A Darkness More Than Night - Michael Connelly [115]
“What is this thing you said we missed?”
“It was in the arrest package from Gunn’s last duice. I guess after Bosch told you he had spoken to him in lockup you pulled all the records. I just scanned through it the first time I looked at the book.”
“I pulled the records,” she said in a defensive tone. “He spent the night of December thirtieth in the Hollywood tank. That’s where Bosch saw him.”
“And he bonded out in the morning. Seven-thirty.”
“Yeah. Okay? I don’t get it.”
“Look who bailed him out.”
“Terry, I’m at my parents’. I don’t have —”
“Right, sorry. He was bailed out by Rudy Tafero.”
Silence. McCaleb was at the pier. He walked out toward the gangway that led down to the skiff dock and leaned on the railing. He cupped his free hand over his ear again.
“Okay, he was bailed out by Rudy Tafero,” Winston said. “I assume he is a licensed bail bondsman. What does that mean?”
“You haven’t been watching your TV. You’re right, Tafero is a licensed bail bondsman — at least he put a license number on the bail sheet. But he’s also a PI and security consultant. And — ready for this — he works for David Storey.”
Winston didn’t say anything but McCaleb could hear her breathing into the phone.
“Terry, I think you better slow down. You are reading too much into this.”
“No coincidences, Jaye.”
“What coincidence? The man’s a bail bondsman. It’s what he does. He gets people out of jail. I’ll bet you a box of doughnuts his office is right across the street from Hollywood station with all the others. He probably bails every third drunk and fourth prostitute out of the tank there.”
“You don’t believe it’s that simple and you know it.”
“Don’t tell me what I believe.”
“This was when he was in the middle of preparing for Storey’s trial. Why would Tafero come over and write a duice ticket himself?”
“Because maybe he’s a one-man show and maybe, like I said, all he had to do was cross the street.”
“I don’t buy it. And there’s something else. On his booking slip it says Gunn got his one phone call at three A.M. December thirty-first. The number’s on the slip — he called his sister in Long Beach.”
“Okay, what about it? We knew that.”
“I called her today and asked if she’d called a bondsman for him. She said no. She said she was tired of getting calls in the middle of the night and literally bailing him out all the time. She told him he was on his own this time.”
“So he went with Tafero. What about it?”
“How’d he get him? He already used his call.”
Winston had no answer for that. They were both silent for a while. McCaleb looked out across the harbor. The yellow taxi boat was moving slowly down one of the fairways, empty except for the man at the wheel. Men alone in their boats, McCaleb thought.
“What are you going to do?” Winston finally asked. “Where are you going with this?”
“I’m coming back across tonight. Can you meet me in the morning?”
“Where? When?”
The tone of her voice revealed that she was put out by the prospect of a meeting.
“Seven-thirty, out front at the Hollywood station.”
There was a pause and then Winston said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. I can’t do this. If Hitchens gets wind of it, that will be the end. He’ll ship me out to Palmdale. I’ll spend the rest of my career pulling bones out of the desert sand.”
McCaleb was ready for that protest.
“You said the bureau guys want the murder book back, right? You meet me, I’ll have it with me. What’s Hitchens going to say about that?”
There was silence as Winston considered this.
“Okay, that’ll work. I’ll be there.”
34
When Bosch got home that evening he found the message light on his phone machine was blinking. He pushed the button and listened to two messages, one from each of the prosecutors on the Storey case. He decided to call Langwiser back first. As he punched her number into the phone, he wondered what urgency had caused both members of the prosecution team to call him. He thought maybe they had been contacted by the FBI agents McCaleb had mentioned. Or possibly by the reporter.
“What’s up?” he asked when Langwiser answered. “With