Michael Connelly (51 page)

“Oh, yeah. Sliced and diced. The best and the brightest of my fine department — a couple of your pals, too — had me on the
ropes all morning. There’s a chair on this side.”

She circled the bed but continued standing next to the chair. She looked around and a slight frown creased her brow, as if
she knew this room and therefore knew something wasn’t right.

“They got me, too. Last night. They wouldn’t let me come see you till they were through with you. Orders. Didn’t want us going
together on the story. But I guess our stories came out all right. At least they didn’t pull me back in after they talked
to you today. Told me that was it.”

“They find the diamonds?”

“Not that I’ve heard, but they aren’t telling me much anymore. They’ve got two crews working it today, but I’m out of it.
I’m on a desk till it cools off and the shooting team finishes up. They’re still probably at Rourke’s place looking.”

“What about Tran and Binh, they cooperate?”

“No. They aren’t saying one word. I know that from a friend who was on the interrogation. They don’t know anything about any
diamonds. Probably got their own people together in a posse. They’ll be out on the treasure hunt, too.”

“Where do you think the treasure is?”

“I don’t have any idea. This whole thing, Harry, it’s kind of thrown me. I don’t know what I think about things anymore.”

That included how she thought about him, he knew. He didn’t say anything and after a while the silence became uneasy.

“What happened, Eleanor? Irving told me Lewis and Clarke intercepted Avery. But that’s all I know. I don’t understand.”

“They watched us watch the vault all night. They must’ve gotten it into their heads that we were lookouts. If you start with
the assumption that you were a bad cop, like they did, then you might come to the same conclusion. So when they see you turn
Avery away and send the two uniforms home, they figure they know your game. They grab Avery at Darling’s and he tells them
about your visit the day before, and all the alarms this week, and then he lets it slip that you didn’t want him to open the
vault.”

“And they said, ‘You mean you can open the vault?’ and the next thing is they are sneaking down the alley.”

“Yeah. They had an idea about being heroes. Catching the bad cops and the robbers all at once. Nice plan until the payoff.”

“Poor dumb jerks.”

“Poor dumb jerks.”

The silence came back then and Eleanor didn’t wait for it to settle.

“Well, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

He nodded.

“And …and to tell you —”

Here it is, he thought, the kiss good-bye.

“— I’ve decided to quit. I’m going to leave the bureau.”

“What about…. What will you do?”

“I don’t know. But I’m going to leave here, Harry. I have some money so I’ll travel awhile and then see what I want to do.”

“Eleanor, why?”

“I don’t — it’s hard for me to explain. But everything that happened. Everything about the job has turned to shit. And I don’t
think I can go back and work in that squad room again after what has happened.”

“Will you come back to L.A.?”

She looked down at her hands and then around the room again.

“I don’t know. Harry, I’m sorry. It seemed like — I don’t know, I’m very confused about things right now.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know. Us. What’s happened. Everything.”

Silence filled the room again and it seemed so loud that Bosch hoped a nurse or even Galvin Junior would stick a head in to
see if everything was all right. He needed a cigarette badly. He realized it was the first time today that he had thought
about smoking. Eleanor looked down at her feet now, and he looked over at his untouched food. He picked up the roll and started
to toss it up and down in his hand like a baseball. After a while Eleanor’s eyes made their third trip around the room without
seeing whatever it was she was looking for. Bosch couldn’t figure it out.

“Didn’t you get the flowers I sent?”

“Flowers?”

“Yes, I sent daisies. Like the ones growing on the hill below your house. I don’t see any in here.”

Daisies, Bosch thought. The vase he had knocked against the wall. Where are my goddam cigarettes, he wanted to yell.

“They’ll probably come later. They only make deliveries up here once a day.”

She frowned.

“You know,” Bosch said, “if Rourke knew we’d found the second vault and were watching it, and if he knew that we watched Tran
go in and clear his box, why didn’t he get his people out? That really bothers me about this whole thing. Why’d he go through
with it?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe …well, I’ve been thinking that maybe he wanted them to go down. He knew those
guys, maybe he knew it would work out that they’d go down shooting, that without them he’d get to keep all the diamonds from
the first vault.”

