Trunk Music

by Michael Connelly

  “Not here. Follow me.”

  They left through the front doors of the casino and walked out into the dry heat of the night. The sun was all the way down now and it was neon that lit the sky.

  “There’s a bar in Caesar’s that’s quiet. It doesn’t have any machines.”

  She led him across the street and onto the people mover that delivered them to the front door of Caesar’s Palace. They walked past the front desk and into a circular bar where there were only three other customers. Eleanor had been right. It was an oasis with no poker or slot machines. Just the bar. He ordered a beer and she ordered scotch and water. She lit a cigarette.

  “You didn’t used to smoke before,” he said. “In fact, I remember you were—”

  “That was a long time ago. Why are you here?”

  “I’m on a case.”

  During the walk over he’d had time to compose himself and put his thoughts in order.

  “What case and what does it have to do with me?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with you, but you knew the guy. You played poker with him on Friday at the Mirage.”

  Curiosity and confusion creased her brow. Bosch remembered how she used to do that and remembered how attractive he’d found it. He wanted to reach over and touch her but he didn’t. He had to remind himself that she was different now.

  “Anthony Aliso,” he said.

  He watched the surprise play on her face and believed instantly that it was real. He wasn’t a poker player from Kansas who couldn’t read a bluff. He had known this woman and believed from the look on her face she clearly did not know Aliso was dead until he told her.

  “Tony A…,” she said and then let it trail off.

  “Did you know him well or just to play against?”

  She had a distant look in her dark eyes.

  “Just when I’d see him there. At the Mirage. I’ve been playing there on Fridays. A lot of fresh money and faces come in. I’d see him there a couple times a month. For a while I thought he was a local, too.”

  “How’d you find out he wasn’t?”

  “He told me. We had a drink together a couple months ago. There were no seats at the tables. We put our names in and told Frank, he’s the night man, to come get us at the bar when there was an opening. So we had a drink and that’s when he told me he was from L.A. He said he was in the movie business.”

  “That’s it, nothing else?”

  “Well, yeah, he said other things. We talked. Nothing that stands out, though. We were passing the time until one of our names came up.”

  “You didn’t see him again outside of playing?”

  “No, and what’s it to you? Are you saying I’m a suspect because I had a drink with the guy?”

  “No, I’m not saying that, Eleanor. Not at all.”

  Bosch got out his own cigarettes and lit one. The waitress in a white-and-gold toga brought their drinks, and they settled into a silence for a long moment. Bosch had lost his momentum. He was back to not knowing what to say.

  “Looked like you were doing pretty good tonight,” he tried.

  “Better than most nights. I got my quota and I got out.”

  “Quota?”

  “Whenever I get two hundred up I cash out. I’m not greedy and I know luck doesn’t last for long on any given night. I never lose more than a hundred, and if I’m lucky enough to get two hundred ahead, then I’m done for the night. I got there early tonight.”

  “How’d you—”

  He stopped himself. He knew the answer.

  “How’d I learn to play poker well enough to live off it? You spend three and a half years inside and you learn to smoke and play poker and other things.”

  She looked directly at him as if daring him to say anything about it. After another long moment she broke away and got out another cigarette. Bosch lit it for her.

  “So there’s no day job? Just the poker?”

  “That’s right. I’ve been doing this almost a year now. Kind of hard to find a straight job, Bosch. You tell ’em you’re a former FBI agent and their eyes light up. Then you tell them you just got out of federal prison and they go dead.”

  “I’m sorry, Eleanor.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not complaining. I make more than enough to get by, every now and then I meet interesting people like your guy Tony A., and there’s no state income tax here. What do I have to complain about, except maybe that it gets to be over a hundred degrees in the shade about ninety times a year too many?”

  The bitterness was not lost on him.

  “I mean I’m sorry about everything. I know it doesn’t do you any good now, but I wish I had it to do all over again. I’ve learned things since then, and I would’ve played it all differently. That’s all I wanted to tell you. I saw you on the surveillance tape playing with Tony Aliso and I wanted to find you to tell you that. That’s all I wanted.”

  She stubbed her half-finished smoke out in the glass ashtray and took a strong pull on her glass of scotch.

  “I guess I should be going, then,” she said.

  She stood up.

  “Do you need a ride anywhere?”

  “No, I actually have a car, thank you.”

  She started out of the bar in the direction of the front doors but after a few yards stopped and came back to the table.

  “You’re right, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “About it not doing me any good now.”

  With that she left. Bosch watched her push through the revolving doors and disappear into the night.

