Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [53]
“Don’t,” he said.
The man considered his situation while Gussie groaned through his tuxedo jacket. Finally, the valet raised his hands and stepped back, allowing Bosch a path to the car door.
“At least somebody around here makes the right choices,” Bosch said as he slid in.
He looked through the windshield and saw Gussie’s body slide down the slope of the Corvette’s hood and fall to the pavement. The valet ran to his side.
As Bosch pulled out onto Madison, he checked the rearview mirror. The valet was pulling the jacket back over Gussie’s head. Bosch could see blood on the bouncer’s white shirt.
Bosch was too keyed up to go back to the hotel to sleep. He also had a bad mix of emotions weighing on him. Seeing the naked woman dancing still bothered him. He didn’t even know her but thought he had invaded some private world of hers. He also felt angry at himself for lashing out at the brute, Gussie. But most of all, what bothered him was that he had played the whole scene wrong. He had gone to the strip club to try to get a line on Layla and he got nothing. At best, all he had come up with was the probable explanation for what the specks of glitter found in the cuffs of Tony Aliso’s pants and the shower drain were and where they came from. It wasn’t enough. He had to go back to L.A. in the morning and he had nothing.
When he got to a traffic light at the beginning of the Strip, he lit a cigarette, then took out his notebook and opened it to the page on which he had written down the address Felton had given him earlier in the night.
At Sands Boulevard he turned east and within a mile he came to the apartment complex where Eleanor Wish lived. It was a sprawling development with numbered buildings. It took him a while until he found hers and then figured out which unit was hers. He sat in his car and smoked and watched her lighted windows for a while. He wasn’t sure what he was doing or what he wanted.
Five years earlier Eleanor Wish had done the worst and the best to him. She had betrayed him, put him in danger and she had also saved his life. She had made love to him. And then it all went bad. Still, he had often thought about her, the old what-might-have-been blues. She had a hold on him through time. She had been cold to him this night but he thought for sure the hold went both ways. She was his reflection, he had always been sure of that.
He got out of the car, dropped his dead cigarette and went to her door. She answered his knock quickly, almost as if she was expecting him. Or someone.
“How’d you find me? Did you follow me?”
“No. I made a call, that’s all.”
“What happened to your lip?”
“It’s nothing. Are you going to ask me in?”
She backed up to allow him to enter. It was a small place with spare furnishings. It looked as though she was adding things over time, as she could afford them. He first noticed the print of Hopper’s Nighthawks on the wall over the couch. It was a painting that always struck a chord with him. He had once had the same print on his own wall. It had been a gift from her five years before. A good-bye gift.
He looked from the painting to her. Their eyes met and he knew everything she had said earlier had been a front. He stepped closer to her and touched her, put his hand on her neck and ran a thumb along her cheek. He looked closely at her face. It was resolute, determined.
“This time it’s been a long time for me,” she whispered.
And he remembered that he had told her the same on the night they’d first made love. That was a lifetime ago, Bosch thought. What am I doing now? Can you pick up after so long and so many changes?
He pulled her close and they held each other and kissed for a long moment and then she wordlessly led