Bosch leaned forward.
“Listen, I’m going to tell you something very few people know about, okay?”
McCaleb nodded. He knew better than to ask a question now. He would just let Bosch tell it.
“Because of that window thing I went on suspension. When I got tired of walking around my house staring at the walls, I started investigating an old case. A cold case. A murder case. I went freelancing on it and I ended up following a blind trail to some very powerful people. But at the time I had no badge, no real standing. So a few times, when I made some calls, I used Pounds’s name. You know, I was trying to hide what I was doing.”
“If the department found out you were working a case while on suspension things would’ve gotten worse for you.”
“Exactly. So I used his name when I made what I thought were some routine, innocuous calls. But then one night somebody called Pounds up and told him that they had something for him, some urgent information. He went to the meet. By himself. Then they found him later in that tunnel. He’d been beaten pretty bad. Like they had tortured him. Only he couldn’t answer their questions because he was the wrong guy. I was the one who had used his name. I was the one they wanted.”
Bosch dropped his chin to his chest and was silent for a long moment.
“I got him killed,” he said without looking up. “The guy was a pure-bred asshole but my actions got him killed.”
Bosch suddenly jerked his head up and drank from his bottle. McCaleb saw his eyes were dark and shiny. They looked weary.
“Is that what you wanted to know, Terry? Does that help you?”
McCaleb nodded.
“How much of this would Tafero have known?”
“Nothing.”
“Could he have thought you were the one who called Pounds out that night?”
“Maybe. There were people who did and probably still do. But what does it mean? What’s it got to do with Gunn?”
McCaleb took his first long drink of beer. It was cold and he felt the chill in his chest. He put the bottle down and decided it was time to give something back to Bosch.
“I need to know about Tafero because I need to know about reasons, motives. I have no proof of anything – yet – but I think Tafero killed Gunn. He did it for Storey. He set you in the frame.”
“Jesus…”
“Nice perfect frame. The crime scene is connected to the painter Hieronymus Bosch, the painter is connected to you as his namesake and then you are connected to Gunn. And you know when Storey probably got the idea for it?”
Bosch shook his head. He looked too stunned to talk.
“The day you tried to interview him in his office. You played the tape in court last week. You identified yourself on it by your full first name.”
“I always do. I…”
“He then connects with Tafero and Tafero has the perfect victim to put in the frame. Gunn – a man he knew walked away from you and a murder charge six years ago.”
Bosch lifted his bottle a couple of inches off the table and brought it back down hard.
“I think the plan was twofold. If they got lucky the connection would be made quickly and you’d be fighting a murder charge before Storey’s trial even started. If that didn’t happen, then plan B. They would still have it to crush you with at trial. Destroy you, they destroy the case. Fowkkes already took out that woman today and pot- shotted a few of the other wits. What does the case rest on? You, Harry. They knew it would come down to you.”
Bosch turned his head slightly and his eyes seemed to go blank as he stared at the scarred table top while considering what McCaleb had said.
“I needed to know your background with Tafero. Because that’s a question; why would he do this? Yes, there probably is money in it and a hook into Storey if he walks. But there had to be something more. And I think you just told me what it was. He’s probably hated you for a long time.”
Bosch looked up from the table and directly at McCaleb.
“It’s a payback.”
McCaleb nodded.
“For Pounds. And unless we get the proof of it, it might just work.”
Bosch was silent. He stared down at the table. He looked tired and washed out to McCaleb.
“Still want to shake his hand?” McCaleb asked.
Bosch raised his eyes.
“Sorry, Harry, that was a cheap shot.”
Bosch shook his head, shrugging it off.
“I deserve it. So tell me, what do you have?”
“Not a lot. But you were right. I missed something. Tafero bailed Gunn out on New Year’s Eve. I think the plan was to kill him that night, set the scene and let things take their course. The Hieronymus Bosch connection would come to light – either through Jaye Winston or a bureau VICAP inquiry – and you’d become a natural target. But then Gunn went and got himself drunk in here.”
He raised his bottle and gestured to the bar.
“And then he got himself duiced while driving home. Tafero had to get him out so they could stay with the plan. So he could kill him. That bail slip is the one direct link we have.”
Bosch nodded. McCaleb could tell he was seeing the scheme.
“They leaked it to that reporter,” Bosch said. “Once it hit the media they could jump on it and use it and act like it was news to them, like they were behind the curve when all along they were bending the goddamn curve.”
McCaleb nodded hesitantly. He didn’t bring up Buddy Lockridge’s admission because it threw a jam into the working theory.
“What?” Bosch asked.
“Nothing. I’m just thinking.”
“You’ve got nothing other than Tafero posting the bail?”
“A traffic ticket and that’s it for now.”
In detail McCaleb described his morning’s visits to Valentino Bonds and the post office and how his being forty-eight minutes late at the post office might be the difference in being able to clear Bosch and take down Tafero.
Bosch winced and picked up his bottle, but then put it down without drinking from it.
“The parking ticket puts him at the post office,” McCaleb offered.
“It’s nothing. He’s got an office five blocks away. He could claim it was the only parking place he could find. He could say he lent his car to somebody. It’s nothing.”
McCaleb didn’t want to concentrate on what they didn’t have. He wanted to fill in pieces.
“Listen, the morning watch sergeant told us you had a standing request to be notified every time Gunn was brought in. Would Tafero have known about it? Either from before when he was still in the squad or some other way?”
“He could have. It wasn’t a secret. I was working on Gunn. Someday I was going to break him.”
“By the way, what did Pounds look like?”
Bosch gave him a confused look.
“Short, wide and balding with a mustache?”
Bosch nodded and was about to ask a question when McCaleb answered it.
“His picture is on the wall in Tafero’s office. Pounds giving him the detective-of-the-month plaque. I bet you never got one of those, Harry.”
“Not with Pounds making the pick.”
McCaleb looked up and saw that Jaye Winston had entered the bar. She was carrying a briefcase. He nodded to her and she started toward the booth, walking with her shoulders up as though she were carefully stepping