  Following the directions he had written down when he spoke with Rhonda over the phone in Tony Aliso’s office, Bosch found Dolly’s on Madison in North Las Vegas. It was strictly an upper-crust club: twenty-dollar cover, two-drink minimum and you were escorted to your seat by a large man in a tuxedo with a starched collar that cut into his neck like a garrote. The dancers were upper-crust, too. Young and beautiful, they probably were just shy of having enough coordination and talent to work the big room shows on the Strip.

  Bosch was led by the tuxedo to a table the size of a dinner plate about eight feet from the main stage, which was empty at the moment.

  “A new dancer will be on stage in a couple minutes,” the man in the tuxedo told Bosch. “Enjoy the show.”

  Bosch didn’t know if he was supposed to tip the guy for seating him at such a close-up location as well as putting up with the tuxedo, but he let it go and the man didn’t hang around with his hand out. Bosch had barely gotten his cigarettes out when a waitress in a red silk negligee, high heels and black fishnet stockings floated over and reminded him of the two-drink minimum. Bosch ordered beer.

  While he waited for his two beers, Bosch took a look around. Business seemed slow, it being the Monday night tail-end of a holiday weekend. There were maybe twenty men in the place. Most of them were sitting by themselves and not looking at each other while they waited for the next nude woman to entertain them.

  There were full-length mirrors on the side and rear walls. A bar ran along the left side of the room, and cut into the wall in the back was an arched entrance above which a red neon sign that glowed in the darkness announced PRIVATE DANCERS. The front wall was largely taken up by a shimmering curtain and the stage. A runway projected from the stage through the center of the room. The runway was the focus of several bright lights attached to a metal gridwork on the ceiling. Their brightness made the runway almost glow in contrast to the dark and smoky atmosphere of the seating area.

  A disk jockey in a sound booth at the left side of the stage announced the next dancer would be Randy. An old Eddie Money song, “Two Tickets to Paradise,” started blaring over the sound system as a tall brunette wearing blue jeans cut off to expose the lower half of her bottom and a neon pink bikini top charged through the shimmering curtain and started moving to the beat of the music.

  Bosch was immediately mesmerized. The woman was beautiful and the first thought he had was to question why she
was doing this. He had always believed that beauty helped women get away from many of the hardships of life. This woman, this girl, was beautiful and yet here she was. Maybe that was the real draw for these men, he thought. Not the glimpse of a naked woman, but the knowledge of submission, the thrill of knowing another one had been broken. Bosch began to think he had been wrong about beautiful women.

  The waitress put down two beers on the little table and told Bosch he owed fifteen dollars. He almost asked her to repeat the price but then figured it came with the territory. He handed her a twenty, and when she started digging through the stack of bills on her tray for his change he waved it off.

  She clutched his shoulder and bent down to his ear, making sure that she was at an angle that afforded him a look at her full cleavage.

  “Thank you, darlin’. I ’preciate that. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “There is one thing. Is Layla here tonight?”

  “No, she’s not here.”

  Bosch nodded. And the waitress straightened up.

  “How about Rhonda then?” Bosch asked.

  “That’s Randy up there.”

  She pointed to the stage and Bosch shook his head and signaled her to come closer.

  “No, Rhonda, like help, help me Rhonda. She working tonight? She was here last night.”

  “Oh, that Rhonda. Yeah, she’s around. You just missed her set. She’s probably in the back changing.”

  Bosch reached into his pocket for his money and put a five on her bar tray.

  “Will you go back and tell her the friend of Tony’s she talked to last night wants to buy her a drink?”

  “Sure”

  She squeezed his shoulder again and went off. Bosch’s attention was drawn to the stage, where Randy’s first song had just ended. The next song was “Lawyers, Guns and Money” by Warren Zevon. Bosch hadn’t heard it in a while and he remembered how it had been an anthem among the uniforms back when he had worked patrol.

  The dancer named Randy soon slipped out of her outfit and was nude except for a garter stretched tightly around her left thigh. Many of the men got up and met her as she danced her way slowly down the runway. They slid dollar bills under the garter. And when a man put a five under the strap, Randy bent down over him, using his shoulder to steady herself, and did an extra wiggle and kissed his ear.

  Bosch watched this and was thinking that he now had a pretty good idea how Tony Aliso ended up with the small handprint on his shoulder, when a petite blond woman slid into the seat next to him.

  “Hi. I’m Rhonda. You missed my show!”

  “I heard that. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I go back on in a half hour and do it all over again. I hope you’ll stay. Yvonne said you wanted to buy me a drink?”

  As if on cue Bosch saw the waitress heading their way. Bosch leaned over to Rhonda.

  “Listen, Rhonda, I’d rather take care of you than give my money to the bar. So do me a favor and don’t go exorbitant on me.”