“Yeah. But you know, I’ve been remembering things all day. About when we were down there. It’s been coming back, and I remember
that he didn’t say he’d get it all. He said something about his share being bigger now with Meadows and the other two dead.
He still used the word ‘share,’ like there was still someone else to split it with.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Maybe, but it’s just semantics, Harry.”

“Maybe.”

“I’ve got to go. You know how long they’ll keep you?”

“Haven’t been told, but I think tomorrow I’ll take myself out. Thinking about going to Meadows’s funeral over at veterans.”

“A Memorial Day funeral. Sounds appropriate to me.”

“Want to go with me?”

“Mmmm, no. I don’t think I want anything more to do with Mr. Meadows…. But I’ll be at the bureau tomorrow. Clearing out my
desk and writing up status sheets on the cases I’ll have to pass to other agents. You could come by if you’d like. I’ll brew
you some fresh coffee like before. But, you know, I don’t really think they are going to let you out so fast, Harry. Not with
a bullet wound. You need to rest. You need to heal some.”

“Sure,” Bosch said. He knew she was saying good-bye to him.

“Okay, then, maybe I’ll see you.”

She leaned over and kissed him good-bye, and he knew it was good-bye to everything about them. She was almost out the door
before he opened his eyes.

“One last thing,” he said, and she turned at the door and looked back at him. “How’d you find me, Eleanor? You know, in the
tunnels with Rourke.”

She hesitated and her eyebrows went up again.

“Well, I went down with Hanlon. But when we got out of the hand-dug tunnel we split up. He went one way in that first line
and I went the other. I picked the winner. I found the blood. Then I found Franklin. Dead. And after that I was a little lucky.
I heard the shots and then the voices. Mostly Rourke’s voice. I followed that. Why did you think of that now?”

“I don’t know. It just sort of came up. You saved my life.”

They looked at each other. Her hand was on the door handle and it was open just enough so that Bosch could look past her and
see Galvin Junior still there, sitting in a chair in the hallway.

“All I can say is thanks.”

She made a shushing sound, dismissing his gratitude.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“Don’t quit.”

He saw the crack in the door disappear, Junior with it. She stood there silently.

“Don’t leave.”

“I must. I’ll see you, Harry.”

She pulled the door all the way open now.

“Good-bye,” she said, and then she was gone.

• • •

Bosch remained motionless on the hospital bed for the better part of an hour. He was thinking about two people: Eleanor Wish
and John Rourke. For a long time he closed his eyes and dwelt on the look on Rourke’s face as he crumpled and went down into
the black water. I’d be surprised, too, Bosch thought, but there was also something else there, something he couldn’t exactly
identify. Some kind of knowing look of recognition and resolution — not of his dying, but of another, secret knowledge.

After a while he got up and took a few tentative steps alongside his bed. His body felt weak, yet all the sleep in the last
thirty-six hours had made him restless. After he got his bearings and his shoulder made a slightly painful adjustment to gravity,
he began to pace back and forth alongside the bed. He was wearing pale green hospital pajamas, not one of the opened-back
smocks that he would have found humiliating. He padded around the room in bare feet, stopping to read the cards that had come
with the flowers. The protective league had sent one of the vases. The others came from a couple of cops he knew but wasn’t
particularly close to, the widow of an old partner, his union lawyer and another old partner who lived in Ensenada.

He walked away from the flowers and went to the door. He opened it a crack and saw Galvin Junior still sitting there, reading
a police equipment catalog. Bosch pulled the door all the way open. Galvin’s head jerked up and he slapped the magazine closed
and slipped it into a briefcase at his feet. He didn’t say anything.

“So, Clifford — I hope I can call you that — what are you doing here? Am I supposed to be in danger?”

The younger cop didn’t say anything. Bosch glanced up and down the hall and saw that it was empty all the way down to the
nurses’ station about fifty feet away. He looked at his door and noticed he was in room 313.

