The Black Echo (34 page)

“I got it-a hand shot,” Lewis said as he stood up. “They’re on the move, let’s go.”

Lewis collapsed the telescope legs of the tripod and quickly got in the passenger seat of the gray Caprice they had traded the black Plymouth for.

“See ya, bro,” Clarke said to the guard. He got in behind the wheel.

The car backed out, forcing the security guard to jump out of the way. Clarke looked in the rearview mirror smiling as he drove toward the exit ramp. He saw the guard talking into a hand-held radio.

“Talk all you want, buddy boy,” he said.

The IAD car pulled up to the exit booth. Clarke handed the parking stub and two dollars to the man in the booth. He took it but didn’t lift the black-and-white-striped pipe that served as a gate.

“Benson said I have to hold you guys here,” the man in the booth said.

“What? Who the fuck is Benson?” Clarke said.

“He’s the security. He said hold it here a minute.”

Just then, both IAD officers saw Bosch and Wish drive by the garage, heading up to Fourth Street. They were going to lose them. Clarke held out his badge to the booth attendant.

“We’re on the job. Open that goddam gate. Now!”

“He’ll be along. I gotta do what he say. Else I’ll lose my job.”

“You open that gate or you’re going to lose it, peckerwood,” Clarke yelled.

He put his foot down and revved the engine to show he meant to drive through it.

“Why you think we got a pipe ’stead a flimsy piece a wood. You go ahead. That pipe’ll take out your windshield, mister. You do what you want, but he’s coming right along.”

In the rearview, Clarke saw the security guard walking down the ramp. Clarke’s face was becoming blotchy red with anger. He felt Lewis’s hand on his arm.

“Cool it, partner,” Lewis said. “They were holding hands when they came out of the restaurant. We won’t lose them. They’re only going to her place. I’ll bet you a week’s driving that we’ll pick ’em up there.”

Clarke shook his hand off and let out a long breath; that seemed to bring a more placid tone to his face. He said, “I don’t care. I don’t fucking like this shit one bit.”

On Ocean Park Boulevard Bosch found a parking space across from Eleanor’s building. He pulled in but made no move to get out of the car. He looked at her, still feeling the glow of a few minutes before but unsure where they were going with this. She seemed to know this, maybe even feel it herself. She put her hand on top of his and leaned over to kiss him. She whispered, “Come in with me.”

He got out and came around to her side. She was already out and he closed the door. They rounded the front end of the car and then stood next to it, waiting for an approaching car to pass by. The car’s high beams were on and Bosch turned away and looked at Eleanor. So it was she who first noticed the high beams drift toward them.

“Harry?”

“What?”

“Harry!”

Then Bosch turned back to the approaching car and saw the lights-actually four beams from two sets of square side-by-side headlights-bearing down on them. In the few seconds that were left Bosch clearly came to the conclusion that the car was not drifting their way but rather driving at them. There was no time, yet time seemed to go into suspension. In what seemed to him to be slow motion, Bosch turned to his right, to Eleanor. But she needed no help. In unison, they leapt onto the hood of Bosch’s car. He was rolling over her and they were both tumbling toward the sidewalk when his car lurched violently and there was a high-pitched keening sound of tearing metal. Bosch saw a shower of blue sparks pass in his peripheral vision. Then he landed on top of Eleanor on the thin strip of sod that was between the curb and the sidewalk. They were safe, Bosch could sense. Scared, but safe for the moment.

He came up, gun out and steadied by both hands. The car that had come after them was not stopping. It was already fifty yards east, heading away and picking up speed. Bosch fired one round that he thought ricocheted off the rear window, the bullet too weak at that distance to penetrate the glass. He heard Eleanor’s gun fire twice at his side, but saw no damage to the hit-and-run car.

Without a word they both piled into Bosch’s car through the passenger door. Bosch held his breath while he turned the key, but the engine started and the car squealed away from the curb. Bosch rocked the steering wheel from side to side as he picked up speed. The suspension felt a little loose. He had no idea what the extent of the damage was. When he tried to check the side-view mirror he saw it was gone. When he turned on the lights, only the passenger-side beam worked.

The hit-and-run car was at least five blocks ahead, near the crest where Ocean Park Boulevard rises and then drops from sight. The lights on the speeding car went out just as it dropped over the hill out of sight. He was heading for Bundy Drive, Bosch thought. From there a short jog to the 10. And from there he would be gone and they’d never catch him. Bosch grabbed the radio and called in an Officer Needs Assistance. But he could not provide a description of the car, only the direction of the chase.

