Lost Light (2003)

by Michael Connelly

  A half hour went by and then the secretary’s phone buzzed and she got the word to send me in.

  Szatmari was a solidly built man in his midfifties. He looked more like a salesman than an investigator but the walls of his office were hung with commendations and handshake photos testifying to his success as one. He pointed me to a chair in front of his cluttered desk and spoke as he wrote something down on a report.

  “I’m busy, Mr. Bosch. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, like I told you yesterday on the phone, I’m working one of your cases. I thought maybe we could share some information, see if one of us has gone down a road the other hasn’t.”

  “Why should I share with you?”

  Something was wrong. He was predisposed not to like me before I had even set foot in his office. I wondered if somehow Peoples had talked to him about me. Maybe Szatmari had called the LAPD or the bureau to check me out and got the word not to cooperate. Maybe that was why the appointment had been canceled.

  “I don’t get this,” I said. “Is something wrong? It’s called solving the case, that’s why maybe we should share information.”

  “And how about you? Would you share with me? How much of the reward do you give to me?”

  I nodded. Now I got it. The reward.

  “Mr. Szatmari, you have it wrong. You have me wrong.”

  “Sure. Have reward, will travel. I see your kind all the time. Come in here, wanting information, maybe make some big bucks.”

  His accent became more pronounced as he got worked up. I flipped open the murder book and found the black-and-white photocopies of the murder scene photos. I tore the page with Angella Benton’s hands on it out of the book and slapped it down on his desk.

  “That’s why I’m doing this. Not the money. Her. I was there that day. I was a cop. I’m retired now but I was on this case until they took me off it. That probably cuts me out of any reward, okay?”

  Szatmari studied the grainy copy of the photo. He then looked at the binder on my lap. He then finally looked at me.

  “I remember you now. Your name. You were the one who hit one of the robbers with a round.”

  I nodded.

  “I was there that day, but since we never found the robbers it’s not known for sure who hit who.”

  “Come on, eight rent-a-cops and an LAPD veteran. It was you.”

  “I think so.”

  “You know, I tried to talk to you back then. Interview you. But the department stonewalled me.”

  “How come?”

  “They’d do anything they could to keep other investigations and investigators out of the picture. They’re like that over there.”

  “I know. I remember.”

  He smiled and leaned back in his seat.

  “And now here you are, wanting cooperation from me. Ironic, eh?”

  “Very.”

  “Is that the investigative file? Let me see it, please.”

  I handed the heavy binder across his desk. He put it down and flipped back to the front section and started leafing through the reports until he came to the original offense report. The homicide. He worked a finger down the page until he came to my name in the block marked “I/O” for investigating officer. He then closed the murder book but didn’t hand it back.

  “Why now? Why do you investigate this?”

  “Because I just retired and it’s one of the ones that won’t let go.”

  He nodded that he understood.

  “Our investigation, you understand, was in regard to the money, not the woman.”

  “It’s all the same thing, you ask me.”

  “Our investigation is no longer active. The money is gone by now. Split up, spent. Without the possibility of recovery. There are other cases.”

  “The money’s been written off,” I said, “but she hasn’t been. Not by me, not by those who knew her.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “I met her that day.”

  He nodded again, seeming to understand what that meant. He straightened the corners on a stack of files on his desk.

  “Did it ever go anywhere?” I asked. “Did you get close to anything?”

  He took a long time answering.

  “No, not really. Only dead ends on this one.”

  “When did you put it aside?”

  “I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

  “Where’s your file on it?”

  “I cannot give you my file. It is against company policy.”

  “Because of the reward thing, right? The company doesn’t allow you to cooperate with unofficial investigations if there’s a reward.”

  “It can lead to collusion,” he said, nodding. “Also, there is the legal jeopardy. I don’t have the luxury of the protections the police have. If my investigative notes and summaries were to become public, I’d be left open to possible lawsuits.”

  I tried to think for a minute about how to play this. Szatmari seemed to be holding something back and whatever it was might be in the file. I think he wanted to give it to me but wasn’t sure how.

  “Take a look at the photocopy again,” I said. “Look at her hands. Are you a religious man, Mr. Szatmari?”

  Szatmari looked at the photo of Angella Benton’s hands again.

  “Sometimes I am religious,” he said. “Are you?”

