The Drop (25 page)

He got up and went over to Tim Marcia’s desk.

“Is the L.T. in?”

“Yeah, she’s in there.”

“Can I go in? I need to give her an update.”

“She’s all yours—if you can get her to open up.”

Bosch knocked on the agoraphobic lieutenant’s door. After a pause, he heard Duvall give the okay and he went in. She was at her desk, working on the computer. She glanced up to see who it was but then finished typing something as she spoke.

“What’s up, Harry?”

“What’s up is that I’m going to be bringing in a body today on the Irving case.”

This made her look up.

“The plan is to get him to come in voluntarily. But if that doesn’t work, we’ll hook him up.”

“Thanks for keeping me in the loop.”

It was not said as a sincere thanks. Bosch had not updated her in twenty-four hours and a lot had happened in that time. He pulled out the chair in front of her desk and sat down. He gave her the short version, taking ten minutes to lead her up to the phone call from the reporter.

“My bad for not keeping you updated,” he said. “Things have just been breaking quickly. The chief’s office is up to speed—I just spoke to his adjutant today at the funeral—and they’ll let the councilman know.”

“Well, I guess I should be glad you kept me in the dark.

Now I won’t be a suspect in the leak to the
Times
. Any idea about that?”

“I’m assuming it was Irving or someone in his camp.”

“But what does he get out of this? He’s not going to end up looking good here.”

It was the first time Bosch had considered this. The lieutenant was right. Why would Irving leak a story that was ultimately going to taint him with, at minimum, the whiff of corruption? That didn’t make sense.

“Good question,” Bosch said. “But I don’t have an answer. All I know is that it got across the street somehow.”

Duvall glanced at the blinds that covered the window looking out at the Times Building. It was as if her paranoia about reporters watching had been confirmed. Bosch stood up. He had said what he needed to say.

“What about backup, Harry?” Duvall asked. “You and Chu can handle this by yourselves?”

“I think so. McQuillen won’t see us coming—and like I said, we want him to come voluntarily.”

She thought about this and then nodded.

“Okay, let me know. In a timely manner this time.”

“Right.”

“That means tonight.”

“You got it.”

Bosch went back to the cubicle. Chu still wasn’t back.

Harry was consumed by the idea that the leak hadn’t come from the Irving camp. This left the chief’s office and the possibility that moves were being made that Kiz Rider didn’t know about, or that she was hiding from him. He went to his computer and opened up the
Times
website. In the search box he typed “Emily Gomez-Gonzmart” and hit return.

Soon he had a page full of citations—the headlines of stories that carried the reporter’s byline in reverse chronological order. He started scrolling through, reading the headlines, and quickly came to the conclusion that GoGo did not cover politics or city government. There were no stories in the last year that put her in proximity to Irvin or George Irving. She appeared to be a feature writer who specialized in crime stories. The day-later kind of stories in which she expanded on a crime, reporting on victims and their families. Bosch clicked on a few of these, read the opening paragraphs and then went back to the list.

He scrolled backwards through more than three years of stories, not seeing anything that would connect Gomez-Gonzmart to anyone involved in the George Irving case. And then a headline from early 2008 caught his eye.

Triads Exact Toll on Local Chinese

Bosch opened the story. It was an anecdotal lead about an old woman who owned an apothecary store in Chinatown and who had been paying a monthly protection fee to a Triad boss for more than thirty years. The story then widened into a report on the cultural history of local small-business owners continuing the age-old, Hong Kong–based tradition of paying Triad crime syndicates for protection. The story was spawned by the then-recent murder of a Chinatown landlord that was suspected to have been a Triad hit.

Bosch froze when he got to the ninth paragraph of the story.

“The Triads are alive and well in L.A.,” said Detective David Chu, a member of the LAPD’s Asian Gang Unit. “They prey on people like they’ve preyed on people in Hong Kong for three hundred years.”

Harry stared at the paragraph for a long moment. Chu had transferred to the Open-Unsolved Unit and to partnering with Bosch two years earlier. Before that he worked in AGU, where he had crossed paths with Emily Gomez-Gonzmart, and it seemed he had continued the relationship.

