The Drop (18 page)

“What else did you tell him?”

“That was it. Just that, like conversation.”

Bosch paused to see if anything else would come out. Rollins was silent, his eyes holding on the cuffs in Bosch’s hand.

“Okay, Hooch, what’s the name of the shift supervisor you had Sunday night?”

“Mark McQuillen. He’s on the stick at night.”

“The stick?”

“He’s the dispatcher. But they call him the stick cause in the old days there was like a microphone or something on the desk. The stick. You know, somebody told me he’s an ex-cop.”

Bosch looked at Rollins for a long moment as he fit the name McQuillen into the picture. Rollins was right about his being an ex-cop. And the feeling Bosch had had earlier about things tumbling together now returned. Only things weren’t tumbling anymore. They were cascading. Mark McQuillen was a name out of the past. Both Bosch’s and the department’s.

Bosch finally came away from his thoughts and looked at Rollins.

“What did McQuillen say when you told him you saw Irving?”

“Nothing. I think he asked if the guy was checking in.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“That I thought he was. I mean, he was dumping his car at the garage. That garage is too small; they only let hotel guests park there. If you’re just going to the bar or something, you have to use the outside valet.”

Bosch nodded. Rollins was right about that.

“Okay, we’re going to take you back now, Hooch. If you tell anybody what we talked about here, I’m going to know. And I promise you if that happens, it’s not going to turn out good for you.”

Rollins raised his hands in surrender.

“I’m straight with that,” he said.

19

A
fter they dropped Rollins off they headed back toward downtown and the PAB.

“So, McQuillen,” Chu said, as Bosch knew he would. “Who is he? I could tell the name meant something to you.”

“Like Hooch said, a former cop.”

“But you know him? Or knew him?”

“I knew of him. I never met him.”

“Well, what’s the story?”

“He was a cop who was sacrificed to the gods of appeasement. He lost his job for doing it just the way they taught him.”

“Stop talking in circles, Harry. What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that I have to go up to the tenth floor and talk to somebody.”

“The chief?”

“No, not the chief.”

“And this is one of those times again where you’re not going to tell your partner what’s going on until you feel like it.”

Bosch didn’t answer. He was grinding things down.

“
Harry!
I’m talking to you.”

“Chu, when we get back, I want you to start a moniker search.”

“Who?”

“Somebody who went by the name Chill in the North Hollywood–Burbank area about twenty-five years ago.”

“What the fuck? Are you talking about the other case now?”

“I want you to find this guy. His initials are C. H. and people called him Chill. It’s got to be a variation on his first name.”

Chu shook his head.

“That’s it, man, I’m done after this. I can’t work this way. I’ll tell the lieutenant.”

Bosch just nodded.

“‘After this’? Does that mean you’ll do the moniker search first?”

Bosch didn’t call ahead to Kiz Rider. He just took the elevator up to the tenth floor and entered the OCP suite without invitation or appointment. He was met by twin desks with twin adjutants behind them. He went to his left.

“Detective Harry Bosch. I need to see Lieutenant Rider.”

The adjutant was a young officer in a crisp uniform with the name R
IVERA
on his nameplate. He picked up a clipboard from the side of his desk and studied it for a moment.

“I don’t have anything here. Is the lieutenant expecting you? She’s in a meeting.”

“Yes.”

Rivera seemed surprised by the answer. He had to check the clipboard again.

“Why don’t you have a seat, Detective, and I’ll check on availability.”

“You do that.”

Rivera didn’t move. He waited for Bosch to go away. Harry walked over to some chairs arranged near a set of windows that looked out upon the civic center—the signature spire of City Hall took up most of the view. He stayed standing. When Harry was a safe distance from the desk, Rivera picked up his phone and made a call, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece when he spoke to someone on the other end. Soon he hung up but did not even glance in Bosch’s direction.

Bosch turned back to the window and looked down. He saw a television camera crew set up on the steps of City Hall, waiting for a sound bite from some politician with something to sell. Bosch wondered if it would be Irving who would come out and descend the marble steps.

