Michael Connelly (28 page)

He looked around the rest of the room. There was no TV. There was just the music on the stereo and the magazines on the table
and the books on the lawyer’s shelves against the wall across from the couch. He stepped over and looked through the glass
panes and browsed the collection. The top two shelves were mostly high-brow book-of-the-month offerings descending into crime
fiction by writers like Crumley and Willeford and others. He had read some of them. He opened the glass door and pulled out
a book called
The Locked Door
. He’d heard of the book but had never seen it to buy. He opened the cover to see how old it was and he solved the mystery
of the last letter on the needlework. On the first page, printed in ink, it said Eleanor D. Scarletti — 1979. She must have
kept her husband’s name after the divorce, Bosch thought. He put the book back and closed the case.

The books on the bottom two rows of the bookcase ranged from true crime to historical studies of the Vietnam War to FBI manuals.
There was even an LAPD homicide investigation textbook. Many of these books Bosch had read. One of them he was even in. It
was a book the
Times
reporter Bremmer had written about the so-called Beauty Shop Slasher. A guy named Harvard Kendal, the slasher killed seven
women in one year in the San Fernando Valley. They were all beauty shop owners or employees. He cased the shops, followed
the victims home and killed them by cutting their throats with a sharpened nail file. Bosch and his partner at the time connected
Kendal through a license plate number the seventh victim had written on a pad in the salon the night before she was murdered.
They never figured out why she had done it, but the detectives suspected she had seen Kendal watching the shop from his van.
She wrote the tag number down as a precaution but then didn’t take the precaution of not going home alone. Bosch and his partner
traced the tag to Kendal and found out he had spent five years in Folsom for a series of beauty shop arsons near Oakland in
the 1960s. They later discovered his mother had worked as a manicurist in a beauty shop when he was a boy. She had practiced
her craft on young Kendal’s nails, and the shrinks figured he never got over it. Bremmer had gotten a best-seller out of it.
And when Universal made a movie of the week out of it, the studio paid Bosch and his partner for the use of their names and
technical assistance. The money doubled when a cop series spun off the movie. His partner quit the department and moved to
Ensenada. Bosch stayed on, investing his stake in the stilt house on the hill that looked down on the studio that paid him
the money. Bosch always found an unexplainable symbiosis in that.

“I read that book before your name ever came up in this. It wasn’t part of the research.”

Eleanor had come out of the kitchen with two glasses of red wine. Harry smiled.

“I wasn’t going to accuse you of anything,” he said. “Besides, it isn’t about me. It’s about Kendal. The whole thing was luck,
anyway. But they still made a book and TV show about it. Whatever it is in there, it smells good.”

“You like pasta?”

“I like spaghetti.”

“That’s what we’re having. I made a big pot of sauce Sunday. I love to spend an entire day in the kitchen, not thinking about
anything else. I find it’s good therapy for stress. And it lasts and lasts. All I have to do is warm it up and boil some noodles.”

Bosch sipped his wine and looked around some more. He still hadn’t sat down but was feeling very comfortable with her. A smile
played across his face. He gestured toward the Hopper print. “I like it. But why something so dark?”

She looked at the print and crinkled her brow as if this were the first time she had considered it.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve always liked that painting. Something there grabs me. The woman is with a man. So that isn’t
me. So I guess if it’s anyone, it would be the man sitting with his coffee. All alone, kind of watching the two that are together.”

“I saw it in Chicago once,” Bosch said. “The original. I was out there on an extradition and had about an hour to kill until
I could pick up the body. So I went into the Art Institute and it was there. I spent the whole hour looking at it. There’s
something about it — like you said. I can’t remember the case or who I was bringing back here. But I remember that painting.”

They sat at the table talking for nearly an hour after the food was gone. She told him more about her brother and her difficulty
getting over the anger and loss. Eighteen years later she was still working it out, she said. Bosch told her that he was still
working things out, too. He still dreamed of the tunnels from time to time, but more often he battled insomnia instead. He
told her how mixed up he was when he got back, how thin the line was, the choice, between what he had done afterward and what
Meadows did. It could have been different, he said, and she nodded, seeming to know that was true.

