The Last Coyote (Harry Bosch, #4; Harry Bosch Universe, #4)

by Michael Connelly

They were healing nicely. He hoped the rest of him would, too. But he doubted it. He knew he was responsible. And he knew he had to pay. Somehow.

“Yes, well, I got a better job. I was offered the position of press spokesman for the district attorney at the time, Arno Conklin. I took it. Better pay, more interesting than the cop beat and a brighter future.” “What do you mean, brighter future?”

“What happened with Conklin? Why didn’t things turn out?”

All I know is that in sixty-eight he was planning on running for attorney general and the office was practically his for the taking. Then he just… dropped out. He quit politics and went back to practice law. And it wasn’t to harvest the big corporate

bucks that sit out there when these guys go into private practice. He opened a one-man law firm. I admired him. As far as I heard, sixty percent or better of his practice was pro...

You wrote the story after he got killed that made him out to be an angel. Then you end up on Conklin’s team. I don’t care what you did, I just want to know what you did.”

“One of Johnny’s girls who got killed about a year before him. Her name was Marjorie Lowe.”

Well, Johnny Fox was the Jack Ruby of L.A., okay? Same era, same kind of guy. Fox ran women, was a gambler, knew which cops could be greased and greased them when he needed to. It kept him out of jail. He was a classic Hollywood bottom feeder. When he ended up dead on the Hollywood Division blotter, I saw it but was going to pass. He was trash and we didn’t write about trash. Then a source I had in the cop shop told me Johnny had been on Conklin’s payroll.”

was the guy attacking every vice in the city and here he had a vice hoodlum on the payroll. It was a great story. Though Fox didn’t have a record, I don’t think, there were intel files on him and I had access to them. The story was going to do damage and Mittel knew it.”

told Mittel I wanted to be the main spokesman after Arno’s election or forget it. He got back to me later and agreed.”

“Eno? I remember him. It might’ve been. I think I remember that it… Yes, it was. Now I remember. He was on it alone. His partner had transferred or retired or something and he was working alone, waiting for his next partner to transfer in. So they gave him the traffic cases. They were usually pretty light, as far as any investigation went.”

Mittel must also have seen that it was proof that the candidate knew a murder victim, Bosch realized.

He was about to confront the man he believed had killed his mother and then used his position and the people he surrounded himself with to walk away from it. To Bosch, Conklin was the symbol of all that he never had in his life. Power, home, contentment.

“Through your mother. She told me about you and your special name. I loved your mother.”

take responsibility and therefore, yes, it could be said I killed her. The only truth I know is that I loved her. You can call me a liar but that is the truth. You could make an old man whole again if you believed that.”

“I killed her… with my words, my actions.

“You see, we made plans that night. Marjorie and I. I had fallen for her against all better judgment and advice. My own and others. We were going to get married. We’d decided. We were going to get you out of that youth hall. We had many plans. That was the night we made them. We were both so happy that we cried.

I called my best friend to tell him the good news and to ask him to stand with me as my best man. I wanted him to go with us to Las Vegas.

Do you know what he said? He declined the honor of being my best man. He said that if I married that… that woman, I’d be finished. He said he wouldn’t let me do that. He said he had great plans for me.” “Gordon Mittel.” Conklin nodded sadly. “So what are you saying, Mittel killed her? You didn’t know?”

“Yes. He called and he said he had heard the police were looking for him. He said he was innocent. He threatened me. He said if I did not protect him, he would reveal to the police that Marjorie was with me that last night. It would be the end of my career.” “So you protected him.”

“You’re saying that it wasn’t you and that it wasn’t Fox.

You’re saying that Mittel killed her to eliminate a threat to your political career. But that he didn’t tell you. It was all his idea and he just went out and did it.”

Mittel came to me one day and said that I needed to take a wife before the election year.

He was that blunt about it.

‘Sometimes I wish I hadn’t saved you from that whore scandal. Maybe if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have this problem now. People would know you aren’t queer.’

“Mittel?” “I would assume that he was responsible, though I must admit he’s a rather convenient scapegoat for all the bad deeds I’ve been involved in.”

“He told me that if I ever attempted to assault his reputation, he would see to it that I was indicted for Marjorie’s death. And I had no doubt that he could have done it.”

“I think, young man, that you only run into a person that is a perfect fit once in your life. When you find the one that you think fits, then grab on for dear life. And it’s no matter what she’s done in the past. None of that matters. Only the holding on matters.”

“She used to tell me that you were a tough little egg,”

“She once told me that she knew it didn’t matter what happened to her because you were tough enough to make it through.”

In realizing that Conklin spoke the truth, Bosch knew that he had already met the real enemy face to face. Gordon Mittel. The strategist. The fixer. The killer. The man who held the strings to the puppet. Now they would meet again. But this time, Bosch planned to make it on his terms.

“The law is for fools, Detective Bosch. But I must correct you. I don’t really consider myself to be in politics. I consider myself to be just a fixer. A solver of problems of any kind for anyone.

He waited for the feeling of satisfaction and triumph that he knew was supposed to come with vengeance accomplished. But none of it ever came to him. He only felt hollow and tired.

His fear was that he would indeed call her and that he would become entwined with someone with more baggage than himself.

Bosch reread the story about his investigation and couldn’t escape a growing feeling that something was wrong, that something was left out or incomplete.

He had freely, though indirectly, admitted that he had caused the deaths of Conklin and Pounds. But despite those admissions, he had not done the same when it came to the killing of Marjorie Lowe.

Opportunity. Mittel had called her death an opportunity.

the murder you set out to solve. That, of course, is your mother’s death. I am only going by what I read, but today’s Times attributes her killing to Gordon Mittel. Are you telling me that you now know that to be incontro-vertibly wrong?” “Yes. I now know that to be incontrovertibly wrong.”

“Well, I don’t know the numbers but a significant number of homicides are reported by the actual doer. You know, the husband who calls up crying, saying his wife is missing. More often than not, he’s just a bad actor. He killed her and thinks calling the cops helps convince everybody he’s clean.

“But you always seem drawn toward finding someone of power, a person of the establishment, to blame. Maybe that’s not the case here. Maybe it’s a symptom of your larger desire to blame society for what happened to your mother… and to you.”

Subconsciously or not, he was making a statement about her. So to make a statement such as that about a person, he would have to have known her to some degree. Known about her. Known she was a prostitute. Known enough to judge her.”

“This might not have been her belt.

“Oh, I don’t know, just a theory about it possibly being the property of another woman who may have been the motivating factor behind the killer’s action. It’s called aggression transference.

given her. Maybe she would have gone to say good-bye. But something happened when she got there. And on her happiest night Meredith killed her.

Meredith had sustained those injuries while killing Marjorie. The drop of blood on Marjorie’s blouse had come from Meredith.

Meredith killed Marjorie and then hours later called Fox at his card game to give him the news. She asked him to help her get rid of the body and hide her involvement.

He knew it was a confirmation that all the things he had accepted as the truths of his life could be as false as Meredith Roman.

What is jealousy but a reflection of your own failures? I was jealous and angry and I struck at her.

“By killing yourself? I don’t get it.” “Mittel told me that supreme power over someone is the power they don’t know you have until you need to use it. You see, Bosch, Mittel always suspected that Conklin was really the one who did your mother.” Bosch nodded. He saw where the story was going.

That was me. I was the ace. So we arranged that little hit and run, me and Mittel.