The Wrong Side of Goodbye(60)

Finished with the copying, Haller started collating the documents, creating a dozen sets of both.

“You have paper clips?” he asked.

“No,” Bosch said.

“I have some in the car. You take half of these and I’ll take half. Put a set under the mattress, in the safe deposit box. Doesn’t hurt to have them in many places. I’ll do the same.”

“Where do you go from here?”

“I go to court and act like I don’t know shit about any of this while you find and confirm that heir.”

“When I get to her, do I tell her or confirm on the sly?”

“That’s gotta be your call when you reach that point. But whatever you decide, remember that secrecy is our edge—for now.”

“Got it.”

Haller went to the front door and whistled to get his driver’s attention. He signaled him to come in to get the printer/copier. He then stepped out onto the front stoop and looked both ways up the street before coming back in.

The driver entered, unplugged the machine, and wrapped the cord around it so he could carry it back out without tripping on it. Haller walked over to the sliding glass doors in the living room to look out at the view of the Cahuenga Pass.

“Your view is quieter,” he said. “Lots of trees.”

Haller lived on the other side of the hill with an unfettered view across the Sunset Strip and the vast expanse of the city. Bosch stepped over and slid the door open a few feet so Haller could hear the never-ending hiss of the freeway at the bottom of the pass.

“Not so quiet,” Bosch said.

“Sounds like the ocean,” Haller said.

“A lot of people up here tell themselves that. Sounds like a freeway to me.”

“You know, you’ve seen a lot with all the murders you worked for all those years. All the human depravity. The cruelty.”

Haller kept his eyes focused out into the pass. There was a red-tailed hawk floating on spread wings above the ridgeline on the other side of the freeway.

“But you haven’t seen anything like this,” he continued. “There are billions of dollars on the line here. And people will do anything—I mean anything—to maintain control of it. Be ready for that.”

“You too,” Bosch said.





25

Twenty minutes later Bosch left the house. When he got to the rented Cherokee he used the GPS detector for the first time, walking completely around the SUV, holding the device down low with its antenna pointed toward the undercarriage and wheel wells. He got no response. He popped the front hood and went through a similar process as instructed in the manual. Again, nothing. He then switched the device to its jamming frequency as a precaution and got behind the wheel.

He took Wrightwood down to Ventura in Studio City and then jogged west to his bank, which was located in a shopping plaza off of Laurel Canyon Boulevard. He had not been to the safe deposit box in at least two years. It contained primarily his own documents—birth and marriage and divorce certificates and military service documentation. He kept his two Purple Hearts in a box in there along with a commendation he had received from the chief of police for pulling a pregnant woman out of a fiery wreck when he was a boot. He put one copy of the Vance documents in the box and then returned it to the handler from the bank.

Bosch checked his surroundings when he got back to the rental car and initially saw no sign of surveillance. But when he pulled out of the bank’s parking lot onto Laurel Canyon he saw in his rearview a car with dark tinted windows pull out of the same lot but at a different exit point and fall in behind him a hundred yards back.

Bosch knew it was a busy shopping plaza so he didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that he was being followed. But he decided to avoid the freeway and stay on Laurel Canyon so he could keep a better eye on the traffic behind him. Continuing north, he checked the mirror every block or so. By its distinctive grille work, he identified the dark green car trailing him as a BMW sedan.

After two miles he was still on Laurel Canyon, and the BMW was still in traffic behind him. Even though Bosch had slowed at times and sped up at others and the Beemer had occasionally changed lanes on the four-lane boulevard, it had never changed the distance between them.

Bosch became increasingly convinced he was being tailed. He decided to try to confirm it by doing a basic square-knot maneuver. He took the next right, pinned the accelerator, and drove down to the stop sign at the end of the block. He took another right and then turned right again at the next stop sign. He then drove at the speed limit back to Laurel Canyon Boulevard. He checked the mirrors. The Beemer had not followed him through the maneuver.

He turned back onto Laurel Canyon and continued north. He saw no sign of the Beemer. It was either well north of him because the driver was not tailing him, or it was gone because Bosch’s maneuver had revealed to the driver that he had spotted the tail.

Ten minutes later Bosch pulled into the employee lot at the San Fernando police station. He entered through the side door and found the detective bureau empty. He wondered if Sisto had gone with Lourdes to re-search the Sahagun house. Maybe Bella had told Sisto about Bosch’s poor review of Friday’s search and Sisto had insisted on going as a result.

At his desk, Bosch picked up the phone and called Lourdes to inquire about the search but the call rang through to voice mail and he left word for her to call back when she was free.