

“On your face, Luke,” Iverson finally ordered. “You girls get some clothes on. Now!”

One of the women said, “You can’t just —”

“Shut up!” Iverson cut her off. “Or you go in to town like that. Your choice.”

“I’m not go —”

“Randy!” Goshen boomed with a voice as deep as a barrel. “Shut the fuck up and get dressed. They’re not taking you anywhere. You, too, Harm.”

All the men but Goshen instinctively looked at the woman he had called Harm. She looked like she weighed about ninety pounds. She had soft blond hair, breasts she could hide in a child’s tea cups and a gold hoop piercing one of the folds of her vagina. There was a look of fright etched on her face that had completely crowded out any hint of beauty.

“Harmony,” she whispered, understanding their dilemma.

“Well, get dressed, Harmony,” Felton said. “Both of you. Turn to the wall and get dressed.”

“Just get ’em their clothes and get ’em out of here,” Iverson said.

Harmony was stepping into a pair of jeans when she stopped and looked at the men giving conflicting orders.

“Well, which is it?” Randy asked in an irritated voice. “You people got your shit together or what?”

Bosch recognized her as the woman who had been dancing in Dolly’s the night before.

“Get ’em out of here!” Iverson yelled. “Now.”

The uniforms moved in to usher the naked women out.

“We’re going,” Randy yelped. “Don’t touch me.”

Iverson yanked the sheets off Goshen and began cuffing his hands behind his back. Goshen’s blond hair ran in a thin and tightly braided ponytail down his back. Bosch hadn’t noticed that the night before.

“Whatsa matter, Iverson?” he said, his face against the mattress. “You got a problem with a little poon hangin’ around? You a little punk or something?”

“Goshen, do yourself a favor, shut your fuckin’ hole.”

Goshen laughed off the threat. He was a deeply tanned man who seemed even larger than Bosch recalled from the night before. He was completely buffed, his arms the size of hams. For a short moment, Bosch thought he understood Goshen’s desire to sleep with two women. And why they willingly went with him in twos.

Goshen faked a yawn to make sure everyone knew he wasn’t the least bit threatened by what was happening. He wore only black bikini underwear that matched the sheets. There were tattoos on his back. A one percent sign on the left shoulder blade, a Harley Davidson insignia on the right. On the upper left arm there was another tattoo. The number eighty-eight.

“What’s this, your IQ?” Iverson said as he sharply slapped the arm.

“Fuck you, Iverson, and the phony fuckin’ warrant you rode in on.”

Bosch knew what the tattoo meant. He had seen it enough in L.A. The eighth letter of the alphabet was H. Eight-eight meant HH, short for Heil Hitler. It meant Goshen had spent some time with white supremacists. But most of the assholes Bosch came across with similar tattoos had gotten them in prison. It was amazing to him that Goshen apparently had no criminal record and had spent no time in stir. If he had, his name would have come up when the prints from Tony Aliso’s jacket had been run through the AFIS computer. He put thoughts of this contradiction aside when Goshen managed to turn his head so that he was looking at Bosch.

“You,” he said. “You’re the one they should be arresting. After what you did to Gussie.”

Bosch bent over the bed to reply.

“This ain’t about last night. This is about Tony Aliso.”

Iverson roughly turned Goshen over on the bed.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Goshen asked angrily. “I’m clean on that, man. What are you —”

He tried to pull himself up into a sitting position but Iverson pushed him back down hard.