Trunk Music - Michael Connelly [58]
“Let’s see, we think he also has a piece of some of the brothels up north. Then he’s got the usual, your standard loan-sharking and fencing operations. He runs a book and has the street tax on almost anything that moves in town. You know, the escort services, peep shows, all of that. He’s the king. He can’t go in any of the casinos ’cause he’s in the commission’s black book but it doesn’t matter. He’s the king.”
“How does he have a betting book in a town where you can walk into any casino and bet on any game, any race, anywhere?”
“You gotta have money to do that. Not with Joey. He’ll take your bet. And if you are unlucky enough to lose, then you better come up with the money quick or you’re one sorry motherfucker. Remember how he got his name. Well, suffice it to say his employees carry on the tradition. See, that’s how he gets his hooks into people. He gets them to owe him and then they have to give him a piece of what they have, whether it’s a company that makes paint in Dayton or something else.”
“Maybe a guy who makes cheap movies in L.A.”
“Yeah, like that. That’s how it works. They open up to him or they get two broken knees or worse. People still disappear in Vegas, Bosch. It might look like it’s all volcanoes and pyramids and pirate ships on the outside, but on the inside it’s still dark enough for people to disappear in.”
Bosch reached over and turned the air up a notch. The sun was already all the way up and the desert was beginning to bake.
“This is nothing,” Iverson said. “Wait till about noon. If we’re out here then, forget about it. We’ll be over one-ten easy.”
“What about Joey’s air of legitimacy?”
“Yeah, well, like I said, he’s got holdings all over the country. Pieces of the legitimate world he got through these various scams. He also reinvests. He cleans up all the cash he’s pulling out of his various enterprises and then puts it into legit stuff, even charities. He’s got car dealerships, a country club on the east side, a goddamn wing of a hospital named after one of his kids who died in a swimming pool. His picture gets in the paper at ribbon cuttings, Bosch. I tell you, we’ve either got to fucking take the guy down or give him the key to the city and I don’t know which would be more appropriate.”
Iverson shook his head.
After a few minutes of silence they were there. Iverson pulled into a county fire station and drove around back, where there were several more detective cars and several men standing around them holding paper cups of coffee. One of them was Captain Felton.
Bosch had forgotten to take a bulletproof vest with him from Los Angeles and had to borrow one from Iverson. He was also given a plastic raid jacket that said LVPD in bright yellow letters across the chest when it was zipped closed.
They were standing around Felton’s Taurus, going over the plan and waiting for the uniform backup. Execution of the warrant was going to be done by Vegas rules, the captain said. That meant at least one uniform team had to be there when they kicked the door.
By this time Bosch had already had his “friendly” exchange with Felton. The two had gone into the fire station to get Bosch some coffee, and Bosch had given the police captain an earful for the way he had handled the discovery that the prints Bosch had brought with him belonged to Lucky Luke Goshen. Felton feigned contrition and told Bosch he’d be involved in calling the shots from that moment on. Bosch had to back down after that. He’d gotten what he wanted, at least in the captain’s words. Now he just had to watch that Felton walked the talk.
Besides Felton and Bosch, there were four others standing around the car. They were all from Metro’s Organized