The Black Echo (10 page)

“You can call me Harry.”

“As I am doing what for you?”

“Interdepartmental cooperation,” he said. “Kinda like you and our helicopter this morning.”

Bosch drank some of his coffee and said, “Your name is on a BOLO I came across yesterday. Year-old case out of downtown. I’m interested in it. I work homicide out of Hollywood Div-”

“Yes, I know,” Agent Wish interrupted.

“-ision.”

“The receptionist showed me the card you gave. By the way, do you need it back?”

That was a cheap shot. He saw his sad-looking business card on her clean green blotter. It had been in his wallet for months and its corners were curled up at the edges. It was one of the generic cards the department gave detectives who worked out in the bureaus. It had the embossed police badge on it and the Hollywood Division phone number but no name. You could buy yourself an ink pad and order a stamp and sit at your desk at the beginning of each week and stamp out a couple dozen cards. Or you could just write your name on the line with a pen and not give out too many. Bosch had done the latter. Nothing the department could do could embarrass him anymore.

“No, you can keep it. By the way, you have one?”

In a quick, impatient motion, she opened the top middle drawer of the desk, took a card out of a little tray and put it down on the desk top next to the elbow Bosch had leaned there. He took another sip of coffee while glancing down at it. The E stood for Eleanor.

“So anyway you know who I am and where I come from,” he began. “And I know a little bit about you. For instance, you investigated, or are investigating, a bank caper from last year in which the perps came in through the ground. A tunnel job. WestLand National.”

He noticed her attention immediately pick up with that, and even thought he sensed Gray Suit’s breathing catch. Bosch had a line in the right water.

“Your name is on the bulletins. I am investigating a homicide I believe is related to your case and I want to know… basically, I want to know what you’ve got… Can we talk about suspects, possible suspects… I think we might be looking for the same people. I think my guy might have been one of your perps.”

Wish was quiet for a moment and played with a pencil she’d picked up off the blotter. She pushed Bosch’s card around on the green square with the eraser end. Gray Suit was still acting like he was on the phone. Bosch glanced over at him and their eyes briefly connected. Bosch nodded and Gray Suit looked away. Bosch figured he was looking at the man whose comments had been in the newspaper articles. Special Agent John Rourke.

“You can do better than that, can’t you, Detective Bosch?” Wish said. “I mean, you just walk in here and wave the flag of cooperation and you expect me to just open up our files.”

She tapped the pencil three times on the desk and shook her head like she was disciplining a child.

“How about a name?” she said. “How about giving me some reason for the connection? We usually handle this kind of request through channels. We have liaisons that evaluate requests from other law enforcement agencies to share files and information. You know that. I think it might be best-”

Bosch pulled the FBI bulletin with the insurance photo of the bracelet out of his pocket. He unfolded it and laid it on the blotter. Then he took the pawnshop Polaroid out of the other pocket and also dropped that on the desk.

“WestLand National,” he said, tapping a finger on the bulletin. “The bracelet was pawned six weeks ago in a downtown shop. My guy pawned it. Now he’s dead.”

She kept her eyes on the Polaroid bracelet and Bosch saw recognition there. The case had stayed that much with her.

“The name is William Meadows. Found him in a pipe yesterday morning, up at the Mulholland Dam.”

Gray Suit ended his one-sided conversation. He said, “I appreciate the information. I have to go, we’re wrapping up a two eleven. Uh huh… Thank you… You too, good-bye now.”

Bosch didn’t look at him. He watched Wish. He thought he sensed that she wanted to look over at Gray Suit. Her eyes darted that way but then quickly went back to the photograph. Something wasn’t right, and Bosch decided to jump back into the silence.

“Why don’t we skip the bullshit, Agent Wish? As far as I can tell, you’ve never recovered a single stock certificate, a single coin, a single jewel, a single gold-and-jade bracelet. You’ve got nothing. So screw the liaison stuff. I mean, what is this? My guy pawned the bracelet; he ended up dead. Why? We have parallel investigations here, don’t you think? More likely, the same investigation.”

Nothing.