“Detective, please go back in your room,” Galvin finally said. “I am only here to keep the press out of your room. The deputy
chief thinks they will probably try to get in to get an interview with you, and my job is to prevent that, to prevent you
from being disturbed.”

“What if they use the sneaky method of just”— Bosch made a show of looking up and down the hall to make sure no one would
hear —“using the telephone?”

Galvin exhaled loudly and continued not to look at Bosch. “The nurses are screening incoming calls. Only family, and I am
told you don’t have family, so no calls.”

“How’d that lady FBI agent get by you?”

“She was cleared by Irving. Go back into your room, please.”

“Certainly.”

Bosch sat on his bed and tried to go over the case again in his mind. But the more he turned the parts of it over the more
he got an anxious feeling that sitting on a bed in a hospital room was wasting time. He felt he was onto something, a breakthrough
in the logic of the case. A detective’s job was to walk down the trail of evidence, examine each piece and take it with him.
At the end of the trail, what he had in his basket made or lost the case. Bosch had a full basket, but he began to believe
there were pieces missing. What had he missed? What had Rourke told him at the end? Not so much in his words but his meaning.
And the look on his face. Surprise. But surprise at what? Was he shocked at the bullet? Or shocked by where, and who, it came
from? It could have been both, Bosch decided, and either way, what did it mean?

Rourke’s reference to his share growing larger because of the deaths of Meadows, Franklin and Delgado continued to bother
him. He tried to put himself in Rourke’s position. If all his partners were dead and he was suddenly the sole beneficiary
of the first vault caper, would he say, “My share has gone up,” or would he simply say, “It’s all mine”? Bosch’s gut feeling
was he would say the latter, unless there was still someone else sharing in the pot.

He decided he had to do something. He had to get out of this room. He was not under house arrest, but he knew that if he left
Galvin was there to follow and report to Irving. He checked the phone and found that it had been turned on as Irving promised.
No calls in, but Harry could call out.

He got up and checked the closet. His clothes were there, what was left of them. Shoes, socks and pants, that was it. The
pants had abrasion marks on the knees but had been cleaned and pressed by the hospital. His sport coat and shirt had probably
been taken off with scissors in the ER and either thrown away or put in an evidence bag. He grabbed all the clothing and got
dressed, tucking his pajama top into his pants when he was done. He looked cloddish, but it would do until he got some clothes
on the outside.

The pain in his shoulder was least when he held his arm up in front of his chest, so he began to put his belt around his shoulders
to use it as a sling. But deciding that would make him too noticeable going out of the hospital, he put the belt back through
the loops of his pants. He checked the drawer of the nightstand and found his wallet and badge, but no gun.

When he was ready, he picked up the phone on the bedside table, dialed the operator and asked for the third-floor nursing
station. A woman’s voice said hello and Bosch identified himself as Deputy Chief Irvin Irving. “Can you get Detective Galvin,
my man on the chair down the hall, to come to the phone? I need to speak with him.”

Bosch put the phone down on the bed and walked softly to the door. He opened it just wide enough to see Galvin sitting on
the chair reading the catalog again. Bosch heard the nurse’s voice calling him to the phone, and Galvin got up. Bosch waited
about ten seconds before looking down the hall. Galvin was still walking toward the nurses’ station. Bosch stepped out of
the room and began walking quietly the opposite way.

After ten yards there was an intersection of hallways and Bosch took a left. He came to an elevator with a sign above it that
said Hospital Personnel Only and he punched the button. When it came, it was a stainless steel and fake wood-grain affair
with another set of doors at the back, big enough for at least two beds to be wheeled in. He pushed the first-floor button
and the door closed. His treatment for the bullet wound had ended.

The elevator dropped Bosch off in the emergency room. He walked through and out into the night. On the way to Hollywood Station
in a cab, he had the driver stop at his bank, where he got money out of an ATM, and then at a Sav-On drugstore, where he bought
a cheap sport shirt, a carton of cigarettes, a lighter since he couldn’t handle matches, and some cotton, fresh bandages and
a sling. The sling was navy blue. It would be perfect for a funeral.