Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [119]
They sat in silence for a few minutes while Edgar and Rider digested this.
“Okay,” Edgar finally said. “I see what you’re saying. But if Vegas was one big fucking red herring, how does the gun get over there in the agent’s house?”
“That’s what we have to figure out. What if there was someone outside of Tony’s mob connections but close enough to him to know he was washing money and the reason why he made all the trips to Vegas? Someone who either had personal knowledge or maybe followed Tony to Vegas and watched how he worked, how he picked up the money from Goshen, everything? Someone who knew exactly how he did it, who knew Goshen could be set up to take the fall, and that Tony’d be coming back on Friday with a lot of money in his briefcase?”
“They would be able to set the whole thing up, as long as they could get into the agent’s house to plant the gun,” Edgar answered.
“Right. And getting into the house would be no problem. It’s out in the middle of nowhere. He was away at the club for long stretches at a time. Anybody could get in, plant the gun, and get out. The question is who?”
“You’re talking about either his wife or his girlfriend,” Edgar said. “Both could have had that kind of access.”
Bosch nodded.
“So which one do we set up on? The three of us can’t do both, not on a freelance like this.”
“We don’t need to,” Bosch said. “I think the choice is obvious.”
“Which?” Edgar said. “The girlfriend?”
Bosch looked at Rider, giving her the chance to answer. She saw his look and then her eyes narrowed as she went to work.
“It…it can’t be the girlfriend because…because she called Tony on Sunday morning. On the voice mail. Why would she call the guy if she knew he was dead?”
Bosch nodded. She was good.
“Could have been part of a setup,” Edgar said. “Another misdirection.”
“Could be but I doubt it,” Bosch said. “Plus, we know she worked Friday night. That would make it kind of tough for her to be over here whacking Tony.”
“So then it’s the wife,” Edgar said. “Veronica.”
“Right,” Bosch said. “I think she was lying to us, acting like she didn’t know anything about her husband’s business when she knew everything. I think this whole thing was her plan. She wrote the letters to the IRS and to the OCID. She wanted to get something going against Tony, then when he ended up dead it would point toward a mob hit. Trunk music. Planting the gun on Goshen was just icing. If we found it, fine. If we didn’t, then we’d be sniffing around Vegas until we shelved the case.”
“You’re saying she did this all on her own?” Edgar asked.
“No,” Bosch said. “I’m just saying I think this was her plan. But she had to have had help. An accomplice. It took two to do the actual hit and she sure didn’t take the gun to Vegas. After the kill, she stays at the house and waits while the accomplice goes to Vegas and plants the gun while Luke Goshen’s at the club.”
“But wait a minute,” Rider said. “We’re forgetting something. Veronica Aliso had it very cushy in her existing life. Tony was raking in the bread with his washing machine. They had the big house in the hills, the cars…why would she want to kill the cash cow? How much was in that briefcase?”
“According to the feds, four hundred and eighty thousand,” Bosch said.
Edgar whistled softly. Rider shook her head.
“I still don’t see it,” she said. “That’s a hell of a lot of money, but Tony was making at least that much a year. In business terms, killing him was a short-term gain/long-term loss for her. Doesn’t make sense.”
“Then there is something else running through all of this that we don’t know about yet,” Bosch said. “Maybe he was about to dump her. Maybe that old lady in Vegas who said Tony was going to go away with Layla was telling the truth. Or maybe there’s money somewhere we don’t know about. But for now I can’t see anybody else fitting into this picture but her.”
“But what about the gatehouse?” Rider said. “The log shows she never left Friday, the whole night. And she had no visitors.”
“Well, we’ve got to work on that,” Bosch said. “There had to have been a way