The Black Echo (31 page)

“You got a warrant saying you can drop a bug on me?”

“Listen to me, Bosch,” Lewis said. “I told you, we-”

“I didn’t think so. Have to have evidence of a crime to get a warrant. Least that’s what I always heard. But Internal Affairs doesn’t usually bother with details like that. You know what your assault case looks like, Clarke? While you two are taking me to the Board of Rights and getting me fired for dragging you out of the car and getting grass stains on your shiny asses, I’m going to be taking you two, your boss Irving, IAD, the police chief and the whole fucking city to federal court on a Fourth Amendment case. Illegal search and seizure. I’ll throw in the mayor, too. How’s that?”

Clarke spit on the grass at Bosch’s feet. A drop of blood from his nose fell onto his white shirt. He said, “You can’t prove that came from us, ’cause it didn’t.”

“Bosch, what do you want?” Lewis blurted out, his rage turning his face a darker red than it had been when his tie had been tightened like a noose around his neck. Bosch started walking in a slow circle around them, so they had to constantly turn their heads or bend around the palm trunk to watch him.

“What do I want? Well, as much as I despise you two, I don’t really want to have to drag your asses into court. Dragging them across the sidewalk was enough. What I want-”

“Bosch, you ought to get your fuckin’ head examined,” Clarke burst out.

“Shut up, Clarke,” Lewis said.

“You shut up,” Clarke said back.

“Matter of fact, I have had it examined,” Bosch said. “And I still would rather have mine than yours. You’d need a proctologist to check yours out.”

He said this as he circled close behind Clarke. Then he moved out a few steps and continued to make the rounds. “I’ll tell you what, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones on this. All you have to do is answer a few questions and we’re square on this little mix-up. I’ll cut you loose. After all, we’re all part of the Family, right?”

“What questions, Bosch?” Lewis said. “What are you talking about?”

“When’d you start the tail?”

“Tuesday morning, we picked you up when you left the FBI,” Lewis said.

“Don’t tell him shit, man,” Clarke said to his partner.

“He already knows.”

Clarke looked at Lewis and shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“When’d you drop the bug in my phone?”

“Didn’t,” Lewis said.

“Bullshit. But never mind. You saw me interview the kid down in Boytown.” It was a statement, not a question. Bosch wanted them to think he knew most of it and just needed the gaps filled in.

“Yeah,” Lewis said. “That was our first day on it. So you made us. So fucking what?”

Harry saw Lewis pull his hand toward his coat pocket. He quickly moved in and got his hand in first. He pulled out a key ring that included a cuff key. He threw the keys into the car. Behind Lewis, he said, “Who’d you tell about it?”

“Tell?” Lewis said. “About the kid? Nobody. We didn’t tell anybody, Bosch.”

“You write up a daily surveillance log, don’t you? You take pictures, don’t you? I bet there’s a camera in the backseat of that car. Unless you forgot and left it in the trunk.”

“Course we do.”

Bosch lit a cigarette and started walking again. “Where did it all go?”

It was a few moments before Lewis answered. Bosch saw him make eye contact with Clarke. “We turned in the first log and the film yesterday. Put it in the deputy chief’s box. Like always. Don’t even know if he looked at it yet. That’s the only paper we’ve done so far. So, Bosch, take these cuffs off. This is embarrassing. People seein’ us and all. We can still talk after.”

Bosch walked up between them and blew smoke into the center of the huddle and told them the cuffs stayed on until the conversation was over. He then leaned close to Clarke’s face and said, “Who else was copied?”

“With the surveillance report? Nobody was copied, Bosch,” Lewis said. “That would violate department procedure.”

Bosch laughed at that, shook his head. He knew they would not admit any illegality or violation of department policy. He started to walk away, back to his house.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Bosch,” Lewis called out. “We copied the report to your lieutenant. All right? Come on back.”

Bosch did and Lewis continued. “He wanted to be kept apprised. We had to do it. The DC, Irving, okayed it. We did what we were told.”

“What did the report say about the kid?”

“Nothing. Just some kid is all… Uh, ‘Subject engaged juvenile in conversation. Juvenile was transported to Hollywood Station for formal interview,’ something like that.”

