I felt a great attraction to her… that crooked smile…I knew she had secrets. I suppose all people do. But hers ran deep. And despite all of that, she was full of life. And, you see, I didn’t think I was at the time we met. That’s what she gave to me.”
He drank from the glass of water again, emptying it. Bosch offered to get more but Conklin waved off the offer.
“I had been with other women and they wanted to show me off like a trophy,” he said. “Your mother wasn’t like that. She’d rather stay at home or take a picnic basket to Griffith Park than go to the clubs on the Sunset Strip.”
“How did you find out about…what she did?”
“She told me. The night she told me about you. She said she needed to tell me the truth because she needed my help. I have to admit…the shock was…I initially thought of myself. You know, protecting myself. But I admired her courage in telling me and I was in love by then. I couldn’t turn away.”
“How did Mittel know?”
“I told him. I regret it to this day.”
“If she…If she was as you described her, why did she do what she did? I’ve never…understood.”
“I haven’t, either. As I told you, she had her secrets. She didn’t tell me them all.”
Bosch looked away from him and out the window. The view was to the north. He could see the lights of the Hollywood Hills glimmering in the mist from the canyons.
“She used to tell me that you were a tough little egg,” Conklin said from behind him. His voice was almost hoarse now. It was probably more talking than he had done in months. “She once told me that she knew it didn’t matter what happened to her because you were tough enough to make it through.”
Bosch said nothing. He just looked through the window.
“Was she right?” the old man asked.
Bosch’s eyes followed the crestline of the hills directly north. Somewhere up there the lights glowed from Mittel’s spaceship. He was up there somewhere waiting for Bosch. He looked back at Conklin, who was still waiting for an answer.
“I think maybe the jury’s still out.”
Chapter Forty
BOSCH LEANED AGAINST the stainless steel wall of the elevator as it descended. He realized how different his feelings were from those that he held while the elevator had been carrying him up. He had ridden up with hatred pounding in his chest like a cat in a burlap bag. He didn’t even know the man he carried it for. Now he looked upon that man as a pitiful character, a half of a man who lay with his frail hands folded on the blanket, waiting, maybe hoping, for death to come and end his private misery.
Bosch believed Conklin. There was something about his story and his pain that seemed too genuine to be dismissed as an act. Conklin was far beyond posing. He was facing his grave. He had called himself a coward and a puppet and Bosch could think of nothing much harsher that a man could put on his own tombstone.
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.
He pushed the L button again as if that might coax the elevator to descend faster. He knew it was a useless gesture but he did it again.
When the elevator finally opened, the lobby seemed empty and sterile. The guard was there, behind his desk, working on his word puzzle. There wasn’t even the sound of a far-off TV. Only the silence of old people’s lives. He asked the guard if he needed him to sign out and he was waved off.
“Look, sorry I was an asshole before,” Bosch offered.
“Don’t worry about it, partner,” the guard replied. “It gets to the best of us.”
Bosch wondered what the “it” was he was talking about but said nothing. He nodded solemnly, as if he got most of his life lessons from security guards. He pushed through the glass doors and headed down the steps into the parking lot. It was getting cool and he turned up the collar of his jacket. He saw the sky was clear and the moon as sharp as a sickle. As he approached the Mustang he