Ballard folded her arms across her chest, not ready to give in on the point just yet.
“So, you’re saying you might have the chrono but you don’t have the book?”
“Exactly. I kept the chronos in case they ever got cleared and I got pulled into court to testify about the initial investigation. I wanted to be able to refresh my memory, that sort of thing. I remember the Albert Lee case. It wasn’t the kind of case where I’d even want to steal the book.”
Ballard shifted her stance and looked back at the dining room table. She saw a six-inch stack of documents she had not noticed when she had entered. The top page was clearly the front page of an autopsy report. She pointed to it.
“And what’s that?” she asked. “That looks like a whole book at least.”
“It’s parts of about six books,” Bosch said. “But it isn’t Lee. Look for yourself if you don’t believe me. Why would I lie to you about this, Renée?”
“I don’t know. But stealing books is not cool.”
“I agree. That’s why I never did it.”
She walked over to the table and used a hand to spread the stack out over the table so she could see some of the documents. One of the documents had what looked like a surveillance photo attached to it. It showed a man getting into a car in what was clearly the parking lot of an In-N-Out restaurant. There was no time-and-date stamp, so it wasn’t an official stakeout shot.
“Who’s this?” she asked.
“It’s not the Lee case,” Bosch insisted. “It’s something else entirely, okay?”
“I’m just asking. Who is it?”
“Finbar McShane.”
Ballard nodded. It explained the stack. Some cases spawn many murder books. Especially the unsolved cases.
“I thought so,” she said. “Can’t let it go, can you?”
“And what, you think I should?” Bosch asked. “He killed a whole family and got away with it. I should let it go?”
“I’m not saying that. I know it’s your white whale, Harry. We’ve talked about it.”
“Okay, then you know.”
Ballard wanted to switch the conversation back to her case.
“You said Lee wasn’t the kind of case you’d copy a whole book for,” she said. “What do you mean by that?”
“It didn’t get its hooks into me,” Bosch said.
“Why not?”
“Well, as you know, or as I guess you will come to know, some people are sort of the architects of their own demise. And others, they get hit by the bus. They’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time and they did nothing to bring on their fate. They’re innocent.”
Bosch gestured to the pile of documents spread out on his table.
“And they’re the ones who get their hooks in you,” he said.
Ballard nodded and was silent for a moment, as if giving all those who were innocent her respect.
“Hooks or no hooks, can you tell me what you remember about Lee?” she asked. “I’ve made a ballistic connection to the killing of a man in Hollywood last night.”
Bosch raised his eyebrows. He was finally intrigued.
“Last murder of the year, huh?” he said.
“Actually, the first,” Ballard said. “When the shooting started at midnight, somebody put one in my victim’s head.”
“Audio camouflage. Clever. Who’s the vic?”
“Harry, you’re not the one asking questions here. Tell me about Lee first, then we can talk about my case. Maybe.”
“Got it. You want to sit?”
He gestured toward the table instead of the more comfortable living room. He moved behind it, where his back would be to a wall of unkempt stacks of books, files, CDs, and LPs, and sat down. Ballard sat across from him.
As Bosch spoke, he pushed the files Ballard had spread out back into a squared-off pile.
“Albert Lee, black male, I think he was thirty-four when he died. Maybe thirty-three. He had a good idea. Rappers were becoming stars overnight, making their own tapes, coming right out of the ghetto and all of that. He borrowed money and opened a recording studio up in North Hollywood. It was nice, it was out of the gang territories of South Central, and people could come in, rent time in the studio, and lay down their raps. It was a great idea.”
“Until it wasn’t.”
“Right, until it wasn’t. I mentioned he borrowed the money. He had a monthly nut he had to pay, plus rent and other expenses. Plus some of these people who came up to his place to record — ”
“Were gangsters.”
“No. I mean, yeah, they were, but what I was going to say was they had no money for studio time, and Albert — he had a soft side — he’d let them record if they signed over a piece of whatever they made off the beats, you know?”
“Got it. Just try to collect on that down the line.”
“Exactly, and a few of these people hit it sort of big, but even then collecting was slow. He sued a couple of those guys and it got all tied up in the courts.”
“He was going out of business?”
“That would have been the case but he took on an investor. Do you know what factoring is?”
“Nope.”
“It’s a high-interest business loan that is sort of a bridge loan. It’s secured by your accounts receivable. Make sense?”
“Not really, no.”
“Say your company is owed a hundred dollars but it’s not going to come in for a couple months. A factor loan would give you the hundred so you can keep the business rolling, but it’s not secured by property or equipment, because none of that stuff is owned by the company. It’s all rented. The only value the company has for securing a loan is what it’s owed — accounts receivable.”
“Okay, I got it.”
“So that’s what Albert Lee did. Only these are high-interest loans — it gets right up to the edge of loan-sharking but doesn’t cross the line. It’s legal and that’s the road Albert went down. He took out three different loans totaling a hundred thousand, got upside down, and couldn’t pay them because his lawsuits were delayed and delayed. So, soon his loan guy takes over the business. He leaves Albert in charge and running the place, he pays him a salary, and — and this is the thing — he makes him take out a key person insurance policy in case something happens to him.”
“Oh, shit. How much?”
“A million.”
“So Albert gets whacked and the loan guy gets paid.”
“Exactly.”
“But you couldn’t make a case.”
“Couldn’t get it there.”
Bosch gestured to the stack of documents on the table.
“Like this one. I have a pretty good idea who did it, but I can’t get it there. But unlike this family, Albert went down the road with his killer. For some people, the wolf breaks into the house. With people like Albert, they invite the wolf in.”
“So no sympathy for the guy who invites the wolf in. How does that fit with ‘everybody counts or nobody counts’?”
“The guy who opens the door still counts. But the innocents come first. When I get all of those solved, we can talk about the next wave. Everybody still counts. There are only so many hours in the day and days in the year.”