  “Not really. I mean, what is religion? I don’t go to church, if that’s what it is. But I think about religion and I think I have something like it inside. A code is like religion. You have to believe it. You have to practice it. The thing is, look at her hands, Mr. Szatmari. I remember when I saw her down on the tile and saw how her hands were . . . I sort of took it as a sign.”

  “A sign of what?”

  “I don’t know. A sign of something. Like religion. That’s why this is one of the cases that didn’t go away.”

  “I understand.”

  “Then pull out the file and put it on your desk,” I said as if giving instruction to someone in a hypnotic trance. “Then go get a cup of coffee or have a smoke. And take your time. I’ll wait for you right here.”

  Szatmari looked at me for a long moment and then reached down to what I guess was a file drawer in the desk. He finally took his eyes off me so he could pull the right file. He brought it up—it was a thick one—and put it down on the desk. He then pushed back his chair and got up.

  “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee,” he said. “You want something?”

  “I think I’ll be fine. But thanks.”

  He nodded and went out, closing the door behind him. The moment it clicked I was up out of my seat and moving behind the desk. I sat down and dove into the file.

  For the most part, Szatmari’s file was filled with documents I had already seen before. There were also copies of contracts and directives between Global and its client BankLA that were new, as well as summaries of interviews with several bank and film company employees. Szatmari had conducted interviews with every one of the security transport men who had been on the scene the day of the shoot-out and heist.

  But there was no interview with me. As usual the LAPD had put up a wall. Szatmari’s request to interview me never even got to me. Not that I would have accepted the request if I had seen it. I had an arrogance then that I hoped I had now lost.

  I scanned the interviews and summaries as fast as I could, paying particular attention to the reports pertaining to the three bank employees I hoped to talk to later in the day, Gordon Scaggs, Linus Simonson and Jocelyn Jones. The subjects did not give Szatmari much. Scaggs was the one who handled everything and he was very specific as to the steps he had taken and the planning of the one-day loan of $2 million in cash. The interviews with Simonson and Jones depicted them as worker bees who did what they were told. They could have just as easily been putting labels on cans as counting twenty thousand hundred-dollar bills and writing down eight hundred serial numbers while they were at it.

  My curiosity meter jumped when I came acros
s documents pertaining to the financial backgrounds of Jack Dorsey, Lawton Cross and myself. Szatmari had pulled TRW reports on all of us. He had apparently called our banks and credit-card companies. He wrote short summaries on each of us, my record coming out cleanest, while Cross and Dorsey did not fare as well. According to Szatmari, both men carried huge credit-card debt, with Dorsey in the most difficult financial position because he was divorced but still supporting four children, two of whom were in college.

  The door to the office opened and the secretary looked in, just about to say something to Szatmari when she saw it was me behind his desk.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting for Mr. Szatmari. He went to get a coffee.”

  She put her hands on her ample hips, the international sign of indignation.

  “Did he tell you to go behind his desk and start reading that file?”

  It was incumbent upon me not to leave Szatmari in a potential jam.

  “He told me to wait. I’m waiting.”

  “Well, you get right back around to the other side of that desk. I’ll be informing Mr. Szatmari about what I saw.”

  I closed the file, got up and came around the desk as instructed.

  “You know, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t do that,” I said.

  “I don’t care what you’d appreciate, I’m telling him.”

  She then disappeared, leaving the door open in her wake. A few minutes went by and Szatmari stormed in and closed the door sharply. He then lost his anger as he turned to face me. He was carrying a coffee mug with steam rising out of it.

  “Thanks for playing it that way,” he said. “I just hope you got whatever you needed because now to make good on the little fit I had out there I have to throw you out.”

  “No problem,” I said, standing up. “I’ve got one question, though.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Was that just routine to do the background financials on the cops on the case? Me, Jack Dorsey and Lawton Cross.”

  Szatmari folded his brow as he tried to remember the reason for the financial checks. Then he shrugged.

  “I forgot about that. I think I just thought that with the money that was at stake I should check everybody out. Especially you, Bosch, with the coincidence of you being there at the set at the right moment.”

  I nodded. It sounded like a solid investigative move.

  “Are you angry about it?”

  “Me? No, not mad. I was just curious about where it came from, that’s all.”

  “Anything else helpful?”

  “Maybe, you never know.”

  “Good luck then. If you don’t mind, keep me informed of any progress.”

  “I will. I’ll let you know.”

  We shook hands. On my way out I passed by the indignant secretary and told her to have a nice day. She didn’t respond.

