Trunk Music

up while he was in Las Vegas, yet he had been killed here in L.A. He thanked Salazar, calling him Sally as many people did, and headed out. He was in the hallway before he remembered something and went back to the door of the autopsy suite. When he stuck his head in, he saw Salazar tying the sheet around the body, making sure the toe tag hung free and could be read.
    “Hey, Sally, the guy had hemorrhoids, right?”
    Salazar looked back at him with a quizzical look on his face.
    “Hemorrhoids? No. Why do you ask?”
    “I found a tube of Preparation H in his car. In the glove box. It was half used.”
    “Hmmm…well, no hemorrhoids. Not on this one.”
    Bosch wanted to ask him if he was sure but knew that would be insulting. He let it go for the moment and left.
    Details fueled any investigation. They were important and not to be misplaced or forgotten. As he headed toward the glass exit doors of the coroner’s office, Bosch found himself bothered by the detail of the tube of Preparation H found in the glove box of the Silver Cloud. If Tony Aliso hadn’t suffered from hemorrhoids, then whom did the tube belong to and why was it in his car? He could dismiss it as probably being unimportant, but that wasn’t his way. Everything had its place in an investigation, Bosch believed. Everything.
    His deep concentration on this problem caused Bosch to go through the glass doors and down the stairs to the parking lot before he saw Carbone standing there smoking a cigarette and waiting. When Bosch had dropped him off earlier, the OCID detective had begged for a couple of hours to get the tapes together. Bosch had agreed but hadn’t told him that he was heading to an autopsy. So he now assumed that Carbone had called the bureau in Hollywood and been told by Billets or someone else that he was at the coroner’s office. Bosch wouldn’t check this with Carbone because he didn’t want to show any kind of concern that the OCID detective had so easily found him.
    “Bosch.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Somebody wants to talk.”
    “Who? When? I want the tapes, Carbone.”
    “Cool your jets for a couple minutes. Over here in the car.”
    He led Bosch to the second parking row, where there was a car with its engine running and its dark-tinted windows all the way up.
    “Hop in the back,” Carbone said.
    Bosch nonchalantly walked to the door, still showing no concern. He opened it and ducked in. Leon Fitzgerald was sitting in the back. He was a tall man-more than six and a half feet-and his knees were pressed hard against the back of the driver’s seat. He wore a beautiful suit of blue silk and held the stub of a cigar between his fingers. He was almost sixty and his hair was a jet-black dye job. His eyes, behind steel-rimmed glasses, were pale gray. His skin was pasty white. He was a night man.
    “Chief,” Bosch said, nodding.
    He had never met Fitzgerald before but had seen him often enough at cop funerals and on television news reports. He was the embodiment of the OCID. No one else from the secretive division ever went on camera.
    “Detective Bosch,” Fitzgerald said. “I know of you. Know of your exploits. Over the years you have been suggested to me more than once as a candidate for our unit.”
    “Why didn’t you call?”
    Carbone had come around and gotten in the driver’s seat. He started moving the car slowly through the lot.
    “Because like I said, I know of you,” Fitzgerald was saying. “And I know you would not leave homicide. Homicide is your calling. Am I correct?”
    “Pretty much.”
    “Which brings us to the current homicide case you are pursuing. Dom?”
    With one hand, Carbone passed a shoebox over the seat. Fitzgerald took it and put it on Bosch’s lap. Bosch opened it and found it full of audiocassette tapes with dates written on tape stuck to the cases.
    “From Aliso’s phone?” he asked.
    “Obviously.”
    “How long were you on it?”
    “We’d only been listening for nine days. It hadn’t been productive, but the tapes are yours.”
    “And what do you want in return, Chief?”
    “What do I want?”
    Fitzgerald looked out the window, down at the railroad switching yard in the valley below the parking lot.
    “What do I want?” he asked again. “I want the killer, of course. But I also want you to be careful. The department’s been through a lot these past few years. No need to hang our dirty laundry in public once again.”
    “You want me to bury Carbone’s extracurricular