“My guy was either given that bracelet by your perps or he stole it from them. Or possibly, he was one of them. So, maybe the bracelet wasn’t supposed to turn up yet. Nothing else has. And he goes and breaks the rules and pawns the thing. They whack him, then go to the pawnshop and steal it back. Whatever. The thing is, we are looking for the same people. And I need a direction to start in.”

She remained silent still, but Bosch sensed a decision coming. This time he waited her out.

“Tell me about him,” she finally said.

He told her. About the anonymous call. About the body. About the apartment that had been searched. About finding the pawn stub hidden behind the photo. And then going to the pawnshop to find the bracelet stolen. He didn’t say that he had known Meadows.

“Anything else taken from the pawnshop, or just this bracelet?” she asked when he was done.

“Of course. Yes. But just as a cover for the real thing they wanted. The bracelet. Way I see it, Meadows was killed because whoever killed him wanted the bracelet. He was tortured before he was murdered because they wanted to know where it was. They got what they needed, killed him, then went and got the bracelet. Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes, I do. What could be so important about one bracelet? This bracelet is only a drop in the bucket of what was taken, of what hasn’t ever turned up.”

Bosch had thought of that and didn’t have an answer. He said, “I don’t know.”

“If he was tortured as you say, why was the pawn ticket there for you to find? And why did they have to break into the pawnshop? You’re suggesting that he told them where the bracelet was but didn’t give up the ticket?”

Bosch had thought about this, too. He said, “I don’t know. Maybe he knew they wouldn’t let him live. So he only gave them half of what they needed. He kept something back. It was a clue. He left the pawn stub behind as a clue.”

Bosch thought about the scenario. He had first begun to put it together when rereading his notes and the reports he had typed. He decided it was time to play one more card.

“I knew Meadows twenty years ago.”

“You knew this victim, Detective Bosch?” Her voice was louder now, accusatory. “Why didn’t you say that when you first came in here? Since when does the LAPD allow its detectives to go around investigating the deaths of their friends?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I knew him. Twenty years ago. And I didn’t ask for the case. It was my turn in the bucket. I got the call out. It was…”

He didn’t want to say coincidence.

“This is all very interesting,” Wish said. “It is also irregular. We-I’m not sure we can help you. I think-”

“Look, when I knew him, it was with the U.S. Army, First Infantry in Vietnam. Okay? We were both there. He was what they called a tunnel rat. Do you know what that means?… I was one too.”

Wish said nothing. She was looking down at the bracelet again. Bosch had totally forgotten about Gray Suit.

“The Vietnamese had tunnels under their villages,” Bosch said. “Some were a century old. The tunnels went from hootch to hootch, village to village, jungle to jungle. They were under some of our own camps, everywhere. And that was our job, the tunnel soldiers, to go down into those things. There was a whole other war under the ground.”

Bosch realized that aside from a shrink and a circle group at the VA in Sepulveda he had never told anyone about the tunnels and what he did.

“And Meadows, he was good at it. As much as you could like going down into that blackness with just a flashlight and a.45, well, he did. Sometimes we’d go down and it would take hours, and sometimes it would take days. And Meadows, well, he was the only one I ever knew over there that wasn’t scared of going down there. It was life above ground that scared him.”

She didn’t say anything. Bosch looked over at Gray Suit, who was writing on a yellow tablet Bosch couldn’t read. Bosch heard someone report on the tac channel that he was transporting two prisoners to the Metro lockup.

“So now twenty years later you’ve got a tunnel caper and I’ve got a dead tunnel fighter. He was found in a pipe, a tunnel. He had property from your caper.” Bosch felt around in his pockets for his cigarettes, then remembered she had said no. “We have to work together on this one. Right now.”

He knew by her face it hadn’t worked. He emptied his coffee cup, ready for the door. He didn’t look at Wish now. He heard Gray Suit pick up the phone again and punch a number out. He stared down at the residue of sugar in the bottom of his cup. He hated sugar in his coffee.

“Detective Bosch,” Wish began, “I am sorry you had to wait in the hall so long this morning. I am sorry this fellow soldier you knew, Meadows, is dead. Whether it was twenty years ago or not, I am. I have sympathy for him, and you, and what you may have had to go through… But I am also sorry that I can’t help you at the moment. I will have to follow established protocol and talk to my supervisor. I will get back to you. As soon as possible. That is all I can do at the moment.”