Bosch killed the screen and turned in his seat. Still no sign of Chu. He rolled over to his partner’s side of the cubicle and opened the laptop Chu had left on his desk. The screen lit up and Bosch clicked on the e-mail icon. He glanced around again to make sure Chu had not entered the squad room. He then opened a new e-mail and typed “GoGo” in the address box.

Nothing happened. He deleted it and typed “Emily.” The automatic feature that completed e-mail addresses that had been previously used took over and filled in
[email protected]
.

Bosch felt a rage building. He looked around once more and then went into the e-mail account’s sent box and searched for all e-mails to emilygg. There were several. Bosch started reading them one at a time and quickly realized they were innocuous. Chu used e-mail only to set up meetings, often at the
Times
cafeteria across the street. There was no way to determine the kind of relationship he had with the reporter.

Bosch closed out the e-mail screens and shut the laptop. He had seen enough. He knew enough. He rolled in his chair back to his own desk and contemplated what to do. The investigation had been compromised by his own partner. The ramifications of this could extend all the way into court if McQuillen was eventually prosecuted. A defense attorney with knowledge of Chu’s impropriety could destroy his credibility as well as the credibility of the case.

That was just part of the case damage. It didn’t even speak to the irrevocable harm that Chu had caused their partnership. As far as Bosch was concerned, that relationship had just ended.

“Harry! You ready to rock?”

Bosch turned in his seat. Chu had just entered the cubicle.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “I’m ready.”

27

A
taxi garage was much like a police station. It operated solely as a hub for the refueling, maintenance and direction of vehicles that continually spread out across a geographic jurisdiction. And, of course, it was the place where those vehicles were replenished with those who drove them. The vehicles were always in play until mechanical failure pulled them out of the lineup. In that there was a rhythm that could be counted on. Cars in, cars out. Drivers in, drivers out. Mechanics in and mechanics out. Dispatchers in and dispatchers out.

Bosch and Chu sat on Gower and watched the front of the Black & White Taxi garage for nearly an hour before they saw the man they believed was Mark McQuillen park a car on the curb and then walk in through the open garage door. He wasn’t what Bosch expected. In his mind’s eye he was picturing the McQuillen he remembered from twenty-five years earlier. The McQuillen whose photo was splashed across the media as the scapegoat of the choke hold task force. The twenty-eight-year-old stud with the buzz cut and the biceps that looked strong enough to crush a man’s skull, let alone his carotid artery.

The man who sauntered into B&W Taxi was thicker in the hips than the shoulders, had straggly hair in an unkempt gray ponytail and walked with the pace of a man going where he didn’t really care to go.

“That’s him,” Bosch said. “I think.”

They were his first words in twenty minutes. He had very little to say anymore to Chu.

“You sure?” Chu asked.

Bosch looked down at the copy of the driver’s license photo Chu had printed. It was three years old but he was sure he had it right.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Bosch didn’t wait for his partner’s response. He got out of the car and headed diagonally across Gower toward the garage. He heard the other door slam behind him and Chu’s shoes on the pavement as he scurried to catch up.

“Hey, are we going to do this together or is it one-man-army time?” Chu called out.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “Together.”

For the last time, he thought.

It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dim lighting of the garage. There was more activity than on their previous visit. Shift change. Drivers and cars coming and going. They headed directly to the dispatch office, not wanting anyone to get the news to McQuillen before they got to him.

Bosch rapped on the door with his knuckles as he opened it. As he stepped in, he saw two men in the room, just as before. But one was McQuillen and the other was a new man as well. McQuillen was standing by his workstation, spraying a disinfectant on the radio headset he was about to put on. He seemed unfazed by the appearance of the two men in suits. He even nodded as if to signal that they were expected.

“Detectives,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Mark McQuillen?” Bosch asked.

“That would be me.”

“Detectives Bosch and Chu, LAPD. We want to ask you a few questions.”

McQuillen nodded again and turned to the other dispatcher.

“Andy, you hold the fort? Hopefully this won’t take long.”

The other man nodded and gave the smooth-seas signal with his hand.

