“Yeah, but you don’t have me, you prick. Fingerprints? You need more than that. That gun’s a plant and everybody’s going to know it.”
“Yeah, you keep saying it. I’ll know what I need to know from ballistics by tomorrow morning.”
It was hard for Bosch to tell if that had registered because Goshen didn’t give it much time to.
“I’ve got a fuckin’ alibi! You can’t pin this on me, man!”
“Yeah? What’s your fuckin’ alibi? How do you even know when he got hit?”
“You asked me about Friday night, right? That’s the night.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Goshen sat silent and motionless for a half minute. Bosch could see the eyes going to work. Goshen knew he had crossed one line with what he had said. Bosch guessed he was considering how far he should cross. Bosch pulled the chair out and sat back down.
“I got an alibi, so I’m in the clear.”
“You’re not in the clear till we say you are. What’s your story?”
“No. I’m gonna tell my lawyer what it is.”
“You’re hurting yourself, Goshen. You’ve got nothing to lose telling me.”
“Except my freedom, right?”
“I could go out, verify your story. Maybe then I’d start listening to your story about the gun being planted.”
“Yeah, right, that’s like puttin’ the inmates in charge of the prison. Talk to my lawyer, Bosch. Now get me a fucking phone.”
Bosch stood up and signaled for him to put his arms behind his back. He did so and Bosch cuffed him again, then left the room.
After Bosch filled them in on how Goshen had won round one, Felton told Iverson to take a phone into the interview room and allow the suspect to call his lawyer.
“I guess we’ll let him stew,” Felton said when he and Bosch were alone. “See how he likes his first taste of incarceration.”
“He told me he did three years down in Mexico.”
“He tells that to a lot of people he’s trying to impress. Like the tattoos. When we were backgrounding him after he showed up a couple years ago, we never found anything about a Mexican prison and as far as we know, he’s never ridden a Harley, let alone with any motorcycle gang. I think a night in county might soften him up. Maybe by round two we’ll have the ballistics back.”
Bosch said he had to use a phone to call his CO to check on what the plan was for the gun.
“Just pick an empty desk out there,” Felton said. “Make yourself at home. Listen, I’ll tell you how this most likely will go and you can tell your Lieutenant Billets. The lawyer he calls is most likely going to be Mickey Torrino. He’s Joey Marks’s top guy. He’s going to object to extradition and meantime try to get bail. Any bail will do. All they want to do is get him out of our hands and into their hands and then they can make their decision.”
“What decision?”
“Whether or not to whack him. If Joey thinks Lucky might flip, he’ll just take him out to the desert somewhere and we’ll never see him again. Nobody will.”
Bosch nodded.
“So you go make your call and I’ll call over to the prosecutor’s office, see if we can’t get an X hearing scheduled. I think the sooner the better. If you can get Lucky to L.A., he’s going to be even more likely to start thinking about cutting a deal. That is, if we don’t break him first.”
“It’d be nice to have the ballistics before the extradition hearing. If we get a ballistics match, it will seal it. But things don’t move so quickly in L.A., if you know what I mean. I doubt there’s even been an autopsy.”
“Well, make your call and then we’ll reconnoiter.”
Bosch used an empty desk next to Iverson’s to make his call. He got Billets at her desk and he could tell she was eating. He quickly updated her on his failed effort to scam Goshen into talking and the plans to have the prosecutor’s office in Las Vegas handle the extradition hearing.
“What do you want to do about the gun?” he asked when he was done.
“I want it back here as soon as possible. Edgar talked somebody over at the coroner’s office into doing the cut this afternoon. We should have the bullets by tonight. If we have the gun, we can take the whole thing over to ballistics tomorrow morning. Today’s Tuesday. I doubt there’d be an extradition hearing before Thursday. We’d have an answer from ballistics by then.”
“Okay, I’ll grab a plane.”
“Good.”
Bosch sensed something off about her tone. She was preoccupied by something other than ballistics and what she was eating.
“Lieutenant,” he said. “What’s up? Is there something I don’t know about?”
She hesitated a moment and Bosch waited her out.
“Actually, something’s come up.”
Bosch’s face flashed warm. He guessed that Felton had screwed him and told Billets about the Eleanor Wish situation.
“What is it?”
“I’ve made an ID on the guy who was in Tony Aliso’s office.”
“That’s great,” Bosch said, relieved but confused by her somber tone. “Who?”
“No, it’s not great. It was Dominic Carbone from OCID.”
Bosch was stunned into silence for a long moment.
“Carbone? What the…?”
“I don’t know. I’ve got some feelers out. I’d like you back here until we figure out what to do with this. Goshen will keep until the extradition hearing. He’s not going to be talking to anyone but his lawyer. If you can get back, I’d like us all to get together and hash this around. I haven’t talked to Kiz and Jerry yet today. They’re still working the financial trail.”
“How’d you make the ID on Carbone?”
“Pure luck. Things were kind of slow after I talked to you and the captain out there this morning. I took a drive downtown and stopped by Central. I’ve got a friend, she’s a lieutenant, too, up in OC. Lucinda Barnes, you know her?”
“No.”
“Anyway, I went up to see her. I wanted to kind of feel around, maybe get an idea why they took the pass on this one. And, lo and behold, we’re sitting there talking and this guy walks through the squad and I think I recognize him but I’m not sure from where. I ask who he is and she tells me that’s Carbone. And that’s when I remembered. He’s the guy on the tape. He had his suit jacket off and his sleeves rolled up. I even saw the tattoo. It’s him.”
“You tell all this to your friend?”
“Hell no. I just acted natural and got the hell out of there. I tell you, Harry, I don’t like this inside stuff. I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll figure something. Look, I’m going to go. I’ll be there as soon as I can. What you might want to do in the meantime, Lieutenant, is try to use some juice with ballistics. Tell them we’ll be coming in with a code three in the morning.”
Billets said she would do what she could on that.
After making arrangements to fly back to L.A., Bosch barely had time to take a cab back to the Mirage and check out and still make it by Eleanor’s apartment to say good-bye. But his knock on her door went unanswered. He didn’t know what kind of car she had, so it was impossible for him to check the lot to make sure she was gone. He went back to his rental and sat inside and waited as long as he could, until he was at risk of missing his flight. He then scribbled a message on a page from his notebook saying he would call her and went back to the door. He folded the page up tight and stuck it in the crack of the door jamb so that it would fall and be noticed the next time she opened the door.
He wanted to wait around longer and talk to her in person but he couldn’t. Twenty minutes later he was leaving the security office of the airport. The gun from Goshen’s house was wrapped in an evidence bag and safely in his briefcase. Five minutes later he was aboard a jet headed for the city of angels.
