Angels Flight

by Michael Connelly

  ‘I think she was lying,’ Edgar said. ‘She knows the whole story.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Bosch said. ‘But if she knows the story, why keep it secret now that Elias is dead?’

  ‘Pelfry is the key,’ Rider said. ‘We should run him down right now.’

  ‘No,’ Bosch said. ‘Not tonight. It’s late and I don’t want to talk to Pelfry until we’ve gone through Elias’s files and know what’s in them. We master the files, then we brace Pelfry about Mistress Regina and everything else. First thing tomorrow.’

  ‘What about the FBI?’ Rider asked.

  ‘We meet the FBI at eight. I’ll figure something out by then.’

  They drove the rest of the way in silence. Bosch dropped them off at their cars in the Hollywood station parking lot and reminded them to be at Parker Center at eight the following morning. He then parked his slickback but didn’t turn in the key because the file cartons from Elias’s office were still in the trunk. After locking the car he went to his own car.

  He checked the clock as he was pulling out onto Wilcox and saw it was ten-thirty. He knew it was late but he decided to make one last call before going home. As he drove through Laurel Canyon to the Valley, he kept thinking about the man in the walk-in closet and how he had turned his face away, wishing not to be seen. Working homicide for so many years, Bosch could not be surprised anymore by the horrors people inflicted on each other. But the horrors people saved for themselves were a different story.

  He took Ventura Boulevard west to Sherman Oaks. It was a busy Saturday night. On the other side of the hill the city could be a tinderbox of tensions but on the main drag in the Valley the bars and coffee shops seemed full. Bosch saw the red-coated valets running to get cars in front of Pinot Bistro and the other upscale restaurants that lined the boulevard. He saw teenagers cruising with the top down. Everyone was oblivious to the seething hatred and anger that churned in other parts of the city — beneath the surface like an undiscovered fault line waiting to open up and swallow all above.

  At Kester he turned north and then made a quick turn into a neighborhood of tract houses sandwiched between the boulevard and the Ventura Freeway. The houses were small and with no distinct style. The hiss of the freeway was always present. They were cops’ houses except they cost between four and five hundred thousand dollars and few cops could afford them. Bosch’s old partner Frankie Sheehan had bought early and bought well. He was sitting on a quarter of a million dollars in equity. His retirement plan, if he made it to retirement.

  Bosch pulled to the curb in front of Sheehan’s house and left the car running. He got out his phone, looked up Sheehan’s number in his phone book, and made the call. Sheehan picked up after two rings, his voice alert. He’d been awake.

  ‘Frankie, it’s Harry.’

  ‘My man.’

  ‘I’m out front. Why don’t you come out and we’ll take a drive.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Silence.

  ‘Frankie?’

  ‘Okay, give me a couple minutes.’

  Bosch put the phone away and reached into his coat pocket for a smoke that wasn’t there.

  ‘Damn,’ he said.

  While he waited he thought about the time he and Sheehan were looking for a drug dealer suspected of having wiped out a rival’s operation by going into a rock house with an Uzi and killing everyone in it — six people, customers and dealers alike.

  They’d repeatedly pounded on the door of the suspect’s apartment but no one answered. They were thinking about their options when Sheehan heard a tiny voice from inside the apartment saying, ‘Come in, come in.’ They knocked on the door once again and called out that it was the police. They waited and listened. Again the voice called out, ‘Come in, come in.’

  Bosch tried the knob and it turned. The door was unlocked. Assuming combat stance they entered the apartment only to find it empty — except for a large green parrot in a cage in the living room. And lying right there in full view on a kitchen table was an Uzi submachine gun broken down and ready for cleaning. Bosch walked over to the door and knocked on it once again. The parrot called out, ‘Come in, come in.’

  A few minutes later, when the suspect returned from the hardware store with the gun oil he needed to finish his work on the Uzi, he was arrested. Ballistics matched the gun to the killings and he was convicted after a judge refused to throw out the fruits of the search. Though the defendant claimed the entry of the apartment was without permission and unlawful, the judge ruled that Bosch and Sheehan were acting in good faith when they acted on the invitation from the parrot. The case was still winding its way through the nation’s appellate courts, while the killer remained in jail.

