Edgar led him into a walk-in closet. Another red bulb glowed from the ceiling. There was nothing hanging on the clothes rods running down either side of the closet. But a naked man stood spread-eagled on one side of the closet, his arms up and wrists handcuffed to the clothes rod. The cuffs were gold-plated and had ornate designs on them. The man was blindfolded and had a red ball gag in his mouth. There were red welts caused by fingernail scratches running down his chest. And between his legs a full liter bottle of Coke dangled at the end of a leather strap that was tied in a slipknot around the head of his penis.
“Jesus,” Bosch whispered.
“I asked him if he needed help and he shook his head no. I think he’s her customer.”
“Take the gag out.”
Bosch pulled the blindfold up on the man’s forehead while Edgar pulled out the gag. The man immediately jerked his face to the right and tried to turn away. He moved his arm and tried to use it to block the view of his face, but his cuffed wrist prevented him from hiding. The man was in his mid-thirties with a good build. It seemed as though he could certainly defend himself against the woman upstairs. If he wanted to.
“Please,” he said in a desperate voice. “Leave me alone. I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”
“We’re the police,” Bosch said. “Are you sure?”
“Of course, I’m sure. You think if I needed help I wouldn’t ask for it? I don’t need you here. This is completely consensual and nonsexual. Just leave us alone.”
“Harry,” Edgar said, “I think we ought to just step the fuck back out of here and forget we ever saw this guy.”
Bosch nodded and they stepped out of the closet. He looked around the room and saw that the chair had clothes draped over it. He went to them and checked the pockets of the pants. He pulled out the wallet and walked to the floor lamp, where he opened it and studied the driver’s license in the red glow. He felt Edgar come up behind him and look over his shoulder.
“Recognize the name?”
“No, do you?”
Bosch shook his head and closed the wallet. He walked back and returned it to the pocket of the pants.
Rider and Regina were silent as they came back up the steps. Bosch studied Regina and thought he saw a look of pride and a slight smile on her face. She knew that what they had seen down there had shocked them. He glanced at Rider and saw that she, too, had registered the looks on their faces.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything’s fine,” he said.
“What is it?”
Bosch ignored the question and looked at the other woman.
“Where are the keys?”
She put a little pout on her face and reached into her bra. Her hand came out with the tiny cuff key and she held it out to him. Bosch took it and handed it to Edgar.
“Go down and cut him loose. If he wants to stay after that, that’s his business.”
“Harry, he said he – ”
“I don’t care what he said. I said cut him loose. We aren’t going to leave here with some guy in shackles down there.”
Edgar went down the stairs while Bosch stared at Regina.
“That’s what you get two hundred dollars an hour for?”
“Believe me, they get their money’s worth. And, you know, they all come back for more. Hmm, I wonder what it is about men? Maybe you should try me sometime, Detective. Might be kind of fun.”
Bosch stared a long time before breaking away and looking at Rider.
“What’ve you got, Kiz?”
“Her real name is Virginia Lampley. She says she knows Elias from TV, not as a client. But she says Elias’s investigator was here a few weeks ago, asking questions just like us.”
“Pelfry? What did he ask?”
“A bunch of bullshit,” Regina said before Rider could answer. “He wanted to know if I knew anything about that little girl that was murdered last year. The daughter of the car czar from TV. I told him I didn’t know why the hell he was asking me about that. What would I know about it? He tried to get rough but I got rough right back. I don’t let men fuck with me. He left. I think somebody put you on the same wild goose chase he was on.”
“Maybe,” Bosch said.
There was silence for a moment. Bosch was distracted by what he had seen in the closet. He couldn’t think of what else to ask.
“He’s staying.”
It was Edgar. He came up the stairs and handed the cuff key back to Regina. She took it and made a big production out of returning it to her bra, looking at Bosch all the while.
“All right, let’s go,” Bosch said.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for a Coke, Detective?” Virginia Lampley asked, a clever smile on her face.
“We’re going,” Bosch said.
They went silently down the steps to the door, Bosch the last in line. On the landing he looked down into the dark room. The glow of the red light was still there and Bosch could see the faint outline of the man sitting on the chair in the corner of the room. His face was in darkness but Bosch could tell the man was looking up at him.
“Don’t worry, Detective,” Regina said from behind him. “I’ll take good care of him.”
Bosch turned and looked at her from the door. That smile of hers was back.
Chapter 20
ON the way back to the station Rider repeatedly asked exactly what they had seen in the lower room but neither Bosch nor Edgar told her more than the basic fact that one of Mistress Regina’s clients was shackled in the closet. Rider knew there was more to it and kept pressing but she got nowhere.
“The man down there is not important,” Bosch finally said as a means of ending that part of the discussion. “We still don’t know what Elias was doing with her picture and web address. Or for that matter, why he sent Pelfry to her.”
“I think she was lying,” Edgar said. “She knows the whole story.”
“Maybe,” Bosch said. “But if she knows the story, why keep it secret now that Elias is dead?”
“Pelfry is the key,” Rider said. “We should run him down right now.”
“No,” Bosch said. “Not tonight. It’s late and I don’t want to talk to Pelfry until we’ve gone through Elias’s files and know what’s in them. We master the files, then we brace Pelfry about Mistress Regina and everything else. First thing tomorrow.”
“What about the FBI?” Rider asked.
“We meet the FBI at eight. I’ll figure something out by then.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. Bosch dropped them off at their cars in the Hollywood station parking lot and reminded them to be at Parker Center at eight the following morning. He then parked his slickback but didn’t turn in the key because the file cartons from Elias’s office were still in the trunk. After locking the car he went to his own car.
He checked the clock as he was pulling out onto Wilcox and saw it was ten-thirty. He knew it was late but he decided to make one last call before going home. As he drove through Laurel Canyon to the Valley, he kept thinking about the man in the walk-in closet and how he had turned his face away, wishing not to be seen. Working homicide for so many years, Bosch could not be surprised anymore by the horrors people inflicted on each other. But the horrors people saved for themselves were a different story.
He took Ventura Boulevard west to Sherman Oaks. It was a busy Saturday night. On the other side of the hill the city could be a tinderbox of tensions but on the main drag in the Valley the bars and coffee shops seemed full. Bosch saw the red-coated valets running to get cars in front of Pinot Bistro and the other upscale restaurants that lined the boulevard. He saw teenagers cruising with the top down. Everyone was oblivious to the seething hatred and anger that churned in other parts of the city – beneath the surface like an undiscovered fault line waiting to open up and swallow all above.
At Kester he turned north and then made a quick turn into a neighborhood of tract houses sandwiched between the boulevard and the Ventura Freeway. The houses were small and with no distinct style. The hiss of the freeway was always present. They were cops’ houses except they cost between four and five hundred thousand dollars and few cops could afford them. Bosch’s old partner Frankie Sheehan had bought early and bought well. He was sitting on a quarter of a million dollars in equity. His retirement plan, if he made it to retirement.