Two Kinds of Truth

by Michael Connelly

  Bosch proffered the cane in explanation.

  “And the woman, I want to get her into detox and rehab.”

  For the first time, Lourdes looked up from her shelf-shopping and tried to get a read on him.

  “You sound sympathetic. Is this getting personal? You heard what the DEA undercover trainer said about that.”

  “I’ve only been under twenty-four hours, and I don’t even know her name. It’s not personal. I just saw some stuff down there in Slab City and I want her pulled out. Besides, the more people they’re down, the more important I become. Maybe they’ll think twice about playing Russian roulette with me again.”

  “Okay, we’ll do it. But that will pull a lot of us off the surveillance. I’ll make sure at least one car stays with you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You can wait for us at Whiteman. We’ll be going back for the plane.”

  Bosch heard the name that was on his phony ID called out by the pharmacist.

  “Gotta go.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s Sunday. These mom-and-pop places are usually closed Sundays.”

  “Then I guess I get a day off in Slab City. Tell them not to lose me this time.”

  “You better believe I will. Take care of yourself.”

  Bosch pointed the cane toward the ceiling and twirled it like a musketeer brandishing a sword. He then limped toward the counter to get his pills.

  Twenty minutes later he was sitting in the back of the van, waiting for the second crew of shills to complete their pharmacy run. He watched Edgar and Hovan enter the pharmacy, and fifteen minutes after that, with the van’s driver getting restless and talking to himself in Russian, a pair of LAPD cruisers pulled up.

  The Russian cursed.

  “Tvoyu mat’!”

  He turned around in his seat and looked at the three men sitting in the back. He pointed at Bosch.

  “You. You go in and see. Find out what is going on in there.”

  Bosch slid off his seat and moved to the side door. He got out and crossed the parking lot to the pharmacy. He guessed he had been chosen by the driver because he had the cleanest clothes of those in the van. He walked in, saw the four shills lined up and in handcuffs by the pharmacy counter. The uniformed officers were checking their pockets.

  Bosch’s entering had rung an overhead bell. The woman with the stars on her hand looked over her shoulder and saw Bosch. She widened her eyes and jutted her chin in the direction of the door. Bosch turned around and walked back out.

  Acting as though he had just seen a ghost, Bosch quickly legged it back to the van, dropping any gentleness about his knee. He jumped in through the side door.

  “The cops got them! They’re all in handcuffs.”

  “Close the door! Close the door!”

  The van was moving before Bosch could pull the sliding door closed. The driver took an exit onto Van Nuys Boulevard and headed back toward Whiteman. He hit a speed dial on his phone and soon was yelling in Russian at someone at the other end of the line.

  Bosch looked through the back windows at the plaza shopping center as it retreated in the distance. For all her fuck-offs and leave-me-alones, the woman with the stars on her hand had warned him about Brody and then about the bust going down. It made him believe that there was still something inside her worth salvaging.

  27

  There was no calamitous wakeup call on Sunday morning. No one walked down the side of the bus, hitting it with a broomstick and yelling for everyone in the camp to get up. On Sunday the camp slept late. Having not been able to sleep at all his first night in the camp, Bosch had succumbed to his exhaustion Saturday night and slept deeply, moving through murky dreams of tunnels. When he was roused by the Russian with the dyed-blond hair shaking his cot, he was completely disoriented and at first unsure of where he was and who the man looking down at him was.

  “Come,” the Russian said. “Now.”

  Bosch finally came to and realized that the guy was the one who spoke the least English and had hung back on Friday night when his partner had put a gun against Harry’s head and pulled the trigger.

  In his mind, Bosch had labeled them Ivan and Igor, and this was Igor, the one who didn’t normally speak.

  Bosch swung his legs off the cot and sat up. He rubbed his eyes, got his bearings, and started pulling on his work boots, wondering if they were going to fly off to hit pharmacies again, even though most of the non-chain stores were likely to be closed on Sunday, especially those in low-income Latino neighborhoods, where a reverence for the day of rest and religious reflection was strong.

  Igor was waiting for him, holding the front of his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose because of the stench in the bus. He pointed to the door.

  “Come. Hurry.”

  At first Bosch panicked, because he thought Igor had called him Harry and that his cover had somehow been blown. But then he understood what had been said in the Russian’s thick accent.

  “Okay, okay,” he said.

  Bosch looked around and saw that he was the only one Igor had rousted. Everybody else in the bus was still dead to the world.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  Igor didn’t respond. Before pulling on his left boot, Bosch reached to the floor and grabbed the knee brace. He pulled it up over his left calf for use later and then put the other boot on. He tied his laces, grabbed his cane, and stood up, ready to go fill prescriptions, though he had a growing suspicion that wasn’t the plan for the day.

  Igor pointed to the floor.

  “Backpack.”

  “What?”

  “Bring backpack.”

  “Why?”

  Igor turned and headed out of the bus without another word. Bosch grabbed the backpack and followed, stepping out of the bus into blinding sunlight. He kept asking questions, hoping for some hint of what awaited him.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked.

  There was no answer.

  “Hey, where’s your pal with the English?” Bosch tried. “I want to talk to somebody.”

