The Last Coyote

could feel the wind come through. I don’t see why the police would be interested in all-”
    “What happened with Conklin? Why didn’t things turn out?”
    “Well, I’m not the expert on this. All I know is that in sixty-eight he was planning on running for attorney general and the office was practically his for the taking. Then he just…dropped out. He quit politics and went back to practice law. And it wasn’t to harvest the big corporate bucks that sit out there when these guys go into private practice. He opened a one-man law firm. I admired him. As far as I heard, sixty percent or better of his practice was pro bono. He was working for free most of the time.”
    “Like he was serving a penance or something?”
    “I don’t know. I guess.”
    “Why’d he drop out?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Weren’t you part of the inner circle?”
    “No. He didn’t have a circle. He had one man.”
    “Gordon Mittel.”
    “Right. You want to know why he didn’t run, ask Gordon.” Then it clicked in Kim’s brain that Bosch had introduced the name Gordon Mittel to the conversation. “Is this about Gordon Mittel?”
    “Let me ask the questions first. Why do you think Conklin didn’t run? You must have some idea.”
    “He wasn’t officially in the race in the first place, so he didn’t have to make any public statement about dropping out. He just didn’t run. There were a lot of rumors, though.”
    “Like what?”
    “Oh, lots of stuff. Like he was gay. There were others. Financial trouble. Supposedly there was a threat from the mob that if he won, they’d kill him. Just stuff like that. None of it was ever more than backroom talk amongst the town politicos.”
    “He was never married?”
    “Not as far as I know. But as far as him being gay, I never saw anything like that.”
    Bosch noted that the top of Kim’s head was slick now with sweat. It was already warm in the room but he kept the cardigan on. Bosch made a quick change of tracks.
    “Okay, tell me about the death of Johnny Fox.”
    Bosch saw the quick glimmer of recognition pass behind the glasses but then it disappeared. But it was enough.
    “Johnny Fox, who’s that?”
    “C’mon, Monte, it’s old news. Nobody cares what you did. I just need to know the story behind the story. That’s why I’m here.”
    “You’re talking about when I was a reporter? I wrote a lot of stories. That was thirty-five years ago. I was a kid. I can’t remember everything.”
    “But you remember Johnny Fox. He was your ticket to that brighter future. The one that didn’t happen.”
    “Look, what are you doing here? You’re not a cop. Did Gordon send you? After all these years, you people think I…”
    He stopped.
    “I am a cop, Monte. And you’re lucky I got here before Gordon did. Something’s coming undone. The ghosts are coming back. You read in the paper today about that cop found in his trunk in Griffith Park?”
    “I saw it on the news. He was a lieutenant.”
    “Yeah. He was my lieutenant. He was looking into a couple old cases. Johnny Fox was one of them. Then he ended up in his trunk. So you’ll have to excuse me if I’m a little nervous and pushy, but I need to know about Johnny Fox. And you wrote the story. You wrote the story after he got killed that made him out to be an angel. Then you end up on Conklin’s team. I don’t care what you did, I just want to know what you did.”
    “Am I in danger?”
    Bosch hiked his shoulders in his best who-knows-and-who-cares gesture.
    “If you are, then we can protect you. You don’t help us, we can’t help you. You know how it goes.”
    “Oh my God! I knew this-What other cases?”
    “One of Johnny’s girls who got killed about a year before him. Her name was Marjorie Lowe.”
    Kim shook his head. He didn’t recognize the name. He ran his hand over his scalp, using it like a squeegee to move the sweat into the thicker hair. Bosch could tell he had perfectly primed the fat man to answer the questions.
    “So what about Fox?” Bosch asked. “I don’t have all night.”
    “Look, I don’t know anything. All I did was a favor for a favor.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    He composed himself for a long moment before speaking.
    “Look, you know who Jack Ruby was?”
    “In Dallas?”
    “Yeah, the guy who killed Oswald. Well, Johnny Fox was the Jack Ruby of L.A., okay? Same era, same kind of guy. Fox ran women, was a gambler, knew which cops could be greased and greased them when he needed