'What are you talking about?'
Brockman's face lit up with a bully's delight as he read Bosch's surprised look.
'Oooh, baby! She didn't even bother telling you, did she?'
'Tell me what?'
Bosch wanted to reach over the counter and drag Brockman across it but at least outwardly he maintained his cool.
'Tell you what? I'll tell you what. I think your whole story stinks and I'm going to bust it open. Then Mr Clean upstairs isn't going to be able to protect you.'
'He said you were told to leave me alone, that I was clear.'
'Fuck him and fuck you. When I come in with your alibi in a bag, he's not going to have a choice but to cut you loose.'
Toliver stepped through the doorway behind the counter. He was holding a set of car keys in his hands. He stood silently behind Brockman with his eyes down.
'First thing I did was run her on the computer,' Brockman said. 'She's got a record, Bosch. You didn't know that? She's a killer, just like you. Takes one to know one, I guess. Nice couple.'
Bosch wanted to ask a thousand questions but he
wouldn't ask any of this man. He felt a deep void opening inside as he began jettisoning his feelings for Jazz. He realized that she had left all the signs out for him but he hadn't read them. Even so, the feeling that descended on him with the strongest grip was one of betrayal.
Bosch pointedly ignored Brockman and looked at Toliver.
'Hey, kid, you going to give me a ride or what?'
Toliver moved around the counter without answering.
'Bosch, I already got you on an association beef,' Brockman said. 'But I'm not satisfied.'
Bosch went to the hallway door and opened it. It was against LAPD regulations to associate with known criminals. Whether Brockman could make a charge like that stick was the least of Bosch's worries. He headed out the door with Toliver following. Before it closed Brockman yelled after them.
'Give her a kiss for me, killer.'
At first, Bosch sat silently next to Jerry Toliver on the ride back to his house. He had a waterfall of thoughts dropping through his mind and decided to simply ignore the young IAD detective. Toliver left the police scanner on and the sporadic chatter was the only thing resembling conversation in the car. They had caught the crest of the evening commute out of downtown and were moving at an excruciatingly slow pace toward the Cahuenga pass.
Bosch's guts ached from the wracking convulsions of nausea of an hour earlier and he kept his arms crossed in front of him as if he were cradling a baby. He knew he had to compartmentalize his thoughts. As much as he was confused and curious about what Brockman had alluded to in regard to Jasmine, he knew he had to put it aside. At the moment, Pounds and what had happened to him were more important.
He tried to piece together the chain of events and the conclusion he drew was obvious. His stumbling into the party at Mittel's and delivery of the photocopy of the Times clip had set off a reaction that ended with the murder of Harvey Pounds, the man whose name he had used. Though he had given Mittel only the name at the party, it was somehow traced back to the real Pounds, who was then tortured and killed.
Bosch guessed that it was the DMV calls that had
doomed Pounds. Fresh from receiving the threatening news clip at the fund-raiser from a man who had introduced himself as Harvey Pounds, Mittel likely would have put his lengthy arm out to find out who this man was and what his purpose was. Mittel had connections from LA to Sacramento to Washington, DC. He could have quickly found out that Harvey Pounds was a cop. Mittel's campaign financing work had put a good number of legislators in seats in Sacramento. He would certainly have the connections in the capital city to find out if anyone was running traces on his name. And if he had that done, then he would have learned that Harvey Pounds, an LAPD lieutenant, had inquired not only about him but about four other men who would be of vital interest to him as well. Arno Conklin, Johnny Fox, Jake McKittrick and Claude Eno.
True, all the names were involved in a case and conspiracy almost thirty-five years old. But Mittel was at the center of that conspiracy and the snooping around by Pounds would be more than enough, Bosch believed, for someone of his position to take some kind of action to find out what Pounds was doing.
Because of the approach the man he thought was Pounds had made at the party, Mittel had probably concluded he was being set upon by a chiseler, an extortionist. And he knew how to eliminate the problem. Like Johnny Fox had been eliminated.
That was the reason Pounds had been tortured, Bosch knew. For Mittel to make sure the problem went no further than Pounds, he had to know who else knew what Pounds knew. The problem was that Pounds didn't know anything himself. He had nothing to give. He was tormented until his heart could take it no longer.
A question that remained unanswered in Bosch's mind was what Arno Conklin knew of all this. He had not yet
been contacted by Bosch. Did he know of the man who approached Mittel? Did he order the hit on Pounds or was it solely Mittel's reaction?
Then Bosch saw a bump in his theory that needed refining. Mittel had come face to face with him posing as Harvey Pounds at the fund-raiser. The fact that Pounds was tortured before he died indicated that Mittel was not present at the time, or he would have seen that they were brutalizing the wrong man. Bosch wondered now if they understood that they had, in fact, killed the wrong man, and if they would be looking for the right one.
He mulled over the point that Mittel could not have been there and decided that it fit. Mittel was not the type to get involved in the blood work. He'd have no problem calling the shots, he just wouldn't want to see them fired. Bosch realized the surfer in a suit had also seen him at the party and, therefore, could not have been directly involved in the killing of Harvey Pounds, either. That left the man Bosch had seen through the French doors at the house. The man with the wide body and thick neck whom he had seen Mittel show the newspaper clip to. The man who had slipped and fallen while coming down the driveway for Bosch.
Bosch realized that he didn't know how close he had come to being where Pounds was now. He reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and started to light one.
'Do you mind not smoking?' Toliver asked, his first words of the thirty-minute journey.
'Yeah, I do mind.'
Bosch finished lighting the smoke and put his Bic away. He lowered the window.
'There. You happy? The exhaust fumes are worse than the smoke.'
'It's a nonsmoking vehicle.'
Toliver tapped his finger on a plastic magnet that was on
the dashboard ashtray cover. It was one of the little doodads that were distributed when the city passed a widespread antismoking law that forbade the practice in all city buildings and allowed for half of the department's fleet to be declared nonsmoking vehicles. The magnet showed a cigarette in the middle of a red circle with a slash through it. Beneath the circle it said thank you for not smoking. Bosch reached over, peeled the magnet off and threw it out the open window. He saw it bounce once on the pavement and stick on the door of a car one lane over. 'Now it's not. Now it's a smoking car.' 'Bosch, you're really fucked, you know that?' 'Write me up, kid. Add it to the association beef your boss is working on. I don't care.'
They were silent for a few moments and the car crept further away from Hollywood.
'He's bluffing you, Bosch. I thought you knew that.' 'How so?'
He was surprised that Toliver was turning. 'He's just bluffing, that's all. He's still hot about what you did with that table. But he knows it won't stick. It's an old case. Voluntary manslaughter. A domestic violence case. She walked on five years probation. All you have to do is say you didn't know and it gets shitcanned.'
Bosch could almost guess what the case was about. She had practically told him during true confessions. She stayed too long with someone. That was what she had said. He thought of the painting he had seen in her studio. The gray portrait with the highlights red like blood. He tried to pull his mind away from it.
'Why're you telling me this, Toliver? Why are you going against your own?'
'Because they're not my own. Because I want to know what you meant by what you said to me in the hallway.' Bosch couldn't even remember what he said.
'You told me it wasn't too late. Too late for what?'