  The Jeep’s front passenger door opened and Sheehan got into the car.

  ‘When did you get this ride?’ he asked.

  ‘When they made me start driving a slickback.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, forgot about that.’

  ‘Yeah, you RHD bigshots don’t have to worry about that shit.’

  ‘So, what’s up? You got your ass out in the wind on this case, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s out there. How’re Margaret and the girls doing?’

  ‘They’re all fine. What are we doing? Riding, talking, what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is that Irish place still over on Van Nuys?’

  ‘No, that one’s gone. Tell you what, go on up to Oxnard and go right. There’s a little sports bar down there.’

  Bosch pulled away from the curb and started following the directions.

  ‘I was just thinking about the Polly-wants-an-Uzi case,’ he said.

  Sheehan laughed.

  ‘That one still cracks me up. I can’t believe it’s shot the rapids this far. I hear the douche bag’s down to one last shot — El Supremo Court.’

  ‘It’ll make it. It woulda got shot down by now if it wasn’t going to fly — no pun intended.’

  ‘Well, what’s it been, eight years? We got our money’s worth, even if they do kick him loose.’

  ‘Yeah, six murders, eight years. Sounds fair.’

  ‘Six douche bags.’

  ‘You still like saying douche bag, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m partial to it. So you didn’t come over the hill to talk about parrots and douche bags and old times, did you?’

  ‘No, Frankie. I need to ask you about the Kincaid thing.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Why do you think? You were lead detective.’

  ‘Everything I know is in the files. You should be able to get them. You’re lead on Elias.’

  ‘I got ’em. But the files don’t always have everything in them.’

  Sheehan pointed to a red neon sign and Bosch pulled over. There was a parking place at the curb right outside the bar’s door.

  ‘This place is always pretty dead,’ Sheehan said. ‘Even Saturday nights. I don’t know how the guy makes it by. Must be taking numbers or selling weed on the side.’

  ‘Frankie,’ Bosch said, ‘between you and me, I gotta know about the fingerprints. I don’t want to be chasing my tail out there. I mean, I got no reason to doubt you. But I want to know if you heard anything, you know what I mean?’

  Sheehan got out of the Cherokee without a word and walked to the door. Bosch watched him go in and then got out himself. Inside, the place was just about empty. Sheehan was sitting at the bar. The bartender was drawing a beer off the tap. Bosch took the stool next to his former partner and said, ‘Make it two.’

  Bosch took out a twenty and put it on the bar. Sheehan still hadn’t looked at him since he had asked the question.

  The bartender put down the frosted mugs on napkins that advertised a Superbowl party almost three months before. He took Bosch’s twenty and went down to the cash register. In unison Bosch and Sheehan took long pulls on their drinks.

  ‘Ever since O.J.,’ Sheehan said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You kn
ow what I’m talking about. Ever since the Juice, nothing is solid anymore. No evidence, no cop, nothing. You can take anything you want into a courtroom and there still will be somebody who can tear it to shreds, drop it on the floor and piss on it. Everybody questions everything. Even cops. Even partners.’

  Bosch took more of his beer before saying anything.

  ‘I’m sorry, Frankie. I got no reason to doubt you or the prints. It’s just that weeding through this Elias stuff, it looks like he was going into court next week with the idea of proving who killed the girl. And he wasn’t talking about Harris. Somebody — ’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m trying to look at it from his side of things. If he had somebody other than Harris, then how the hell did these prints end up on — ’

  ‘Elias was a fucking mutt. And as soon as they get him in the ground I’m gonna go out there one night and do my granddaddy’s Irish jig on his grave. Then I’m gonna piss on it and never think about Elias again. All I can say is that it’s too fucking bad that Harris wasn’t with him on that train. Goddamned murderer. That would have been hitting the quinella, the both of them being put down together.’

