I tracked his logic and could see it coming to the doorway of Walter Elliot. But I wasn’t going to open it with Bosch looking over my shoulder.

“I think you’ve got it wrong, Detective.”

“I don’t think so, Counselor.”

“Well, I can’t help you. I have no idea about this and have seen no indication of it in any of the books or records I’ve got. If you can connect this alleged bribe to my client, then arrest him and charge him. Otherwise, I’ll tell you right now he’s off limits. He’s not talking to you about this or anything else.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I wouldn’t waste my time trying to talk to him. He used his lawyer as cover on this and I’ll never be able to get past the attorney-client protection. But you should take it as a warning, Counselor.”

“Yeah, how’s that?”

“Simple. His lawyer got killed, not him. Think about it. And remember, that little trickle on the back of your neck and running down your spine? That’s the feeling you get when you know you have to look over your shoulder. When you know you’re in danger.”

I smiled back at him.

“Oh, is that what that is? I thought it was the feeling I get when I know I’m being bullshitted.”

“I’m only telling you the truth.”

“You’ve been running a game on me for two days. Spinning bullshit about bribes and the FBI. You’ve been trying to manipulate me and it’s been a waste of my time. You have to go now, Detective, because I have real work to do.”

I stood up and extended a hand toward the door. Bosch stood up but didn’t turn to go.

“Don’t kid yourself, Haller. Don’t make a mistake.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

Bosch finally turned and started to leave. But then he stopped and came back to the desk, pulling something from the inside pocket of his jacket as he approached.

It was a photograph. He put it down on the desk.

“You recognize that man?” Bosch asked.

I studied the photo. It was a grainy still taken off a video. It showed a man pushing out through the front door of an office building.

“This is the front entrance of the Legal Center, isn’t it?”

“Do you recognize him?”

The shot was taken at a distance and blown up, spreading the pixels of the image and making it unclear. The man in the photograph looked to me to be of Latin origin. He had dark skin and hair and had a Poncho Villa mustache, like Cisco used to wear. He wore a panama hat and an open-collared shirt beneath what appeared to be a leather sport coat. As I looked more closely at the photograph, I realized why it was the frame they had chosen to take from the surveillance video. The man’s jacket had pulled open as he’d pushed through the glass door. I could see what looked like the top of a pistol tucked into the belt line of his pants.

“Is that a gun? Is this the killer?”

“Look, can you answer one goddamn question without another question? Do you recognize this man? That’s all I want to know.”

“No, I don’t, Detective. Happy?”

“That’s another question.”

“Sorry.”

“You sure you haven’t seen him before?”

“Not a hundred percent. But that’s not a great photo you’ve got there. Where is it from?”

“A street camera on Broadway and Second. It sweeps the street and we got this guy for only a few seconds. This is the best we can do.”

I knew that the city had been quietly installing street cameras on main arteries in the last few years. Streets like Hollywood Boulevard were completely visually wired. Broadway would have been a likely candidate. It was always crowded during the day with pedestrians and traffic. It was also the street used most often for protest marches organized by the underclasses.

“Well, then I guess it’s better than having nothing. You think the hair and the mustache are a disguise?”

“Let me ask the questions. Could this guy be one of your new clients?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t met them all. Leave me the photo and I’ll show it to Wren Williams. She’d know better than me if he’s a client.”

Bosch reached down and took the photo back.

“It’s my only copy. When will she be in?”

“In about an hour.”

“I’ll come back later. Meantime, Counselor, watch yourself.”

He pointed a finger at me like it was a gun, then turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. I sat there thinking about what he had said and staring at the door, half expecting him to come back in and drop another ominous warning on me.

But when the door opened one minute later it was Lorna who entered.

“I just saw that detective in the hallway.”

“Yeah, he was here.”

“What did he want?”

“To scare me.”

“And?”

“He did a pretty good job.”

Twenty-two

Lorna wanted to convene another staff meeting and update me on things that had happened while I was out of the office visiting Malibu and Walter Elliot the day before. She even said I had a court hearing scheduled later on a mystery case that wasn’t on the calendar we had worked up. But I needed some time to think about what Bosch had just revealed and what it meant.

“Where’s Cisco?”

“He’s coming. He left early to meet one of his sources before he came into the office.”

“Did he have breakfast?”

“Not with me.”

“Okay, wait till he gets in and then we’ll go over to the Dining Car and have breakfast. We’ll go over everything then.”

“I already ate breakfast.”

“Then, you can do all the talking while we do all the eating.”

She put a phony frown on her face but went out into the reception office and left me alone. I got up from behind the desk and started to pace the office, hands in my pockets, trying to evaluate what the information from Bosch meant.

According to Bosch, Jerry Vincent had paid a sizable bribe to a person or persons unknown. The fact that the $100,000 came out of the Walter Elliot advance would indicate the bribe was somehow linked to the Elliot case, but this was by no means conclusive. Vincent could easily have used money from Elliot to pay a debt or a bribe relating to another case or something else entirely. It could have been a gambling debt he wanted to hide. The only fact was that Vincent had diverted the $100K from his account to an unknown destination and had wanted to hide the transaction.

Next to consider was the timing of the transaction and whether it was linked to Vincent’s murder. Bosch said the money transfer had gone down five months ago. Vincent’s murder was just three nights before and Elliot’s trial was set to begin in a week. Again there was nothing definitive. The distance between the transaction and the murder seemed to me to strain any possibility of a link between the two.

But still, I could not push the two apart, and the reason for this was Walter Elliot himself. Through the filter of Bosch’s information I now began to fill in some answers and to view my client – and myself – differently. I now saw Elliot’s confidence in his innocence and eventual acquittal coming possibly from his belief that it had already been bought and paid for. I now saw his unwillingness to consider delaying the trial as a timing issue relating to the bribe. And I saw his willingness to quickly allow me to carry the torch for Vincent without checking a single reference as a move made so he could get to the trial without delay. It had nothing to do with any confidence in my skills and tenacity. I had not impressed him. I had simply been the one who showed up. I was simply a lawyer who would work in the scheme of things. In fact, I was perfect. I was pulled out of the lost-and-found bin. I had been on the shelf and was hungry and ready. I could be dusted off and suited up and sent in to replace Vincent, no questions asked.

The reality jolt this sent through me was as uncomfortable as the first night in rehab. But I also understood that this self-knowledge could give me an edge. I was in the middle of some sort of play but at least now I knew it was a play. That was an advantage. I could now make it my own play.