Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [20]
“I don’t…How did this happen?” she asked, her eyes staring down at the floor.
“He was found in his car. He’d been shot.”
“In Las Vegas?”
“No. Here. Not far. It looks like he was coming home from the airport when…when he was somehow stopped by somebody. We’re not sure yet. His car was found off Mulholland Drive. Down by the Bowl.”
He watched her a little more. She still had not looked up. Bosch felt a sense of guilt pass over him. Guilt because he was not watching this woman with sympathy. He had been in this place too many times for that. Instead, he watched her with an eye for false mannerisms. In these situations his suspicion outweighed his compassion. It had to.
“Can I get you anything, Mrs. Aliso?” Rider asked. “Water? Do you have coffee? Do you want something stronger?”
“No. I’m fine. Thank you. It’s just a terrible shock.”
“Do you have any children in the house?” Rider asked.
“No, we…no children. Do you know what happened? Was he robbed?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Bosch said.
“Of course.…Can you tell me, was there much pain?”
“No, there was no pain,” Bosch said.
He thought of the tears welled in Tony Aliso’s eyes. He decided not to tell her about that.
“It must be hard, your job,” she said. “Telling people this sort of thing.”
He nodded and looked away. For a moment he thought of the old squad room joke about the easiest way to do next-of-kin notification. When Mrs. Brown opens the door, you say, “Are you the widow Brown?”
He looked back at the widow Aliso.
“Why did you ask if it happened in Las Vegas?”
“Because that was where he was.”
“How long was he supposed to be there?”
“I don’t know. He never scheduled it with a return. He always bought open-ended tickets so he could come back when he wanted to. He always said he’d be back when his luck changed. For the worse.”
“We have reason to believe he came back to Los Angeles on Friday night. His car wasn’t found until this evening. That’s two days, Mrs. Aliso. Did you try to call him in Las Vegas during that time?”
“No. We usually didn’t speak when he was over there.”
“And how often was it that he went?”
“Once or twice a month.”
“For how long each time?”
“Anywhere from two days to once he spent a week. Like I said, it all depended on how he was doing.”
“And you never called him there?” Rider asked.
“Rarely. Not at all this time.”
“Was it business or pleasure that took him there?” Bosch asked.
“He always told me it was both. He said he had investors to see. But it was an addiction. That’s what I believed. He loved to gamble and could afford to do it. So he went.”
Bosch nodded but didn’t know why.
“This last time, when did he go?”
“He went Thursday. After leaving the studio.”
“You saw him last then?”
“Thursday morning. Before he went to the studio. He left for the airport from there. It’s closer.”
“And you had no idea when to expect him back.”
He said it as a statement. It was out there for her to challenge if she wanted to.
“To be honest, I was just beginning to wonder tonight. It usually doesn’t take long for that place to separate a man from his money. I thought it was a little long, yes. But I didn’t try to track him down. And then you came.”
“What did he like to play over there?”
“Everything. But poker the most. It was the only game where you weren’t playing against the house. The house took a cut, but you were playing against the other players. That’s how he explained it to me once. Only he called the other players schmucks from Iowa.”
“Was he always alone over there, Mrs. Aliso?”
Bosch looked down at his notebook and acted as if he was writing something important and that her answer wasn’t. He knew it was cowardly.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Did you ever go with him at all?”
“I don’t like to gamble. I don’t like that city. That city is a horrible place. They can dress it up all they want, it’s still a city of vices and whores. Not just the sexual kind.”
Bosch studied the cool anger in her dark eyes.
“You didn’t answer