The Night Fire (Harry Bosch #22) - Michael Connelly Page 0,62
jazz photo on his wall?”
“Jesus Christ, you don’t believe me, do you? Ben Webster, okay? ‘The Brute and the Beauty.’ Happy?”
“‘Beautiful.’”
“What?”
“Webster—they called him ‘the Brute and the Beautiful.’”
“Whatever. Are you satisfied?”
“Yeah, okay, I’m satisfied.”
“I can’t believe you’d think I’d forge a search warrant.”
Bosch knew he had to change the subject.
“Well, when did Olivas make captain?”
“Just got the bars.”
Bosch knew that Olivas was Ballard’s nemesis in the department—and she his. He decided he didn’t want to know how she got him to sign off on the warrant. Asking her would risk another rift between them.
“So, it’s been a long time since I worked a wiretap,” he said instead. “We used to have to go out to the wiretap room in Commerce to listen. You’re saying I can monitor it from here?”
“Totally,” Ballard said. “It’s all on the laptop.”
Bosch nodded.
“So, who are we listening to?” he asked.
“Elvin Kidd,” Ballard said. “Starting tomorrow. I want to get you set up and comfortable on it, and then after my shift tomorrow morning I’m going to go out to Rialto and shake his tree. Hopefully, he’ll get on the phone and call or text to ask his old friends in South L.A. what’s going on. We get an admission and we’ll take him down.”
Bosch nodded again.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“Starving,” Ballard said.
“Good. Let’s get something to eat and talk this through. When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t remember. But we had a deal, remember?”
“Right.”
Bosch drove. They went down the hill, crossed the freeway on Barham and over to the Smoke House by the Warner Brothers studio. Ballard reported that she had not eaten anything since a meal break on her last shift. She ordered a steak, a baked potato, and garlic toast to share. Bosch ordered a salad with grilled chicken. Ballard had brought her backpack into the restaurant and while they waited for their food she updated Bosch on her investigation, detailing her interview with Hilton’s former roommate, Nathan Brazil, which confirmed that Hilton was gay and in love with an unattainable man.
“It all leads to Kidd,” she said. “He owned that alley and he cleared everybody out, set up the meeting with Hilton, and then executed him.”
“And the motive?” Bosch asked.
“Pride. He couldn’t have this infatuated kid threatening his reputation. Did you look at the phone records in the murder book when you had it?”
“Yes, but just in a cursory way.”
“There were several calls from Hilton’s apartment line to a payphone number in South Central. It was in a shopping plaza at Slauson and Crenshaw, the heart of Rolling 60s turf. The original investigators didn’t do anything with it, thought it was a dealer connection, but I think Hilton was calling Kidd there or trying to reach him, and it was becoming a problem for him.”
Bosch sat back and considered her theory as their food arrived. Once the waiter was gone, he summarized.
“Forbidden love,” he said. “Lovers in prison, but outside that was a threat to Kidd’s position and power. It could get him ousted—maybe even killed.”
Ballard nodded.
“Nineteen-ninety?” she said. “That wasn’t going to go over on the gang streets.”
“That wouldn’t go over now,” Bosch said. “I heard about this case a few years before I quit where guys on a no-knock search warrant hit a stash house and caught a guy from Grape Street in bed with another guy. They used it to turn him into an inside man in five minutes flat. That was more leverage than holding a five-year sentence over his head. They know they can do the time if necessary, come out and be an operator. But nobody wants a gay rap in the gang. They get that and they’re done.”
They started to eat, both so hungry that they stopped talking. Bosch ran everything through his filters while silent and spoke when his hunger had been pushed back into its cage.
“So, tomorrow,” he said. “How are you going to push his buttons?”
“For one, I hope to catch him at home,” Ballard answered, her mouth still full with the last bite of her steak. “He’s married now and his business is in his wife’s name. When I start mentioning Hilton and their prior relationship, I hope he panics. I doubt the wife knows about his gay relationships. I have the sketchbook. I start showing the drawings and he’ll shit a brick.”
“But how does that get him on the phone? You’re making it between him and her.”