The door was opened before she had to hit it again. A man stood there. He was in his sixties, white, with the cliché attempts to look younger on full display: earring, bracelets, dyed hair and chin beard, fraying blue jeans, and a gray hoodie. It all went with the Porsche.
“Yes?” he asked.
Ballard badged him.
“We’re here to see the woman dropped off a half hour ago,” Ballard said. “I believe she may be your wife.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “It’s midnight and this is out—”
He was interrupted by the informant walking up behind him to see who was at the door.
“You,” she said. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want,” Ballard said. “I want the name.”
Ballard stepped forward and her intimidating bearing made the man step back, even as he protested.
“Wait a minute here,” he said. “You can’t just—”
“Is this your wife, sir?” Ballard asked.
“That’s right,” he said.
“Well, step back unless you want this conversation to take place in a police station,” Ballard said.
She then looked directly at the informant.
“You wouldn’t want that, would you?” she said. “Going back to the old neighborhood. You never know who from Las Palmas might be on the lockdown bench when we go in the back door at the station.”
“Gene,” the informant said. “Let them in. The sooner I deal with them, the sooner they leave. Go out on the deck.”
“Smart girl,” Ballard said.
“It’s cold out there,” Gene said.
“Just go,” the informant commanded. “This won’t take long.”
“Jesus,” Gene protested. “You said this sort of shit was over.”
He sauntered toward a set of sliding doors leading to the deck. Beyond the deck, the blue-black waves were beautifully lit by spotlights anchored under the house. The informant waited to speak until Gene was out on the deck and had closed the slider to muffle the sound of the ocean.
“I don’t like this,” she said. “Davenport told me not to speak to you anymore. And who the fuck are you?”
This last part was directed at Bosch.
“He’s with me,” Ballard said. “That’s all you need to know. And I don’t care what Davenport told you or whether you like this. You’re going to tell me about the banker or you’re going to be in the kind of trouble that Gene’s money can’t help you with.”
“I haven’t broken any laws,” the informant said.
“There are state laws, and there are gang laws,” Ballard said. “You think Humberto Viera up in Pelican Bay thinks you’re innocent? You think he doesn’t want to know where you’ve been these last ten years?”
Ballard could see the threat pierce the informant’s armor. Ballard had put things together correctly. Viera was the philandering fiancé and he now had the rest of his life in maximum security to consider who had wronged him.
“Sit down over there,” Bosch said, pointing to a couch. “Now.”
He had read the situation as well. The informant had just gone from tough ex-gang girl to kept woman, scared that her carefully ordered life with a wealthy older man could suddenly change.
She did as she was told and went to the couch. Ballard took a swivel chair across a bamboo coffee table from her, turning it from a view through the sliders to a view of the informant. Bosch walked over to the sliders and stayed standing with his back to Gene, who was trying to watch through the glass.
“What’s your name?” Ballard asked.
“I’m not giving my name,” the informant said.
Resentment was written all over her face.
“I need something to call you by,” Ballard insisted.
“Then call me Darla,” the woman said. “I always liked that name.”
“Okay, Darla, tell me about the street banker. Who was he?”
“All I know is that he was a cop and his name was Bonner. That’s it. I never saw him. I don’t know what he looks like. Please leave now.”
“What kind of cop?”
“I don’t know.”
“LAPD? Sheriff’s?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“What was his first name?”
“I don’t know that either, or I would have told you.”
“How do you know he was a cop? How did you know his last name?”
“From Berto. He talked about the guy.”
“He said he was a street banker?”
“He said he was the guy who could get money for Raffa. He told him. I was there.”
“Where?”
“We drove to Raffa’s father’s place. Where they fixed cars up front and chopped ’em up in the back. Raffa came to the car and Berto told him. He gave him a number to call. And he also warned El Chopo that Bonner was a cop. He said he had to be careful about dealing with him because he was a cop and he was serious people.”
“What does that mean, ‘serious people’?”
“You know, like don’t cross him. There are consequences for shit like that.”
“Did that mean he was a killer?”
“I don’t know. It meant he was serious.”
“Okay. Were there other times Bonner was mentioned?”
“Yeah, when Raffa brought the money to Humberto. He said Bonner got it for him from a doctor and he had to sign papers and all of that.”
“What kind of doctor?”
“I didn’t hear that part or they didn’t talk about it. Just a doctor is what I remember.”
“How come you never told this to your handler at the LAPD — about the banker being a cop?”
“Because I’m not a fool.”
“What’s that mean?”
“For one thing, if something happened, Berto would know it came from me because he told me about Bonner in the first place. And the other thing is that you don’t rat out cops to cops. That’s just stupid. Next thing you know, somebody rats you out to your man. You understand what I’m saying?”
“I do. How do you think Berto met Bonner in the first place?”
“I don’t know that. They just got together somehow. They knew each other before I was in the picture.”
Ballard knew that was a key connection to make.
“When was that?” she asked. “When you entered the picture?”
“Me and Berto got together when I was seventeen,” Darla said. “That was ’04. And we were together for six years.”
Ballard had some respect for Darla and her path. To come out of East Hollywood and end up on the beach was an unlikely journey. She could see that Darla carried a certain pride in it, despite the choices of men she used to get there.
“Do you know if there were other transactions between Berto and Bonner?” Ballard asked. “I mean besides the deal with Raffa.”
“Yeah, they had business,” Darla said. “Like when someone needed big money, they would, like, talk and shit. I think there were other deals.”
Ballard looked at Bosch to see if he had any questions she had not covered. He nodded.
“How did Berto and Bonner communicate?” he asked.
“By phone mostly,” Darla said. “Sometimes they would meet up.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Darla looked away when she answered. It was the first time in the conversation that Ballard had seen a tell indicating untruthfulness. Ballard glanced at Bosch and he nodded slightly. He had seen it too.
“You sure?” Ballard asked.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Darla said. “You think I asked Berto about his business all the time? That would get me killed.”