Trunk Music

started when it all went down.”
    She nodded again. Her mind wasn’t on the subject. Bosch stood up.
    “I’ll listen to the tapes tonight. There’s about seven hours but Fitzgerald said it’s mostly Aliso talking to his girlfriend in Vegas. Nothing much else. But I’ll listen anyway. You need anything else, Lieutenant?”
    “No. Let’s talk in the morning. I want to know about the ballistics as soon as you know.”
    “You got it.”
    Bosch headed to the door but she stopped him.
    “It’s weird, isn’t it, when sometimes you can’t tell the good guys from the bad.”
    He looked back at her.
    “Yeah, it’s weird.”
    The house still smelled of fresh paint when Bosch finally got home. He looked at the wall he had started to paint three days before and it seemed long ago. He didn’t know when he’d finish now. The house had been a ground-up rebuilding job after the earthquake. He’d only been back a few weeks after more than a year of living in a residence hotel near the station. The earthquake, too, seemed long ago. Things happened fast in this city. Everything but the moment seemed like ancient history.
    He got out the number Felton had given him for Eleanor Wish and called it but there was no answer, not even a machine picking up. He hung up and wondered if she had gotten the note he left for her. His hope was that they would somehow be together after this case was over. But if it came to that, he realized, he wasn’t sure how he’d deal with the department’s prohibition against associating with a convicted felon.
    His thoughts about this spun into the question of how Fitzgerald had found out about her and the night they had spent together in her apartment. It seemed to him it was likely that Fitzgerald would maintain contacts with Metro, and he guessed that maybe Felton or Iverson had informed the deputy chief about Eleanor Wish.
    Bosch made two sandwiches of lunch meat from the refrigerator and then took them, two bottles of beer and the box of tapes Fitzgerald had given him over to the chair next to his stereo. As he ate, he arranged the tapes in chronological order and then started playing them. There was a photocopy of a log and pen register with entries showing what time of day Aliso either received or made the calls and what number he had called.
    More than half the calls were between Aliso and Layla, either placed to the club-Bosch could tell because of the background music and noise-or a number he assumed was her apartment. She never identified herself on any of the calls, but on the occasions Tony called her at the club he asked for her by her stage name, Layla. Other than that, he never used her name. Most of their conversations were about the minutia of daily life. He called her most often at home in the midafternoon. In one call to her home, Layla was angry at Aliso for waking her up. He complained that it was already noon and she reminded him that she had worked until four at the club. Like a chastened boy, he apologized and offered to call back. He did, at two.
    In addition to the conversations with Layla there were calls to other women involving the timing of a scene that needed to be reshot for one of Tony’s movies and various other film-related business calls. There were two calls placed by Aliso to his home but both of his conversations with his wife were quick and to the point. One time he said he was coming home and the other time he said he was going to be held up and wouldn’t be home for dinner.
    When Bosch was done it was after midnight and he had counted only one of the conversations as being of even marginal interest. It was a call placed to the dressing room at the club on the Tuesday before Aliso was murdered. In the midst of their rather boring, innocuous conversation, Layla asked him when he was coming out next.
    “Comin’ out Thursday, baby,” Aliso replied. “Why, you miss me already?”
    “No-I mean, yeah, sure, I miss you and all, Tone. But Lucky was asking if you were coming. That’s why I asked.”
    Layla had a soft, little-girl voice that seemed unpracticed or fake.
    “Well, tell him I’ll be in Thursday night. You working then?”
    “Yeah, I’m working.”
    Bosch turned off the stereo and thought about the one call that mattered. It meant Goshen knew, through Layla, that Aliso was coming out. It wasn’t much, but it could probably be used by a prosecutor as part of an argument for premeditation. The problem was that it was tainted evidence. In