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“No. Nothing stays a secret forever, but if I told you, it would be a betrayal. Not just of him, but of all of us.”
Ballard slowly nodded. She instinctively guessed that they had gotten all they could from Beecher. He had admitted that he lied but confirmed the alibi of Harmon Harris.
“Okay, let me ask you this,” Ballard said. “If you weren’t with Harris, how do you know he was actually with this other person? This Mr. X movie star.”
“Because I asked him.”
“You asked Mr. X?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to just take Harmon’s word and lie to the cops. I went to him and asked. He confirmed. End of story, and you have to leave now.”
“You know, we could charge you for lying to us back then.”
“After seventeen years? I really doubt that.”
Ballard knew her threat had backfired almost as soon as she said it. She could think of no other way to get the name she needed from Beecher.
“Are you still in touch with Mr. X?” she asked.
“No, not really,” Beecher said. “He’s gotten so big you can’t get near him even to say, ‘Hey, you remember me?’”
“Could you reach out and get him to call us anonymously? I just want to confirm this and move on with the investigation.”
“No. It’s impossible for him to be anonymous. You’d know who you’re talking to within ten seconds.”
Ballard nodded and glanced over at Bosch. It was her signal for him to ask any questions he might be sitting on. But he gave a slight shake of the head. He had nothing to ask that hadn’t already been asked.
“Okay, Mr. Beecher, thank you for your cooperation,” shesaid. “I’m going to leave you my card, and I hope you’ll call if you think of any further information to share with me.”
“Fine,” Beecher said. “But I don’t think I’ll be calling you.”
All three of them stood up and headed toward the door. Beecher opened it and then stepped back to let Ballard and Bosch out. As Bosch passed him, Beecher spoke.
“You don’t talk too much, do you?” he said.
“I usually don’t have to,” Bosch said.
18
BOSCH WAS LISTENING to the King Curtis live album recorded at the Fillmore West just a few months before he was murdered in 1971. He popped the volume two notches for “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and thought about all the music not recorded by the sax player because of his early demise in a fight in front of his New York apartment. Parker, Coltrane, Brown, Baker—the list of those who left the stage in mid-song was long. It got Bosch thinking about the Gallagher family and all that was lost with them. The kids never even had the chance to leave a song behind.
There was a short honk from outside the house and Bosch lifted the needle off the record and killed the power to the stereo. He grabbed his keys and went out the front door. Ballard was in her city ride at the curb, the passenger door already open. It told Bosch that something had her in a hurry this morning. He got in quickly and pulled his seat belt on.
“Morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” she said. “Was that Procol Harum you were playing?”
She said it with surprise in her voice as she pulled away from the curb and headed down to Cahuenga.
“Close,” Bosch said. “It was a cover by King Curtis.”
“My father loved that song,” Ballard said. “He’d sit on the beach after surfing and play it on this toy flute he had.”
“First time I heard it was on a harmonica. A guy in Vietnam. It sounded like a funeral song to me. And that guy, he never made it home.”
That ended the conversation and Bosch became self-conscious about the buzzkill. Ballard rescued him by handing him a piece of paper he knew came from her notebook.
“What’s this?”
