Lost Light (2003)

by Michael Connelly

  She took me by the arm and pulled me away from the railing.

  41

  The North Hollywood station was the newest in the city. It was built post-earthquake and Rodney King riots. On the outside it was a brick fortress designed to withstand both tectonic and social upheavals. On the inside it was state-of-the-art electronics and comfort. I was sat in the center seat of a table in a large interview room. I could not see the microphones and the camera but I knew they were there. I also knew I had to be careful. I had made a bad deal. If a quarter century in the cops had taught me anything, it was not to talk to cops without a lawyer’s advice. And here I was about to do just that. I was about to open up to two people predisposed to believe me and to want to help me. But that wouldn’t matter. What would matter was the tape. I had to step carefully and make sure I said nothing that could come back on me when the tape was reviewed by those who were not my friends.

  Kizmin Rider started things off by entering all three of our names into the record, reporting the date, time and location, and then reading me my constitutionally guaranteed right to a lawyer and to hold my tongue if I wished. She then asked me to acknowledge both orally and in writing that I understood these rights and was willingly waiving them. I did so. I had taught her well.

  She then got right to it.

  “Okay, Harry, you have four people including a federal agent dead at your house, not to mention a fifth man in a coma. You want to tell us all about it?”

  “I killed two of them—in self-defense. And the guy in the coma, I did that too.”

  “Okay, tell us what happened.”

  I began the story at the Baked Potato and took it from there. I mentioned Sugar Ray, the quartet, the porter, the bartenders and their tattoos. I even described the cashier I had bought the coffee from at Ralph’s. I used as much detail as I could remember because I knew that the details would convince them once they checked it all out. I knew from experience that conversation was hearsay, it wasn’t provable one way or the other. So if you were going to tell a story about what people said and how they said it—especially people who were no longer alive—then you’d best salt the story with the things that could be checked and proven. The details. Safety and salvation were in the details.

  So I put everything I could remember on the tape, right down to the Marilyn Monroe tattoo. That one made Roy Lindell laugh but Rider didn’t see the humor in it.

  I walked them through the story, describing things as they had happened. I offered no background story because I knew that would come out in the questioning that would follow. I wanted them to have a moment-by-moment and detail-by-detail account of what had happened. I did not lie in what I told them but I didn’t tell them everything. I still wasn’t sure how to play the Milton angle. I would wait for a signal from Lindell on that. I was sure he had been given his orders long before he got to the station.

  I held the Milton details out for Lindell. The detail I held out for myself was what I had seen when I closed my eyes before pressing the shotgun’s trigger. I kept the image of Angella Benton’s hands to myself.

  “And that’s it,” I said when I was done. “Then the uniforms showed up and here we are.”

  Rider had been jotting down notes occasionally on a legal pad. She put her pad down and looked at me. She seemed stunned by the story. She probably believed I was very lucky to have survived it.

  “Thank you, Harry. That was certainly a close call for you.”

  “It was about five close calls.”

  “Um, I think we’re going to take a break for a few minutes. Agent Lindell and I are going to step out and talk about this and then I’m sure we will come back with some questions.”

  I smiled.

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “Can we get you anything?”

  “Coffee would be nice. I’ve been up all night and at the house they wouldn’t give me any from my own machine.”

  “Coffee coming up.”

  She and Lindell got up and left the room. A few minutes later a North Hollywood detective I didn’t know came in with a cup of black coffee. He told me to hang in there and left.

  When Rider and Lindell came back in I noticed that there were more notes on her pad. She kept the lead and started out doing the talking again.

  “We need to clear up a couple things first,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “You said that Agent Milton was already in your house when you came in.”

  “That’s right.”

  I looked at Lindell and then back at Rider.

  “You said you were in the process of informing him that you believed you had been followed home when the front door was kicked in by the intruders.”

  “Correct.”

  “He stepped into the hall to investigate and was immediately hit with a blast from a shotgun, presumably fired by Linus Simonson.”

  “Right again.”

  “What was Agent Milton doing in your house if you weren’t there?”

  Before I could speak Lindell blurted out a question.

  “He did have permission to be there, didn’t he?”

  “Hey, how about we take one question at a time?” I said.

  I looked at Lindell again and his eyes turned down to the table. He couldn’t look at me. Judging by his question, which was really a statement disguised as a question, Lindell was revealing to me what he wanted me to say. I believed at that point that he was making an offer of trade. He was almost certainly in trouble with the bureau for his aid to me during my investigation. And as such, he now had his orders: keep the bureau’s nose clean on this, or there would be consequences for him and possibly for me. So what Lindell was saying to me was that if I told the story in a way that helped him accomplish that objective—without legally compromising myself—then we would both be better off.