“He’s going for the freeway, Harry,” Eleanor yelled. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Are you? Did you get a make?”

“I’m fine. Scared is all. No make. American, I think. Uh, square headlights. No color, just dark. I didn’t see the color. We won’t catch him if he makes the freeway.”

They were heading east on Ocean Park, parallel to the 10, which was about eight blocks to the north. They approached the top of the crest, and Bosch cut off the one working headlight. As they came over, he saw the unlit form of the hit-and-run car passing through the lighted intersection at Lincoln. Yeah, he was going for Bundy. At Lincoln, Bosch took a left and floored the gas pedal. He put the lights back on. And as the car’s speed increased there was a thumping sound. The front left tire and alignment were damaged.

“Where are you going?” Eleanor shouted.

“I’m going for the freeway first.”

Bosch had no sooner said that than the freeway entrance signs came up and the car made a wide, arcing right turn onto the ramp. The tire held up. They sped down the ramp into the traffic.

“How’ll we know?” Eleanor shouted. The noise from the tire was very loud now, almost a continual throbbing.

“I don’t know. Look for the square lights.”

In one minute they were coming up on the Bundy entrance, but Bosch had no idea whether they had beaten the other car or if it was already well ahead of them. A car was coming up the ramp and into the merging lane. The car was white and foreign.

“I don’t think so,” Eleanor called.

Bosch gunned it to the floor again and moved ahead. His heart was pounding almost as fast as the tire, half with the excitement of the chase, half with the excitement of still being alive and not broken on the street in front of Eleanor’s apartment. He was gripping the steering wheel at the ten and two o’clock positions, urging the car on as if he held the reins of a galloping horse. They were moving through sparse traffic at ninety miles an hour, both of them looking at the front ends of the cars they passed, searching for the four square lights or a damaged right side.

A half-minute later, Bosch’s knuckles as white as bones wrapped around the wheel, they came upon a maroon Ford going at least seventy in the slow lane. Bosch swung out from behind and passed alongside. Eleanor had her gun in her hands but was holding it below the window so it could not be seen from outside the car. The white male driver didn’t even look over or register notice. As they pulled ahead, Eleanor shouted, “Square lights, side by side.”

“Is it the car?” Bosch called back excitedly.

“I can’t-I don’t know. Can’t see the right side for damage. It could be. The guy isn’t showing anything.”

They were three-quarters of a car length ahead now. Bosch grabbed the portable pull-over light off the transmission hump on the floor and swung it out the window onto the roof. He switched on the revolving blue light and slowly began to angle the Ford onto the shoulder. Eleanor put her hand out the window and signaled the car over. The driver began to comply. Bosch braked sharply and let the other car shoot by onto the shoulder, then Bosch swung his car onto the shoulder behind it. When both had stopped alongside a sound barrier wall Bosch realized he had a big problem. He put on the high beams, but still only the passenger-side headlight responded. The car in front was too close to the wall for Bosch and Wish to see if the right side was damaged. Meantime, the driver sat in his car, mostly shrouded in darkness.

“Shit,” Bosch said. “Okay. Don’t come up till I say it’s clear, okay?”

“Got it,” she said.

Bosch had to throw his weight hard against the door to open it. He came out of the car, gun in one hand and flashlight in the other. He held the light out away from his body and trained its beam on the driver of the car ahead. The roar of passing traffic in his ears, Bosch started to shout, but a diesel horn drowned him out and a blast of wind from the passing semi shoved him forward. Bosch tried again, shouting for the driver to stick both hands out the side window where Bosch could see them. Nothing. Bosch shouted the order again. After a long moment, with Bosch poised off the left rear fender of the maroon car, the driver finally complied. Bosch ran the flash beam through the back window and saw no other occupants. He ran up and put the light on the driver and ordered him to step out slowly.

“What is this?” the man protested. He was small, with pale skin, reddish hair and a transparent mustache. He opened the car door and stepped out with his hands up. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and beige pants held up by suspenders. He looked out into the passing field of cars, almost as if beckoning for a witness to this commuter’s nightmare.

