The concrete blonde - By Michael Connelly Page 0,34
the void again.
There were three callers who gave vague descriptions of a woman they thought might be the concrete blonde, but after a few questions into each conversation Bosch and Edgar identified the callers as cop geeks, people who got a thrill from talking to the police.
The most unusual call was from a Beverly Hills psychic who mentioned that she had placed her hand on the TV screen while it showed the face and felt the dead woman's spirit cry out to her.
“What did it cry?” Bosch asked patiently.
“Praise.”
“Praise for what?”
“Jesus our savior, I would assume but I don't know. That was all I received. I might receive more if I could touch the actual plaster cast of the—”
“Well, did this spirit that was giving praise identify itself? See, that's what we're doing here. We're more interested in a name than cries of praise.”
“Someday you will believe but by then you will be lost.”
She hung up on him.
At seven-thirty Bosch told Edgar he was splitting.
“How 'bout you? You going to hang out for the eleven o'clock news?”
“Yeah, I'll be here but I can handle it. If I get a lot of calls I'll pull one of the dipshits off the desk.”
Stock that OT, Bosch thought.
“What's next?” he asked.
“I don't know. What do you think?”
“Well, aside from all the calls saying it's your mother, this porno thing seems to be the way to go.”
“Leave my blessed mother out of it. How you think I can check the porno?”
“Administrative Vice. Guy over there, a detective-three, name of Ray Mora, he works porno. He's the best. He also was on the Dollmaker task force. Call him and see if he can come take a look at the face. He might've known her. Tell him we had one call saying her name was Maggie.”
“Will do. It fits with the Dollmaker, doesn't it? The porno, I mean.”
“Yeah, it fits.” He thought about this a moment, then added, “Two of the other victims were in the business. The one that got away from him was, too.”
“The lucky one—she still in it?”
“Last I heard. But she might be dead now for all I know.”
“Still doesn't mean anything, Harry.”
“What?”
“The porno. Still doesn't mean it was the Dollmaker. The real one, I mean.”
Bosch just nodded. He had an idea about something to do on his way home. He went out to his Caprice and got the Polaroid camera out of the trunk. In the squad room, he took two shots of the face in the box and put them in his coat pocket after they developed.
Edgar watched this and asked, “What're you going to do?”
“Might stop at that adult supermarket in the Valley on my way up to Sylvia's.”
“Don't get caught in one of those little rooms with your dick out.”
“Thanks for the tip. Let me know what Mora says.”
Bosch worked his way on surface streets up to the Hollywood Freeway. He went north and then exited on Lanker-shim, which took him into North Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley. He had all four windows down and the air was cool as it buffeted him from all directions. He smoked a cigarette, flicking the ashes into the wind. There was some techno-funk jazz on KAJZ so he turned the radio off and just drove.
The Valley was the city's bedroom community in more ways than the obvious. It was also home to the nation's pornography industry. The commercial-industrial districts of Van Nuys, Canoga Park, Northridge and Chatsworth housed hundreds of porno production outfits, distributors and warehouses. Modeling agencies in Sherman Oaks provided ninety percent of the women and men who performed in front of the cameras. And, consequently, the Valley was also one of the largest retail outlets for the material. It was made here, it was sold here—through video mail-order businesses also nestled in the warehouses with the production outfits, and places like X Marks the Spot on Lankershim Boulevard.
Bosch pulled into the lot in front of the huge store and appraised it for a few moments. It had formerly been a Pic N Pay supermarket, but the front plate-glass windows had been walled up. Under the red neon X Marks the Spot sign, the front wall was whitewashed and painted with black figures of naked and overly buxom female figures, like the metallic silhouettes Bosch saw all the time on the mudflaps of trucks on the freeway. The men who put those on their trucks were probably the same guys this place catered to, Bosch figured.