Nothing.
“Where did the money come from?”
He raised his eyes from the photo to mine. He said nothing.
“Did these agents tell you not to talk to me?”
Nothing.
“Did they? Look, if you didn’t know her, then tell me.”
Aziz dropped his sad eyes to the table again. He appeared to be looking at the photo again but I could tell he wasn’t. He was looking at something far away. I knew it was useless, just as I had probably known before sitting down.
I got up and turned to Peoples.
“You can keep the rest of the fifteen minutes.”
He pushed off the wall and looked up at an overhead camera. He made the little swirling motion with a finger and the door’s electronic lock snapped open. Without thinking I moved toward the door and pushed it open. Almost immediately I heard a banshee cry from behind me and Aziz was up and over the table. He hit me in the upper back with all his weight-maybe 130 pounds tops-and I went through the door and into the hallway.
Aziz was still on me and as I started to go down I felt his arms and legs flailing for purchase. He then jumped off and started running down the hall. Peoples and the other agent were quickly down the hall after him. As I got up I saw them corner Aziz at a dead end. Peoples held back while the other agent moved in and roughly wrestled the smaller man to the ground.
Once Aziz was controlled Peoples turned and came back to me.
“Bosch, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
I stood up and made a show of straightening my clothes. I was embarrassed. I had been taken by surprise by Aziz and I knew it would probably be the talk of the squad room at the other end of the hall.
“I wasn’t ready for that. I guess being out of the life so long, I got rusty.”
“Yes. You never can turn your back on them.”
“My box. I forgot it.”
I went back into the interview room and got the photo off the table and the box. Just as I came back out Aziz was being walked by, his wrists cuffed behind his back.
I watched him go by and then Peoples and I followed at a safe distance.
“And so,” Peoples said, “all of this was for naught.”
“Probably.”
“And it all could have been avoided if…”
He didn’t finish so I did.
“Your agent hadn’t committed those crimes on camera. Yeah.”
Peoples stopped in the hallway and I did, too. He waited for the other agent and Aziz to go through the door.
“I’m not comfortable with this arrangement,” he said. “I have no guarantees. You could walk out of here and get hit by a truck. Does that mean those recordings will end up on the news?”
I thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Yeah, it does. You better hope that truck misses me.”
“I don’t want to live and work under the weight of that.”
“I don’t blame you. What are you going to do about Milton?”
“What I told you. He’s out. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“Well, let me know when that happens. Then we can talk about the weight again.”
He looked like he was about to say something more but then thought better of it and started walking again. He led me through the security doors to the elevator. He used his card key to summon it and then to push the button for the lobby. He held his hand on the door’s bumper.
“I’m not going down with you,” he said. “I think we’ve said enough.”
I nodded and he stepped back through the door. He stood there and watched, maybe to make sure I didn’t sneak off the elevator and try to spring the incarcerated terrorists.
Just as the door started closing I hit the bumper with the side of my hand and it slowly reopened.
“Remember, Agent Peoples, my lawyer has taken steps to secure herself and the recordings. If something happens to her it’s the same as it happening to me.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Bosch. I will make no move against her or you.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about.”
The door closed as we were holding each other’s eyes in a pointed stare.
“I understand,” I heard him say through the doors.
29
My dance with the federales was not totally for naught as I had led Peoples to believe. Yes, my chasing down of the tiny terrorist may have been a false lead but in any case there are always false leads. It is part of the mission. At the end of the day what I had was the full record of the investigation and I was happy with that. I was playing with a full deck-the murder book-and it allowed me to write off in my mind all that had occurred in the two days leading up to the point I got it, including my hours in lockdown. For I knew that if I was to find Angella Benton’s killer, the answer, or at least the key that would turn the case, would likely be sitting somewhere in the middle of that black plastic binder.
I got home from the federal building and came into the house like a man who thinks he may have won the lottery but needs to check the numbers in the newspaper to be sure. I went directly to the dining room table with my cardboard box and spread out everything I carried in it. Front and center was the murder book. The Holy Grail. I sat down and started reading from page one. I didn’t get up for coffee, water or beer. I didn’t turn on music. I concentrated fully on the pages I was turning. On occasion I jotted notes down on my notepad. But for the most part I just read and absorbed. I got in the car with Lawton Cross and Jack Dorsey and I rode through their investigation.
Four hours later I turned the last page in the binder. I had carefully read and studied every document. Nothing struck me as the key, the obvious strand to pursue, but I wasn’t discouraged. I still believed it was in there. It always was. I would just have to sift it from a different angle.
The one thing that struck me from the intense immersion into the documented part of the case was the difference in personalities of Cross and Dorsey. Dorsey was a good ten years older than Cross and had been the mentor in the relationship. But in their writing and handling of reports I sensed strong differences in their personalities. Cross was more descriptive and interpretive in his reports. Dorsey was the opposite. If three words summed up an interview or a lab report, then he went with the three words. Cross was more likely to put down the three words and then add another ten sentences of interpretation of what the lab report or the witness’s demeanor meant. I preferred Cross’s method. It had always been my philosophy to put everything in the book. Because sometimes cases go months and even years long and nuances can be lost in time if not set down as part of the record.
It also made me conclude that maybe the two partners had not been close. They were close now, inextricably linked in department mythology as keepers of the ultimate bad luck. But maybe if they had been close that moment in the bar, things would have been different.
Thinking about what could have been made me remember Danny Cross singing to her husband. I finally got up and went to the CD player and put in a disc of the collected works of Louis Armstrong. It had been put out in unison with the Ken Burns documentary on jazz. Most of it was the very early stuff but I knew it ended with “What a Wonderful World,” his last hit.
Back at the table I looked at my notepad. I had written down only three things during my first read- through.