  The truth was I didn’t mind sparing Milton posthumous controversy and shame. As far as I was concerned he’d already gotten what he deserved and then some. Going after him now would be vindictive and I didn’t need to be vindictive to a dead man. I had other things to do and wanted to preserve my ability to do them.

  There was Special Agent Peoples and his BAM squad but there was too much gray between them and Milton’s actions. I had Milton on tape, not Peoples. Using one to try to get to the other was a tough road to drive. I decided in that moment to let the dead man sleep and to live to drive another day.

  “What was Agent Milton doing in your house if you weren’t there?” Rider repeated.

  I looked back at her.

  “He was waiting for me.”

  “To do what?”

  “I had told him to meet me there but I got delayed because I went and bought the coffee on my way home.”

  “Why was he meeting you so late at night?”

  “Because I had information that would clear some things up for him.”

  “What was that information?”

  “It was about how a terrorist involved in a case he was working ended up with a hundred-dollar bill that supposedly came from the movie set heist I was investigating and had been warned off of. I told him I had put things together and found that the two cases were actually unrelated. I invited him to come to my lawyer’s office in the morning when you two were going to come and I’d explain it all to everybody. But he didn’t want to wait so I told him to meet me at the house.”

  “And what, you left him a key?”

  “No, I didn’t. But I must’ve left the door unlocked because he was inside when I got home. I guess you could say he had permission because I invited him to the house but I didn’t exactly tell him to go inside. He just sort of did that on his own when he beat me to the house.”

  “Agent Milton had a number of miniaturized listening devices in the pocket of his coat. Do you know anything about that or why he had them?”

  My guess was that he had removed them from my house but I didn’t say this.

  “No idea,” I said. “You would’ve had to
ask him, I guess.”

  “What about his car? It was found parked about a block north of your house on Woodrow Wilson. In fact, it was further away from your house than the car the four assailants used. Any idea why Milton would park so far from your house if he was invited to be there?”

  “No, not really. Like I said, I guess he’s the only one who knew that.”

  “Exactly.”

  I could see her getting heated. Her eyes grew sharper and she seemed to be trying to read the looks I was giving Lindell. She knew there was a play on but she was smart enough not to mention anything on camera. I had taught her well.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what, Harry. You told us every detail about what happened last night but not how it fits into anything. Before all the shit hit the fan you called the big meeting for this morning in order to lay it all out for us. So go ahead and do it now. Tell us what you’ve got.”

  “You mean from the beginning?”

  “From the beginning.”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, well, I guess you could say it all started with Ray Vaughn and Linus Simonson deciding to rip off the cash shipment to the movie set. There was some sort of connection between them. One of their former colleagues at the bank said she thought Vaughn was gay and Simonson had said he was making a move on him. Anyway, whether Simonson drew Vaughn in or it was the other way around, they decided to take the money. They planned it out and then Simonson recruited his four pals for the heavy work. It went from there.”

  “What about Angella Benton?” Rider asked.

  “I’m getting to that. Without telling the others, Vaughn and Linus decided they needed a device, something that would make the cops think the heist came from inside the movie company, not the bank. So they picked her. She’d come to the bank as a liaison once with documents pertaining to the loan. So they knew a case could be made that she knew about the money. They picked her and probably watched her for a couple days and then figured out when she was most vulnerable and when to do it. They killed her and one of them put the semen on her so it would look like a sex case at first and it wouldn’t immediately reflect on the movie company or the plan to shoot scenes with real money. That would come later. After the heist.”

  “So she was just a device is what you are saying,” Rider said dejectedly. “Her life taken simply because she fit into the plan.”

  I nodded somberly.

  “What a wonderful world, right?”

  “Okay, go on. Did they both do it?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. Simonson had an alibi for that night but it was cleared by Jack Dorsey, and we’ll get to him in a minute. But my guess is that they did it together. It would take two to completely overpower her without a struggle.”

  “The jizz,” Rider said. “We can see if it matches one of them. Since Vaughn was killed during the robbery and Simonson was shot, it was never thought to type them against the semen collected at the murder scene.”

  I shook my head.

  “I have a feeling that it won’t match either one of them.”

  “Then who did it come from?”

  “We may never know. Remember the spatter evidence? We decided the semen was brought to the scene and dripped onto the body. Who knows where they got it. Maybe from one of themselves but if they were smart they wouldn’t have left their own. Why leave a direct tie to the crime?”

