The Concrete Blonde (1994)

by Michael Connelly

  Bosch found the way on the map and pulled out of the service station. Charlie Company was in grove country. He thought about her story about the pedophile. Something about it bothered him. He rolled it around in his head but couldn’t get to it. He let it drift and went on to another question.

  “Why was nothing ever recovered? All that jewelry and bonds and stocks, and nothing ever turns up except for a single bracelet. Not even any of the other worthless things that were taken.”

  “They are sitting on it until they think they are clear,” Wish said. “That’s why Meadows was smoked. He went out of line and pawned the bracelet before he should have, maybe before everyone agreed they were clear. They found out he’d sold it. He wouldn’t say where, so they buzzed him until he told them. Then they killed him.”

  “And by coincidence, I get the call.”

  “It happens.”

  “There is something in that story that doesn’t work,” Bosch said. “We start out with Meadows getting juiced, tortured, right? He tells them what they want, they put the hot load in his arm and they go get the bracelet from the pawnshop, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “But, see, it doesn’t work. I’ve got the pawn slip. It was hidden. So he didn’t give it to them, and they had to go break in the shop and take the bracelet, covering the scam by also taking a lot of other junk. So if he didn’t give them the pawn slip, how’d they know where the bracelet was?”

  “He told them, I guess,” Wish said.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t see him giving up one and not the other. He had nothing to gain from holding back the slip. If they got the name of the shop out of him, they would’ve gotten the slip.”

  “So, you’re saying he died before he told them anything. And they already knew where the bracelet was pawned.”

  “Right. They worked him to get the ticket, but he wouldn’t give it up, wouldn’t break. They killed him. Then they dump the body and roll his place. But they still don’t find the pawn stub. So they hit the pawnshop like third-rate burglars. The question is, if Meadows didn’t tell them where he had sold the bracelet and they didn’t find the stub, how did they know where it was?”

  “Harry, this is speculation on top of speculation.”

  “That’s what cops do.”

  “Well, I don’t know. Could have been a lot of things. They could have had a tail on Meadows ’cause they didn’t trust him and could have seen him go into the pawnshop. Could’ve been a lot of things.”

  “Could’ve been they had somebody, say a cop, who saw the bracelet on the monthly pawn sheets and told them. The sheets go to every police department in the county.”

  “I think that kind of speculation is reckless.”

  They were there. Bosch braked the car at a gravel entranceway below a wooden sign with a green eagle painted on it and the words Charlie Company. The gate was open and they drove down a gravel road with muddy irrigation ditches running along both sides. The road split the farmland, with tomatoes on the right and what smelled like peppers on the left. Up ahead there was a large aluminum-sided barn and a sprawling ranch-style house. Behind these Bosch could see a grove of avocado trees. They drove into a circular parking area in front of the ranch house and Bosch cut the engine.

  A man wearing a white apron that was as clean as his shaven head came to the screen at the front door.

  “Mr. Scales here?” Bosch asked.

  “Colonel Scales, you mean? No, he is not. It’s almost time for chow, though. He’ll be coming in from the fields then.”

  The man did not invite them to come in out of the sun, and so Bosch and Wish went back and sat in the car. A few minutes later a dusty white pickup truck drove up. It had an eagle inside a large letter C painted on the driver’s door. Three men got out of the cab and six more piled out of the back. They moved quickly toward the ranch house. They ranged in age from late thirties to late forties. They wore military green pants and white T-shirts soaked with sweat. No one wore a bandanna or sunglasses or had his sleeves rolled up. No one’s hair was longer than a quarter inch. The white men were burned brown like stained wood. The driver, wearing the same uniform but at least ten years older than the rest, slowed to a stop and let the others go inside. As he approached, Bosch put him on the early side of his sixties, but a guy who was almost as solid as he had been in his twenties. His hair, what could be seen of it against his gleaming skull, was white and his skin was like walnut. He was wearing work gloves.

  “Help you?” he asked.

  “Colonel Scales?” Bosch said.

  “That’s right. You police?”

  Bosch nodded and made introductions. Scales didn’t seem too impressed, even with the FBI being mentioned.

  “You remember about seven, eight months ago the FBI asked you for some information on a William Meadows, who spent some time here?” Wish asked.

  “Sure I do. I remember every time you people call up or come around asking about one of my boys. I resent it, so I remember it. You want more information on Billy? Is he in some trouble?”

  “Not anymore,” Bosch said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Scales said. “Sounds like you’re saying he’s dead.”

  “You didn’t know?” Bosch said.

  “ ’Course I didn’t. Tell me what happened to him.”

  Bosch thought he saw genuine surprise and then a flashing hint of sadness cross Scales’s face. The news had hurt.

