The Harry Bosch Novels Vol I Part 96

"So what are we going to do?"

"Call you."

"What about the delay?"

"What delay?"

Bosch nodded. There was no changing it. There would be no delay. He realized he had handled it badly. He had approached Belk the wrong way. He should have tried to make Belk believe it had been his own idea to go for a delay. Then it would have worked. Instead, Bosch was beginning to feel the jitters - that uneasy feeling that came with approaching the unknown. He felt the way he did before he climbed down into a VC tunnel for the first time in Vietnam. It was fear, he knew, blossoming like a black rose in the pit of his chest.

"We've got twenty-five minutes," Belk said. "Let's forget about delays and try to work out how we want your testimony to go. I am going to lead you down the path. The jury will follow. But remember, you have to take it slow or you will lose them. Okay?"

"We got twenty minutes," Bosch corrected him. "I need to go out for a smoke before I sit up there on the stand."

Belk pressed on as if he hadn't heard.

"Remember, Bosch, there could be millions of dollars at stake here. It may not be your money but it may be your career."

"What career?"

Bremmer was hanging around the door to the conference room when Bosch came out twenty minutes later.

"Get it all?" Harry asked.

He walked by him and headed toward the escalator. Bremmer followed.

"No, man, I wasn't listening. I'm just waiting for you. Listen, what's going on with the new case? Edgar won't tell me s.h.i.+t. Did you get an ID or what?"

"Yeah, we ID'd her."

"Who was it?"

"Not my case, man. I can't give it out. Besides, I give it to you and you'll run to Money Chandler with it, right?"

Bremmer stopped walking beside him.

"What? What are you talking about?"

Then he scurried up to Bosch's side and whispered.

"Listen, Harry, you're one of my main sources. I wouldn't screw you like that. If she's getting inside s.h.i.+t, look for somebody else."

Bosch felt bad about accusing the reporter. He'd had no evidence.

"You sure? I'm mistaken about this, right?"

"Absolutely. You're too valuable to me. I wouldn't do it."

"Okay, then."

That was as close as he'd come to an apology.

"So what can you tell me about the ID?"

"Nothing. It's still not my case. Try RHD."

"RHD has it? They took it from Edgar?"

Bosch got on the escalator and looked back at him. He nodded as he went down. Bremmer didn't follow.

Money Chandler was already on the steps smoking when Bosch came out. He lit a cigarette and looked back at her.

"Surprise, surprise," he said.

"What?"

"Resting."

"Only a surprise to Bulk," she said. "Any other lawyer would have seen it coming. I almost feel sorry for you, Bosch. Almost, but not quite. In a civil rights case, the chances of a win are always a long shot. But going up against the city attorney's office always kind of levels the playing field. These guys like Bulk, they couldn't make it on the outside....If he had to win in order to eat, your lawyer would be a thin man. He needs that steady paycheck from the city coming in, win or lose."

What she said, of course, was correct. But it was old news. Bosch smiled. He didn't know how to act. A part of himself liked her. She was wrong about him, but somehow he liked her. Maybe it was her tenacity, because her anger - though misdirected - was so pure.

Maybe it was because she wasn't afraid to talk to him outside of court. He had seen how Belk studiously avoided coming in contact with Church's family. Before getting up during recesses, he would sit at the defendant's table until he was sure they were all safely down the hall and on the escalator. But Chandler didn't play that kind of game. She was an up-front player.

Bosch guessed that this was what it was like when two boxers touched gloves before the bell. He changed the subject.

"I talked to Tommy Faraday out here the other day. He's Tommy Faraway now. I asked him what happened but he didn't say. He just said justice happened, whatever that means."

She blew a long stream of blue smoke out but didn't say anything for a while. Bosch looked at his watch. They had three minutes.

"You remember the Galton case?" she said. "It was a civil rights case, an excessive force."

Bosch thought about it. The name was familiar but it was difficult to place in the blend of excessive force cases he had heard or known about over the years.

"It was a dog case, right?"

"Yes. Andre Galton. This was before Rodney King, back when the wide majority of people in this city did not believe that their police engaged in horrible abuses as a matter of routine. Galton was black and driving with an expired tag through the hills of Studio City when a cop decided to pull him over.

"He had done nothing wrong, wasn't wanted, just had the tag one month overdue. But he ran. Great mystery of life, he ran. He got all the way up to Mulholland and ditched the car at one of those pull-offs where people look out at the view. Then he jumped out and climbed down the incline. There was nowhere to go down there but he wouldn't come back up and the cops wouldn't go down - too dangerous, they claimed at the trial."

Bosch remembered the story now but he let her tell it. Her indignation was so pure and stripped of lawyerly pose that he just wanted to hear her tell it.

"So they sent a dog down," she said. "Galton lost both t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and had permanent nerve damage to the right leg. He could walk but he had to kind of drag it behind him...."

"Enter Tommy Faraday," Bosch prompted.

"Yeah, he took the case. It was dead bang. Galton had done nothing wrong but to run. The response of the police certainly did not meet the offense. Any jury would see this. And the city attorney's office knew this. In fact, I think it was Bulk's case. They offered half a million to settle and Faraday pa.s.sed. He thought he'd get a minimum three times that in trial, so he pa.s.sed.

"And like I said, this was in the old days. Civil rights lawyers call it BK, that's short for Before King. A jury listened to four days of evidence and found for the cops in thirty minutes. Galton got nothing but a dead leg and a dead d.i.c.k out of the whole thing. He came out here afterward and went to that hedge right there. He had hidden a gun - wrapped it in plastic and buried it there. He came over to the statue here and put the gun in his mouth. Faraday was coming through the door just then and saw it happen. Blood all over the statue, everywhere."