“Did you ID him in the report?”

“No name. We didn’t even know his name. Honest, Bosch. We just watched you, that’s all. Now uncuff us.”

“What about Home Street Home? You watched me take him there. Was that in the report?”

“Yeah, on the log.”

Bosch moved in close again. “Now here’s the big question. If there is no complaint from the bureau anymore, why is IAD still on me? The FBI made the call to Pounds and withdrew the complaint. Then you guys act like you were called off but you weren’t. Why?”

Lewis started to say something but Bosch cut him off. “I want Clarke to tell me. You’re thinking too fast, Lewis.”

Clarke didn’t say a word.

“Clarke, the kid you saw me with ended up dead. Somebody did him because he talked to me. And the only people who knew he talked to me were you and your partner here. Something is going on here, and if I don’t get the answers I need I’m just going to lay it all out, go public with it. You are going to find your own ass being investigated by Internal Affairs.”

Clarke said his first two words in five minutes: “Fuck you.”

Lewis jumped in then.

“Look, Bosch, I’ll tell you. The FBI doesn’t trust you. That’s the thing. They said they brought you into the case, but they told us they weren’t sure about you. They said you muscled onto the case and they were going to have to watch you, make sure you weren’t pulling a scam. That’s all. So we were told to drop back but stay on you. We did. That’s all, man. Now cut us loose. I can hardly breathe, and my wrists are starting to hurt with these cuffs. You really put them on tight.”

Bosch turned to Clarke. “Where’s your cuff key?”

“Right front pocket,” he said. He was cool about it, refusing to look at Bosch’s face. Bosch walked around behind him and reached both hands around his waist. He pulled a key ring out of Clarke’s pocket and then whispered in his ear, “Clarke, you ever go in my home again and I’ll kill you.”

Then he yanked the detective’s pants and boxer shorts down to his ankles and started walking away. He threw the key ring into the car.

“You bastard!” Clarke yelled. “I’ll kill you first, Bosch.”

As long as he kept the bug and the Nagra, Bosch was reasonably certain Lewis and Clarke would not seek departmental charges against him. They had more to lose than he. A lawsuit and public scandal would cut their careers off at the stairway to the sixth floor. Bosch got in his car and drove back to the Federal Building.

Too many people knew about Sharkey or had the opportunity to know, he realized as he tried to assess the situation. There was no clear-cut way of flushing out the inside man. Lewis and Clarke had seen the boy and passed the information on to Irving and Pounds and who knew who else. Rourke and the FBI records clerk knew about him as well. And those names didn’t even include the people on the street who might have seen Sharkey with Bosch, or had heard that Bosch was looking for him. Bosch knew that he would have to wait for things to develop.

At the Federal Building, the red-haired receptionist behind the glass window on the FBI floor made him wait while she called back to Group 3. He checked the cemetery again through the gauze curtains and saw several people working in the trench cut in the hill. They were lining the earth wound with blocks of black stone that reflected sharp white light points in the sun. And Bosch at last believed he knew what it was they were doing. The door lock buzzed behind him and Bosch headed back. It was twelve-thirty and the heavy squad was out, except for Eleanor Wish. She sat at her desk eating an egg salad sandwich, the kind they sold in plastic triangle-shaped boxes at every government building cafeteria he’d ever been in. The plastic bottle of water and a paper cup were on the desk. They exchanged small hellos. Bosch felt that things had changed between them, but he didn’t know how much.

“You been here since this morning?” he asked.

She said she hadn’t. She told him that she had taken the mugs of Franklin and Delgado to the vault clerks at WestLand National and one of the women positively identified Franklin as Frederic B. Isley, the holder of a box in the vault. The scout.

“It’s enough for a warrant, but Franklin isn’t around,” she said. “Rourke sent a couple crews to the addresses DMV had on both him and Delgado. Called back in a little while ago. Either they’ve moved on or never lived in the places in the first place. Looks like they’re in the wind.”

“So, what’s next?”

“I don’t know. Rourke’s talking about closing shop on it until we catch them. You’ll probably get to go back to your homicide table. When we catch one of them, we’ll bring you down to work on him about the Meadows murder.”

