Bosch smiled in a sad way. Never leave a thing uncovered. That was Irving. His parting shot was a threat, a threat that if Bosch ever used his knowledge against the department, he, too, would go down. Irving would personally see to it.
“Are you afraid?” Bosch asked.
“Afraid of what, Detective?”
“Of everything. Of me. Yourself. That it won’t hold together. That I might be wrong. Everything, man. Aren’t you afraid of everything?”
“The only thing that I fear are people without a conscience. Who act without thinking their actions through. I don’t think you are like that.”
Bosch just shook his head.
“So let’s get down to it, Detective. I have to rejoin the chief and I see the mayor has arrived. What is it you want, provided it is within my authority to provide?”
“I wouldn’t take anything from you,” Bosch said very quietly. “That’s what you just don’t seem to get.”
Irving finally turned around to face him again.
“You are right, Bosch. I really don’t understand you. Why risk everything for nothing? You see? It raises my concerns about you all over again. You don’t play for the team. You play for yourself.”
Bosch looked steadily at Irving and didn’t smile, though he wanted to. Irving had paid him a fine compliment, though the assistant chief would never realize it.
“What happened down there had nothing to do with the department,” he said. “If I did anything at all, I did it for somebody and something else.”
Irving stared back blankly, his jaw flexing as he ground his teeth. There was a crooked smile below the gleaming skull. It was then that Bosch recognized the similarity to the tattoos on the arms of Moore and Zorrillo. The devil’s mask. He watched as Irving’s eyes lit on something and he nodded knowingly. He looked back at Sylvia and then returned his gaze to Bosch.
“A noble man, is that it? All of this to insure a widow’s pension?”
Bosch didn’t answer. He wondered if it was a guess or Irving knew something. He couldn’t tell.
“How do you know she wasn’t part of it?” Irving said.
“I know.”
“But how can you be sure? How can you take the chance?”
“The same way you’re sure. The letter.”
“What about it?”
Bosch had done nothing but think about Moore on his way back. He had had four hours of driving on the open road to put it together. He thought he had it.
“Moore wrote the letter himself,” he began. “He informed on himself, you could say. He had this plan. The letter was the start. He wrote it.”
He stopped to light a cigarette. Irving didn’t say a word. He just waited for the story.
“For reasons that I guess go back to when he was a boy, Moore fucked up. He crossed and after he was already on the other side he realized there is no crossing back. But he couldn’t go on, he had to get out. Somehow.
“His plan was to start the IAD investigation with that letter. He put just enough in the letter so Chastain would be convinced there was something to it, but not enough that Chastain would be able to find anything. The letter would just serve to cloud his name, put him under suspicion. He had been in the department long enough to know how it would go. He’d seen the way IAD and people like Chastain operate. The letter set the stage, made the water murky enough so that when he turned up dead at the motel the department, meaning you, wouldn’t want to look too closely at it. You’re an open book, Chief. He knew you’d move quickly and efficiently to protect the department first, find out what really happened second. So he sent the letter. He used you, Chief. He used me, too.”
Irving turned toward the grave site. The ceremony was about to begin. He turned back to Bosch.
“Go ahead, Detective. Quickly, please.”
“Layer after layer. Remember, you told me he had rented that room for a month. That was the first layer. If he hadn’t been discovered for a month decomp would’ve taken care of things. There would have been no skin left to print. That would leave only the latents he left in the room and he’d’ve been home free.”
“But he was found a few weeks early,” Irving helpfully interjected.
“Yeah. That brings us to the second layer. You. Moore had been a cop a long time. He knew what you would do. He knew you’d go to personnel and grab his package.”
“That’s a big gamble, Bosch.”
“You ask me, it was a better-than-even bet. Christmas night, when I saw you there with the file, I knew what it was before you said. So I can see Moore taking the gamble and switching the print cards. Like I said, he was gambling it would never come to that anyway. You were the second layer.”
“And you? You were the third?”
“Yeah, the way I figure it. He used me as a sort of last backup. In case the suicide didn’t wash, he wanted somebody who’d look at it and see a reason for Moore to have been murdered. That was me. I did that. He left the file for me and I went for it, thought he’d been killed over it. It was all a deflection. He just didn’t want anybody looking too closely at who was actually on the tile floor in the motel. He just wanted some time.”
“But you went too far, Bosch. He never planned on that.”
“I guess not.”
Bosch thought about his meeting with Moore in the tower. He still hadn’t decided whether Moore had been expecting him, even waiting for him. Waiting for Harry to come kill him. He didn’t think he’d ever know. That was Calexico Moore’s last mystery.
“Time for what?” Irving asked.
“What?”
“You said he just wanted some time.”
“I think he wanted time to go down there, take Zorrillo’s place and then take the money and run. I don’t think he wanted to be the pope forever. He just wanted to live in a castle again.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing.”
They were silent a moment before Bosch finished up.
“Most of this I know you already have, Chief.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, you do. I think you figured it out after Chastain told you that Moore sent the letter himself.”
“And how did Detective Chastain know that?”
He wasn’t going to give Bosch anything. That was okay, though. Harry found that telling the story helped clarify it. It was like holding it up to inspect for holes.
“After he got the letter, Chastain thought it was the wife who sent it. He went to her house and she denied it. He asked for her typewriter because he was going to make sure and she slammed the door in his face. But she didn’t do it before saying she didn’t even have a typewriter. So then, after Moore turns up dead, Chastain starts thinking about things and takes the machine out of Moore’s office at the station. My guess is he matched the keys to the letter. From that point, it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out the letter came from either Moore or somebody in the BANG squad. My guess is that Chastain interviewed them this week and concluded they hadn’t done it. The letter was typed by Moore.”
