Trunk Music

isn’t there someone from OCID sitting in this room right now?”
    Billets looked at Bosch and almost imperceptibly nodded. The question was being passed to him.
    “Initially,” Bosch said, “OCID was informed of the murder and the victim’s ID and they passed. They said they didn’t know Tony Aliso. As recently as two hours ago I had a conversation with Leon Fitzgerald and told him what it looked like we had. He offered whatever expertise his people had but felt we were too far along now to have fresh people come in. He wished us best of luck with it.”
    Gregson stared at him a long moment and then nodded. The prosecutor was in his mid-forties with short-cropped hair already completely gray. Bosch had never worked with him but he’d heard the name. Gregson had been around-long enough to know there was more to what Bosch had said. But he had also been around long enough to let it go for the time being. Billets didn’t give him a lot of time to make something of it anyway.
    “Okay, so why don’t we brainstorm a little bit before we call it a night?” she said. “What do we think happened to this man? We’re gathering a lot of information, a lot of evidence, but do we know what happened to him?”
    She looked at the faces gathered in the room. Finally, Rider spoke up.
    “My guess is that the IRS audit brought it all about,” she said. “He got the notice in the mail and he made a fatal mistake. He told this guy in Vegas, Joey Marks, that the government was going to look at his books and his cheap movies and the scam was likely going to come out. Joey Marks responded the way you expect these guys to respond. He whacked him. He had his man Goshen follow Tony back home from Vegas so it would happen far away from him and Goshen puts him in the trunk.”
    The others nodded their heads in agreement. This included Bosch. The information he’d received from Fitzgerald fit with this scenario as well.
    “It was a good plan,” Edgar said. “Only mistake was the fingerprints Artie Donovan got off the jacket. That was pure luck and if we didn’t have that, we probably wouldn’t have any of this. That was the only mistake.”
    “Maybe not,” Bosch said. “The prints on the jacket just hurried things along, but Metro in Vegas was already working a tip from an informant who overheard Lucky Goshen talking about hitting somebody and putting them in a trunk. It would’ve gotten back to us. Eventually.”
    “Well, I’d rather be already on it than waiting for eventually,” Billets said. “Any alternative theories we should also be chasing? Are we clear on the wife, the angry screenwriter, his other associates?”
    “Nothing that sticks out,” Rider said. “There definitely was no love lost between the victim and the wife but she seems clean so far. I pulled the gatehouse log up there with a warrant and her car never left Hidden Highlands on Friday night. She seems clean.”
    “What about the letter to the IRS?” Gregson asked. “Who sent it? Obviously, someone with pretty good knowledge of what this man was doing, but who would that be?”
    “This could all be part of a power play within the Joey Marks group,” Bosch said. “Like I said before, something about the look on Goshen’s face when he saw that gun and his claims later that it was a plant…I don’t know, maybe somebody tipped the IRS knowing it would get Tony whacked and that they could then possibly lay it off on Goshen. With Goshen gone, this person moves up.”
    “You’re saying Goshen didn’t do it?” Gregson asked, his eyebrows arched.
    “No. I think Goshen is probably good for it. But I don’t think he was counting on that gun showing up behind the toilet. It doesn’t make sense, anyway, to keep it around. So say he whacks out Tony Aliso on orders from Joey Marks. He gives the gun to somebody in his crew to get rid of. Only that person goes and plants it at the house-this is the same person who sent the letter to the IRS in the first place to get the whole thing going. Now we come along and wrap Goshen up in a bow. The guy who stashed the gun and sent the letter, he’s in a position to move up.”
    Bosch looked at their faces as they tried to follow the logic.
    “Maybe Goshen isn’t the intended target,” Rider said.
    Everyone looked at her.
    “Maybe there’s one more play. Maybe it’s someone who wants Goshen and Joey Marks out of the way so he can move in.”
    “How will they get Marks now?” Edgar