He shook his head and took another bite of his lunch.
“Who is the big guy I saw him with?” McCaleb asked. “The guy standing behind him like Lurch.”
“Rudy Valentino, his investigator.”
“That’s his name?”
“No, it’s Rudy Tafero. He’s former LAPD. He worked Hollywood detectives until a few years back. People in the bureau called him Valentino ’cause of his looks. He got off on it. Anyway, he went private. Has a bail bonds license. Don’t ask me how but he started getting security contracts with a lot of Hollywood people. He showed up on this one right after we popped Storey. In fact, Rudy brought Storey to Fowkkes. Probably got a nice finder’s fee for that.”
“And how about the judge? How’s he going to be?”
Bosch nodded as if he had found something good in the conversation.
“Shootin’ Houghton. He’s no Second Chance Lance. He’s no bullshit. He’ll slap Fowkkes down if he needs to. At least we have that going for us.”
“Shootin’ Houghton?”
“Under that black robe he’s usually strapped – or at least most people think so. About five years ago he had a Mexican Mafia case, and when the jury came in guilty a bunch of the defendants’ buddies and family in the audience got mad and nearly started a riot in the courtroom. Houghton pulled his Glock and put a round into the ceiling. It quieted things down pretty quick. Ever since he’s been reelected by the highest percentage of any incumbent judge in the county. Go in his courtroom and check the ceiling. The bullet hole’s still there. He won’t let anybody fix it.”
Bosch took another bite and looked at his watch. He changed the subject, talking with his mouth full.
“Nothing personal but I take it they’ve hit the wall on Gunn if they’re going to outside help already.”
McCaleb nodded.
“Something like that.”
He looked down at the chili dog in front of him and wished he had a knife and fork.
“What’s wrong? We didn’t have to come here.”
“Nothing. I was just thinking. Between pancakes at Dupar’s this morning and this, I might need another heart by dinner.”
“You want to stop your heart, next time you go to Dupar’s top it off with a stop at Bob’s Donuts. Right there in the Farmers’ Market. Raised glaze. A couple of those and you’ll feel your arteries harden and snap like icicles hanging off a house. They never came up with suspect one, right?”
“Right. Nothing.”
“So what makes you so interested?”
“Same as Jaye. Something about this one. We think whoever it was might be just starting.”
Bosch just nodded. His mouth was full.
McCaleb appraised him. His hair was shorter than McCaleb had remembered it. More gray but that was to be expected. He still had the mustache and the eyes. They reminded him of Graciela’s, so dark there was almost no delineation between iris and pupil. But Bosch’s eyes were weary and slightly hooded by wrinkles at the corners. Still, they were always moving, observing. He sat leaning slightly forward, as if ready to move. McCaleb remembered that there had always been a spring-loaded feel to Bosch. He felt as though at any moment or for any reason Bosch could put the needle into the red zone.
Bosch reached inside his suit coat and took out a pair of sunglasses and put them on. McCaleb wondered if that had been in response to realizing that McCaleb had been studying him. He bent down, raised up his chili dog and finally took a bite. It tasted delicious and deadly at the same time. He put the dripping mess back on the paper plate and wiped his hand on a napkin.
“So tell me about Gunn. You said he was a scumbag. What else?”
“What else? That’s about it. He was a predator. Used women, bought women. He murdered that girl in that motel room, no doubt in my mind.”
“But the DA kicked the case.”
“Yeah. Gunn claimed self-defense. He said some things that didn’t add up but not enough to add up to charges. He claimed self-defense and there wasn’t going to be enough to go against that in a trial. So they no-billed it, end of story, on to the next case.”
“Did he ever know you didn’t believe him?”
“Oh, sure. He knew.”
“Did you try to sweat him at all?”
Bosch gave him a look that McCaleb could read through the sunglasses. The last question went to Bosch’s credibility as an investigator.
“I mean,” McCaleb said quickly, “what happened when you tried to sweat him?”
“Actually, the truth is we never really got the chance. There was a problem. See, we did set it up. We brought him in and put him in one of the rooms. My partner and I were planning to leave him there a while, let him percolate a little and think about things. We were going to do all the paper, put it in the book and then take a run at him, try to break his story. We never got the chance. I mean, to do it right.”
“What happened?”
“Me and Edgar – that’s my partner, Jerry Edgar – we went down the hall to get a cup of coffee and talk about how we were going to play it. While we were down there the squad lieutenant sees Gunn sitting in the interview room and doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing there. He takes it upon himself to go in and make sure the guy’s been properly advised of his rights.”
McCaleb could see the anger working its way into Bosch’s face, even six years after the fact.
“You see, Gunn had come in as a witness and ostensibly as the victim of a crime. He said she came at him with the knife and he turned it on her. So we didn’t need to advise him. The plan was to go in there, shake his story down and get him to make a mistake. Once we had that, then we were going to advise him. But this dipshit lieutenant didn’t know any of this and he just went in and advised the guy. After that, we were dead. He knew we were coming after him. He asked for a lawyer as soon as we walked into the room.”
Bosch shook his head and looked out onto the street. McCaleb followed his eyes. Across Victory Boulevard was a used-car lot with red, white and blue pennants flapping in the wind. To McCaleb, Van Nuys was always synonymous with car lots. They were all over, new and used.
“So what did you say to the lieutenant?” he asked.
“Say? I didn’t say anything. I just shoved him through the window of his office. I got a suspension out of it – involuntary stress leave. Jerry Edgar eventually took the case in to the DA and they sat on it a while and then finally kicked it.”
Bosch nodded. His eyes rested on his empty paper plate.
“I sort of blew it,” he said. “Yeah, I blew it.”
McCaleb waited a moment before speaking. A gust of wind blew Bosch’s plate off the table and the detective watched it skitter across the picnic area. He made no move to chase it down.
“You still working for that lieutenant?”
“Nope. He’s no longer with us. Not too long after that he went out one night and didn’t come home. They found him in his car up in the tunnel in Griffith Park near the Observatory.”
“What, he killed himself?”
“No. Somebody did it for him. It’s still open. Technically.”
Bosch looked back at him. McCaleb dropped his eyes and noticed that Bosch’s tie tack was a tiny pair of silver handcuffs.
“What else can I tell you?” Bosch said. “None of this had anything to do with Gunn. He was just a fly in the ointment – the ointment being the bullshit they call the justice system.”
“Doesn’t sound like you had time to do much background on him.”
“None, actually. All that I told you took place in the span of eight or nine hours. Afterward, with what happened, I was off the case and the guy walked out the door.”