Angle of Investigation_ Three Harry Bosch Stories - Michael Connelly [3]
Monty Kelman’s address was an apartment on Los Feliz near Griffith Park. Bosch’s knock was answered by a young woman in shorts andresn short a long-sleeve turtleneck shirt. She was thin to the point of being gaunt. An obvious junkie. She abruptly collapsed into the fetal position on the couch when they gave her the bad news about Monty. While Braxton attempted to console her and gather information from her at the same time, Bosch took a quick look around the one-bedroom apartment. As he expected, there was no obvious sign that the premises belonged to a burglar. This apartment was the front—the place where the parole agent visited and Kelman kept the semblance of a law-abiding life. Bosch knew that any active burglar with a parole tail would keep a separate and secret place—a safe house—for his tools and swag.
In the bedroom was a small desk in which Kelman kept his checkbook and personal papers. Bosch flipped through the checkbook and saw nothing unusual. He looked through everything else in the drawer but found no lead to Kelman’s safe house. He wasn’t particularly anxious about it. It was just a loose end, something that would be of greater concern to Braxton, as a burglary detective, than to Bosch.
As he turned to leave the bedroom he saw a saxophone propped on a stand in the corner by the door. He recognized from its size that it was an alto. He stepped over and lifted it into his hands. It looked old but well cared for. It was polished brass and he saw the buffing cloth pushed down into the mouth of the instrument. Bosch had never played the saxophone, had never even tried, but the instrument’s sound was the only music that had ever been able to truly light him up inside.
He held the instrument with a sense of reverence he rarely exhibited for any person or thing. And for a moment he was tempted to raise the mouthpiece to his lips and try to sound a note. Instead, he gripped the instrument the way he had seen countless musicians—from Art Pepper to Wayne Shorter—hold theirs.
“Harry, you got anything?” Braxton said from the other room.
Bosch carried the saxophone and stand out to the living room. The woman was sitting up on the couch now, her arms folded tightly across her chest. Tears streaked her face. Bosch didn’t know if she was crying over her lost love or her lost junk ticket.
He held up the saxophone.
“Whose is this?”
She swallowed before answering.
“It’s Monty’s. Was.”
“He played?”
“He tried. He liked jazz. He always said he wanted to take lessons. He never did.”
A new rush of tears cascaded down her cheeks.
“It’s gotta be swag,” Braxton said, ignoring her and speaking to Bosch. “I can run it on the box when we get back. On those things the manufacturer and serial number are engraved inside the bell.”
He pointed to the mouth of the horn.
“In there. Wouldn’t surprise me if it came out of Servan’s shop on one of the earlier B and Es.”
Bosch pulled the felt buffing cloth out of the opening and looked inside. There was an inscription on the curved brass but he couldn’t read it. He walked over to the window and angled the instrument so sunlight flooded into the mouth. He bent close and turned the instrument so he could read it.
CALUMET INSTRUMENTS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
CUSTOM MADE FOR QUENTIN MCKINZIE, 1963
“THE SWEET SPOT”
Bosch read it again and then a third time. His temples suddenly felt as if someone had pressed hot quarters against them. A flash memory filled his thoughts. A musician under the canopy set up on the deck of the ship. The soldiers crowded close. Those in wheelchairs, the men missing limbs, at the front. The man playing the sax, bending up and down and in and out like Sugar Ray Robinson coming from the corner of the ring. The music beautiful and agile, lighting him up. The sound better than anything he had ever heard. The goddamn light at the end of all his tunnels.
“Jesus, Harry, what’s it say?”
Bosch looked over at Braxton, the memory retreating into the darkness.
“What?”
“You look like you saw a ghost hidin’