“Sharkey’s murder, too. Don’t forget that.”

“That, too.”

Bosch nodded. It was over. The bureau was going to close it down.

“By the way, you got a message,” she said. “Someone called for you, said his name was Hector. That was all.”

Bosch sat down at the desk next to hers and dialed Hector Villabona’s direct line. He picked up after two rings.

“It’s Bosch.”

“Hey, what’re you doing with the bureau?” he asked. “I called the number you gave and somebody said it was the FBI.”

“Yeah, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. Did you come up with anything?”

“Not much, Harry, and I’m not going to, either. I can’t get the file. This guy Binh, whoever he is, he has got some connections. Like we figured. His file is still classified. I called a guy I know out there and asked him to send it out. He called me back and said no can do.”

“Why would it still be classified?”

“Who knows, Harry? That’s why it’s still classified. So people won’t find this shit out.”

“Well, thanks. It’s not looking that important anymore.”

“If you have a source at State, somebody with access, they might have better luck than me. I’m just the token beaner in the bean-counting department. But, listen, there is one thing this guy I know kind of let slip.”

“What?”

“Well, see, I gave him Binh’s name, you know, and when he calls back he says, ‘Sorry, Captain Binh’s file is classified.’ Just like that is how he said it. Captain, he called him. So this guy musta been a military guy. That’s probably why they got him out of there and over here so fast. If he was military, they saved his ass for sure.”

“Yeah,” Bosch said, then he thanked Hector and hung up.

He turned to Eleanor and asked if she had any contacts in the State Department. She shook her head no. “Military intelligence, CIA, anything like that?” Bosch said. “Somebody with access to computer files.”

She thought a moment and said, “Well, there is a guy on the State floor. I sort of know him from D.C. But what’s going on, Harry?”

“Can you call him and tell him you need a favor?”

“He doesn’t talk on the phone, not about business. We’ll just have to go down there.”

He stood up. Outside the office, while they waited for the elevator, Bosch told her about Binh, his rank, and the fact that he left Vietnam on the same day as Meadows. The elevator opened and they got on and she pushed seven. They were alone.

“You knew all along, that I was being tailed,” Bosch said. “Internal Affairs.”

“I saw them.”

“But you knew before you saw them, didn’t you?”

“Does it make a difference?”

“I think it does. Why didn’t you tell me?”

She took a while. The elevator stopped.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t at first, and then when I wanted to tell you I couldn’t. I thought it would spoil everything. I guess it did, anyway.”

“Why didn’t you at first, Eleanor? Because there was still a question about me?”

She looked into the stainless steel corner of the elevator. “In the beginning, yes, we weren’t sure about you. I won’t lie about that.”

“What about after the beginning?”

The door opened on the seventh floor. Eleanor moved through it, saying, “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

Bosch stepped out after her. He took hold of her arm and stopped her. They stood there as two men in almost matching gray suits charged through the open elevator door.

“Yes, I’m still here, but you didn’t tell me about them.”

“Harry, can we talk about this later?”

“The thing is, they saw us with Sharkey.”

“Yes, I thought so.”

“Well, why didn’t you say anything when I was talking about the inside man, when I was asking about who you told about the kid?”

“I don’t know.”

Bosch looked down at his feet. He felt like the only man on the planet who didn’t understand what was going on.

“I talked to them,” he said. “They claim they just watched us with the kid. They never followed up to see what it was about. Said they didn’t have his ID. Sharkey’s name wasn’t in their reports.”

“And do you believe them?”

“Never have before. But I don’t see them involved in this. It just doesn’t fit. They’re just after me and they’ll do anything to get me. But not take out a witness. That’s crazy.”

“Maybe they’re feeding information to someone who is involved and they just don’t realize it.”

Bosch thought about Irving and Pounds again.

“A possibility. The point is, there is an inside man. Somewhere. We know this. And it might be from my side. It might be yours. So we have to be very careful, about who we talk to and what we’re doing.”

After a moment he looked straight into her eyes and said, “Do you believe me?”

It took her a long time, but she finally nodded her head. She said, “I can’t think of any other way to explain what’s happening.”