Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [126]
There was silence for a few moments, and then one by one the other three nodded.
“Okay, then,” he said, “you may have told the lieutenant what you’ve been doing, but I’d like to hear it myself.”
“We’ve come up with a few things, not a lot,” Rider said. “Jerry went up the hill to see Nash while I worked the computer and talked to a friend at the Times. First off, I ran Tony Aliso’s TRW credit report and got Veronica’s Social Security number off that. I then ran that through the Department of Social Security computer to try and get a work history and found out that Veronica is not her real name. The Social comes back to Jennifer Gilroy, born forty-one years ago in Las Vegas, Nevada. No wonder she said she hated Vegas. She grew up there.”
“Any work history?”
“Nothing until she came out here and worked for TNA Productions.”
“What else?”
Before she could answer, there was a loud commotion near the glass door to the interior bar. The door opened and a large man in a bartender’s jacket pushed a smaller man through. The smaller man was disheveled and drunk and yelling something about the lack of respect he was getting. The bartender roughly walked him to the courtyard gate and pushed him through. As soon as the bartender turned to go back to the bar, the drunk spun around and started back in. The bartender turned around and pushed him so hard he fell backward onto the seat of his pants. Now embarrassed, he threatened to come back and get the bartender. A few people at some of the outside tables snickered. The drunk got up and staggered out to the street.
“They start early around here,” Billets said. “Go ahead, Kiz.”
“Anyway, I did an NCIC run. Jennifer Gilroy got picked up twice in Vegas for soliciting. This is going back more than twenty years. I called over there and had them ship us the mugs and reports. It’s all on fiche and they have to dig it out, so we won’t get it till next week. There probably won’t be much there, anyway. According to the computer, neither case went to court. She pleaded out and paid a fine each time.”
Bosch nodded. It sounded like a routine disposal of routine cases.
“That’s all I’ve got on that. As far as the Times goes, there was nothing on the search. And my friend at Variety didn’t do much better. Veronica Aliso was barely mentioned in the review of Casualty of Desire. Both she and the movie were panned, but I’d like to see it anyway. Do you still have the tape, Harry?”
“On my desk.”
“Does she get naked in it?” Edgar asked. “If she does, I’d like to see it, too.”
He was ignored.
“Okay, what else?” Rider said. “Uh, Veronica also got a couple mentions in stories about movie premieres and who attended. It wasn’t a lot. When you said she had fifteen minutes, I think you confused minutes with seconds. Anyway, that’s it from me. Jerry?”
Edgar cleared his throat and explained that he had gone up to the gatehouse at Hidden Highlands and run into a problem when Nash insisted on a new search warrant to look at the complete gate log. Edgar said he then spent the afternoon typing up the search warrant and hunting for a judge who hadn’t left early for the weekend. He eventually was successful and had a signed warrant which he planned to deliver the next morning.
“Kiz and I are goin’ up there in the morning. We’ll get a look at the gate log and then we’re probably going to hit some of the neighbors, do some interviews. Like you said, we’re hopin’ the widow will look out her window and catch our act, maybe get a little spooked. Maybe panic, make a mistake.”
It was then Bosch’s turn, and he recounted his afternoon efforts, including his run-in with Roy Lindell and the agent’s recollection that Veronica Aliso had started her show business career as a stripper in Vegas. He also discussed Salazar’s finding that Tony Aliso had been hit in the face with a blast of pepper spray shortly before his death and shared the deputy coroner’s hunch that it might have been