  Sheehan held his glass up in a toast to Elias’s killer and then took a deep swallow. Bosch could almost feel the hate radiating from him.

  ‘So nobody fucked with the scene,’ Bosch said. ‘The prints are legit.’

  ‘Fucking A legit. The room was sealed by patrol. Nobody went in until I got there. I then watched over everything — we were dealing with the Kincaid family and I knew what that meant. The car czar and heavy contributor to local political coffers. I was on the straight and narrow with everything. The prints were on her schoolbook — a geography book. SID got four fingers on one side and a thumb on the other — as if he had picked the book up by the binding. Those prints were perfect. The guy must’ve been sweating like a pig when he left ‘em because they were grade A perfect.’

  He drained his glass and then held it up so the bartender would see he needed a refill.

  ‘I can’t believe you can’t smoke anymore in a fucking bar in this city,’ Sheehan said. ‘Fucking douche bags.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Anyway, we ran everything and Harris pops up. Ex-con, did time for assault, burglary, he’s got about as much a legitimate reason for his prints being in her room as I have a chance of winning the lottery — and I don’t fucking play. So bingo, we got our man. We go hook him up. Remember, at that time the girl’s body hadn’t turned up. We were operating on the belief she might still be alive somewhere. We were wrong but we didn’t know it at the time. So we hook him up, bring him downtown and put him in the room. Only this motherfucker won’t tell us the time of day. Three days and we get nothing. We never even took him to a cell at night. He was in that room seventy-two straight hours. We worked in teams and in shifts and we could not crack his egg. Never gave us jack shit. I tell you what, I’d like to kill the fuck, but I gotta respect him for that. He was the best I ever went against.’

  Sheehan took a double gulp from his new beer. Bosch was still only halfway through his first. He was content to let Sheehan talk and tell the story at his own pace without interrupting him with questions.

  ‘On the last day some of the guys lost it a little bit. Did things.’

  Bosch closed his eyes. He had been wrong about Sheehan.

  ‘Me, too, Harry.’

  He said it matter of factly, as if it felt good to finally say it out loud. He drank more of his beer, turned on his stool and looked about the bar as if seeing it for the first time. There was a TV mounted in a corner. It was tuned to ESPN.

  ‘We’re off the record here, right, Harry?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Sheehan turned back and leaned toward Bosch in a conspiratorial sort of way.

  ‘What Harris says happened ... happened. But that doesn’t excuse what he did. He rapes and strangles that little girl; we stick a pencil in his ear. Big fucking deal. He gets off and I’m the new Mark Fuhrman — a racist cop who planted evidence. I just wish somebody could tell me how the fuck I could’ve planted those prints?’

  He was getting loud. Luckily, only the bartender was noticing.

  ‘I know,’ Bosch said. ‘I’m sorry, man. I shouldn’t have asked.’

  Sheehan went on as if he hadn’t heard Bosch.

  ‘I guess I always carried around a set of throw-down prints that belonged to a douche bag I wanted to send away. I then put them on the book — don’t ask me how — and voilà, we got our douche bag. Only why would I pick Harris to pin it on? I never knew the mutt or had anything to do with him. And there’s nobody on this planet that can prove I did because it’s not there to be proved.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  Sheehan shook his head and looked down into his beer.

  ‘I quit caring about shit when that jury came in and said not guilty. When they said I was guilty ... when they believed that man instead of us.’

  Bosch remained silent. He knew that Sheehan had to say his piece.

  ‘We’re losing the battle, man. I see that now. It’s all a game. The fucking lawyers, what they can do to you. To the evidence. I give up, Harry. I really do. I already decided. It’s twenty-five and out for me. I got eight more months and I’m counting the fuckers down. I’m gonna punch out, move on up to Blue Heaven and leave this toilet for all the douche bags.’

  ‘I think that’s a good idea, Frankie,’ Bosch said quietly.

