Trunk Music (44 page)

“This is so much bullshit, Bosch. It’s a joke!”

“Then you started following Tony. You see, he was your problem. He was in the way. So you did your homework. You followed him to Vegas and you caught him in the act. You knew just what he was up to and how to put him down in a way that we’d go down the wrong path. Trunk music, they call it. Only you couldn’t carry the tune, Powers. We’re on to you. With her help, we’re going to put you down.”

Powers was looking down at the table. The skin around his eyes and his jawline had drawn tight.

“This is so much crap,” he said without looking up. “I’m tired of listening to it and to you. She’s not in the other room. She’s sitting up there in that big house on the hill. This is the oldest trick in the book.”

Powers looked up and a twisted smile cracked his face.

“You try to pull this shit on a cop? I can’t believe it. This is really weak, man. You’re weak. You’re embarrassing yourself here.”

Bosch reached over to the tape recorder and pushed the play button. Veronica Aliso’s voice filled the tiny room.

“It was him. He’s crazy. I couldn’t stop him until it was too late. Then I couldn’t tell anyone because it…it would look like I —”

Bosch turned it off.

“That’s enough,” he said. “It’s out of line for me to even play
that
for you. But I thought, cop to cop, you should know where you stand.”

Bosch silently watched Powers as he did a slow burn. Bosch could see the anger boiling up behind his eyes. He didn’t seem to move a muscle, yet he seemed all at once to become as hard as a stack of lumber. He finally was able to hold himself back, though, and compose himself.

“It’s just her word,” he said in a quiet voice. “There’s no corroboration of anything. It’s a fantasy, Bosch. Her word against mine.”

“It could be. Except we have these.”

Bosch opened the file and threw the stack of photos in front of Powers. Then he reached across and carefully fanned them on the table so they could be seen and recognized.

“That backs up a good part of her story, don’t you think?”

Bosch watched as Powers studied the photographs. Once again Powers seemed to go to the edge with an interior rage, but once more he contained it.

“It doesn’t back up shit,” he said. “She could’ve taken these herself. Anybody could have. Just because she gives you a stack of…She’s got you people wrapped up, doesn’t she? You’re buying every line she feeds you.”

“Maybe that would be so, only she didn’t give us the photos.”

Bosch reached into the file again and pulled out a copy of the search warrant. He reached over and put it on top of the photos.

“Five hours ago we faxed that to Judge Warren Lambert at his home in the Palisades. He faxed it back signed. Edgar and Rider have been in your little Hollywood bungalow most of the night. Among the items seized was a Nikon camera with telephoto lens. And these photos. They were under your mattress, Powers.”

He paused here to let it all sink in behind Powers’s darkening eyes.

“Oh, and one other thing we found.” Bosch reached down and brought the box up. “This was in the attic with the Christmas stuff.”

He dumped the contents of the box on the table and the stacks of cash tumbled every which way, some falling to the floor. Bosch shook the box to make sure it had all come out and then dropped it to the floor. He looked at Powers. His eyes were wild, darting over the thick bundles. Bosch knew he had him. And he also knew in his gut that he had Veronica Aliso to thank for that.

“Now, personally, I don’t think you are this stupid,” Bosch said quietly. “You know, to keep the pictures and all this cash right in your house. Of course, I’ve seen crazier things in my time. But if I was betting, I’d bet that you didn’t know all of this was there because you didn’t put it there. But, hey, either way it works fine for me. We’ve got you and we’ll clear this one, that’s all I care about. It would be nice to grab her, too, but that’s okay. We’ll need her for you. With the photos and her story and all the other stuff we’ve talked about here, I think we got you for the murder easy. There’s also lying-in-wait to tack on. That makes it a special circumstances case, Powers. You’re looking at one of two things. The needle or LWP.”

He pronounced the last acronym
el-wop
, knowing that any cop, just as any criminal in the system, would know it meant life without parole.

“Anyway,” Bosch continued, “I guess I’ll go get that phone brought in here so you can call your lawyer. Better make it a good one. And none of those grandstanders from the O.J. case. You need to get yourself a lawyer who does his best work outside of the courtroom. A negotiator.”

