Bosch knew Leicas were expensive cameras, so he assumed that Santanello was serious about his photography. Yet there weren’t many printed photos in the box. He checked the envelopes containing the negative strips and determined that there were far more frames of developed film than there were prints. He figured Santanello must not have had the money or access to print out all of his work while in Vietnam. He probably planned to do that when he got back home to the States.
The last thing Bosch did was open the back of the camera to see if Santanello had used the interior space to smuggle more drugs. Instead he found a coil of film around the take-up spool. At first he thought he had opened the camera on unexposed film, but as he unfurled the coil, he realized that it was a strip of developed negatives that had been rolled up and then secreted in the camera.
The strip was brittle and it cracked and broke apart in his hands as he attempted to unfurl it and look at the images. He held one piece of three shots up to the flashlight beam. He saw that each shot was a photo of a woman with what looked like a mountain behind her.
And she was holding a baby.
16
Bosch drove out to Burbank in the morning and into a commercial industrial area near the airport and the Valhalla Memorial Park. A couple blocks from the cemetery he pulled into the lot in front of Flashpoint Graphix. He had called ahead and was expected.
Flashpoint was a sprawling business that created large-scale photo-illustrations for billboards, buildings, buses, and all other advertising media. On any day its fine work could be seen across a spectrum of locations in Los Angeles and beyond. There wasn’t an angle anywhere on the Sunset Strip that didn’t include a Flashpoint creation. And it was all run by a man named Guy Claudy, who in an earlier life had been a forensic photographer for the LAPD. Bosch and Claudy had worked a number of crime scenes together in the ’80s and ’90s, before Claudy left to open his own photography and graphics business. The two had stayed in touch over the years, usually taking in a Dodgers game or two each season, and when Bosch called him that morning to ask a favor, Claudy said he should come on over.
Dressed casually in jeans and a Tommy Bahama shirt, Claudy met Bosch in a nondescript reception area—Flashpoint didn’t rely on walk-in business—and led him back to a more opulent but not over-the-top office where the walls were hung with framed photos from the Dodgers’ glory years. Bosch knew without asking that Claudy had taken the photos during a short stint as team photographer. One showed the pitcher Fernando Valenzuela exulting from the mound. The glasses he wore allowed Bosch to place the shot— toward the end of the storied pitcher’s career. He pointed at the frame.
“The no-hitter,” he said. “The Cardinals, 1990.”
“Yep,” Claudy said. “Good memory.”
“I remember I was on a surveillance in Echo Park. Up on White Knoll. It was me and Frankie Sheehan—you remember the Doll-maker case?”
“Of course. You got the guy.”
“Yeah, well, that night we were watching a different guy up on White Knoll and we could see the stadium from there and we listened to Vinny call the no-hitter. We could hear the broadcast coming out of all the open windows of the houses. I wanted to bail out on the surveillance and go over for the last inning. You know, badge our way into the stadium and watch. But we stayed put and listened to Vinny. I remember it ended on a double-play.”
“Yep, and I wasn’t expecting that—Guerrero hitting into a double. I almost didn’t get the shot because I was reloading. And, man, what are we going to do now without Vinny?”
It was a reference to the retirement of Vin Scully, the Dodgers’ venerable announcer who had called the team’s games since 1950— an incredibly long record going all the way back to when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “He might’ve started in Brooklyn but he’s the voice of this city. It won’t be the same without him.”
They somberly sat down on either side of a desk and Bosch tried to change the subject.
“So this is a big place you’ve got here,” he said, thoroughly impressed by how large his friend’s business was. “I had no idea.”
“Forty thousand square feet—that’s the size of a Best Buy,” Claudy said. “And we need more room. But you know what? I still miss the crime stuff. Tell me you have some crime stuff for me to do.”
Bosch smiled.
“Well, I’ve got a mystery but I don’t think there’s any crime involved.”
“Mystery is good. I’ll take mystery. What’ve you got?”
Bosch handed him the envelope he had carried in from the car. It contained the negatives that included the shot of the woman and the baby. He had shown them to Olivia Macdonald but she had no idea who the woman or child was. Just as intrigued as Harry, she had allowed him to take the envelope along with the toiletries kit.
“I’m on a private case,” Bosch said. “And I found these negatives. They’re almost fifty years old and they’ve been in an attic without air-conditioning or heat. On top of that they’re damaged—they cracked and broke apart in my hand when I found them. I want to know what you can do with them.”
Claudy opened the envelope and poured its contents out on his desk. He leaned over and looked straight down at the broken pieces of the negative strip without touching them.
“Some of them look like they show a woman in front of a mountaintop,” Bosch said. “I’m interested in all of it, but in those the most. The woman. I think the location is someplace in Vietnam.”
“Yeah, you have some cupping here. Some cracking. It’s Fuji film.”
“Meaning what?”
“It usually holds up pretty well. Who is she?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I want to see her. And the baby she’s holding.”
Claudy said, “Okay. I think I can do something with this. My guys in the lab can. We’ll rewash and re-dry them. Then we’ll print. I see some fingerprints and they might be set after so long.”
Bosch considered that. His assumption was that Santanello took the shots. They were with his camera and other negatives taken by him. Why would someone send developed negatives to a soldier in Vietnam? But if it was ever questioned, the fingerprints might be useful.
“What’s your time frame?” Claudy asked.
“Yesterday,” Bosch said.
Claudy smiled.
“Of course,” he said. “You’re Hurry-Up-Harry.”
Bosch smiled back and nodded. Nobody had called him that since Claudy had left the department.
“So give me an hour,” Claudy said. “You can go to our break room and make a Nespresso.”
“I hate those things,” Bosch replied.
“Okay, then go take a walk in the cemetery. More your style anyway. One hour.”
“One hour.”
Bosch stood up.
“Give my regards to Oliver Hardy,” Claudy said. “He’s in there.”
“Will do,” Bosch said.
Bosch left Flashpoint and walked down Valhalla Drive. It was only when he entered the cemetery by a huge memorial that he remembered that in his research of Whitney Vance he had read that Vance’s father was buried here. Close to Caltech and under the jet path of Bob Hope Airport, the cemetery was the final resting place for a variety of aviation pioneers, designers, pilots, and barnstormers. They were interred or memorialized in and around a tall domed structure called the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation. Bosch found Nelson Vance’s memorial plaque on the tiled floor of the shrine.
NELSON VANCE
Visionary Air Pioneer
Earliest Advocate of U.S. Air Power, Whose Prophetic Vision
and Leadership Was a Primary Factor in American
Supremacy in the Air in War and Peace
Bosch noticed that there was a space next to the memorial plaque for another interment and wondered if this was already on reserve as Whitney Vance’s final destination.