Milton. I think he’s mad because you got caught, not because of what you did.”
He pointed a finger at me.
“Don’t fucking go there. Don’t. The day I want career advice from you is the day I turn in my badge.”
“Fine. Then what do you want?”
“I want to give you a warning. Watch out for me, Bosch. ’Cause I’m coming.”
“Then I’ll be ready.”
He turned and walked out, leaving the door open. A few seconds later Peoples was back.
“You ready?”
“Been ready.”
“Where’s the file I gave you?”
“It’s back in the drawer.”
He leaned over the desk and slid open the drawer to make sure. He even opened the file to make sure I hadn’t pulled a fast one.
“Okay, let’s go. Bring your box.”
I followed him through a couple security doors and I was once again in the hallway of cells. But before we got close to the doors with the mirrored windows he used his card key to open a door and he ushered me into an interview room. There was a table and two chairs. Mousouwa Aziz was already sitting in one of them. An agent I had not seen before was leaning against the corner to the left of the door. Peoples moved into the other corner.
“Have a seat,” he said. “You’ve got fifteen minutes.”
I put the box I carried down on the floor, pulled out the remaining chair and sat down across the table from Aziz. He looked weak and thin. A line of dark hair had grown in below the blond dye job. His hooded eyes were bloodshot and I wondered if they ever turned the light out in his cell. Things had certainly changed in his world. Two years ago his arrival and identification at LAX had brought a custody hold for a few hours while an agent attempted to interview him. Now a border stop got him an interminable hold in the FBI’s inner sanctum.
I wasn’t expecting much from the interview but felt I needed the face-to-face before proceeding or disposing of Aziz as a suspect. After viewing the intelligence reports a few minutes earlier, I was leaning toward the latter. All I had that connected the diminutive would-be terrorist to Angella Benton was the money. At the time of his arrest at the border he’d had in his possession one of the hundred-dollar bills that had come from the movie set heist. Only one. There were probably a lot of explanations for this and I was beginning to think that his involvement in the murder and heist was not one of them.
Reaching down to the cardboard box I pulled up my file on Angella Benton and opened it on my lap, where Aziz could not see it. I took out the photo of Angella that had been provided by her family. It showed her in a studio portrait taken at the time of her graduation from Ohio State, less than two years before her death. I looked up at Aziz.
“My name is Harry Bosch. I am investigating the death of Angella Benton four years ago. Does she look familiar to you?”
I slid the photo across the table and studied his face and eyes for any tell, any giveaway. His eyes moved over the photograph but I saw nothing in the way of a reaction. He said nothing.
“Did you know her?”
He didn’t answer.
“She worked for a movie company that was robbed. You ended up with some of the money. How?”
Nothing.
“Where did the money come from?”
He raised his eyes from the photo to mine. He said nothing.
“Did these agents tell you not to talk to me?”
Nothing.
“Did they? Look, if you didn’t know her, then tell me.”
Aziz dropped his sad eyes to the table again. He appeared to be looking at the photo again but I could tell he wasn’t. He was looking at something far away. I knew it was useless, just as I had probably known before sitting down.
I got up and turned to Peoples.
“You can keep the rest of the fifteen minutes.”
He pushed off the wall and looked up at an overhead camera. He made the little swirling motion with a finger and the door’s electronic lock snapped open. Without thinking I moved toward the door and pushed it open. Almost immediately I heard a banshee cry from behind me and Aziz was up and over the table. He hit me in the upper back with all his weight—maybe 130 pounds tops—and I went through the door and into the hallway.
Aziz was still on me and as