“Can I see a badge?” he stammered. Bosch rushed forward, spun him around and slammed his body into the side of his car, his head and shoulders over its roof. With one hand on the back of the man’s neck, holding him down, and the other holding the gun to his ear, Bosch shouted to Eleanor that it was clear.

“Check the front side.”

The man beneath Bosch let out a moaning sound, like a scared animal, and Bosch could feel him shaking. His neck felt clammy. Bosch never took his eyes off him to see where Eleanor was. Suddenly her voice was right behind him.

“Let him go,” she said. “It’s not him. There’s no damage. We’ve got the wrong car.”

They were interviewed by the Santa Monica police, the California Highway Patrol, LAPD and the FBI. A DUI unit had been called to give Bosch a sobriety test. He passed. And by 2A.M. he sat in an interview room at the West Los Angeles bureau, bone-tired and wondering if the Coast Guard or IRS would be next. He and Eleanor had been separated and he hadn’t seen her since they had arrived three hours earlier. It bothered him that he could not be with her to protect her from the interrogators. Lieutenant Harvey “Ninety-eight” Pounds came into the room then and told Bosch they were finished for the night. Bosch could tell that Ninety-eight was angry, and it wasn’t just because he had been rousted from home.

“What kind of cop doesn’t get the make of the car that tries to run him down?” he asked.

Bosch was used to the second-guessing tone to the questions. It had been that way all night.

“Like I told every one of those guys before you, I was a little busy at the time. I was trying to save my ass.”

“And this guy you pull over,” Pounds cut in. “Jesus, Bosch, you rough him up on the side of the freeway. Every asshole with a car phone is dialing nine one one reporting kidnap, murder, who knows what else. Couldn’t you have tried to get a look at the right side of his car before you pulled him over?”

“It was impossible. All of this is covered in the report we typed up, Lieutenant. I’ve gone over it, seems like ten times already.”

Pounds acted as though he didn’t hear. “And he’s a lawyer no less.”

“So what?” Bosch said, now losing his patience. “We apologized. It was a mistake. The car looked the same. And if he is going to sue anybody it will be the FBI. They’ve got deeper pockets. So don’t worry about it.”

“No, he’ll sue us both. He’s already talking about it, fer crissake. And this is not the time to try to be funny, Bosch.”

“It’s also not the time to be worried about what we did or didn’t do right. None of the suits that have come in here to interview me have seemed to care that somebody might be trying to kill us. They just want to know how far away I was when I fired and whether I endangered bystanders and why I pulled that car over without probable cause. Well, fuck it, man. Somebody is out to kill my partner and me. Excuse me if I’m not feeling particularly sorry for the lawyer who got his suspenders twisted.”

Pounds was ready for that argument.

“Bosch, for all we have evidence of, it could have just been a drunk. And what do you mean ‘partner’? You are on a day-to-day loan to this investigation. And after tonight, I think the loan is going to be withdrawn. You’ve spent five solid days on this case, and from what I understand from Rourke, you’ve got nothing.”

“It was no drunk, Pounds. We were a target. And I don’t care what Rourke says we have, I’m going to clear this one. And if you’d quit undermining the effort, believe in your own people for once and maybe get those Internal Affairs assholes off me, you might be in line for a piece of the honors when it happens.”

Pounds’s eyebrows arched like roller coasters.

“Yeah, I know about Lewis and Clarke,” Bosch said. “And I know their paper was being copied to you. I guess they didn’t tell you about the little talk we had? I caught ’em snoozing outside my house.”

It was clear from his expression that Pounds had not heard. Lewis and Clarke were staying low and Bosch would not get jammed up over what he had done to them. He began to wonder where the two IAD detectives had been when he and Eleanor had almost been run down.

Meanwhile, Pounds remained silent for a long time. He was a fish swimming around the bait Bosch had cast, seeming to know there was a hook in it but thinking there might be a way to get the bait without the hook. Finally he told Bosch to give him a rundown on the week’s investigation. He was on the hook now. Bosch ran the case down for him, and though Pounds never spoke once during the next twenty minutes Bosch could tell by his roller-coasting eyebrows whenever he heard something that Rourke had neglected to bring up.

When the story was finished, there was no more talk from Pounds of Bosch’s being withdrawn from the case. Nevertheless, Bosch felt very tired of the whole thing. He wanted to sleep, but Pounds still had questions.

“If the FBI isn’t putting people into the tunnels, should we?” he asked.