He stood up and turned to the door. With his hand on the knob he looked back at Powers.

“You know, I feel bad, Powers. You being a cop and all, I was sort of hoping you’d catch the break instead of her. I feel like we’re hitting the wrong person with the hammer. But I guess that’s life in the big city. Somebody’s got to be hit with it.”

He turned back to the door and opened it.

“
Bitch!
” Powers said with a quiet forcefulness.

Then he whispered something under his breath that Bosch couldn’t hear. Bosch looked back at him. He knew enough not to say a word.

“It was her idea,” Powers said. “All of it. She conned me and now she’s conning you.”

Bosch waited a beat but there was nothing else.

“Are you saying you want to talk to me?”

“Yeah, Bosch, have a seat. Maybe we can work something out.”

At nine Bosch sat in the lieutenant’s office, Billets behind the desk, bringing her up to date. He had an empty Styrofoam cup in his hand, but he didn’t drop it in the trash can because he needed something to remind him that he needed more coffee. He was beat tired and the lines beneath his eyes were so pronounced they almost hurt. His mouth tasted sour from all the coffee and cigarettes. He’d eaten nothing but candy bars in the last twenty hours and his stomach was finally protesting. But he was a happy man. He had won the last round with Powers and in this kind of battle the last round was the only one that mattered.

“So,” Billets said, “he told you everything?”

“His version of it,” Bosch said. “He lays everything on her and that’s to be expected. Remember, he thinks she’s in the other room laying everything on him. So he’s making her out to be the big bad black widow, like he never had an impure thought in his life until he ran across her.”

He brought the cup up to his mouth but then realized it was empty.

“But once we get her in here and she knows he’s talking, we’ll probably get her version,” he said.

“When did Jerry and Kiz leave?”

Bosch looked at his watch.

“About forty minutes ago. They should be back with her any time.”

“Why didn’t you go up to get her?”

“I don’t know. I figured I took Powers, they should have her. Spread it around, you know?”

“Better be careful. You keep acting like that and you’ll lose your rep as a hardass.”

Bosch smiled and looked down into his cup.

“So what’s the gist of his story?” Billets asked.

“The gist is pretty much how we figured it. He went up there to take a burglary report that day and it went from there. He says she put the moves on him and next thing you know they had a thing going. He started taking more and more patrol swings through the neighborhood and she was stopping by his bungalow in the mornings after Tony went to work or while he was in Vegas. The way he describes it, she was reeling him in. The sex was good and exotic. He was hooked up pretty good.”

“Then she asked him to tail Tony.”

“Right. That first trip Powers took to Vegas was a straight job. She asked him to tail Tony. He did and he came back with a bunch of photos of Tony and the girl and a lot of questions about who Tony was meeting with over there and why. He wasn’t stupid. He could tell Tony was into something. He says Veronica filled him in, knew every detail, knew all the OC guys by name. She also told him how much money was involved. That was when the plan came together. She told Powers that Tony had to go, that it would be just them afterward, them and a lot of money. She told him Tony had been skimming. Skimming off the skim. For years. There was at least a couple million in the pot plus whatever they took off Tony when they put him down.”

Bosch stood up and continued the story while pacing in front of her desk. He was too tired to sit for very long without being overcome with fatigue.

“Anyway, that was what the second trip was for. Powers went over and watched Tony one more time. It was research. He also tailed the guy Tony made the pickups from. Luke Goshen, who he obviously had no idea was an agent. They decided Goshen would be the patsy and worked out the plan to make it look like a mob hit. Trunk music.”

“It’s pretty complicated.”

“Yeah, that it is. He says the planning was all hers, and I kind of think he might be telling the truth there. You ask me, Powers is smart but not that smart. This whole thing was Veronica’s plan and he became a willing player. Only she had a backdoor built into it that Powers didn’t know about.”

“He was the backdoor.”

