Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [145]
“I didn’t think it would be for me.”
“When did you get there?”
“Last night. I’ve been waiting for you. Thanks for leaving the key.”
“You’re welcome…. Eleanor, where’d you go?”
There was a beat of silence before she answered.
“I went back to Vegas. I needed to get my car…clear out my bank account, things like that. Where have you been all night?”
“Working. We have a new suspect. We’re holding him here. Did you go by your apartment?”
“No. There was no reason to. I just did what I had to do and drove back.”
“I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“That’s okay. I was worried about where you were, but I didn’t want to call you there in case you were in the middle of something.”
Bosch wanted to ask her what came next for them, but he felt such a sense of happiness that she was there in his home that he didn’t dare to ruin the moment.
“I don’t know how much longer I’ll be tied up,” he said.
Bosch heard the heavy doors in the station’s rear hallway open and bang shut. Footsteps were coming toward the squad room.
“Do you have to go?” Eleanor asked.
“Um…”
Edgar and Rider walked into the squad room. Rider carried a brown evidence bag with something heavy in it. Edgar carried a closed cardboard box across which someone had stenciled Xmas with a Magic Marker. He also had a broad smile on his face.
“Yeah,” Bosch said, “I think I better go.”
“Okay, Harry, I’ll see you.”
“You’ll be there?”
“I’ll be here.”
“Okay, Eleanor, I’ll see you as soon as I can.”
He hung up and looked up at his two partners. Edgar was still smiling.
“We got your Christmas present here, Harry,” Edgar said. “We got Powers right here in this box.”
“You got the boots?”
“No. No boots. We got better than boots.”
“Show me.”
Edgar lifted the lid off the box. Off the top he took out a manila envelope. He then tilted the box so that Bosch could look in. Bosch whistled.
“Merry Christmas,” Edgar said.
“You count it?” Bosch asked, his eyes still on the stacks of currency with rubber bands around them.
“Each bundle has a number on it,” Rider said. “You add them all up, it equals four hundred eighty thousand. It looks like it’s everything.”
“Not a bad present, eh Harry?” Edgar said excitedly.
“No. Where was it?”
“Attic crawl space,” Edgar said. “One of the last places we looked. Box was just sitting there in front of me as soon as I stuck my head up.”
Bosch nodded.
“Okay, what else?”
“Found these under his mattress.”
From the envelope Edgar withdrew a stack of photos. They were six by four in size and each had the date of the photograph digitally printed on the bottom left corner. Bosch put them on the table in front of them and looked through them, carefully picking them up by the corners. He hoped Edgar had handled them the same way.
The first photo was of Tony Aliso getting into a car at the valet stand in front of the Mirage. The next was of him walking to the door of Dolly’s. Following that was a series of shots of him outside Dolly’s talking to the man Aliso knew as Luke Goshen. It was dark outside in these shots and they were taken from a distance, but the neon-glutted entrance of the club was lit as brightly as daylight and Aliso and Goshen were easily recognizable.
Then there were photos from the same location but the date at the bottom corner had changed. They showed a young woman leaving the club and walking to Aliso’s car. Bosch recognized her. It was Layla. There were also pictures of Tony and Layla poolside at the Mirage. The last shot was of Tony leaning his deeply tanned body over Layla’s lounge chair and kissing her on the mouth.
Bosch looked up at Edgar and Rider. Edgar was smiling again. Rider wasn’t.
“Just like we thought,” Edgar said. “He cased this guy over there in Vegas. That shows he had the knowledge to set this whole thing up. Him and the widow. We got ’em, Harry. This shows premeditation, lying in wait, the works. We got ’em both, nine ways to Sunday.”
“Maybe.” He looked at Rider. “What’s up with you, Kiz?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t know. It just seems too easy. The place was very clean. No old boots, no