Later, she asked about the Dollmaker case and his fall from Robbery-Homicide. It was more than curiosity. He sensed that something
important rode on what he told her. She was making a decision about him.

“I guess you know the basics,” he began. “Somebody was strangling women, mostly prostitutes, then painting over their faces
with makeup. Pancake, red lipstick, heavy rouge on the cheeks, sharp black eyeliner. The same thing every time. The bodies
were bathed, too. But we never said it looked like he was making them into dolls. Some asshole — I think it was a guy named
Sakai over at the coroner’s — leaked that the makeup was the common denominator. Then this Dollmaker stuff started playing
in the press. I think Channel 4 was the first to come up with that name. It took off from there. To me, it looked more like
a mortician’s work. But the truth is we weren’t doing too good. We didn’t have a handle on the guy until he was into double
figures.

“Not much physical evidence. The victims were all dumped in random locations, all over the Westside. We knew from fiber evidence
on a couple of the bodies that the guy probably wore a rug or some kind of hair disguise, fake beard or something. The women
that were taken off the stroll, we were able to isolate times and places of their last trick. We went to the hourly motels
and got nothing. So we figured the guy was picking them up in a car and then taking them somewhere else, maybe to his home
or some kind of safe place he used as a killing pad. We started watching the Boulevard and other hot spots the pros work,
and we must’ve busted up three hundred tricks before we got the break. This whore name of Dixie McQueen calls up the task
force one morning, early, and says she just escaped from the Doll-maker and is there a reward if she gives him up. Well, we
were getting calls like that every week. I mean, eleven murdered women and people are coming out of the woodwork with clues
that aren’t really clues. It’s panic city.”

“I remember,” Wish said.

“But Dixie was different. I was working the late shift in the task force offices that day and I caught the call. I went and
talked to her. She told me that this john she’d picked up on Hollywood near Spa Row, you know, near the Scientology mansion,
took her to this garage apartment in Silver Lake. She said that while the guy was getting naked she wanted to use the toilet.
So she goes in and while she’s running the water she looks through the cabinet below the sink, probably to see if there is
anything worth lifting. But she sees all these little bottles and compacts and all this women’s stuff. She looks at it all
and she just puts it all together. Just like that. Bingo; this has to be the guy. So she gets a case of total creeps and bails
out. She comes out of the bathroom and the guy’s in the bed. She just hauls ass through the front door.

“The thing is, we hadn’t put out all the stuff about the makeup. Or, actually, the asshole that was the media leak didn’t
put out everything. See, we knew that the guy was keeping the victims’ stuff. They were found with their purses but there
were no cosmetics — you know, lipstick, compacts, things like that. So when Dixie told me about what was in the bathroom cabinet
she got my attention. I knew she was legit.

“And that is the point where I screwed up. It was 3
A.M.
by the time I was done talking to Dixie. Everybody on the task force had gone home and I was left there thinking that this
guy might realize Dixie made him and clear out. So I went there alone. I mean, Dixie went with me to show me the place, but
then she never left the car. Once we were there, I saw a light on above the garage, which was behind this rundown house off
of Hyperion. I called for patrol backup, and while I’m waiting I see the guy’s shadow going back and forth across the window.
Something tells me he is getting ready to bug out and take all the stuff from the cabinet with him. And we had no evidence
from the eleven bodies. We needed the stuff that was in the bathroom cabinet. The other consideration was, what if he has
someone up there? You know, a replacement for Dixie. So I went up. Alone. You know the rest.”

Wish said, “You went in without a warrant and shot him when he was reaching under the pillow on the bed. You later told the
shooting team that you believed it was an emergency situation. There had been enough time for him to go out and get another
prostitute. You said that gave you the authority to come through the door without a warrant. You said you fired because you
believed the suspect was reaching for a weapon. It was one shot, upper torso from fifteen or twenty feet, if I remember the
report. But the Doll-maker was alone, and under the pillow was only his toupee.”

