The Wrong Side of Goodbye
Page 34
She smiled and nodded.
“I kinda hope you’re right.”
At the nursing station on her floor, they embraced and promised to keep in touch. Bosch left her there.
Bosch headed back down the 5 to San Fernando to tell Trevino he was in—at least until Bella came back.
Along the way he thought about what he’d said to Lourdes about cop blood. It was something he truly believed. He knew that in his internal universe, there was a mission etched in a secret language, like drawings on the wall of an ancient cave, that gave him his direction and meaning. It could not be altered and it would always be there to guide him to the right path.
It was a Sunday afternoon in spring. A crowd was gathered in the triangle created by the convergence of Traction Avenue and Rose and Third Streets. What for years had been a parking lot was now taking shape as the first public park in the Arts District. Rows of folding chairs were lined in front of a sculpture twenty feet high, its shape and content only hinted at by the contours of the massive white shroud that draped it. A steel cable extended from the shroud to a crane that had been used in the installation. The veil would be dramatically lifted and the sculpture revealed as the centerpiece of the park.
Most of the chairs were filled and videographers from two of the local news channels were on hand to record the event. Many in attendance knew the artist who had created the sculpture. Some were meeting her for the first time even though they were bound by family ties if not by blood.
Bosch and his daughter sat in the back row. Harry could see Gabriela Lida and Olivia Macdonald seated three rows in front of them. Young Gilberto Veracruz sat between them, his attention drawn to a handheld video game. Olivia’s grown children were in the chairs to her right.
At the appointed start time of the unveiling, a man in a suit walked to the podium in front of the sculpture and adjusted the microphone.
“Hello and thank you all for coming out on this wonderful spring day. My name is Michael Haller. I am legal adviser to the Fruit Box Foundation, which I am sure you have all learned about through the media in the past few months. Thanks to a very generous endowment from the estate of the late Whitney P. Vance, the Fruit Box Foundation is dedicating this park today in honor of Mr. Vance. We are also announcing plans to purchase and renovate four historic structures in the Arts District. These will be dedicated live-work complexes offering affordable housing and studio space for this city’s artists. The Fruit Box—”
Haller had to stop because of the applause from those seated in front of him. He smiled, nodded, and then continued.
“The Fruit Box Foundation has additional plans for the area as well. More structures containing affordable housing and studio space, more parks, and more consignment galleries. They call this area the Arts District, and the Fruit Box Foundation—its very name tied to the creative history of this neighborhood—will continue to strive to keep it a vibrant community of artists and public art.”
More applause broke into Haller’s speech and he waited it out before continuing.
“And finally, speaking of artists and public art, we are very proud today to dedicate this park with the unveiling of a sculpture created by Vibiana Veracruz, artistic director of the Fruit Box Foundation. Art speaks for itself. So, without delay, I give you ‘The Wrong Side of Goodbye.’”
In dramatic fashion the crane raised the shroud, revealing a sculpture of shining white acrylic. It was a diorama like Bosch had seen in Vibiana’s loft the previous year. A multitude of figures and angles. The base of the sculpture was the mangled fuselage of a helicopter lying on its side, a piece of a broken rotor blade sticking up like a tombstone. From the open side door of the craft rose hands and faces, soldiers looking and reaching up for rescue. The figure of one soldier rose above the rest, his full body up and through the door, as if pulled from the wreckage by the unseen hand of God. One of the soldier’s hands reached with splayed fingers toward the heavens. From his angle Bosch could not see the face of the soldier but he knew who he was.
And standing next to the torso of the fallen helicopter was the figure of a woman holding a baby in her arms. The child was faceless but Bosch recognized the woman as Gabriela Lida and the mother-daughter pose of the photo from the beach at the del Coronado.
Deep applause greeted the unveiling but at first there was no sign of the sculptress. Then Bosch felt a hand touch his shoulder and he turned to see Vibiana passing behind him on her way to the podium.
As she turned up the middle aisle, she glanced back at him and smiled. Bosch realized in that moment that it was the first time he had ever seen her smile. But it was a lopsided smile he knew he had seen before.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
All novels are the product of research and experience, some more than others. This book relied heavily on the help of others. The author gratefully acknowledges them for their contributions and for sharing their memories.
Many thanks to John Houghton, former Navy corpsman who served in Vietnam. His experiences on the Sanctuary and with Connie Stevens many years later became Harry Bosch’s experiences and the emotional core of the novel. Many thanks to Dennis Wojciechowski, the author’s researcher and a Vietnam vet as well.
The “blue” team was invaluable as usual. A great big thank you to Rick Jackson for being there from the start, opening doors and providing the kind of direction that could only come from a detective who spent more than twenty-five years tracking down murderers. Former and current LAPD homicide detectives Mitzi Roberts, Tim Marcia, and David Lambkin provided outstanding advice and contributions to this story as well.
The San Fernando Police Department opened its doors to the author and embraced him with open arms. Many, many thanks to Chief Anthony Vairo and Sergeant Irwin Rosenberg. The author hopes the novel does the department proud (because Harry Bosch wants to come back).
Thank you to Terrill Lee Lankford, Henrik Bastin, Jane Davis, and Heather Rizzo for reading early drafts and providing exceptional advice.
A tremendous amount of help also came from attorney Daniel F. Daly, photographer Guy Claudy, and NCIS investigator Gary McIntyre. The author also gratefully acknowledges the help of Shannon Byrne, and many thanks go to Pamela Wilson and artist Stephen Seemayer, who have been documenting L.A.’s Arts District for many years through films like Young Turks and Tales of the American.
Last but not least are the editors who helped sculpt a coherent story from an unwieldy block of a manuscript. Asya Muchnick and Bill Massey are the best any writer could ask for. Copyeditor Pamela Marshall knows more about Harry Bosch than the author and is always there to fix things.
The author gratefully acknowledges all who contributed to this book.
Also by Michael Connelly
Fiction
The Black Echo
The Black Ice
The Concrete Blonde
The Last Coyote
The Poet
Trunk Music
Blood Work
Angels Flight
Void Moon
A Darkness More Than Night
City of Bones
Chasing the Dime
Lost Light
The Narrows
The Closers
The Lincoln Lawyer
Echo Park
The Overlook
The Brass Verdict
The Scarecrow
Nine Dragons
The Reversal
The Fifth Witness
The Drop
The Black Box
The Gods of Guilt
The Burning Room
The Crossing
Non-fiction
Crime Beat
Ebooks
Suicide Run
Angle of Investigation
Mulholland Dive
The Safe Man
Switchblade
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in
2016 by Orion Books.
Copyright © 2016 by Hieronymus, Inc.
The right of Michael Connelly to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book, with the exception of those already in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 4749 7
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