“No. Who would do this? Javier was good man.”
“Did he say anything recently about angry customers or employees?”
“No. Everybody happy. It was a happy place.”
“Did Javier have a will?”
Josefina’s face showed confusion. Ballard looked at Gabriel, trying to think of how to explain. Bosch called from the back of the chapel.
“Ultimo testamento.”
Ballard looked back at him and nodded, realizing he’d had many such conversations in his years as a homicide detective. She looked back at Josefina, who spoke to her son in Spanish.
“She doesn’t know,” Gabriel said.
“Did he have a lawyer?” Ballard asked. “Abogado?”
“Sí, sí, sí,” Josefina said. “Dario Calvente es su abogado.”
Ballard nodded.
“Thank you,” she said. “We’re going to call on him and he may ask you for permission to talk to us.”
Gabriel translated and Josefina nodded.
“Did Mr. Calvente come today?”
Josefina nodded.
“Did you know your husband’s business partner?” Ballard asked.
“No,” Josefina said.
“Was he here today? Dr. Hoyle?”
“I don’t know.”
It was clear to Ballard that Josefina knew little about Javier’s business dealings and that she needed to talk to the lawyer for clarity on things like the will, insurance, and records pertaining to the partnership.
“Josefina, did you know that Javier had to pay his way out of the Las Palmas gang?” Ballard asked.
Josefina nodded and seemed to take a moment to compose her answer. She spoke in Spanish and Gabriel translated.
“We could not have a family if he was doing these things with the gang,” he said.
“How much did he have to pay?” Ballard asked.
“Veinticinco,” Josefina said.
“Twenty-five thousand?”
“Sí. Yes.”
“Okay. Where did he get that money?”
“El dentista.”
“His partner.”
“Sí.”
“How did he know the dentist? Who brought the dentist?”
Gabriel translated the question but there was no answer to translate back. Josefina shook her head. She didn’t know.
Ballard said that she would be in touch when she had something more to report on the investigation and asked Gabriel to translate for Josefina to make sure she understood. She and Bosch left then and walked to his car.
“Should we see if we can run down Dario Calvente, the abogado?” Ballard asked.
“It’s a Sunday,” Bosch said. “I doubt he’ll be in his office.”
“We can find him. Let’s take my car. I’ll bring you back afterward.”
“Perfect.”
Ballard googled the lawyer’s name on her phone and found his website. Before she got to the car, she was leaving a message on his office line. Like Cindy Carpenter’s attorney, Calvente’s website promised 24/7 service.
“I’ll run his DMV and get his home address if he doesn’t call back pretty quick,” she told Bosch.
They got into the Defender and almost immediately Ballard got a call with a blocked ID that she assumed was Calvente.
“Detective Ballard.”
“Ballard, are you ducking my calls?”
She recognized the voice of Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds.
“L-T, no. I, uh, was in a church so I had my phone off.”
“I know it’s Sunday, Ballard, but I didn’t think you were the church type.”
“It was a memorial for my homicide victim. I needed to speak to the family and, you know, see who showed up.”
“Ballard, you should not be working. You should be in the hospital.”
“I’m fine, Lieutenant. It was just a knock on the head.”
“Look, the overnight report said an EMT told you to go home. I don’t want this on an EMT, okay? I want you to go to an ER and get checked out before you do any more work.”
“I’m following a lead and I’m telling you, I’m — ”
“This is not a suggestion, Detective. This is an order. We are not going to risk anything with a head injury. Go to the ER and get checked out. Then call me back so I know.”
“Fine. I’ll finish up here and go.”
“Tonight, Detective. I want to hear from you tonight.”
“You got it, L-T.”
She disconnected and told Bosch about the order.
“Sounds like a smart move,” he said.
“You too now?” she said. “I’m fine and this will be a big waste of time.”
“You’re a cop. They’ll get you in quick.”
“Well, I’m not going to do it until I’m on duty. I’m not wasting my own time. And speaking of time, I’m not going to wait for this abogado to call back. Twenty-four-seven, my ass.”
She called the com center, identified herself and gave her serial number, then asked for a DMV check on Dario Calvente. She got lucky. There was only one that had a Los Angeles address. She thanked the operator and disconnected.
“Silver Lake,” she said. “You still want to go?”
“Let’s do it,” Bosch said.
It took them fifteen minutes to drive over. Calvente lived in a 1930s Spanish-style house across from the reservoir. They climbed a set of stone stairs to get to the front porch. There was a large picture window with a view of the lake, but it was covered with a sign that said black lives matter.
Ballard knocked on the door and had her badge off her belt and in her hand. The door was answered by a man of about forty whom Ballard recognized from the receiving line at the memorial. He still had his suit on but the tie was gone. He had a thick mustache and brown eyes as dark as Bosch’s.
“Mr. Calvente, LAPD,” Ballard said. “Sorry to bother you at home, but we left a message at your office and you didn’t return it.”
Calvente pointed at her.
“I saw you today,” he said. “At the memorial for Javier.”
“That’s right,” Ballard said. “My name is Renée Ballard and this is my colleague Harry Bosch. Josefina Raffa told us you were her husband’s attorney and we would like to ask you a few questions.”
“I don’t know what I can tell you,” Calvente said. “I did some work for Javier, yes, but it was in trade for work on my car. I wouldn’t call myself his lawyer per se.”
“Do you know if he had another lawyer?”
“No, I don’t think so. This is why he asked me if I could help.”
“And when was this?”
“Oh, a few months ago. My wife, she had an accident and I had the car towed to Javier’s. When he found out I was a lawyer, he asked me to do some work.”
“What was the work? Can you tell us?”
“There was privilege involved but it was a contract he had signed. He wanted to know how to dissolve a partnership.”
“Was this for his business?”
Calvente looked past them and out at the reservoir. He canted his head back and forth as if weighing whether to answer. Then he looked at Ballard and nodded his head once.
“Were you able to help him?” Ballard asked.
“Contract law is not my specialty,” Calvente said. “I told him that I saw no place in the contract that I thought he could attack. And I told him he should seek a second opinion from a contract attorney. I asked if he wanted a referral and he said no. And for this he gave me a discount on the repairs of our car. That was it.”
“Do you remember, was the partner named Dennis Hoyle?”
“I think that was the name but I can’t be sure. It’s been a few months.”
“Did he tell you anything about why he wanted to break the contract?”
“He just said it was not a good situation, because he had long ago paid off a debt to this man but he had to keep paying him out of the profits. I remember the contract had no termination. It was a full partnership for the life of the business.”
“What was Hoyle’s stake in the business?”
“I think twenty-five percent.”
“If this review was all you did for him, why did you go to the memorial today?”
“Well, I, uh, wanted to express my condolences to the family and say I was available for anything they might need. In a legal capacity, of course.”
“How did you know, by the way, that he had been the victim of a homicide?”
“I saw the memorial scheduled at the church when I attended this morning. I did not know it was a homicide until I was there today. It was a terrible thing for the family.”