  33

  The interview with Gordon Scaggs went quickly and smoothly. He met me at the agreed-upon time at the BankLA tower in downtown. His forty-second-floor office faced east and had one of the best views of the city’s smog I had ever seen. His recounting of his involvement in the ill-fated $2 million loan to Eidolon Productions deviated in no noticeable way from his statement in the murder book. He negotiated a $50,000 fee for the bank, the costs of security included. The money was to go out in the morning on the day of filming and come back before 6 P.M. closing time.

  “I knew there was a risk,” Scaggs told me. “But I saw a nice, quick profit for the bank. I guess you could say that clouded my vision.”

  Scaggs turned the money transport issues over to Ray Vaughn, head of bank security, while he turned his attention to the chores of insuring the one-day operation through Global Underwriters and then gathering together the $2 million in cash. It would have been highly unusual for a single bank—even the downtown flagship—to have that much money in cash available on one day. So in the days before the loan took place Scaggs had to arrange for cash shipments from various BankLA branches to the downtown location. On the day of the loan the money was loaded into an armored vehicle and driven from downtown to the movie set in Hollywood. Ray Vaughn rode in a lead car. He was in constant radio contact with the driver of the armored truck and led him on a meandering course through Hollywood in an effort to determine if they were being followed.

  When they arrived at the set location they were met by more armed security and Linus Simonson, one of the assistants who had helped Scaggs pull the cash together and had created the list of serial numbers the insurance company had demanded.

  And, of course, the bank entourage was met by the hooded and heavily armed robbers as well.

  One thing new I got from Scaggs during the initial part of the interview was that bank policy had changed since the heist. BankLA no longer engaged in what he called boutique cash loans to the movie industry.

  “What is that saying?” he asked. “Once burned is an education. Twice burned is just plain stupidity. Well, we’re not stupid here, Mr. Bosch. We’re not going to get burned by those people again.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “So you feel confident it was ‘those people’ where this came from? The heist originated over there and not here within the bank?”

  Scaggs looked indignant at the very thought of anything else.

  “I should say so. Look at the poor girl who was murdered. She worked for them, not me.”

  “True. But her murder could have been part of the plan. To throw suspicion on the movie production instead of the bank.”

  “Impossible. The police have been over this place with a fine-tooth comb. Same with the insurance company. We received a clean bill of health from everyone involved. We are absolutely one-hundred-percent clean on this.”

  I nodded again.

  “Then I guess you won’t mind if I talk to your employees, too. I’d like to speak to Linus Simonson and Jocelyn Jones.”

  Scaggs realized he’d been cornered. How could he not let me speak to employees after that ringing endorsement of honesty and innocence on the bank’s behalf?

  “The answer is yes and no,” he said. “Jocelyn is still with us. She’s an assistant branch manager now in West Hollywood. I don’t think there will be a problem talking to her.

  “And Linus Simonson?”

  “Linus never came back to us after that awful day. I guess you know he got shot up by those bastards. Him and Ray. Ray didn’t make it but Linus did. He was in the hospital and then he was on sick leave and then he didn’t want to come back at all and I can’t see as I blame him.”

  “He quit?”

  “That’s right.”

  I had not seen mention of this in the murder book or even in Szatmari’s records. I knew the investigation was most intense in the days and weeks after the heist. This was probably when Simonson was still recovering and still technically an employee. The investigative records generated at this time would have no reason to mention his leaving employment at the bank.

  “Do you know where he went from here?”

  “I used to. I don’t now. But to lay it all out there for you, Linus went and got himself a lawyer who started making liability claims. You know, that the bank put Linus in harm’s way and all of this nonsense. None of the claims mentioned that he volunteered to be out there that day.”

  “He wanted to be there?”

  “Sure. He was a young guy. He grew up in town and probably had Hollywood aspirations at one time or another. Everybody does. He thought spending the day on the set, being the guy in charge of the money, would be a good deal. He volunteered and I said fine, go. I wanted somebody from my office there anyway. Besides Ray Vaughn, I mean.”

  “So did Simonson actually sue the bank or just make noise with his lawyer?”

  “He made noise. But he made enough noise that legal settled him out. They gave him a chunk of cash and he went away. I heard he used it to buy a nightclub.”

  “How much they give him?”

  “I don’t know
. One time I asked our attorney, Jim Foreman, what the kid got and he wouldn’t tell me. He said terms of the settlement were confidential. But from what I understand, this club he bought, it was a nice one. One of those Hollywood-type places.”