  “So, what, they just go up to a stranger and ask him to jerk off in a cup for them?” Lindell asked incredulously.

  “It wouldn’t be that hard to get,” Rider said. “Go into any alley in Hollywood and you’ll find a loaded condom. And if Vaughn was gay, then it could have come from one of his partners and the partner might not have ever known it.”

  I nodded. I had been thinking the same thing.

  “Exactly. And that’s probably why he was killed. Simonson double-crossed him. He told his guys to make sure they took him out during the robbery. It would mean more money for them and a link to the Benton case eliminated.”

  “Jesus, these are cold-blooded fucks,” Lindell said.

  I could tell he was thinking about Marty Gessler and her unknown fate.

  “Simonson further secured the operation and the future use of the money by switching the currency report he and another BankLA employee had put together. You could say he unmarked the bills.”

  “How?” Rider asked.

  “I thought at first that he probably just put wrong currency numbers into the report he and another bank employee made in the vault. But I guess that would have been too risky because she wasn’t in on it and she might have decided to double-check the numbers. So I think what he did was create a second, phony report on his computer. It listed currency numbers he just made up. He then printed it out and forged his coworker’s signature on it and turned it in to the vice president for his signature. From there it went to the insurance company and then to the cops after the heist and eventually to the FBI.”

  “You told me to bring the original to the meeting we were supposed to have this morning,” Rider said. “Why?”

  “You know what forger’s tremor is? It’s something you can see in a signature that has been forged by tracing. He traced his coworker’s signature off the original or real currency report. In the photocopy of the one he turned in I could see hesitation marks. Her signature would have been one smooth, uninterrupted scrawl. But it looks like whoever signed that page never lifted the pen but stopped and started after almost every letter. It’s a tell and I think the original will show it beyond a doubt.”

  “How was that missed?”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe it wasn’t.”

  “Dorsey and Cross.”

  “I think Dorsey. I don’t know about Cross. Cross helped me with this. In fact, he called me and gave me the jump start on it.”

  Lindell leaned forward. We were getting to the part about Marty Gessler and he wanted to get it right.

  “So Simonson turns in a report with made-up numbers and then his buddies go and rip off the delivery and kill Vaughn in the process. Intentionally.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about Simonson? He got shot, too. Were they trying to cut him out, too?”

  “No, that wasn’t supposed to happen. Not according to Fazio. At least that was what he was saying to me before he got nailed last night. It sounded like Simonson getting shot was just dumb luck. A ricochet. If Banks comes out of his sleep with his brain intact maybe he can tell you about that. I have a feeling he’ll want to talk. He’ll want to spread the blame around.”

  “Don’t worry, if he comes out of it, we’ll be there. But the early word from the hospital is that that’s a big if.”

  “The thing about that ricochet is that it actually helped them. It gave Simonson a valid out from the bank. No suspicion there. Then he hid the purchase and renovation of the bars behind a settlement from the bank. The truth was he didn’t make enough off the settlement to put in a new beer cooler.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.”

  “All right, let’s get back to the heist for a minute,” Lindell said. “So other than Simonson taking a slug in the ass, the heist goes off as planned. All the cops —”

  “Not exactly,” Rider said. “Harry was there. He nailed one of the robbers.”

  I nodded.

  “And he apparently died in the van during the getaway. Simonson told me the others took him out on a boat or something and buried him at sea. His name was Cozy. They named one of the bars after him.”

  “Okay,” Lindell said. “But when the dust settles from this thing, all the cops have is Angella Benton dead and a phony list of numbers that nobody knows is phony. Then nine months sail by and lo and behold one of those numbers scores a hit when Marty Gessler puts it into her computer.”

  I nodded. Lindell knew where it was going.

  “Wait a minute,” Rider said. “I’m not tracking this part.”

  Lindell and I took
five minutes to fill her in on Marty Gessler’s computer program that tracked currency numbers and what her discovery meant.

  “Got it,” Rider said. “She came up with the first inference that something was wrong. She came up with a hit that didn’t work because the hundred-dollar bill in question was already in evidence lockup. It could not have been taken during the movie set heist.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “One of the numbers Simonson made up just happened to be on a bill already accounted for. The same thing would later happen when they arrested Mousouwa Aziz at the border. One of the hundreds he was carrying matched Simonson’s phony list. That brought Milton and the Homeland Security heavies into it and it was all bullshit. The truth was, there was no connection between the two cases.”