“It’s funny,” Bosch said.
“What is?”
“That what all of this really came down to was a bank caper. It’s not really about Tony Aliso’s murder, it’s about the money he skimmed and hid. A bank caper with his murder sort of a side effect. And that’s how you and I met. On a bank job.”
She nodded, her eyes going far off as she thought about it. Bosch immediately wished he hadn’t brought the memory up.
“Sorry,” he said. “I guess it’s not really that funny.”
Eleanor looked up at him from the couch.
“Harry, I’m going with you to Las Vegas.”
PART VIII
THE SILVER STATE National Bank branch where Tony Aliso had taken his girlfriend while Eleanor Wish had watched was in the corner of a small shopping plaza between a Radio Shack and a Mexican restaurant called La Fuentes. The parking lot was largely empty at dawn on Monday morning when the FBI agents and LAPD detectives came to set up. The bank didn’t open until nine and the other businesses would follow beginning at ten.
Because the businesses were closed, the agents had a problem in locating their surveillance points. It would be too obvious to stick four government cars in the lot. They would be too noticeable because there were only five other cars in the entire block-long parking lot, four parked on the outer fringes and an old Cadillac parked in the first row nearest the bank. There were no license plates on the Caddy, which had a spider web crack in the windshield, its windows left open and the trunk sprung and held closed by a chain and padlock through one of its many rusted- out spots. It had the sad appearance of having been abandoned, its owner probably another Las Vegas casualty. Like someone lost in the desert and dying of thirst just a few feet from an oasis, the Caddy had stopped for the final time just a few feet from the bank and all the money inside it.
The agents, after cruising by the location a few times to get the lay of the land, decided to use the Caddy as a blind, by popping the hood and sticking an agent in a greasy T-shirt under it and ostensibly working on the dead engine. They complemented this agent with a panel van parked right next to the Caddy. Four agents were in the van. At seven that morning they had taken it to the federal utilities shop and had a painter stencil La Fuentes Mexican Restaurant-Established 1983 on the side panels in red paint. The paint was still drying when they drove the van into the lot at eight.
Now at nine, the lot was slowly beginning to fill, mostly with employees of the stores and a few Silver State customers who needed to take care of business as soon as the bank opened its doors. Bosch watched all of this from the backseat of a federal car. Lindell and an agent named Baker were in the front seat. They were parked in the service bay of a gas station across Flamingo Road from the shopping center where the bank was located. Edgar and Rider were in another bureau car parked further up Flamingo. There were two other bureau cars in the area, one static and one roving. The plan was for Lindell to move his car into the bank parking lot once it became more crowded with cars and the bureau car would not stand out. This plan included a bureau helicopter making wide arcs around the shopping center.
“They’re opening up,” a voice from the car radio reported.
“Gotcha, La Fuentes,” Lindell said back.
The bureau cars were each equipped with a radio pedal and overhead mike on the windshield visor, meaning the driver of each car simply depressed the foot pedal and spoke, avoiding having to raise a microphone to his mouth and possibly being noticed and identified as law enforcement. Bosch had heard that the LAPD was finally getting such equipment, but the narcotics units and specialized surveillance teams were getting it first.
“Lindell,” he said, “you ever go to talk on the radio and slam on the brakes by mistake?”
“Not yet, Bosch. Why?”
“Just curious how all this fancy equipment works.”
“It’s only as good as the people who work it.”
Bosch yawned. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept. They had driven through the night to get to Las Vegas and then spent the rest of the time planning for the bank surveillance.
“So what do you think, Bosch?” Lindell asked him. “Sooner or later?”
“This morning. They’ll want their money. They don’t want to wait.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You think it’s later?”
“If it was me, I’d do it later. That way if there were people out there watching and waiting-whether it’s the bureau or LAPD or Powers or whoever-they’d get cooked in the sun. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah. We sit out here all day and we aren’t going to be very sharp when the time comes.”
Bosch was quiet for a little while after that. From the backseat he studied Lindell. He noticed that the agent had gotten a haircut. There was no sign of the spot where Bosch had hacked off his ponytail.
“You think you’re going to miss it?” Bosch asked.
“Miss what?”
“Being under. The life, I mean.”
“No, it was getting old. I’ll be happy to go straight.”
“Not even the girls?”
Bosch saw Lindell’s eyes take a quick swipe at Baker and then look at Bosch in the rearview mirror. That told Bosch to let that subject go.
“Whaddaya think about the lot now, Don?” Lindell said, changing the subject.
Baker scanned the lot. It was slowly filling up. There was a bagel shop on the far end from the bank, and that was responsible for most of the autos at the moment.
“I think we can take it in, park it by the bagel place,” Baker said. “There’s enough cover now.”
“Okay, then,” Lindell said. He tilted his head slightly so that he was projecting his voice toward the visor. “Uh, La Fuentes, this is Roy Rogers. We’re going to take our position in now. We’ll check ya from the bagel shop. That will be to your posterior. I believe.”
“Roger that,” came the return. “You always wanted to be on my tail end, didn’t you, Roy?”
“Funny guy,” Lindell said.
An hour went by while they watched from their new position and nothing happened. Lindell was able to move their car in closer, parking in front of a card-dealing school about half the parking lot’s length from the bank. It was class day and several would-be dealers had been pulling in and parking. It was good cover.
“I don’t know, Bosch,” Lindell said, breaking a long silence. “You think they’re going to show or not?”
“I never said it was anything more than a hunch. But I still think it all fits. It even fits better since we got here. Last week I found a matchbook in Aliso’s room at the Mirage. It was from La Fuentes. Whether they show or not, I say Tony’s got a box in that bank.”
“Well, I’m thinking about sending Don here in to ask about that. We might be able to call an end to this and stop wasting our time if we find out there’s no box.”
“Well, it’s your call.”
“You got that right.”
A couple more minutes of tense silence went by.
“What about Powers?” Lindell asked.
“What about him?”
“I don’t see him here, either, Bosch. When you got here this morning, you were all hot and heavy about him comin’ out here to find her and blast her full of holes. So where is he?”
“I don’t know, Lindell. But if we’re smart enough to figure this out, so is he. I wouldn’t doubt it if he knew from tailing Tony where the box was all along and just left that out of our little conversation.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me, either. But I still say it’d be stupid for him to come here. He’s got to know we have a fix on this.”
“Stupid isn’t the word. It’s suicidal. But I don’t think he cares. He just wants her to go down. And if he takes a