Bosch could see he was thinking in terms of being in on the bust, if there was one. If he put LAPD people into the drainage tunnels, the FBI wouldn’t be able to crowd the department out when the credit for the bust came. Pounds would receive a slap on the back from the chief if he could defend against such a maneuver.

But Bosch had come to believe that Rourke’s reasoning was sound and correct. A tunnel crew would stand a good chance of stumbling into the thieves and maybe getting killed.

“No,” Bosch told Pounds. “Let’s first see if we can get a fix on Tran and where he keeps his stash. For all we know, it might not even be a bank.”

Pounds stood up, having heard enough. He said Bosch was free to go. As the lieutenant headed to the interview room door he said, “Bosch, I don’t think you’ll have any problems with this incident tonight. It sounds to me like you did what you could. The lawyer got his feathers ruffled but he’ll settle down. Or just settle.”

Bosch didn’t say anything or smile at his meager joke.

“One thing,” Pounds continued. “The fact that this happened in front of Agent Wish’s home is a bit troubling because it has the appearance of impropriety. Just a hint, no? You were just walking her to the door, weren’t you?”

“I don’t really care how it appeared, Lieutenant,” Bosch answered. “I was off duty.”

Pounds looked at Bosch a moment, shook his head as if Bosch had ignored his outstretched hand, and then went through the door of the small room.

Bosch found Eleanor sitting by herself in an interview room next to his. Her eyes were closed and she had her head propped on her hands, her elbows up on the scarred wooden table. Her eyes opened as he walked in. She smiled and he immediately felt healed of fatigue, frustration and anger. It was a smile a child gives another when they’ve gotten away with something on the adults.

“All done?” she said.

“Yeah. You?”

“Been done more than an hour. You are the one they wanted to grill.”

“As usual. Rourke has left?”

“Yeah, he split. Said he wants me to check in with him every other hour tomorrow. After what happened tonight, he thinks he hasn’t kept a tight enough rein on this.”

“Or you.”

“Yeah. It looks like there is some of that, too. He wanted to know what we were doing at my place. I told him you were just walking me to my door.”

Bosch sat down wearily at the other side of the table and dug a finger into a cigarette pack in search of the last one. He put it in his mouth but didn’t light it.

“Besides being titillated or jealous of what we might have been doing, who does Rourke think tried to take us out?” he asked. “A drunk driver, like my people seem to think?”

“He did mention the drunk driver theory. He also asked whether I have a jealous ex-boyfriend. Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be a great amount of concern that it might have something to do with our case.”

“I hadn’t thought of the ex-boyfriend angle. What did you tell him?”

“You’re as conniving as he is,” she said, flashing her brilliant smile. “I told him it wasn’t any of his business.”

“Good going. Is it mine?”

“The answer is no.” She let him hang over the cliff a few seconds, then added, “That is, no jealous ex-boyfriends. So, can we leave now and get to where we were”-she looked at her watch-“about four hours ago?”

Bosch was awake in Eleanor Wish’s bed long before dawn light crept around the curtain drawn across the sliding glass door. Unable to defeat insomnia, he finally got up and took a shower in the downstairs bathroom. After, he looked through her kitchen cabinets and refrigerator and began to put together a breakfast of coffee, eggs and cinnamon raisin bagels. He couldn’t find any bacon.

When he heard the shower upstairs go off, he carried a glass of orange juice up and found her in front of the bathroom mirror. She was naked and braiding her hair, which she’d divided into three thick hanks. He was entranced by her and watched as she expertly maneuvered her hair into a French braid. She then accepted the juice and a long kiss from Bosch. She put on her short robe and they went downstairs to eat.

After, Harry opened the kitchen door and stood just outside it while he smoked a cigarette.

“You know,” he said, “I’m just happy nothing happened.”

“You mean last night on the street?”

“Yeah. To you. I don’t know how I’d’ve handled it. I know we just met and all, but… uh, I care. You know?”

“Me too.”

Bosch had taken a shower, but his clothes were as fresh as the ashtray in a used car. After a while he said he had to leave, to go by his house and change. Eleanor said she would go into the bureau and check for fallout from last night’s activities and get whatever was on file about Binh. They agreed to meet at Hollywood Station, on Wilcox, because it was closest to Binh’s business, and Bosch needed to turn in his damaged car, anyway. She walked him to the door and they kissed as if she were seeing him off to a day at the office at the accounting firm.

