“Do you recognize this woman? Had she been in this store in the early part of this year?”
Nguyen shook his head as if totally lost.
“Do you know how many people have been in this store since the beginning of the year?” he asked. “And I’m not even here every minute of every day. My brother and I have employees. Your question is impossible to answer.”
“She was murdered.”
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the store.”
“She called here four days before she was murdered. Back in February.”
The man seemed to freeze and his mouth formed an O as he remembered something.
“What?” Bosch asked.
“I remember now,” the man said. “The Sheriff’s Department called about that. A detective called and she asked about that woman who was killed and the phone call.”
“Was her name Schmidt? What did you tell her?”
“I can’t remember the caller’s name. I had to check with my brother, who was on duty here the day they were talking about. He said the woman who called asked about how to get her watch fixed and he told her to look up the brand online and make contact with them. We don’t do watch repairs. We strictly just sell.”
Bosch stared at him. He thought he was either lying or had been lied to by his brother. The call to the shop came after Lexi Parks had called the Audemars Piguet repair center in Las Vegas. It seemed unlikely that she would call to ask about how to get her watch repaired. She called for another reason and this guy and his brother were hiding it.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked. “I need to talk to him.”
“He’s on vacation,” the counter man said.
“Till when?”
“Until he comes back. Look, we did nothing wrong here. Paul answered the phone and told her what to do.”
“That’s a lie, Peter, and we both know it. When I figure out why you’re lying I’ll be back. That is, unless you want to save yourself some trouble and tell me the whole story now.”
Nguyen looked at him without answering. Bosch tried another tack.
“And if I have to drag your father into it, I will.”
“My father is dead. When he died, this business was shit. My brother and I, we built this.”
He made a sweeping move with his arm as if to encompass all the display cases and the glittering jewelry they held. Just then another customer stepped in through the glass door and casually moved to the display cases on the right. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. He started bending down over the glass so he could see the jewelry pieces better.
Bosch glanced at him and then back at Nguyen.
“I have a customer,” Nguyen said. “You must go now.”
Bosch reached into his pocket for a card. It was an old business card from when he was still with the LAPD. He had scratched out the number for the Open-Unsolved Unit and written in his cell number. He had also scribbled the word “retired” in barely legible script on the card in case it fell into the wrong hands and was used against him.
He put it down on the counter in front of Nguyen.
“Think about it,” he said “Have your brother call me before it gets too late.”
Bosch walked back to his car. He had gathered no reliable information inside the jewelry store but felt he had rattled a cage and gathered something possibly more important. Suspicion. He felt he was getting closer to the crossing, the place where Lexi Parks had tripped a wire that resulted in her death.
He sat behind the wheel without turning the ignition and thought about next moves. He picked up his coffee cup but then remembered he had finished it. For the first time he realized how free he was to follow his instincts and cast his net in whatever direction he wanted. With the department he had certainly employed his instincts. But there was always a lieutenant and sometimes a captain to be briefed and an approval needed. There were rules of procedure and rules of evidence. There was a partner and a division of labor. There was a budget and there was the constant, never abating knowledge that every move he made, every word he typed would be reviewed and possibly turned against him.
Bosch didn’t carry those burdens now and for the first time he understood and felt the change. His inner voice told him that that watch with a brand name he could not even pronounce correctly was at the center of the mystery here. Nguyen had acted so shifty in the jewelry store — his own turf and comfort zone — that the watch lead could not be ignored. Bosch considered waiting until his customer left and going back into the store to press Nguyen further, or possibly sitting on the street and watching to see if the other brother showed up. But then he decided to use the freedom he had to follow his instincts without permission or approval.
He started the Cherokee and pulled away from the curb.
28
Long got back into the car and surveyed Sunset Boulevard.
“Where’d he go?” he asked.
From behind the wheel Ellis pointed east.
“Probably back home,” he said. “What did Nguyen say?”
“Bosch asked about the watch and he asked about the phone call Parks made. Nguyen played dumb, said his brother dealt with it. But Bosch will definitely be back. This is getting serious, partner. He’s getting close.”
Ellis considered that. He still hadn’t started the car.
“What else?” he asked.
“He says that’s all,” Long said. “He was scared of me. If there was more, he would’ve given it up.”
Ellis was reaching to the ignition but let his hand drop.
“Where the fuck is his brother?”
“He says he doesn’t know. Thinks Mexico.”
“What did you hear when you got in there?”
“I just got the tail end. Bosch wasn’t buying what he was selling, that’s for sure. I’m thinking we need to close this thing down. Zip it up. This isn’t like the motorcycle guy — a precautionary move. Bosch is zeroing in.”
“We’d have to wait until the brothers are together. That Mexico story is bullshit.”
“What I was thinking. You want to wait?”
Silence filled the car when Ellis didn’t speak. Eventually Long pushed it.
“So, then when?”
“Check your phone. Where’d Bosch just go to?”
“You said probably back home.”
“Yeah, well, make sure.”
Long opened the app on his phone. It took him a few moments to locate Bosch.
“Actually, he’s going down La Cienega toward the ten.”
“He could be going anywhere.”
Ellis turned the key and started the car.
“So, what do we do about him?” Long asked. “We take him out, we end the problem.”
Ellis shook his head.
“Not that easy,” he said. “He has friends. And if Haller loses his second investigator on this, there’ll be questions. We don’t want that kind of heat.”
Ellis checked his mirror and was about to pull away from the curb.
“It’s going to come to a point,” Long said, “where we don’t have a choice.”
“Maybe,” Ellis said. “But we’re not there yet.”
He saw a familiar figure cross Sunset in the mirror.
“Good things come to those who wait,” he said. “There’s the brother.”
“Where?” Long asked.
“Behind us. Coming up to the shop. I knew it was a lie.”
Ellis turned off the ignition. Both brothers together changed things.
29
Bosch took La Cienega south from Sunset toward I-10. Along the way he stopped to gas up the Cherokee and soon after was fighting his way east on the freeway toward the glass-and-stone towers of downtown. He didn’t break free until he cleared the city’s center and got out to I-15, where he started heading north on a clear shot to Las Vegas. He had decided to follow the watch trail directly rather than by phone. Badge or no badge, he knew that the best way to get information was to ask for it in person. It’s easy to hang up a phone, much harder to close a door in someone’s face.