“Harry?”

He turned. It was Rider.

“Walk with me.”

He wished she hadn’t said that line. But he followed when she turned and walked out the double doors to the hallway. Once they were alone she turned on him.

“What’s going on? I have people in my office.”

“We need to talk. Now.”

“So talk.”

“No, not here like this. Things are breaking. It’s going the way I warned you. The chief should know. Who’s in your office? Is it Irving?”

“No, stop being paranoid.”

“Then why are we talking out here?”

“Because the office is busy and because it was
you
who demanded complete confidentiality on this. Give me ten minutes and meet me by Charlie Chaplin.”

Bosch walked over and pushed the elevator button. There was only a down button.

“I’ll be there.”

It was a block’s walk to the Bradbury Building. Bosch went in the side door on Third and into the dimly lit stairwell vestibule. There was a bench there and next to it was a sculpture of Charlie Chaplin as his signature character, the Tramp. Bosch took a seat in the shadows next to Charlie and waited. The Bradbury was the oldest and most beautiful building in downtown. It housed private offices as well as LAPD offices, including the board of rights hearing rooms used by Internal Affairs. It was an odd choice for a surreptitious meeting, but it was the spot Bosch and Rider had used in the past. No discussion or direction was needed once Kiz had said meet me at Charlie Chaplin.

Rider was almost ten minutes past the first ten minutes but that was okay with Bosch. He had used the time to construct the story he would tell her. It was complicated and still emerging, even improvisational.

He had just finished walking himself through it when he felt the buzz of an incoming text on his phone. He pulled it from his pocket, half expecting the message to be a cancellation of the meeting from Rider. But it was from his daughter.

Having dinner and study hall at Ash’s. Her mom makes goooood pizza. K?

He felt a slight pang of guilt because he welcomed the message. With his daughter taken care of for the evening, he had more time to work his cases. It also meant he could see Hannah Stone again if he could come up with a viable investigative reason. He sent back his approval but told his daughter she had to be home by ten. He told her to call if she needed a ride.

Bosch was pocketing his phone when Rider came in, hesitated a moment while her eyes adjusted to the shadows and then sat down next to him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he said.

He waited a moment for her to settle but she wasn’t interested in wasting time.

“Well?”

“You ready?”

“Of course. I’m here. Tell me the story.”

“Well, it goes like this. George Irving has a consulting firm that is really an influence firm. He sells his influence, his connection to his father and the faction his father is part of on the city council. He—”

“Do you have documentary evidence of this?”

“Right now it’s just a story, Kiz, and it’s just you and me here. Let me tell it and then you can ask your questions when I’m done.”

“Go ahead, then.”

The door on Third opened and a uniformed officer walked in, took off his sunglasses and looked around, blindly at first and then focusing on Bosch and Rider and correctly sizing them up as cops.

“Is this where the BORs are heard?” he asked.

“Third floor,” Rider said.

“Thank you.”

“Good luck.”

“Yeah.”

Bosch waited until the cop left the vestibule and rounded the corner into the main lobby where the elevators were located.

“Okay. So George sells influence with the council and by extension with all the different boards the council appoints. In some cases he can do even more than that. He can tilt the game.”

“I don’t get it. How so?”

“Do you know how taxi franchises are awarded in this city?”

“Not a clue.”

“By geographic zones and on two-year contracts. You come up for review every two years.”

“All right.”

“So I don’t know if George goes to them or they come to George, but there’s a franchise holder in South L.A. called Regent Taxi and they hire George to help them get a more lucrative franchise up in Hollywood, where there are highline hotels and tourists on the streets and lots more money to be made. The current franchise holder is Black and White Taxi.”

“I think I know where this is going. But wouldn’t Councilman Irving have to be transparent on this? He’d have a conflict of interest voting for any company repped by his son.”

