While the two detectives looked to be about the same age, it remained to be seen who had the juice—which one had seniority in the partnership, which one was the alpha dog.
Bosch was betting it was Poydras. He was the one who spoke first and had been behind the wheel of the car. Franks may have been carrying the binder but those first two facts were clear signs that he was playing second to Poydras. Another was Franks’s two-tone face. His forehead was as white as a vampire’s but there was a clear line of demarcation where the lower half of his face was a ruddy tan. It told Bosch that it was likely he frequently played either softball or golf. Since Franks was in his forties Bosch guessed it was golf. It was a popular pastime among homicide detectives because it fit with the obsessive qualities needed for the job. But sometimes, Bosch had noticed, golf became a greater obsession than the homicide work. You ended up with guys with two-tone faces playing second string to an alpha dog because they were always thinking about the next round, and who could get them onto the next course.
Years ago, Bosch had had a partner named Jerry Edgar. He turned Bosch into a golf widow because of his obsession with the game. Once they were working a case and had to go to Chicago to find and arrest a murder suspect. When Bosch got to LAX for the flight, he saw Edgar checking his golf clubs at the luggage counter. Edgar said he was planning to stay an extra day in Chicago because he knew a guy who could get him onto Medinah. Bosch assumed that was a golf course. The next two days, while looking for their murder suspect, they drove around with a set of golf clubs in the trunk of their rental.
Sitting across the table from the two men from Pasadena, Bosch decided it was Poydras who was the dog. He kept his eyes on him.
Bosch started with a question before they could.
“How was Vance killed?” he asked.
Poydras put an uneasy smile on his face.
“We’re not going to do it that way,” he said. “We’re here to ask you questions. Not the other way around.”
Franks held up a notebook he had taken from his pocket as if to show he was there to write information down.
“But that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Bosch replied. “If you want answers from me, then I want answers from you. We trade.”
Bosch waved a hand back and forth between them to signal equal and free trade.
“Uh, no, we don’t trade,” Franks said. “One call to Sacramento and we lift your PI license for unprofessional conduct. That’s what we do. How would that be?”
Bosch reached down to his belt and pulled his San Fernando badge off it. He tossed it down on the table in front of Franks.
“It would be okay,” he said. “I’ve got another job.”
Franks leaned forward and looked down at the badge, then smirked.
“You’re a reserve officer,” he said. “You take that and a dollar to Starbucks and they might give you a cup of coffee.”
“I was just offered full-time today,” Bosch said. “I’ll be getting the new badge tomorrow. Not that what it says on a badge matters.”
“I’m real happy for you,” Franks said.
“Go ahead and call Sacramento,” Bosch said. “See what you can get done.”
“Look, how about we stop the pissing match right here?” Poydras said. “We know all about you, Bosch. We know about your LAPD history, we know about what happened in Santa Clarita the other night. And we also know you spent an hour with Whitney Vance last week, and we’re here to find out what that was about. The man was old and he was terminal but somebody sent him to Valhalla a little early and we’re going to figure out who and why.”
Bosch paused and looked at Poydras. He had just confirmed that he had the juice in the partnership. He called the shots.
“Am I a suspect?” Bosch asked.
Franks leaned back in frustration and shook his head.
“There he goes with the questions again,” he said.
“You know the drill, Bosch,” Poydras said. “Everybody’s a suspect until they’re not.”
“I could call my lawyer right now and that would be the end of this,” Bosch said.
“Yeah, you could,” Poydras said. “If you wanted. If you had something to hide.”
He then stared at Bosch and waited. Bosch knew Poydras was counting on his loyalty to the mission. He had spent years doing what these two were doing and he knew what they faced.
“I signed a confidentiality agreement with Vance,” Bosch said.
“Vance is dead,” Franks said. “He doesn’t care.”
Bosch purposely looked at Poydras when he next spoke.
“He hired me,” Bosch said. “He paid me ten grand to find someone for him.”
“Who?” Franks asked.
“You know I can keep that confidential,” Bosch said. “Even with Vance dead.”
“And we can throw your ass in jail for withholding information in a homicide investigation,” Franks said. “You know you’ll beat it, but how long will that take? A day or two in the clink? That what you want?”
Bosch looked from Franks to Poydras.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I only want to talk to you, Poydras. Tell your partner to go sit in the car. You do that and I’ll talk to you, answer any question. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Franks said.
“Then you’re not getting what you came here to get,” Bosch said.
“Danny,” Poydras said.
His head tilted toward the door.
“You’re shitting me,” Franks said.
“Just go have a smoke,” Poydras said. “Cool off.”
Franks got up with a huff. He made a show of flipping closed his notebook, then grabbed the binder.
“You better leave that,” Bosch said. “In case I can point out things at the crime scene.”
Franks looked at Poydras, who gave a slight nod. Franks dropped the binder on the table like it was radioactive. He then left through the front door and made sure to slam it behind him.
Bosch turned his head from the door to Poydras. “If that was all a good-cop-bad-cop act, you guys are the best I’ve ever seen,” Bosch said.
“I wish,” Poydras said. “But no act. He’s just a hothead.”
“With a six handicap, right?”
“Eighteen, actually. Which is one reason he’s pissed off all the time. But let’s stay on subject now that it’s just us two talking here. Who did Vance hire you to look for?”
Bosch paused. He knew he was on the proverbial slippery slope. Anything he told the police could get out into the world before he wanted it to. But Vance’s murder changed the landscape of things and he decided it was time to give in order to get—with limitations on the give.
“He wanted to know if he had an heir,” he finally said. “He told me he got a girl pregnant at USC back in 1950. Under family pressure he more or less abandoned her. He felt guilty all his life about it and now wanted to know if she had the baby and whether he had an heir. He told me it was time to balance the books. If it turned out that he was a father, then he said he wanted to set things right before he died.”
“And did you find an heir?”
“This is where we trade. You ask a question, I ask a question.”
He waited and Poydras did the smart thing. “Ask your question.”
“What was the cause of death?”
“It doesn’t leave this room.”
“Fine with me.”
“We think he was smothered with a pillow off his office couch. He was found slumped at his desk and it looked like a natural. Old man collapses at his desk. Seen it a hundred times before. Only Kapoor at the Coroner’s Office takes the opportunity to grandstand for the media and says there will be an autopsy. He does the cut himself and finds petechial hemorrhaging. Very slight, nothing on the face. Just conjunctival petechiae.”
Poydras pointed to the corner of his left eye to illustrate. Bosch had seen it in many cases. Cutting off oxygen explodes the capillaries. The level of the struggle and the health of the victim were variables that helped define the extent of the hemorrhaging.