Nothing broke through. The transfer still eluded him. He felt discomfort in his gut. He felt as though he was missing something. Something that was right there in the room with him.
Failure brings pressure. Bosch checked his watch and saw that the federal meeting-if there was actually going to be one-was to begin in less than three hours.
He left the bedroom and made his way down the hall toward the kitchen, stopping in each room and checking closets and drawers and finding nothing suspicious or amiss. In the workout room he opened a closet door and found it lined with musty cold-weather clothes on hangers. The Kents had obviously migrated to L.A. from colder climes. And like most people who came from somewhere else, they refused to part with their winter gear. Nobody ever knew for sure how much of L.A. they could take. It was always good to be ready to run.
He left the contents of the closet untouched and closed the door. Before leaving the room he noticed a rectangular discoloration on the wall next to the hooks where rubber workout mats hung. There were slight tape marks indicating that a poster or maybe a large calendar had been taped to the wall.
When he got to the living room Maxwell was still on the floor, red-faced and sweating from struggling. He now had one leg through the loop created by his cuffed wrists, but he apparently couldn’t get the other through in order to bring his hands to the front of his body. He was lying on the tiled floor with his wrists bound between his legs. He reminded Bosch of a five-year-old holding himself in an effort to maintain bladder control.
“We’re almost out of here, Agent Maxwell,” Bosch said.
Maxwell didn’t respond.
In the kitchen Bosch went to the back door and stepped out onto a rear patio and garden. Seeing the yard in daylight changed his perspective. It was on an incline and he counted four rows of rosebushes going up the embankment. Some were in bloom and some weren’t. Some relied on support sticks that carried markers identifying the different kinds of roses. He stepped up the hillside and studied a few of these, then returned to the house.
After locking the door behind him, he walked across the kitchen and opened another door, which he knew led to the adjoining two-car garage. A bank of cabinets stretched along the back wall of the garage. One by one he opened them and surveyed the contents. There were mostly tools for gardening and household chores, and several bags of fertilizer and soil nutrients for growing roses.
There was a wheeled trash can in the garage. Bosch opened it and saw one plastic trash bag in it. He pulled it out, loosened the pull strap and discovered it contained what appeared to be only basic kitchen trash. On top was a cluster of paper towels that were stained purple. It looked like someone had cleaned up a spill. He held one of the towels up and smelled grape juice on it.
After returning the trash to the container Bosch left the garage and ran into his partner in the kitchen.
“He’s trying to get loose,” Ferras said of Maxwell.
“Let him try. Are you finished in the office?”
“Just about. I was wondering where you were.”
“Go finish up and we’ll be out of here.”
After Ferras was gone Bosch checked the kitchen cabinets and the walk-in pantry and studied all the groceries and supplies stacked on the shelves. After that he went to the guest bathroom in the hall and looked at the spot where the cigarette ash had been collected. On the white porcelain tank top there was a brown discoloration about half the length of a cigarette.
Bosch stared at the mark, curious. It had been seven years since he had smoked but he didn’t remember ever leaving a cigarette to burn like that. If he had finished it he would have thrown it into the toilet and flushed it away. It was clear that this cigarette had been forgotten.
With his search complete, he stepped back into the living room and called to his partner.
“Ignacio, you ready? We’re leaving.”
Maxwell was still on the floor but looked tired from his struggle and resigned to his predicament.
“Come on, damn it!” he finally cried out. “Uncuff me!”
Bosch stepped close to him.
“Where’s your key?” he asked.
“Coat pocket. Left side.”
Bosch bent over and worked his hand into the agent’s coat pocket. He pulled out a set of keys and fingered through them until he found the cuff key. He grabbed the chain between the two cuffs and pulled up so he could work the key in. He wasn’t gentle about it.
“Now be nice if I do this,” he said.
“Nice? I’m going to kick your fucking ass.”
Bosch let go of the chain and Maxwell’s wrists dropped to the floor.
“What are you doing?” Maxwell yelled. “Undo me!”
“Here’s a tip, Cliff. Next time you threaten to kick my ass, you might want to wait until after I’ve cut you loose.”
Bosch straightened up and tossed the keys onto the floor on the other side of the room.
“Uncuff yourself.”
Bosch headed to the front door. Ferras was already going through it. As Bosch was pulling it closed he looked back at Maxwell sprawled on the floor. The agent’s face was as red as a stop sign as he sputtered one last threat in Bosch’s direction.
“This isn’t over, asshole.”
“Got it.”
Bosch closed the door. When he got to the car he looked over the roof at his partner. Ferras looked as mortified as some of the suspects who had ridden in the backseat.
“Cheer up,” Bosch said.
As he got in he had a vision of the FBI agent crawling in his nice suit across the living room floor to the keys.
Bosch smiled.
TWELVE
ON THE WAY BACK DOWN the hill to the freeway Ferras was silent and Bosch knew he had to be thinking about the jeopardy his young and promising career had been placed in because of his old and reckless partner’s actions. Bosch tried to draw him out of it.
“Well, that was a bust,” he said. “I got nada. You find anything in the office?”
“Nothing much. I showed you, the computer was gone.”
There was a sullen tone in his voice.
“What about the desk?” Bosch asked.
“It was mostly empty. One drawer had tax returns and stuff like that. Another had a copy of a trust. Their house, an investment property in Laguna, insurance policies, everything like that is held in a trust. Their passports were in the desk, too.”
“Got it. How much the guy make last year?”
“A quarter million take-home. He also owns fifty-one percent of the company.”
“The wife make anything?”
“No income. Doesn’t work.”
Bosch grew quiet as he contemplated things. When they got down off the mountain he decided not to get on the freeway. Instead he took Cahuenga to Franklin and turned east. Ferras was looking out the passenger-side window but quickly noticed the detour.
“What’s going on? I thought we were going downtown.”
“We’re going to Los Feliz first.”
“What’s in Los Feliz?”
“The Donut Hole on Vermont.”
“We just ate an hour ago.”
