And then I saw Bosch. He was sitting alone in the third row from my window. He had his earbuds in. Our eyes held for a moment and then he looked away. I put my fork down and reached into my pocket for my cash. I had no idea how much Mad Housewife cost per glass but Lorna was into her second round. I put five twenties down on the table and told the others to finish eating while I stepped out to make a phone call.
I left the restaurant and called Bosch’s cell. He pulled his plugs and answered it as I was approaching the third row of seats.
“What?” he said by way of a greeting.
“Frank Morgan again?”
“Actually, Ron Carter. Why are you calling me?”
“What did you think of the story?”
I sat in the open seat across from him, gave him a glance but acted like I was talking to someone far away from me.
“This is kind of stupid,” Bosch said.
“Well, I didn’t know whether you wanted to stay undercover or-”
“Just hang up.”
We closed our phones and looked at each other.
“Well?” I asked. “Are we in play?”
“We won’t know until we know.”
“What’s that mean?”
“The story is out there. I think it did what we wanted it to do. Now we wait and see. If something happens, then, yes, we’re in play. We won’t know we’re in play until we’re in play.”
I nodded, even though what he had said made no sense to me.
“Who’s the woman in black?” he asked. “You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend. We should probably put coverage on her, too.”
“She’s my jury reader, that’s all.”
“Oh, she helps you pick out the cop haters and antiestablishment types?”
“Something like that. Is it just you here? Are you watching me by yourself?”
“You know, I had a girlfriend once. She always asked questions in bunches. Never one at a time.”
“Did you ever answer any of her questions? Or did you just cleverly deflect them like you are doing now?”
“I’m not alone, Counselor. Don’t worry. You have people around you that you’ll never see. I’ve got people on your office whether you are there or not.”
And cameras. They had been installed ten days earlier, when we had thought that the
“Yeah, good, but we won’t be there for long.”
“I noticed. Where are you moving to?”
“Nowhere. I work out of my car.”
“Sounds like fun.”
I studied him a moment. He had been sarcastic in his tone as usual. He was an annoying guy but somehow he had gotten me to entrust my safety to him.
“Well, I’ve got to get to court. Is there something I should be doing? Any particular way you want me to act or place you want me to go?”
“Just do what you always do. But there is one thing. Keeping an eye on you in motion takes a lot of people. So, at the end of the day, when you are home for the night, call me and tell me so I can release some people.”
“Okay. But you’ll still have somebody watching, right?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be covered twenty-four-seven. Oh, and one other thing.”
“What?”
“Don’t ever approach me again like this.”
I nodded. I was being dismissed.
“Got it.”
I stood up and looked toward the restaurant. I could see Lorna counting the twenties I had left and putting them down on the check. It looked like she was using them all. Patrick had left the table and gone to get the car from the valet.
“See ya, Detective,” I said without looking at him.
He didn’t respond. I walked away and caught up with my party as they were coming out of the restaurant.
“Was that Detective Bosch you were with?” Lorna asked.
“Yeah, I saw him out there.”
“What was he doing?”
“He said he likes to come over here for lunch, sit in those big, comfortable chairs and just think.”
“That’s a coincidence that we were here too.”
Julie Favreau shook her head.
“There are no coincidences,” she said.
After lunch Golantz began to present his case. He went with what I called the “square one” presentation. He started at the very beginning – the 911 call that brought the double murder to public light – and proceeded in linear fashion from there. The first witness was an emergency operator with the county’s communications center. She was used to introduce the tape recordings of Walter Elliot’s calls for help. I had sought in a pretrial motion to thwart the playing of the two tapes, arguing that printed transcripts would be clearer and more useful to the jurors but the judge had ruled in the prosecution’s favor. He ordered Golantz to provide transcripts so jurors could read along with the audio when the tapes were played in court.
I had tried to halt the playing of the tapes because I knew they were prejudicial to my client. Elliot had calmly spoken to the dispatcher in the first call, reporting that his wife and another person had been murdered. In that calm demeanor was room for an interpretation of calculated coldness that I didn’t want the jury to make. The second tape was worse from a defense standpoint. Elliot sounded annoyed and also indicated he knew and disliked the man who had been killed with his wife.
Tape 1 – 13:05 – 05/02/07
Dispatcher: Nine-one-one. Do you have an emergency?
