More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
June 9 - June 11, 2019
Bosch nodded but it was the kind of detail he would not have left open if it had been his investigation. It was too curious a detail. Who calls a poker room that early in the morning? What kind of call would make Fox up and leave the game?
Well, I never got over that meeting at Conklin’s office. I guess you had to be there but it just… it just seemed that the one that was in charge of that meeting was Fox. It was like he was calling the shots.”
What it came down to was that if you didn’t know who he was or where we were, you’d’ve sworn he was working for Fox. Both of them, Mittel, too. So, I felt pretty sure Fox had his hooks into Arno. Somehow he did. And I was right. It was all confirmed later.”
“But I got curious when I heard about it. So I called over to Hollywood to see who was on it. It was Eno. Big surprise. And he never made a case on anybody. So that about confirmed what I was thinking about him, too.”
“You know why. I didn’t think it would be safe in that file or in the evidence room. Not with Conklin as DA, not with Eno doing him favors. So I kept the stuff.
“Yeah, and I saw I had done the right thing. Somebody had gone through it, stripped it. They pulled the Fox interview out of it. Probably was Eno.”
I think he just wanted to get Conklin’s name out of it.”
He began formulating a theory. For Bosch, this was one of the most important components of homicide investigation. Take the facts and shake them down into hypothesis. The key was not to become beholden to any one theory. Theories changed and you had to change with them.
The same theory, Bosch knew, would work to an even greater degree if Conklin had done more than succumb to the vice of sex but had gone further: if he had killed a woman Fox had sent to him, Marjorie Lowe. For one thing, it would explain how Conklin knew for sure that Fox was in the clear on the murder—because he was the killer himself. For another, it would explain how Fox got Conklin to run interference for him and why he was later hired as a Conklin campaign worker. The bottom line was, if Conklin was the killer, Fox’s hook would be set even deeper and it would be set for good. Conklin
...more
For Bosch, sexual encounters had always been a question of timing. The desires of two individuals rose and subsided on their own courses. There were emotional needs separate from physical needs. And sometimes all of those things clicked together in a person and then clicked in tandem with those of the other person.
“You know, what I was trying to say before is that you’re not like most cops I’ve known. You’ve got too much of your humanity left. How’d that happen?”
“She just got to know me too well. I don’t blame her for anything. I’ve got baggage. I guess maybe I can be hard to take.
But what bothered him more than what the files that were in the drawer could mean was the feeling that something was certainly missing.
The next file contained LAPD forms and Bosch quickly recognized them as the pages and reports that had been removed from the Marjorie Lowe murder book.
The envelopes were all from a Wells Fargo Bank branch in Sherman Oaks and each one contained a statement for a savings account in the name of McCage Inc. The address of the corporation was a post office box, also in Sherman Oaks.
Though separated by years in the late 1960s, each statement was basically the same. A deposit of one thousand dollars was made in the account on the tenth of each month and on the fifteenth a transfer of an equal amount was made to an account with a Nevada Savings and Loan branch in Las Vegas.
Bosch felt in his gut that he was right. Eno had squeezed Conklin. And maybe Mittel. He somehow knew what McKittrick didn’t, that Conklin had been involved with Marjorie Lowe. Maybe he even knew Conklin had killed her. He had enough to put Conklin on the line for a thousand bucks a month for life. It wasn’t a lot. Eno wasn’t greedy, though a thousand a month in
the early sixties probably more than matched what he was making on the job.
The payment did. It was an admission. If it could be traced to Conklin, it was hard evidence. Bosch felt himself getting excited. The records hoarded by a corrupt cop dead five years now mig...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Gambling against the machines had never appealed much to Bosch. He didn’t understand it.
“Okay, president and chief executive officer is Claude Eno. That’s E-N-O. Vice president is Gordon Mittel with two T’s. And the treasurer is listed as Arno Conklin.
going to the closet was department slang for a cop killing himself.
“We are involved in the investigation of the homicide of Lieutenant Harvey Pounds. These other names are not involved. If you think they are people that should be contacted, please let me know.”
The man sitting across from him would like nothing better than to hang a killing on Bosch and he was willing to go to any extreme to do it.
“It’s not illegal. We had a warrant.” “I’ve been shown no warrant.”
The IAD relied so much on its presence as an intimidating factor that most of the detectives assigned to the division never really had to prepare for interviews. And when they hit a wall like this, they didn’t know what to
“There will be no charges on this,” Irving finally continued. “Lieutenant, you baited him and got what you got.”
“It’s not just me. You don’t trust anyone.”
“Yes, and as a matter of course you respond with violence against those who you perceive are not on your side. This is not good to see. It’s very, very disappointing.”
You have to understand something, despite your problems with authority, he is one person who I think is in your court on this. I don’t think he honestly believes you’re involved in the death of your lieutenant—at least directly.
The chief said he… the body showed signs of torture. Particularly sadistic mutilation, he said. He didn’t go into detail. It had happened before Pounds was dead.
What had happened to Pounds was becoming clear and Bosch carried the guilt of having set things in motion. Though legally innocent, he knew he was morally culpable.
“No. I don’t mean I killed him. Not with my hands. I mean what I’ve done, what I’ve been doing. It got him killed. I got him killed.”
“The civilized people in the world, the ones who hide behind culture and art and politics… and even the law, they’re the ones to watch out for. They’ve got that perfect disguise goin’ for them, you know? But they’re the most vicious. They’re the most dangerous people on earth.”
didn’t make Brockman an enemy. He was my enemy before I even met him. They all are.
“I did nothing wrong,” Irving said quietly. “Sure you did,”
“We all did, Chief. We let it go. That was our crime. But not anymore. At least, not with me.
“Pounds is unlisted, I assume.” “Yes. That gives rise to the probability it was someone in the department.” Bosch thought about this. “Not necessarily. It just had to be someone with connections to people in the city.
People that could get his number with a phone call. You ought to put out the word. Grant amnesty to anyone who comes forward and says they gave up the number. Say you’ll go light in exchange for the name of the person they gave it to. That’s who you want.
“The autopsy was this morning. Heart failure. The strain on him was too much, his heart gave way.”
“It just sounds as though one person called him to set up a meeting with a second person, this very important person. If that person had made the call, then he would have told the wife that so and so, the big important guy, just called and I have to go meet him.
It was the desire to keep his mission to himself. In that moment he realized that vengeance was a singular thing, a solo mission, something never to be spoken of out loud.
Important men surround themselves with important men. They’re never alone. Conklin may be old but there could be someone else who isn’t.”
He knew he had to compartmentalize his thoughts.
His stumbling into the party at Mittel’s and delivery of the photocopy of the Times clip had set off a reaction that ended with the murder of Harvey Pounds, the man whose name he had used. Though he had given Mittel only the name at the party, it was somehow traced back to the real Pounds, who was then tortured and killed.
For Mittel to make sure the problem went no further than Pounds, he had to know who else knew what Pounds knew. The problem was that Pounds didn’t know anything himself. He had nothing to give. He was tormented until his heart could take it no longer.
The fact that Pounds was tortured before he died indicated that Mittel
was not present at the time, or he would have seen that they were brutalizing the wrong man.
That left the man Bosch had seen through the French doors at the house. The man with the wide body and thick neck whom he had seen Mittel show the newspaper clip to. The man who had slipped and fallen while coming down the driveway for Bosch.
“That’s right. But in this department nobody polices the police who police the police. Think about that.”