  He couldn’t think of what else he could say. He was hurt and stunned by his friend’s lapse into a complete state of hate and cynicism. He understood it but was simply surprised by the complete toll it had taken. He was also disappointed in himself and privately embarrassed at how wholeheartedly he had defended Sheehan to Carla Entrenkin.

  ‘I remember on that last day,’ Sheehan said. ‘I was in there with him. In the room. And I got so fucking angry I just wanted to take my gun out and blow his shit away. But I knew I couldn’t. Because he knew where she was. He had the girl!’

  Bosch just nodded.

  ‘We had tried everything and got nothing. He broke us before we could break him. It got down to where I was just begging him to tell us. It was embarrassing, Harry.’

  ‘And what did he do?’

  ‘He just stared at me as if I wasn’t there. He said nothing. He did nothing. And then ... then the anger just came over me like ... like I don’t know what. Like it was a bone caught in my throat. Like it never had before. There was a trash can in the corner of the room. I went over and pulled the bag out and just pulled it right down over his fucking head. And I grabbed it around his neck and I held it and I held it and ...’

  Sheehan started crying and trying to finish.

  ‘... and they ... they had to pull me off of him.’

  He put his elbows on the bar and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. For a long time he didn’t move. Bosch saw a drop fall from his chin and into his beer. He reached over and put his hand on his old partner’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s okay, Frankie.’

  Without moving his hands away from his face, Sheehan spoke.

  ‘You see, Harry, I became the very thing that I spent all these years hunting. I wanted to kill him right there and then. I would have if my guys hadn’t come in. I’m never going to be able to forget that.’

  ‘It’s okay, man.’

  Sheehan drank some beer and seemed to recover somewhat.

  ‘After I did what I did, that opened the door. The other guys, they did that thing with the pencil—popped his fucking ear drum. We all became monsters. Like Vietnam, going wild in the villages. We probably would’ve killed the guy but you know what saved him? The girl. Stacey Kincaid saved him.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘They found the body. We got the word and went out to the scene. We left Harris in a cell. Alive. He was lucky the word came when it did.’

  He stopped to take another gulp of beer.

  ‘I
went out there — just a block from Harris’s place. She was pretty much decomposed, the young ones go fast. But I remember how she looked. Like a little angel, her arms out like she was flying ...’

  Bosch remembered the pictures from the newspapers. Stacey Kincaid had been a pretty little girl.

  ‘Harry, leave me alone now,’ Sheehan said quietly. ‘I’m going to walk back.’

  ‘No, let me give you a ride.’

  ‘No thanks. I’m walking.’

  ‘You sure you’re all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. Just a little worked up. That’s all. This is going to stay between us, right?’

  ‘Till the end, man.’

  Sheehan tried a weak smile. But he still didn’t look at Bosch.

  ‘Do me one favor, Hieronymus.’

  Bosch remembered when they had been a team. They only used their formal names, Hieronymus and Francis, when they were talking seriously and from the heart.

  ‘Sure, Francis. What?’

  ‘When you catch the guy who did Elias, I don’t care if it’s a cop or not, shake his hand for me. You tell him he’s my hero. But tell him he missed a good chance. Tell him he should’ve gotten Harris, too.’

  A half hour later Bosch opened the door to his home. He found his bed empty. But this time he was too tired to stay awake waiting for Eleanor. He started stripping off his clothes and thinking about his plans for the next day. He finally sat down on the bed ready for sleep and reached for the light. The moment he was in darkness, the phone rang.

  He turned the light back on and picked up the phone.

  ‘You bastard.’

  A woman’s voice — familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Carla Entrenkin, who do you think? Do you really think I wouldn’t know what you did?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. What happened?’

  ‘I just watched Channel 4. Your buddy Harvey Button.’

  ‘What did he have?’

  ‘Oh, he blew it up real big. Let’s see if I can quote him correctly. “A link between Elias and an Internet prostitution ring was found in Elias’s office, a source close to the investigation says. It is believed by this source that Elias may have had liaisons with at least one of the women who advertised her services as a dominatrix on the web site.” I think that about sums it up. I hope you are happy.’