  The Russian continued to ignore Bosch’s words and just used his hands to signal him to keep following. They walked through the camp to the clearing where the vans had picked up the shill groups the morning before. There was a van waiting with an open side door. Igor pointed to the opening.

  “You go.”

  “Yeah, I get it. Go where?”

  No answer. Bosch came to a stop and looked at him.

  “You go.”

  “I need to hit the head first.”

  Bosch could tell the Russian didn’t understand the slang. He pointed the cane toward the south side of the encampment and started walking that way. Igor grabbed him by the shoulders and roughly redirected him to the van.

  “No. You go!”

  Igor shoved him hard toward the van and Bosch almost dropped the cane while grabbing for the doorframe.

  “Okay, okay. I’m going.”

  He climbed onto the bench seat behind the driver. The Russian then climbed in, slid the door closed behind him, and took the bench behind Bosch.

  The van started moving, and soon enough Bosch could tell they were heading to the airstrip. He knew the man behind him did not have the language skills to answer questions, but Bosch’s growing concern over what was happening left him unable to stop asking. He leaned forward to catch the driver’s peripheral vision.

  “Hey, driver? What are we doing? Why am I the only one going to the plane?”

  The driver acted like he neither saw nor heard him.

  In less than ten minutes they were at the airstrip. The van pulled up to a plane with an already spinning prop. It wasn’t the “minivan” Bosch had taken all of his previous flights on but still clearly a jump plane that could carry several passengers. The other Russian, Ivan, was standing next to the open jump door, using the overhead wing to shade his face from the sun.

  Igor got up and opened the van
door. He grabbed a handful of Bosch’s shirt and yanked him toward the opening.

  “You go. Plane.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  Bosch nearly tumbled out of the van, but used his cane to keep upright. He immediately started walking toward Ivan. He carried the cane by the barrel rather than walking as if he needed it. He wanted to dispense with any sign of weakness in front of the man he was about to confront.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded. “Why am I the only one going?”

  “Because you go home,” Ivan said. “Now.”

  “What are you talking about? What home?”

  “We take you back. We don’t want you here.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just get on plane.”

  “Does your boss know this? I got you four hundred pills yesterday. That’s a lot of money. He’s not going to like losing that.”

  “What boss? Get on plane.”

  “All you guys do is say the same thing. Why? Why should I get on the plane?”

  “Because we take you back. We don’t want you.”

  Bosch shook his head like he didn’t get it.

  “I heard people talking. His name is Santos. Santos is not going to like it.”

  Ivan smirked.

  “Santos long gone. I am boss. Get on plane.”

  Bosch stared at him for a moment, trying to get a read for a sign of truth.

  “Whatever. Then I want my money and pills. We had a deal.”

  Ivan nodded and pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. It contained pills and currency, the outside bill a hundred. He shook it and handed it to Bosch.

  “There. You good. Get on plane.”

  Bosch climbed through the jump door and went to the back of the plane, as far from the door as he could get. He sat down on the bench that ran along the rear bulkhead and looked back. Both Ivan and Igor climbed on board and took seats on benches on either side of the plane at the front. They looked like they were guarding the exit.

  Bosch knew he was in trouble. Giving him the money was the tell. They could easily have gotten away with stiffing him. But giving him what he had earned was a move designed to put him at ease, to make him believe they were actually taking him home.

  Ivan knocked a fist on a small aluminum door that separated the cockpit from the passenger compartment, and the plane started to taxi to the head of the airstrip. Bosch thought of what Ivan had said about Santos and saw where it made sense. The DEA had no current intel on the man who had set up this operation. Hovan said the last known photo they had was almost a year old. Santos and those loyal to him could have been taken out by the Russians, especially if they had gotten wind of the indictment and warrant for his arrest, making him a liability to the operation. This would also help explain why the operation seemed to be short on manpower and why the two apparent bosses were doing the wet work.

  Bosch realized that if Ivan and Igor were indeed the killers who had wiped out the pharmacy in San Fernando, then they had made the call themselves. The end of the case was right in front of him.

  The plane turned and positioned for a run down the airstrip. Bosch felt he knew how this ride was supposed to end for him. He put the cane across his thighs and pulled out his wallet, yanking it off the chain seemingly by accident. He hoped the pulse alert was delivered to the DEA team that supposedly was watching over him.

  Bosch made a show of taking the currency from the plastic bag and putting it into his wallet. He then put the wallet and the bag of pills into his pockets.

  The plane started moving down the runway, gathering momentum. Wind started blasting through the compartment. The Russians hadn’t closed the jump door. Bosch pointed at the opening and yelled.

  “You going to close that?”

  Ivan shook his head and gestured toward the opening.

  “No door!” he yelled back.

  Bosch hadn’t noticed that before.

  The plane took off. It rose steeply and Bosch was pushed back against the rear wall of the passenger compartment. Almost immediately, the craft started to bank left while still in its climb. It then leveled and was on a course west.

  Bosch knew that would take them over the center of the Salton Sea.