Bosch didn't say anything. He remembered the case very clearly now. He looked up at the City Hall tower and watched the gulls circling above it. He always wondered what drew them there. It was miles from the ocean but there were always seabirds on top of City Hall. Chandler kept talking.

"Two things I've always been curious about," she said. "One, why did Galton run? And, two, why did he hide the gun? And I think the answers are both the same. He had no faith in justice, in the system. No hope. He had done nothing wrong but he ran because he was a black man in a white neighborhood and he had heard the stories all his life about what white cops do to black men in that position. His lawyer told him he had a dead-bang case, but he brought a gun to the courthouse because he had heard all his life about what jurors decide when it's a black man's word against the cops."

Bosch looked at his watch. It was time to go in but he did not want to walk away from her.

"So that's why Tommy said justice happened," she said. "That was justice for Andre Galton. Faraday referred all his cases to other lawyers after that. I took a few. And he never set foot in a courtroom again."

She stubbed out what was left of her cigarette.

"End of story," she said.

"I'm sure the civil rights lawyers tell that one a lot," Bosch said. "And now you put me and Church into that, is that it? I'm like the guy who sent the dog down the hill after Galton?"

"There are degrees, Detective Bosch. Even if Church was the monster you claim, he didn't have to die. If the system turns away from the abuses inflicted on the guilty, then who can be next but the innocents? You see, that's why I have to do what I'm going to do to you in there. For the innocents."

"Well, good luck," he said.

He put his own cigarette out.

"I won't need it," she said.

Bosch followed her gaze to the statue above the spot where Galton had killed himself. Chandler looked at it as if the blood were still there.

"That's justice," she said, nodding at the statue. "She doesn't hear you. She doesn't see you. She can't feel you and won't speak to you. Justice, Detective Bosch, is just a concrete blonde."

16

The courtroom seemed as silent as a dead man's heart while Bosch walked behind the plaintiff and defendant tables and in front of the jury box to get to the witness stand. After taking the oath he gave his full name and the clerk asked him to spell it.

"H-I-E-R-O-N-Y-M-U-S B-O-S-C-H."

Then the judge turned it over to Belk.

"Tell us a little bit about yourself, Detective Bosch, about your career."

"I've been a police officer nearly twenty years. I currently am a.s.signed to the homicide table at Hollywood Division. Before that -"

"Why do they call it a table?"

Jesus, Bosch thought.

"Because it's like a table. It is six small desks pushed together to make a long table, three detectives on each side. It's always called a table."

"Okay, go on."

"Before this a.s.signment I spent eight years in Robbery-Homicide Division's Homicide Special squad. Before that I was a detective on the homicide table in North Hollywood and robbery and burglary tables in Van Nuys. I was on patrol about five years, mostly in the Hollywood and Wils.h.i.+re divisions."

Belk slowly led him through his career up until the time he was on the Dollmaker task force. The questioning was slow and boring - even to Bosch, and it was his life. Every now and then he would look at the jurors when he answered a question and only a few seemed to be looking at him or paying attention. Bosch felt nervous and his palms were damp. He had testified in court at least a hundred times. But never like this, in his own defense. He felt hot though he knew the courtroom was overly cool.

"Now where was the task force physically located?"

"We used a second-floor storage room at the Hollywood station. It was an evidence and file storage room. We temporarily moved that stuff out into a rented trailer and used the room. We also had a room at Parker Center. The night s.h.i.+ft, which I was on, generally worked out of Hollywood."

"You were closer to the source, correct?"

"We thought so, yes. Most of the victims were taken from Hollywood streets. Many were later found in the area."

"So you wanted to be able to act quickly on tips and leads and being right there in the center of things helped you do that, correct?"

"Correct."

"On the night you got the call from the woman named Dixie McQueen, how did you get that call?"

"She called in on nine one one and when the dispatcher realized what she was talking about, the call was transferred out to the task force in Hollywood."

"Who answered it?"

"I did."

"Why is that? I thought you testified you were the supervisor of the night s.h.i.+ft. Didn't they have people answering phones?"

"Yes, we had people, but this call came in late. Everybody had left for the night. I was only there because I was bringing the Chronological Investigation Record up to date - we had to turn it in at the end of each week. I was the only one there. I answered."

"When you went to meet this woman, why didn't you call for a backup?"

"She hadn't told me enough over the phone to convince me there was anything to it. We were getting dozens of calls a day. None of them amounted to anything. I have to admit I went to take her report not believing it would amount to anything."

"Well, if you thought that, Detective, why did you go to her? Why not just take her information over the phone?"

"The main reason was that she said she didn't know the address she had been to with this man, but could show me the place if I drove her down Hyperion. Also, there seemed to be something genuine about her complaint, you know? It seemed that something had definitely scared her. I was about to head home so I thought I would just check it out on the way."

"Tell us what happened after you got to Hyperion."

"When we got there we could see lights on in the apartment over the garage. We even saw a shadow pa.s.s across one of the windows. So we knew the guy was still there. That's when Miss McQueen told me about the makeup she saw in the cabinet under the sink."

"What did that mean to you?"

"A lot. It immediately got my attention because we had never said in the press that the killer was keeping the victims' makeup. It had leaked that he was painting their faces but not that he also kept their makeup. So when she told me she had seen this collection of makeup, it all clicked. It gave what she said some immediate legitimacy."

Bosch drank some water from a paper cup the marshal had filled for him earlier.