“Of course he would. But the first vote is with the Taxi Franchise Board, and who puts the people on that board? The council. And when it next comes before the council for ratification, sure, Irving nobly cites conflict of interest and steps out on the vote and it all looks completely aboveboard. But what about the backroom trade-offs? ‘You vote for me when I step out and next time I’ll vote for you.’ You know what goes on, Kiz. But what George offers is even more of a sure thing. He offers a fuller service, shall we say. Regent says, yes, we’ll take the full package, and a month after he’s hired by Regent, things start going sideways for the current holder of the franchise, B and W.”

“What do you mean ‘sideways’?”

“I’m trying to tell you. Less than a month after George Irving is hired by Regent, B and W drivers start getting popped on deuce raps and traffic citations and suddenly the company’s not looking so good.”

“How many arrests?”

“Three, the first coming a month after Irving signed on. And then there’s an auto accident where the B and W driver is held at fault. There are several traffic violations—all moving violations that give the appearance of reckless driving. Speeding, running traffic lights and stop signs.”

“I think the
Times
wrote about this. The DUIs, anyway.”

“Yeah, I have the story and I’m pretty sure George Irving’s the one who tipped them to it. It was all part of an organized plan to get the Hollywood taxi franchise.”

“So you’re saying that the son went to the father and said put some pressure on B and W? The father then in turn reached into the department?”

“I am not exactly sure how it worked yet. But both of them—father and son—still have connections in the department. The councilman has sympathizers and his son was a cop for five years. A guy who was a close friend of his works patrol in Hollywood. I have all the B and W arrest reports and the traffic citations. The same cop—George Irving’s friend—made all three DUI arrests and wrote two of the moving violations. A guy named Robert Mason. What are the chances of that? That he’d get all three deuces.”

“It could happen. You make one arrest and then you know what to look for after that.”

“Sure, Kiz, whatever you say. One of these guys wasn’t even pulled over. He was parked at a cab stand on La Brea when Mason rolled up on him.”

“Well, were these legit busts or not? Did they blow?”

“They blew and the busts were legit as far as I know. But three busts starting a month after Irving was hired. The DUIs, the moving violations and the accident report then become the centerpiece of Regent’s application to the franchise board to take Hollywood away from B and W. He had it completely greased and it just doesn’t smell right, Kiz.”

She finally nodded, a tacit agreement with Bosch’s point of view.

“Okay, even if I agree with you, there’s still the question: How does all of this get George Irving killed? And why?”

“I’m not sure why but let me move to the—”

Bosch stopped when there was a loud explosion of voices from the lobby. After a few seconds they were gone.

“Okay, let me move to the night Irving took the high dive. He arrives by car at nine-forty, gives his keys to the valet and goes upstairs to the lobby to check in. Also arriving at that time is a writer from the East Coast named Thomas Rapport. He comes by cab from the airport and pulls in right behind Irving.”

“Don’t tell me. He was in a Black and White cab.”

“You know, Lieutenant, you really ought to be a detective.”

“I tried it, but my partner was an asshole.”

“I heard about that. Anyway, yes, it was a B and W cab and the driver actually recognized Irving as he was turning his car over to the valet. His picture had been shown around the garage when the application letter to the franchise board got copied to B and W. This driver, a guy named Rollins, recognizes Irving and gets on his radio and says, ‘What do you know, I just saw public enemy number one,’ or words to that effect. And on the other end of that radio call is the shift supervisor. The night man. A guy named Mark McQuillen.”

Bosch stopped there and waited for her to recognize the name. She didn’t.

“McQuillen as in ‘McKillin,’” he said. “That ring a bell?”

It still didn’t break through. Rider shook her head.

“Before your time,” Bosch said.

“Who is he?”

“A former cop. Maybe ten years younger than me. Back in the day, he became the poster boy for the whole choke hold thing. The controversy. And he got sacrificed to the mob.”

“I don’t understand, Harry. What mob? What sacrifice?”

“I told you, I was on the task force. The task force was formed to appease the citizenry of South L.A. who claimed that the choke hold was legalized murder. Cops used it and an inordinate number of people in the south end died. The truth was, they didn’t need a task force to change policy. They could’ve just changed it. But instead they go with a task force so they could feed the media the story about how the department was serious in its effort to respond to the public outcry.”