When Bosch got to his house, he found no messages on the phone machine and no sign that the place had been entered. He shaved and changed clothes and then headed down the hill through Nichols Canyon and then over to Wilcox. He was at his desk, updating the Investigating Officer’s Chronological Report forms, when Eleanor came in at ten. The squad room was full and most of the detectives who were male stopped what they were doing to check her out. She had an uncomfortable smile on her face when she sat down in the steel chair next to the homicide table.

“Anything wrong?”

“I just think I would rather walk through Biscailuz,” she said, referring to the sheriff’s jail downtown.

“Oh. Yeah, these guys can leer better than most flashers. You want a glass of water?”

“No. I’m fine. Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

They took Bosch’s new car, which was actually at least three years old and had seventy-seven thousand miles on it. The station fleet manager, a permanent desk assignee since he’d had four fingers blown off by a pipe bomb he stupidly picked up one Halloween, said it was the best he could do. Budget restraints had halted the replacement of cars, though repairing the old ones actually cost the department more. At least, Bosch learned after starting the car, the air conditioner worked reasonably well. There was a light Santa Ana condition kicking up and the forecast was for an unseasonably warm holiday weekend.

Eleanor’s research on Binh showed he had an office and business on Vermont near Wilshire. There were more Korean-run shops in the area than Vietnamese, but they coexisted. As near as Wish had been able to find out, Binh controlled a number of businesses that imported cheap clothing and electronic and video merchandise from the Orient and then moved it through Southern California and Mexico. Many of the items turistas thought they were getting on the cheap in Mexico and then bringing back to the States had already been here. It all seemed successful on paper, though it was small-time. Still, it was enough to make Bosch question if Binh even needed the diamonds. Or ever had any.

Binh owned the building his office and discount video equipment store was based in. It was a 1930s auto showroom that had been converted years before Binh had ever seen it. Unreinforced concrete block fronted with wide picture windows and guaranteed to come down in a decent shaker. But for someone who had made it out of Vietnam the way Binh had, earthquakes were probably viewed as a minor inconvenience, not a risk.

After they found an empty parking space across the street from Ben’s Electronics, Bosch told Eleanor he wanted her to handle the questioning, at least at first. Bosch said he figured that Binh might be more inclined to talk to the feds than to the locals. They decided on a plan to small-talk him and then ask about Tran. Bosch didn’t tell her that he also had a second plan in mind.

“Doesn’t exactly look like the kind of place run by a guy with a box full of diamonds in a bank vault,” Bosch said as they got out of the car.

“That is
had
in the bank,” she said. “And remember, he couldn’t flaunt that stuff. He had to be like every other Joe Immigrant. The appearance of living day to day. The diamonds, if there were any, were the collateral for this place, for his American success story. But it had to look like he made it from scratch.”

“Wait a second,” Bosch said as they got to the other side of the street. He told Eleanor he had forgotten to ask Jerry Edgar to fill in on a court appearance for him that afternoon. He pointed to a pay phone at a service station next to Binh’s building and trotted over. Eleanor stayed behind, looking in the windows of the store.

Bosch called Edgar but didn’t say anything about a court appearance.

“Jed, I need a favor. You won’t even have to get up.”

Edgar hesitated, as Bosch thought he would.

“What do you need?”

“You aren’t supposed to say it like that. You’re supposed to say, ‘Sure, Harry, what do you need?’”

“Come on, Harry, we both know we’re under the glass. We’ve got to be careful. Tell me what you need. I’ll tell you if I can do it.”

“All I want you to do is buzz me in ten minutes. I need to get out of a meeting. Just buzz me, and when I call in, just put the phone down for a couple minutes. And if I don’t call in, buzz me again in five minutes. That’s it.”

“That’s all you need? Just the buzz?”

“Right. Ten minutes from now.”

“Okay, Harry,” Edgar said, relief in his voice. “Hey, I heard about your thing last night. That was close. And word around here is that it wasn’t no drunk driver. You watch your ass.”

“Always. What’s going on with Sharkey?”

“Nothing. I ran down his crew like you told me. Two of ’em told me they were with him that night. I think they were rolling faggots. They said they lost sight of him after he got in a car. That was a couple hours before the desk got the call that he was in the tunnel up at the bowl. I figure whoever was in that car did him.”