Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [164]
“Roger that,” came the return. “You always wanted to be on my tail end, didn’t you, Roy?”
“Funny guy,” Lindell said.
An hour went by while they watched from their new position and nothing happened. Lindell was able to move their car in closer, parking in front of a card-dealing school about half the parking lot’s length from the bank. It was class day and several would-be dealers had been pulling in and parking. It was good cover.
“I don’t know, Bosch,” Lindell said, breaking a long silence. “You think they’re going to show or not?”
“I never said it was anything more than a hunch. But I still think it all fits. It even fits better since we got here. Last week I found a matchbook in Aliso’s room at the Mirage. It was from La Fuentes. Whether they show or not, I say Tony’s got a box in that bank.”
“Well, I’m thinking about sending Don here in to ask about that. We might be able to call an end to this and stop wasting our time if we find out there’s no box.”
“Well, it’s your call.”
“You got that right.”
A couple more minutes of tense silence went by.
“What about Powers?” Lindell asked.
“What about him?”
“I don’t see him here, either, Bosch. When you got here this morning, you were all hot and heavy about him comin’ out here to find her and blast her full of holes. So where is he?”
“I don’t know, Lindell. But if we’re smart enough to figure this out, so is he. I wouldn’t doubt it if he knew from tailing Tony where the box was all along and just left that out of our little conversation.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, either. But I still say it’d be stupid for him to come here. He’s got to know we have a fix on this.”
“Stupid isn’t the word. It’s suicidal. But I don’t think he cares. He just wants her to go down. And if he takes a bullet, too, then that’s the way it goes. Like I told you before, he was ready to do the kamikaze scene at the station when he thought she was there.”
“Well, let’s just hope he’s cooled down a little since —”
“There!” Baker barked out.
Bosch followed his pointing finger toward the far corner of the lot, where a white limousine had just pulled in and was moving slowly toward the bank.
“Jesus,” Lindell said. “Don’t tell me he is this stupid.”
All limos looked basically the same to Bosch but somehow Lindell and Baker had recognized the car.
“Is that Joey Marks?”
“It’s his limo. He likes those big whitewalls. It’s the wop in him. I just can’t — he can’t be in there. He’s not going to waste two years of my fucking life making this pickup, is he?”
The limo stopped in the lane in front of the bank. There was no further movement.
“You got this, La Fuentes?” Lindell asked.
“Yeah, we got it,” came a whispered reply, though there was clearly no way anyone in that van could be overheard by someone in the limo.
“Uh, one, two and three, standby,” Lindell continued. “Looks like we might have the fox in the henhouse. Air Jordan, you take five until further. I don’t want you swinging over and spooking anybody.”
This brought a chorus of rogers from the three other ground units and the helicopter.
“On second thought, three, why don’t you come on up by the southwest entrance and stand by there for me,” Lindell said.
“Roger that.”
Finally, the door to the limo opened, but it was on the side blocked from Bosch’s view. He waited, not breathing, and after a beat Captain John Felton emerged from the limo.
“Bingo,” the whisper came over the radio.
Felton then leaned back into the open door and reached in. Veronica Aliso now emerged, Felton’s hand tightly around her arm. Following her, another man emerged at the same time the trunk opened automatically. While this second man, who was wearing gray pants and a shirt with an oval name tag sewn above the breast pocket, went to the trunk, Felton bent down and said something to someone still inside the limo. He never took his hand off Veronica’s arm.
Bosch caught only a