  “He was found dead three days ago in L.A. A homicide. We think it is related to a crime he took part in last year, that you may have heard about from the FBI’s previous contact.”

  “The tunnel thing? At that bank in L.A.?” he asked. “I know what I was told by the FBI. That’s it.”

  “That’s fine,” Wish said. “What we need from you is more complete information about who was here when Meadows was. We went over this ground before, but we are rechecking, looking for anything that might help. Will you cooperate with us?”

  “I always cooperate with you people. I don’t like it because half the time I think you got your wires crossed. Most of my boys, when they leave here, they don’t get mixed up again. We have a good record here. If Meadows did what you’re saying he did, he is the rarity.”

  “We understand that,” she said. “And this will be strictly confidential.”

  “O’right then, come into my office and you can ask your questions.”

  As they went through the front door Bosch saw two long tables in what was probably once the ranch house’s living room. About twenty men sat before plates of what looked like chicken-fried steaks and mounds of vegetables. Not one looked at Eleanor Wish. That was because they were silently saying grace, their heads down, eyes closed and hands folded. Bosch could see tattoos on almost every arm. When they stopped their prayer a chorus of forks struck home on the plates. A few of the men took the time then to look at Eleanor approvingly. The man in the apron who had come to the screen door earlier now stood in the doorway of the kitchen.

  “Colonel, are you eating with the men today, sir?” he called.

  Scales nodded and said, “I’ll be through in a few minutes.”

  They went down a hallway and through the first door into an office that was supposed to be a bedroom. It was crowded by a desk with a top the size of a door. Scales pointed to two chairs in front of it and Bosch and Wish sat down, while he took the upholstered job behind the desk.

  “Now, I know exactly what I am required by law to give you and what I don’t have to even speak to you about. But I am inclined to do more, if it will help and we have an understanding. Meadows—I sort of knew he would end up as you say he did. I prayed to the Good Lord to guide him, but I knew. I will help you. No one should take a life in a civilized world. No one at all.”

  “Colonel,” Bosch began, “we appreciate your help. I want you to know, first off, that we know what kind of job you are doing here. We know you have the respect and encouragement of both state and federal authorities. Bu
t our investigation of Meadows’s death leads us to conclude he was involved in a conspiracy with other men who had the same skills as he and—”

  “You are saying they are vets,” Scales cut in. He was filling a pipe with tobacco from a canister on the desk.

  “Possibly. We have not identified them yet, so we don’t know it for a fact. But if that is the case, there would seem a possibility that the players in the conspiracy may have met here. I stress the word ‘may.’ Therefore, there are two things we want from you. A look at any records you still have on Meadows and a list of every man that was here during the ten months he was.”

  Scales was tamping his pipe and seemingly paying no attention to what had just been said. Then he said, “No problem on his records—he’s dead. On the other, I suppose I should call my lawyer just to make sure I can do that. We run a good program here. And vegetables and money from the state and the feds don’t cover it. I get out the soapbox and make the rounds. We rely on the tithings of the community, civic organizations, things like that. Bad publicity will dry that money up faster than a Santa Ana wind. I help you, I risk that. The other risk is the loss in the faith of the men who come here for a new start. See, most of those men that were here back when Meadows was, they’ve gone on to new lives. They aren’t criminals anymore. If I’m handing out their names to every cop that comes around, then that doesn’t look too good for my program, does it?”

  “Colonel Scales, we don’t have time for lawyers to look this over,” Bosch said. “We are on a murder case, sir. We need this information. You know we can get it if we go to the state and federal correctional departments, but that might take longer than your lawyer. We can also get it with a subpoena, but we thought mutual cooperation would be best. We are much more inclined to tread lightly if we have your cooperation.”

  Scales didn’t move and again didn’t seem to be listening. A curl of blue smoke swirled like a ghost out of his pipe bowl.

  “I see,” he finally said. “Then I’ll just get those files, won’t I?” He stood up then and went to a row of beige file cabinets that lined the wall behind his desk. He went to one drawer marked M-N-O and after a short search pulled out a thin manila file. He dropped it on his desk near Bosch. “That’s the file on Meadows, there,” he said. “Now let’s see what else we can find here.”

  He went to the first drawer, which had no marking in the card slot on front. He looked through files without taking any out. Then he chose one and sat down with it.

  “You are free to look through that file and I can copy anything you need from it,” Scales said. “This one is my master flow chart of people through here. I can make you a list of any people Meadows could have met here. I assume you will need DOBs and PINs?”

  “That would help, thank you,” Wish said.

  It took only fifteen minutes to look through Meadows’s file. He had started a correspondence with Scales a year before his release from TI. He had the backing of a chaplain and an intake counselor who knew him because he had been assigned to maintenance at the prison’s intake and placement office. In one of the letters Meadows had described the tunnels he had been into in Vietnam and how he had been drawn to their darkness.