Irving didn’t confirm any of it but didn’t have to. Bosch knew. It all fit.
“Moore had a good plan, Chief. He played us like cheater’s solitaire. He knew every card in the deck before it was turned over.”
“Except for one,” Irving said. “You. He didn’t think you’d come looking.”
Bosch didn’t reply. He looked over at Sylvia again. She was innocent. And she would be safe. He noticed Irving turn his gaze on her, too.
“She’s clear,” Bosch said. “You know it. I know it. If you make trouble for her, I’ll make trouble for you.”
It wasn’t a threat. It was an offer. A deal. Irving considered it a moment and nodded his head once. A blunt agreement.
“Did you speak to him down there, Bosch?”
Harry knew he meant Moore and he knew he couldn’t answer.
“What did you do down there?”
After a few moments of silence Irving turned and walked as uprig
ht as a Nazi back to the rows of chairs holding the VIPs and top brass of the department. He took a seat his adjutant had been saving in the row behind Sylvia Moore. He never looked back at Bosch once.
Chapter 34
Through the entire service Bosch had watched her from his position next to the oak tree. Sylvia Moore rarely raised her head, even to watch the line of cadets fire blanks into the sky or when the air squad flew over, the helicopters arranged in the missing-man formation. One time he thought she glanced over at him, or at least in his direction, but he couldn’t be sure. He thought of her as being stoic. And he thought of her as being beautiful.
When it was over and the casket was in the hole and the people were moving away, she stayed seated and Bosch saw her wave away an offer from Irving to be escorted back to the limousine. The assistant chief sauntered off, smoothing his collar against his neck. Finally, when the area around the burial site was clear, she stood up, glanced once down into the hole, and then started walking toward Bosch. Her steps were punctuated by the slamming of car doors all across the cemetery. She took the sunglasses off as she came.
“You took my advice,” she said.
This immediately confused him. He looked down at his clothes and then back at her. What advice? She read him and answered.
“The black ice, remember? You have to be careful. You’re here, so I assume you were.”
“Yes, I was careful.”
He saw that her eyes were very clear and she seemed even stronger than the last time they had encountered each other. They were eyes that would not forget a kindness. Or a slight.
“I know there is more than what they have told me. Maybe you will tell me sometime?”
He nodded and she nodded. There was a moment of silence as they looked at each other that was neither long or short. It seemed to Bosch to be a perfect moment. The wind gusted and broke the spell. Some of her hair broke loose from the barrette and she pushed it back with her hand.
“I would like that,” she said.
“Whenever you want,” he said. “Maybe you’ll tell me a few things, too.”
“Such as?”
“That picture that was missing from the picture frame. You knew what it was, but you didn’t tell me.”
She smiled as if to say he had focused his attention on something unnecessary and trivial.
“It was just a picture of him and his friend from the barrio. There were other pictures in the bag.”
“It was important but you didn’t say anything.”
She looked down at the grass.
“I just didn’t want to talk or think about it anymore.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“Of course. That’s what happens. The things you don’t want to know or remember or think about come back to haunt you.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“You know, don’t you?” he finally said.
“That that wasn’t my husband buried there? I had an idea, yes. I knew there was more than what people were telling me. Not you, especially. The others.”
He nodded and the silence grew long but not uncomfortable. She turned slightly and looked over at the driver standing next to the limo, waiting. There was nobody left in the cemetery.
“There is something I hope you will tell me,” she said. “Either now or sometime. If you can, I mean… Um, is he… is there a chance he will be back?”
Bosch looked at her and slowly shook his head. He studied her eyes for reaction. Sadness or fear, even complicity. There was none. She looked down at her gloved hands, which grasped each other in front of her dress.
“My driver…,” she said, not finishing the thought.
She tried a polite smile and for the hundredth time he asked himself what had been wrong with Calexico Moore. She took a step forward and touched her hand to his cheek. It felt warm, even through the silk glove, and he could smell perfume on her wrist. Something very light. Not really a smell. A scent.
“I guess I should go,” she said.
He nodded and she backed away.
“Thank you,” she said.
He nodded. He didn’t know what he was being thanked for but all he could do was nod.
“Will you call? Maybe we could… I don’t know. I-”
“I will call.”
Now she nodded and turned to walk back to the black limousine. He hesitated and then spoke up.
“You like jazz? The saxophone?”
She stopped and turned back to him. There was sharpness in her eyes. That need for touch. It was so clear he could feel it cut him. He thought maybe it was his own reflection.
“Especially the solos,” she said. “The ones that are lonely and sad. I love those.”
“There is… is tomorrow night too soon?”
“It’s New Year’s Eve.”
“I know. I was thinking… I guess it might not be the right time. The other night-that was… I don’t know.”
She walked back to him and put her hand on his neck and pulled his face down to hers. He went willingly. They kissed for a long time and Bosch kept his eyes closed. When she let him go he didn’t look to see if anyone was watching. He didn’t care.
“What is a right time?” she asked.
He had no answer.
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
He smiled and she smiled.
She turned for the last time and walked to the car, her high heels clicking on the asphalt once she left the carpet of grass. Bosch leaned back against the tree and watched the driver open the door for her. Then he lit a cigarette and watched as the sleek black machine carried her out through the gate and left him alone with the dead.
FB2 document info
Document ID: bd-2xuvqt42-80uj-9145-pqlj-vd0dto0sj6kv
Document version: 1.1
Document creation date: 21.07.2005
Created using: software
Document authors :
Document history:
v. 1.1 – corrected by Stranger, 28.10.2005
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