Trunk Music

after he checked me out and saw me play. Patsy wrote him and gave me an introduction.”
    Bosch sat silently, listening. He now had an idea where this was going but couldn’t figure out why she was telling him.
    “So he staked me. I got the apartment and some money to play with. He never said anything about Joey Marks, though I should have known the money came from somewhere. It always does. Anyway, later, when he finally told me who had really staked me, he said I shouldn’t worry because the organization he worked for didn’t want me to pay the nut back. What they wanted was just the interest. Two hundred a week. The tax. I didn’t think I had a choice. I’d already taken the money. So I started paying. In the beginning it was tough. I didn’t have it a couple times and it was double the next week plus that week’s regular tax. You get behind and there’s no way out.”
    She looked down at her hands and clasped them on the table.
    “What did they make you do?” Bosch asked quietly, also averting his eyes.
    “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she said. “I was lucky…they knew about me. I mean, that I had been an agent. They figured they could use my skills, as dormant as they were. So they had me just watch people. Mostly in casinos. But there were a few times I followed them outside. Most of the time I didn’t even know exactly who they were or why they wanted the information, but I just watched, sometimes played at the same tables, and reported to Terry what the guy was winning or losing, who he was talking to, any nuances of his game…you know, things like that.”
    She was just rambling now, putting off the meat of what she had to tell him, but Bosch didn’t say anything. He let her go on.
    “A couple days I watched Tony Aliso for them. They wanted to know how much he was dropping at the tables and where he was going, the usual stuff. But as it turned out, he wasn’t losing. He actually was quite good at cards.”
    “Where did you watch him go?”
    “Oh, he’d go out to dinner, to the strip club. He’d run errands, things like that.”
    “You ever see him with a girl?”
    “One time. I followed him on foot from the Mirage into Caesar’s and then into the shopping arcade. He went to Spago for a late lunch. He was alone and then the girl showed up. She was young. I thought at first it was like an escort thing, but then I could tell, he knew her. After lunch they went back to his hotel room for a while and when they came out, they took his rental and he took her to get a manicure and to buy cigarettes and to a bank while she opened an account. Just errands. Then they went to the strip club in North Vegas. When he left, he was alone. I figured then she was a dancer.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “Were you watching Tony last Friday night?” Bosch asked.
    “No. That was just coincidence that we ended up at the same table. It was because he was waiting to go to the high-stakes table. I actually hadn’t done anything for them in a month or so, other than pay the weekly tax, until…Terry…”
    Her voice trailed off. They were finally at the point of no return.
    “Until Terry what, Eleanor?”
    She looked toward the fading horizon. The lights across the Valley were coming on and the sky was pink neon mixed with gray paint. Bosch kept his eyes on her. She spoke while still watching the end of the day.
    “Quillen came to my apartment after you took me home from Metro. He took me to the house where you found me. They wouldn’t tell me why and they told me not to leave. They said nobody would get hurt if I just did what I was told. I sat around that place for two days. They only put the handcuffs on me that last night. It was like they knew you’d be coming then.”
    She let a beat of silence follow. It was there if Bosch wanted to use it but he didn’t say a word.
    “I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that the whole thing was something less than an abduction.”
    She looked back down at her hands now.
    “And that’s obviously why you didn’t want us to call out Metro,” Bosch said quietly.
    She nodded.
    “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you everything before. I’m really sorry, Harry. I…”
    Now Bosch felt his own words sticking in his throat. Her story was understandable and believable. He even felt for her and understood that she was in her own bottomless pit. He saw how she had believed she had no choices. What he couldn’t see, and what hurt him, was why she couldn’t