“Actually,” Bosch said, “it might. Maybe you should see if you can get someone in.”

This time McQuillen spoke while looking directly at Bosch.

“Andy, call Jeff, get him out. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Bosch turned and gestured toward the door. McQuillen started out of the office. He was wearing a baggy shirt that was not tucked in. Bosch stayed behind him and kept his eyes on his hands the whole time. When they got into the garage, he put his hand on McQuillen’s back and directed him toward a taxi that was on jacks.

“Do you mind putting your hands on the hood for a minute?”

McQuillen complied, and when he did so his wrists extended past the cuffs of his shirtsleeves. Bosch saw the first thing he was hoping to see. A military-style watch on his right wrist. It had a large steel bezel with grip ridges.

“Not at all,” McQuillen said. “And I’ll tell you right now that in my right-front waistband you will find a little two-shot popper I like to carry. It’s not the safest job in the world. I know you have it tougher but we work in there through the night, the garage door always open. We take each driver’s bank at the end of shift and sometimes the drivers themselves aren’t the nicest guys, if you know what I mean.”

Bosch reached around McQuillen’s substantial girth and found the weapon. He pulled it out and held it up to show Chu. It was a Cobra Derringer with a big-bore barrel. Nice and small but hardly a popper. It could fire two .38 caliber rounds and they could do some damage if you used it up close enough. The Cobra had been on the list of guns McQuillen had registered and that Chu had pulled up on the ATF computer. Harry put it into his pocket.

“You have a concealed weapons permit?” Bosch asked.

“Not quite.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

As Bosch finished the pat-down, he felt what he was sure was a phone in McQuillen’s right-front pocket. He left it in place, acting as though he had missed it.

“Do you shake down everybody you bring in for questioning?” McQuillen asked.

“Rules,” Bosch said. “Can’t take you in the car without cuffs unless we do the pat-down.”

Bosch wasn’t exactly talking about department rules. More his own rules. When he had seen the Cobra on the ATF report, he guessed that it was a weapon McQuillen liked to carry on him—there wasn’t really much other reason to have a pocket pistol. Harry’s first priority was to separate him from it and anything else that might not have been on the ATF’s radar.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They walked out of the garage and into the late afternoon sun. Walking on either side of McQuillen, the detectives led him toward their car.

“Where are we going for this voluntary conversation?” McQuillen asked.

“The PAB,” Bosch replied.

“Haven’t seen the new building but if it is all the same, I’d rather go to Hollywood. It’s close and I can get back to work sooner.”

This was the start of a cat-and-mouse game. The key thing from Bosch’s perspective was to keep McQuillen cooperating. The moment he shut down and said, I want a lawyer, was the moment everything halted. Being a former cop, McQuillen was smart enough to know this. He was playing them.

“We can check if they have the space,” Bosch said. “Partner, give them a call.”

Bosch had used the code word. As Chu pulled his phone, Bosch opened the back door of their sedan and held it while McQuillen climbed in. He closed it and over the hood of the car gave Chu a hand signal, like a cutoff motion. The meaning was, we are not going to Hollywood.

Once they were all in the car Chu proceeded to fake a phone call with the lieutenant in charge of the detective squad room at Hollywood Division.

“L.T., Detective Chu, RHD, my partner and I are in the vicinity and would like to borrow one of your nine-by-nines for about an hour if we could. We could be there in five. Would that be all right with you?”

There was a long silence followed by “I see” three times from Chu. He then thanked the lieutenant and closed his phone.

“No good. They just rolled a DVD counterfeiting warehouse and they got all three rooms stacked. It will be a couple hours.”

Bosch glanced back at McQuillen and shrugged.

“Looks like you get to see the PAB, McQuillen.”

“I guess so.”

Bosch was pretty sure McQuillen had not fallen for the charade. On the rest of the drive Bosch tried to make small talk that would either elicit information or lower McQuillen’s guard. But the former cop knew all the tricks of the trade and remained mute almost the entire ride. This told Bosch that the interview at PAB was going to be difficult. Nothing was more difficult than trying to get a former cop to talk.