“Yeah. She set him up to take the fall, but only if we got too close. He said he’d given her a key to his place. It’s a bungalow over on Sierra Bonita. She must’ve gone over there sometime this week, shoved the photos under the mattress and stuck the box of money in the attic. Smart woman. Nice setup. When Jerry and Kiz get her in here, I know just what she’ll say. She’s going to say it was all him, that he became infatuated with her, that they had an affair and that she broke it off. He went ahead and knocked off her husband. When she realized what had happened, she couldn’t say anything. He forced her to go along with it. She had no choice. He was a cop and he told her he could pin it all on her if she didn’t go along.”

“It’s a good story. In fact, it still might work with a jury. She could walk on this.”

“Maybe. We still have some things to do.”

“What about the skim?”

“Good question. Nothing like the kind of money he’s talking about showed up on Aliso’s bank accounts. Powers said she said it was in a safe deposit box but she never told him where. It’s got to be somewhere. We’ll find it.”

“If it exists.”

“I think it does. She planted a half million in Powers’s place to put him in the frame. That’s a lot of money to spend on setting him up, unless you happen to have a couple million more stashed someplace. That’s what we —”

Bosch looked through the glass into the squad room. Edgar and Rider were walking toward the lieutenant’s office. Veronica Aliso was not with them. They came into the office with urgent looks on their faces and Bosch knew what they were going to say.

“She’s gone,” Edgar said.

Bosch and Billets just stared at them.

“Looks like she split last night,” Edgar said. “Her cars are still there but there was nobody at the house. We slipped in a back door and it’s empty, man.”

“She take her clothes, jewelry?” Bosch asked.

“Doesn’t look like it. She’s just gone.”

“You check the gate?”

“Yeah, we checked at the gate. She had two visitors yesterday. First was a courier at four-fifteen. Legal Eagle Messenger Service. Guy was there about five minutes, in and out. Then a visitor last night. Late. Guy gave the name John Galvin. She had already called the gate and given the same name and told them to let him through when he showed up. They took his plate down and we ran it. It’s Hertz out of Vegas. We’ll put a call in. Anyway, Galvin stayed until one this morning. Just about the time we were in the woods hooking up Powers, he split. She probably went with him.”

“We called the guard on duty at the time,” Rider said. “He couldn’t remember if Galvin left alone or not. He doesn’t specifically remember seeing Mrs. Aliso last night, but she could have been down in the backseat.”

“Do we know who her attorney is?” Billets asked.

“Yes,” Rider said, “Neil Denton, Century City.”

“Okay, Jerry, you work the trace on the Hertz rental and, Kiz, you try to run down Denton and see if you can find out what was so important that he had to messenger it over to her on Saturday.”

“All right,” Edgar said. “But I got a bad feeling. I think she’s in the wind.”

“Well, then we have to go into the wind to find her,” Billets said. “Go to it.”

Edgar and Rider went back out to the homicide table and Bosch stood silent for a few moments, thinking about this latest development.

“Should we have put people on her?” Billets asked.

“Well, looking back, it seems that way. But we were off the books. We didn’t have the people. Besides, we didn’t really have anything on her until a couple hours ago.”

Billets nodded, a pained expression on her face.

“If they don’t get a line on her in the next fifteen minutes, put it out on the air.”

“Right.”

“Listen, getting back to Powers, you think he’s holding anything back?”

“Hard to say. Probably. There’s still the question about why this time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Aliso had been going over to Vegas for years and bringing back suitcases full of money. He’d been skimming for years, according to Powers, and also had been having his share of the women over there. Veronica knew all of this. She had to. So what was it that made her do it now, rather than last year or next year?”

“Maybe she just got fed up. Maybe this was just the right time. Powers came along and it clicked.”

“Maybe. I asked Powers and he said he didn’t know. But I think maybe he was holding back. I’m going to take another run at him.”

Billets didn’t respond.

“There’s still some sort of secret we don’t know about,” Bosch continued. “There’s something there. I’m hoping she’ll tell it. If we find her.”

Billets dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

“You have Powers on tape?” she asked.

“Audio and video. Kiz was watching in room four. As soon as he said he wanted to talk she started it all rolling.”

“Did you advise him again? On the tape?”

“Yeah, it’s all on there. He’s sealed up pretty good. You want to watch it, I’ll get the tape.”