Trunk Music

door.
    “I’ll do what I can for you on this. But this cuts us in in a big way, you understand that?”
    Bosch stepped out without answering. Felton had no finesse. It was understood without being said that Bosch was now beholden to him. But Felton had to say it anyway.
    In the hallway, Bosch passed the first interview room, where they had placed Goshen, and opened the door to the second. Sitting there handcuffed to the table was Gussie Flanagan. His nose was misshapen and looked like a new potato. He had cotton jammed into the nostrils. He looked at Bosch with bloodshot eyes and recognition showed on his face. Bosch backed out and closed the door without saying a word.
    Eleanor Wish was behind door number three. She was disheveled, obviously dragged from sleep by the Metro cops. But her eyes had the alert and wild quality of a cornered animal and that cut Bosch to the bone.
    “Harry! What are they doing?”
    He closed the door and moved quickly into the tiny room, touching her shoulder in a consoling manner and taking the seat across from her.
    “Eleanor, I’m sorry.”
    “What? What did you do?”
    “Yesterday when I saw you on the tape at the Mirage I asked Felton, he’s the captain here, to get me your number and address because you were unlisted. He did. But then without my knowledge he ran your name and pulled up your package. Then on his own he had his people get you this morning. It’s all part of this Tony Aliso thing.”
    “I told you. I didn’t know him. I had one drink with him once. Just because I happened by chance to be at the same table with him they bring me in?”
    She shook her head and looked away, the distress written on her face. This was the way it would always be, she now knew. The criminal record she carried would guarantee it.
    “I’ve got to ask you something. I want to get this cleared up and get you out of here.”
    “What?”
    “Tell me about this man Terrence Quillen.”
    He saw the shock in her eyes.
    “Quillen? What does he-is he the suspect?”
    “Eleanor, you know how this works. I can’t tell you things. You tell me. Just answer the question. Do you know Terrence Quillen?”
    “Yes.”
    “How do you know him?”
    “He came up to me about six months ago when I was leaving the Flamingo. I had been out here four or five months. I was settling in, playing six nights a week by then. He came up to me and in his words told me what’s what. He somehow knew about me. Who I was, that I’d just gotten out. He said there was a street tax. He said I had to pay it, that all the locals paid it, and that if I didn’t there’d be trouble. He said that if I did pay it, he’d watch out for me. Be there if I ever got in a jam. You know how it goes, extortion plain and simple.”
    She broke then and started to cry. It took all of Bosch’s will not to get up and try to hold her and comfort her in some way.
    “I was alone,” she said. “Scared. I paid. I pay him every week. What was I supposed to do. I had nothing and nowhere to go.”
    “Fuck it,” Bosch said under his breath.
    He got up and squeezed around the end of the table and grabbed hold of her. He pulled her to his chest and kissed the top of her head.
    “Nothing’s going to happen,” he whispered. “I promise you that, Eleanor.”
    He held her there in silence for a few moments, listening to her quiet crying, until the door opened and Iverson stood there. He had a toothpick in his mouth.
    “Get the fuck out of here, Iverson.”
    The detective slowly closed the door.
    “I’m sorry,” Eleanor said. “I’m getting you in trouble.”
    “No, you’re not. It’s all on me. Everything is on me.”
    A few minutes later he walked back into Felton’s office. The captain looked up at him wordlessly.
    “She was paying off Quillen to leave her alone. Two hundred a week. That was all it was. The street tax. She doesn’t know anything about anything. She happened by chance to be at the same table as Aliso for about an hour Friday. She’s clean. Now kick her loose. Tell your people.”
    Felton leaned back and started tapping his lower lip with the end of a pen. He was showing Bosch his deep-thinking pose.
    “I don’t know,” he said.
    “Okay, this is the deal. You let her go and I make a call to my people.”
    “And what’ll you tell ’em?”
    “I’ll tell them I’ve gotten excellent cooperation from Metro out here and that we ought to run this as a joint operation. I’ll say we’re going to put the