Bosch dropped the cup into a trash can next to her desk and reached over to pick up the Polaroid and the bulletin page.

“Can we keep the photo here?” Agent Wish asked. “I need to show it to my supervisor.”

Bosch kept the Polaroid. He got up and stepped in front of Gray Suit’s desk. He held the Polaroid up to the man’s face. “He’s seen it,” he said over his shoulder as he walked out of the office.

Deputy Chief Irvin Irving sat at his desk, bruxing his teeth and working the muscles of his jaw into hard rubber balls. He was disturbed. And this clenching and gnashing of teeth was his habit when disturbed or in solitary, contemplative moods. As a result, the musculature of his jaw had become the most pronounced feature of his face. When looked at head-on, Irving’s jawline was actually wider than his ears, which were pinned flat against his shaven skull and had a winglike shape to them. The ears and the jaw gave Irving an intimidating if not odd visage. He looked like a flying jaw, as though his powerful molars could crush marbles. And Irving did all he could to promote this image of himself as a fearsome junkyard dog who might sink his teeth into a shoulder or leg and tear out a piece of meat the size of a softball. It was an image that had helped overcome his one impediment as a Los Angeles policeman-his silly name-and could only aid him in his long-planned ascendancy to the chief’s office on the sixth floor. So he indulged the habit, even if it did cost him a new set of $2,000 molar implants every eighteen months.

Irving pulled his tie tight against his throat and ran his hand over his gleaming scalp. He reached to the intercom buzzer. Though he could have easily pushed the speaker button then and barked his command, he waited for his new adjutant’s reply first. This was another of his habits.

“Yes, Chief?”

He loved hearing that. He smiled, then leaned forward until his great, wide jaw was inches from the intercom speaker. He was a man who did not trust that technology could do what it was supposed to do. He had to put his mouth to the speaker and shout.

“Mary, get me the jacket on Harry Bosch. It should be in the actives.”

He spelled the first and last names for her.

“Right away, Chief.”

Irving leaned back, smiled through clenched teeth but then thought he felt something out of alignment. He deftly ran his tongue over his left rear lower molar, searching for a defect in its smooth surface, maybe a slight fissure. Nothing. He opened the desk drawer and took out a small mirror. He opened his mouth and studied the back teeth. He put the mirror back and took out a pale blue Post-it pad and made a note to call for a dental checkup. He closed the drawer and remembered the time he had popped a fortune cookie into his mouth while dining with the city councilman from the Westside. The right rear lower molar had crumbled on the stale cookie. The junkyard dog decided to swallow the dental debris rather than expose the weakness to the councilman, whose confirmation vote he would someday need and expect. During the meal, he had brought to the councilman’s attention the fact that his nephew, an LAPD motorman, was a closet homosexual. Irving mentioned that he was doing his best to protect the nephew and prevent his exposure. The department was as homophobic as a Nebraska church, and if the word leaked to the rank and file, Irving explained to the councilman, the officer could forget any hope for advancement. He could also expect brutal harassment from the rest of L.A.’s finest. Irving didn’t need to mention the consequences if a scandal broke publicly. Even on the liberal Westside, it wouldn’t help a councilman’s mayoral ambitions.

Irving was smiling at the memory when Officer Mary Grosso knocked and then walked into the office with a one-inch-thick file in her hand. She placed it on Irving’s glass-topped desk. There was nothing else on its gleaming surface, not even a phone.

“You were right, Chief. It was still in the actives files.”

The deputy chief in charge of the Internal Affairs Division leaned forward and said, “Yes, I believe I did not have it transferred to archives because I had a feeling we had not seen the last of Detective Bosch. Let me see, that would be Lewis and Clarke, I believe.”

He opened the file and read the notations on the inside of the jacket.

“Yes. Mary, will you have Lewis and Clarke come in, please.”

“Chief, I saw them in the squad. They were getting ready for a BOR. I’m not sure which case.”

“Well, Mary, they will have to cancel the Board of Rights-and please do not talk to me in abbreviations. I am a slow-moving, careful policeman. I do not like shortcuts. I do not like abbreviations. You will learn that. Now, tell Lewis and Clarke I want them to delay the hearing and report to me forthwith.”