'If you are, then we can protect you. You don't help us, we can't help you. You know how it goes.'
'Oh my God! I knew this — What other cases?'
'One of Johnny's girls who got killed about a year before him. Her name was Marjorie Lowe.'
Kim shook his head. He didn't recognize the name. He ran his hand over his scalp, using it like a squeegee to move the sweat into the thicker hair. Bosch could tell he had perfectly primed the fat man to answer the questions.
'So what about Fox?' Bosch asked. 'I don't have all night.'
'Look, I don't know anything. All I did was a favor for a favor.'
'Tell me about it.'
He composed himself for a long moment before speaking.
'Look, you know who Jack Ruby was?'
'In Dallas?'
'Yeah, the guy who killed Oswald. Well, Johnny Fox was the Jack Ruby of LA, okay? Same era, same kind of guy. Fox ran women, was a gambler, knew which cops could be greased and greased them when he needed to. It kept him out of jail. He was a classic Hollywood bottom feeder. When he ended up dead on the Hollywood Division blotter, I saw it but was going to pass. He was trash and we didn't write about trash. Then a source I had in the cop shop told me Johnny had been on Conklin's payroll.'
'That made it a story.'
'Yeah. So I called up Mittel, Conklin's campaign manager, and ran it by him. I wanted a response. I don't know how much you know about that time, but Conklin had this squeaky-clean image. He was the guy attacking every vice in the city and here he had a vice hoodlum on the payroll. It was a great story. Though Fox didn't have a record, I don't think, there were intel files on him and I had access to them. The story was going to do damage and Mittel knew it.'
He stopped there at the edge of the story. He knew the rest but to speak of it out loud he had to be pushed over the edge.
'Mittel knew it,' Bosch said. 'So he offered you a deal. He'd make you Conklin's flak if you cleaned up the story.'
'Not exactly.'
'Then what? What was the deal?'
'I'm sure any kind of statute has passed ...'
'Don't worry about it. Just tell me and only me, you and your dog will ever know it.'
Kim took a deep breath and continued.
'This was mid-campaign so Conklin already had a spokesman. Mittel offered me a job as deputy spokesman after the election. I'd work out of the office in the Van Nuys Courthouse, handle the Valley stuff.'
'If Conklin won.'
'Yeah, but that was a given. Unless this Fox story caused a problem. But I held out, used some leverage. I told Mittel I wanted to be the main spokesman after Arno's election or forget it. He got back to me later and agreed.'
'After he talked to Conklin.'
'I guess. Anyway, I wrote a story that left out the details of Fox's past.'
'I read it.'
'That's all I did. I got the job. It was never mentioned again.'
Bosch sized Kim up for a moment. He was weak. He didn't see that being a reporter was a calling just the same as being a cop. You took an oath to yourself. Kim had seemingly had no difficulty breaking it. Bosch could not imagine someone like Keisha Russell acting the same way under the same circumstances. He tried to cover his distaste and move on.
'Think back now. This is important. When you first called up Mittel and told him about Fox's background, did you get the impression that he already knew the background?'
'Yes, he knew. I don't know if the cops had told him that day or he had known all along. But he knew Fox was dead and he knew who he was. I think he was a little surprised that I knew and he became eager to make a deal to keep it out of the paper ... It was the first time I ever did anything like that. I wish I hadn't done it.'
Kim looked down at the dog and then to the beige rug and Bosch knew it was a screen on which he saw how his life diverged sharply the moment he took the deal. It went from where it was going to where it eventually was.
'Your story didn't name any cops,' Bosch said. 'Do you remember who handled it?'
'Not really. It was so long ago. It would have been a couple guys from the Hollywood homicide table. Back then, they handled fatal accidents. Now there's a division for that.'
'Claude Eno?'
'Eno? I remember him. It might've been. I think I remember that it ... Yes, it was. Now I remember. He was on it alone. His partner had transferred or retired or something and he was working alone, waiting for his next partner to transfer in. So they gave him the traffic cases.
They were usually pretty light, as far as any investigation went.'
'How do you remember so much of this?'
Kim pursed his lips and struggled for an answer.
'I guess ... Like I said, I wish I never did what I did. So, I guess, I think about it a lot. I remember it.'
Bosch nodded. He had no more questions and was already thinking of the implications of how Kim's information fit with his own. Eno had worked both cases, Lowe and Fox, and later retired, leaving behind a mail- drop corporation with Conklin's and Mittel's name on it that collected a thousand dollars a month for twenty-five years. He realized that compared to Eno, Kim had settled for too little. He was about to get up when he thought of something.
'You said that Mittel never mentioned the deal you made or Fox again.'
'That's right.'
'Did Conklin ever say anything about either one?'
'No, he never mentioned a thing, either.'
'What was your relationship like? Didn't he treat you as a chiseler?'
'No, because I wasn't a chiseler,' Kim protested but the indignation in his voice was hollow. 'I did a job for him and I did it well. He was always very nice to me.'
'He was in your story on Fox. I don't have it here but in it he said he had never met Fox.'
'Yeah, that was a lie. I made that up.'
Bosch was confused.
'What do you mean? You mean, you made up the lie?'
'In case they went back on the deal. I put Conklin in the story saying he didn't know the guy because I had evidence he did. They knew I had it. That way, if after the election they reneged on the deal, I could dredge up the story again and show Conklin said he didn't know Fox but
he did. I could then make the inference that he also knew Fox's background when he hired him. It wouldn't have done much good because he'd have already been elected, but it would do some PR damage. It was my little insurance policy. Understand?'
Bosch nodded.
'What was the evidence you had that Conklin knew Fox?'
'I had photos.'
'What photos?'
'They were taken by the society photographer for the Times at the Hollywood Masonic Lodge's St Patrick's Day dance a couple of years before the election. There's two of them. Conklin and Fox are at a table. They were scratches but one day I was -'
'What do you mean, scratches?'
'Photos never published. Outtakes. But, see, I used to look at the society stuff in the photo lab, so I could learn who the big shots in the city were and who they were out with and so on. It was useful information. One day I saw these photos of Conklin and some guy that I recognized but wasn't sure from where. It was because of the social background. This wasn't Fox's turf so at the time I didn't recognize him. Then, when Fox got killed and I was