“Only his rug,” Bosch said. He shook his head like a Monday-morning quarterback. “The shooting team cleared me. We connected
him to two of the bodies through the hair from the toupee, and the makeup in the bathroom was traced to eight of the victims.
There was no doubt. It was him. I was clear, but then the shooflies started in on it. A Lewis and Clarke expedition. They
ran down Dixie and got her to sign a statement saying she told me beforehand that he put his hair under the pillow. I don’t
know what they used against her, but I can imagine. IAD’s always had a hard-on for me. They don’t like anybody who’s not a
hundred percent part of the family. Anyway, the next thing I know they are bringing departmental charges against me. They
wanted to fire me and take Dixie to a grand jury to get criminal charges. It was like there was blood in the water and two
fat white sharks.”

He stopped there but Eleanor continued. “The IAD detectives misjudged things, though, Harry. They didn’t realize that public
opinion would be with you. You were known in the newspapers as the cop who broke the Beauty Shop Slasher and Dollmaker cases.
A character in a TV show. They couldn’t take you down without a lot of public scrutiny and embarrassment for the department.”

“Someone reached down from above them and put a stop to the grand jury move,” Bosch said. “They had to settle for a suspension
and my demotion to Hollywood homicide.”

Bosch had his fingers on the stem of his empty wine glass and was absent-mindedly turning the glass on the table.

“Some settlement,” he said after a while. “And those two IAD sharks are still swimming around out there, waiting for the kill.”

They sat silently for a while then. He was waiting for her to ask the question she had asked once before. Had the whore lied?
She never asked it, and after a while she just looked at him and smiled. And he felt as if he had just passed the test. She
started gathering the plates off the table. Bosch helped her in the kitchen and when the work was done, they stood close,
drying their hands on the same dish towel, and lightly kissed. Then, as if following the same secret signals, they pressed
themselves against each other and kissed with the kind of hunger lonely people have.

“I want to stay,” Bosch said after momentarily breaking away.

“I want you to stay,” she said.

• • •

Arson’s stoned eyes were shiny and reflected the neon night. He sucked hard on the Kool and held the precious smoke in. The
cigarette had been dipped in PCP. A smile cracked across his face as the jet streams of smoke escaped his nostrils. He said,
“You’re the only shark I ever heard of being used as bait. Get it?”

He laughed and took another deep drag before handing the cigarette to Sharkey, who waved it away because he’d had enough.
Mojo took it then.

“Yeah, I’m getting tired of this shit,” Sharkey said. “You take a turn for once.”

“Chill out, man, you’re the only one can get away with it, man. Mojo and me, man, we just don’t play the part good as you.
Besides, we got our part. You ain’t big enough to pound these faggots.”

“Well, whyn’t we do the 7-Eleven again?” Sharkey said. “I don’t like this not knowing who it is. I like it at the 7-Eleven.
We pick our meat, they don’t pick me.”

“No way,” Mojo spoke up then. “We go back there, we don’t know if that last guy reported it to the sheriff’s or not. We have
to stay clear a there awhile. They’re probly watching the place from the same parking lot we did.”

Sharkey knew they were right. He just thought that being out on Santa Monica on the queer stroll was getting too close to
the real thing. Next thing, he guessed, the two dopers will not feel like charging in. They’ll want him to go through with
it, get the money that way. That was when he would split these guys, he knew.

“Okay,” he said, stepping off the curb. “Don’t fuck me up.”

He started to cross the street. Arson yelled after him, “BMW or better!”

As if I need to be told, Sharkey thought. He walked a half block toward La Brea and then leaned against the door of a closed
print shop. He was still a half block from Hot Rod’s, an adult bookstore that offered twenty-five-cent all-male peeps. But
he was close enough to catch the eye of somebody walking out. If the eye was looking. He looked back the other way and saw
the glow of the joint in the darkness of the driveway where Arson and Mojo sat on their bikes.

Sharkey hadn’t been standing there ten minutes when a car, a new Grand Am, pulled to the curb and the electric window glided
down. Sharkey was going to blow this one off, remembering BMW or better, until he saw the glint of gold and stepped closer.
His adrenaline kicked up a notch. The wrist the driver had draped over the steering wheel was adorned with a Rolex Presidential.
If it was real, Arson knew where they could get $3,000 for it. A grand apiece, not to mention what else the meat might have
at home or in his wallet. Sharkey looked the man over. The guy looked like a straight, a businessman. Dark hair, dark suit.
Mid-forties, not too big. Sharkey might even be able to take him alone. The man smiled at Sharkey and said, “Hey, howya doin’?”