  28

  The unseen pilot throttled back once the plane leveled off. The engine whine lowered significantly and that served as a signal to Ivan. He got up and started moving toward Bosch at the back of the plane. He had to hunch down to keep his head from hitting the curved ceiling. As he came forward, he reached into a front pocket and pulled out a phone. When he got to Bosch, he crouched on his haunches like a baseball catcher. He looked at Bosch, then at the screen of his phone, and then back at Bosch.

  “You cop,” he said.

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

  “What?” Bosch said. “What are you talking about?”

  Ivan referred to his phone again. Over his shoulder Bosch could see Igor still in his seat watching.

  “Har-ree Boosh,” Ivan said. “You cop.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bosch said. “I’m not—”

  “San Fernando PD! It say so.”

  “What says so?”

  Ivan turned the phone so Bosch could see the screen. On it was a photo of a folded section of a newspaper. There was a photo of him that he could tell had been taken last week outside La Farmacia Familia on the day of the murders. It was the continuation page of a story, but not a story on the pharmacy murders. The headline across the body of the story continuation and his photo told Bosch all he needed to know.

  DNA CLEARS DEATH ROW INMATE; D.A. MOVES TO VACATE CONVICTION

  Somebody had leaked the story to the Times. Kennedy. He had gotten word that Bosch and Haller were going to make a move in the Borders hearing and had acted to push Haller back on his heels and vilify Bosch. The story had included his current employment, and the photo of him outside the pharmacy had been a big glaring tip-off to the Russians.

  Ivan lowered the phone and put it in his back pocket. A crooked smile formed on his lips as he grabbed hold of the barrel of Bosch’s cane and they struggled for control of it. Ivan reached his free hand behind him and pulled a gun from under his shirt. With his other hand he pushed the barrel of the cane in on Bosch and leaned into him.

  “Get up, cop,” he said. “You’re going to jump now. Maybe you find your friend Santos, yah?”

  Bosch checked the gun. It was a chrome-plated automatic, not the disabled revolver the DEA had planted in Bosch’s backpack and that Ivan had brandished on Friday night.

  He riffed off of the Russian’s last words, hoping to distract him.

  “You killed Santos, didn’t you? You killed him and took over. And that boy in the pharmacy. You killed him and his father.”

  “That boy was punk. He did not listen to his father and the father could not control the son. They got what they deserved.”

  Ivan tilted his head back toward Igor as if to acknowledge their work on eliminating the problem of José Esquivel Jr. For a split second his attention was divided, and that was all the time Bosch needed. He twisted his wrist and turned the curved handle of the cane. He heard the release snick and in one quick motion pulled the handle and stiletto free, then drove the point into Ivan’s right side with an upward thrust. The thin, sharp blade punctured the skin and went through the ribs and deep into the Russian’s chest.

  Ivan’s eyes widened and his mouth formed a silent O. The two men stared at each other for a second that seemed to last a minute. Then Ivan dropped the gun to clutch at the stiletto’s handle. But blood had already spilled over the weapon and Bosch’s hand. The surfaces were too slippery for Ivan to find purchase. He brought his left hand up and grabbed Bosch’s throat. But he was weakening and it was the desperate move of a dying man.

  Bosch looked past Ivan to Igor, who was still seated at the front. He was smiling because he had not seen the blood yet and thought that his partner was sadistically choking Bosch out bef
ore throwing him from the plane.

  Bosch had killed men face-to-face before—as a young man in the tunnels back in Vietnam. He knew what he needed to do to finish the job. He pulled back on the stiletto and went in again, two quick thrusts up into the neck and near the armpit, where he knew major arteries waited. He then pushed the Russian back. As Ivan fell to the floor, dying, Bosch grabbed the gun.

  He stood up, the stiletto dripping blood in his left hand, the gun in his right. He started moving up the plane toward Igor.

  Igor rose from his seat, ready for battle. Then his eyes fell to the pistol. He made a stutter move, first to one side, then the other, as if his body were moving ahead of his mind and seeking escape. Then, inexplicably, he lunged to his left and went through the jump door.

  Bosch held still for a moment, stunned by the move, then quickly went up to the door, dropping the stiletto and grabbing the steel handle that skydivers hold before stepping out onto the jump platform. He leaned out. They were flying over the Salton Sea at about two hundred feet. Bosch guessed that they had flown low to cut down on the chance that someone might witness Bosch’s drop from the plane.

  Bosch leaned further out to look down on the water behind the plane. The sun’s reflection off the surface was almost blinding and he could see no sign of Igor. If he had survived the jump, he was miles from shore.

  Bosch went to the cockpit door and rapped hard on it with the pistol. He figured the pilot took it as a signal that the disposal of Bosch had been completed. The plane throttled up and started to climb.

  He then tried the door and found it locked. He grabbed on to overhead handles for leverage and kicked his heel into the door, bending it on its frame enough that the lock snapped loose. He quickly flung the door open and thrust himself through the narrow opening, leading with the gun.

  “What the fuck?” the pilot yelled.

  He then did a double-take when he saw that it was Bosch and not one of the Russians.

  “Oh, hey, wait, what’s going on?” he yelped.

  Bosch dropped into the empty copilot’s seat. He reached over and put the muzzle of the gun against the pilot’s temple.