  “Exorbitant…?”

  She crinkled her face up in a question.

  “Don’t go ordering champagne.”

  “Oh, I gotcha.”

  She ordered a martini and Yvonne floated back into the darkness.

  “So, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Harry.”

  “And you’re a friend of Tony’s from L.A. You make movies, too?”

  “No, not really.”

  “How do you know Tony?”

  “I just met him recently. Listen, I’m trying to find Layla to get a message to her. Yvonne tells me she’s not on tonight. You know where I can find her?”

  Bosch noticed her stiffen. She knew something wasn’t right.

  “First of all, Layla doesn’t work here anymore. I didn’t know that when I talked to you last night, but she’s gone and won’t be back. And secondly, if you’re a friend of Tony’s, then how come you’re asking me how to find her?”

  She wasn’t as dumb as Bosch had thought. He decided to go direct.

  “Because Tony got himself killed, so I can’t ask him. I want to find Layla to tell her and maybe warn her.”

  “What?” she shrieked.

  Her voice cut through the loud music like a bullet through a slice of bread. Everybody in the place, including the naked Randy on the stage, looked in their direction. Bosch had no doubt that everyone in the place must think he had just propositioned her, offering an insulting fee for an equally insulting act.

  “Keep it down, Randy,” he quickly said.

  “It’s Rhonda.”

  “Rhonda then.”

  “What happened to him? He was just here.”

  “Somebody shot him in L.A. when he got back. Now, do you know where Layla is or not? You tell me and I’ll take care of you.”

  “Well, what are you? Are you really his friend or not?”

  “In a way I’m his only friend right now. I’m a cop. My name’s Harry Bosch and I’m trying to find out who did it.”

  Her face took on a look that seemed even more horrified than when he told her Aliso was dead. Sometimes telling people you were a cop did that.

  “Save your money,” she said. “I can’t talk to you.”

  She got up then and moved quickly away toward the door next to the stage. Bosch threw her name out after her but it was crushed by the sound of the music. He casually took a look around and noticed behind him that the tuxedo man was eyeing him through the darkness. Bosch decided he wasn’t going to stick around for Rhonda’s second show. He took one more gulp of beer—he hadn’t even touched his second glass—and got up.

  As he neared the exit the tuxedo leaned back and knocked on the mirror behind him. It was then that Bosch realized there was a door cut into the glass. It opened and the tuxedo stepped to the side to block Bosch’s exit.

  “Sir, could you step into the office, please?”

  “What for?”

  “Just step in. The manager would like a word with you.”

  Bosch hesitated but through the door he could see a lighted office where a man in a suit sat behind a desk. He stepped in and the tuxedo came in behind him and shut the door.

  Bosch looked at the man behind the desk. Blond and beefy. Bosch wouldn’t know whom to bet on if a fight broke out between the tuxedoed bouncer and the so-called manager. They were both brutes.

  “I just got off the phone with Randy in the dressing room, she says you were asking about Tony Aliso.”

  “It was Rhonda.”

  “Rhonda, whatever, never-the-fuck-mind. She said you said he was dead.”

  He spoke with a midwestern accent. Sounded like southside Chicago, Bosch guessed.

  “Was and still is.”

  The blond nodded to the tuxedo and his arm came up in a split second and hit Bosch with a backhand in the mouth. Bosch went back against the wall, banging the back of his head. Before his mind cleared, the tuxedo twirled him around until he was face-against-the-wall and leaned his weight against him. He felt the man’s hands begin patting him down.

  “Enough of the wiseass act,” the blond said. “What are you doing talking to the girls about Tony?”

  Before Bosch could say anything the hands running over his body found his gun.

  “He’s strapped,” the tuxedo said.

  Bosch felt the gun being jerked out of his shoulder holster. He also tasted blood in his mouth and felt rage building in his throat. The hands then found his wallet and his cuffs. Tuxedo threw them on the desk in front of the blond and held Bosch pinned against the wall with one hand. By straining to turn his head Bosch could watch the blond open the wallet.

  “He’s a cop, let him go.”

  The hand came off his neck and Bosch gruffly pulled away from the tuxedo.

  “An L.A. cop,” the blond said. “Hieronymus Bosch. Like that painter, huh? He did some weird stuff.”

  Bosch just looked at him and he handed the gun and cuffs and wallet back.

  “Why’d you have him hit me?
”

  “That was a mistake. See, most cops what come in here, they announce themselves, they tell us their business and we help ’em if we can. You were sneaking around, Anonymous Hieronymus. We have a business to protect here.”

  He opened a drawer and pulled out a box of tissues and proffered it to Bosch.

  “Your lip’s bleeding.”