  “Most of the other guys were scared to go down there,” he wrote. “I wanted to go. I didn’t know why then, but I think now that I was testing my limits. But the fulfillment I received from it was false. I was as hollow as the ground we fought on. The fulfillment I now have is in Jesus Christ and knowing He is with me. If given the chance, and with His guidance, I can make the right choices this time and leave these bars forever behind. I want to go from hollow ground to hallowed ground.”

  “Tacky but sincere enough, I guess,” Wish said.

  Scales looked up from the desk, where he was writing names, birth dates and prison identification numbers on a sheet of yellow paper. “He was sincere,” he said in a voice that suggested there was no other way about it. “When Billy Meadows left here, I thought, I believed, he was ready for the outside and that he had shed past alliances with drugs and crime. It becomes obvious that he fell back into that temptation. But I doubt you two will find what you are looking for here. I give you these names but they won’t help you.”

  “We’ll see,” Bosch said. Scales went back to writing, and Bosch watched him. He was too consumed by his faith and loyalty to see he might have been used. Bosch believed Scales was a good man but one who might be too quick to see his beliefs and hopes in someone else, perhaps someone like Meadows.

  “Colonel, what do you get out of all this?” Bosch asked.

  This time he put his pen down, adjusted his pipe in his set jaw and folded his hands together on the desk. “It’s not what I get. It’s what the Lord gets.” He picked up the pen again, but then another thought came to him. “You know, these boys were destroyed in many ways when they got back. I know, it’s an old story and everybody’s heard it, everybody’s seen the movies. But these guys have had to live it. Thousands came back here and literally marched off to the prisons. One day I was reading about that and I wondered what if there hadn’t been any war and these boys never went anywhere. They just stayed in Omaha and Los Angeles and Jacksonville and New Iberia and wherever. Would they still have ended up in prison? Would they be homeless, wandering mental cases? Drug addicts?

  “For most of them, I doubt that. It was the war that did it to them, that sent them the wrong way.” He took a long drag on the dead pipe. “So all I do, with the help of the earth and a few prayer books, is try to put back inside what the Vietnam experience took out. And I’m pretty good at it. So I’m giving you this list, letting you take a look at that file there. But don’t hurt what we’ve got here. You two have a natural suspicion of what goes on here, and that’s fine. It’s healthy for people in your position. But be careful with what is good here. Detective Bosch, you look the right age, were you over there?”

  Bosch nodded and Scales said, “Then you know.” He went back to finishing the list. Without looking up he said, “You two join us for lunch? Freshest vegetables in the county on our table.”

  They declined and stood up to go after Scales handed Bosch the list with the twenty-four names he had come up with. As Bosch turned to the office door he hesitated and said, “Colonel, do you mind me asking what other vehicles you have on the farm? I saw the pickup.”

  “We don’t mind you asking, because we have nothing to hide. We got two more pickups like that, two John Deeres and a four-wheel-drive vehicle.”

  “What kind of four-wheel-drive vehicle?”

  “It’s a Jeep.”

  “And what color?”

  “It’s white. What’s going on?”

  “Just trying to clear up something. But I guess the Jeep would have the Charlie Company seal on the side, like the pickup?”

  “That’s right. All our vehicles are marked. When we go into Ventura we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished. We want people to know where the vegetables are coming from.”

  Bosch didn’t look at the names on the list until he was in the car. He didn’t recognize any, but he noticed that Scales had written the letters PH after eight of the twenty-four names.

  “What’s that mean?” Wish asked as she leaned over and looked at the list also.

  “Purple Heart,” Bosch said. “One more way to say be careful, I guess.”

  “What about the Jeep?” she said. “He said it was white. It has a seal on the side.”

  “You saw how dirty the pickup was. A dirty white Jeep, it could have looked beige. If it’s the right Jeep.”

  “He just doesn’t seem right. Scales. He seems legit.”

  “Maybe he is. Maybe it’s the people he lends his Jeep to. I didn’t want to press it with him until we know more.”

  He started the car and they headed down the gravel road to the gate. Bosch rolled his window down. The sky was the color of bleached jeans and the air was invisible and clean and smelled like fresh green peppers. But not for long, Bosch thought. We go back
into the nastiness now.

  On the way back to the city Bosch cut off the Ventura Freeway and headed south through Malibu Canyon to the Pacific. It would take longer to get back, but the clean air was addictive. He wanted it for as long as possible.

  “I want to see the list of the victims,” he said after they had made their way through the winding canyon and the hazy blue surface of the ocean could be seen ahead. “This pedophile you mentioned earlier. Something about that story bothered me. Why would they take the guy’s collection of kiddie porno?”