Майкл Коннелли - Two Kinds of Truth

“And then the pills go to the capper?”

“Exactly right. Most of these shills, they’re addicts themselves. That capper is the straw boss and he reports to somebody down the line, and he’s gotta make sure nobody guzzles those pills. So he keeps everybody in the van and they hit the pharmacies, maybe two going in at a time, and they turn those pills over right away when they get back to the van. The capper will front them what they need out of the day’s haul to maintain their addiction and keep them working. He keeps them high and keeps them moving. It’s a trap. They get in and they can’t get out.”

Bosch thought about the man in the sunglasses with the goatee who was driving the van of old people that he and Lourdes had tailed.

“What happens next?” Bosch asked.

“The pills get distributed,” Edgar said. “They hit the streets, go to the addicts. Fifty-five thousand dead and counting since this all started. Almost as many as we lost in the Vietnam War. That is sadly quantifiable, but the money, forget it. It’s off the charts. So many people are making money off this crisis — it’s the growth industry of this country. Remember what they used to say about the banks and Wall Street being too big to fail? It’s like that. But too big to shut down.”

“David and Goliath,” Bosch said.

“Worse than that,” Edgar said. “Let me tell you one story that to me says it all. Opiate addiction, in case you don’t know, clogs the pipes. It stunts the gastrointestinal tract. Bottom line is, you can’t shit. So one of the big pharmaceutical companies comes up with a prescription laxative that does the job and costs about twenty times what your over-the-counter laxative runs. The next thing you know the pharma’s stock goes through the roof. They’re selling so much of this that they’re advertising on national television. Of course, they don’t say dick about addiction or anything like that. They just show some guy mowing the lawn and, oh, he can’t shit, so get your doctor to give you this. So now you’ve got Wall Street invested and the national media selling ads. Everybody is making bank, Harry, and when that happens it can’t be stopped.”

“I thought they were trying to change things in Washington,” Lourdes offered. “You know, new laws, putting a big focus on this.”

“Not likely,” Edgar said. “The pharmas are major campaign contributors. Nobody’s going to bite the hand that feeds them.”

Edgar seemed to be using the national picture to justify his own local inertia. Bosch wanted to keep the focus small for the moment. You always start small and go big.

“So going back to this particular case in Pacoima, the capper got to Dr. Herrera. He went from signing no prescriptions to doing hundreds.”

“That’s right and these are big prescriptions. Sixty pills, sometimes ninety. There’s nothing subtle about it. I pulled his records and he’s seventy-three years old. It looks like he retired and they brought him back, reopened the clinic, and put a prescription pad in front of him. For all we know, the guy might be senile. We’ve seen that. They drag some schnook out of retirement because he’s still got that DEA number and a license to practice. ‘You want to make an extra twenty K a month?’ and so on.”

Bosch was quiet as he tried to digest all of the information. Edgar went on unprompted.

“Another thing they do with these old doctors is they go through all their old records and pull legit names to phony up IDs and Medicare cards. They use real people who have no idea their names are being used in all of this. The government thinks the subsistence requests are legit.”

“That’s crazy,” Lourdes said.

“So then what do you guys do about it?” Bosch asked.

“When we can identify it, we can shut the doctor down,” Edgar said. “We work with the DEA to get the number revoked and then we yank the license to practice. But it is a long administrative process and most of the time these cappers have moved on to the next guy. A guy like Efram Herrera is left holding the bag. Not that I have any sympathy for the doctors, but the real villains here are elusive. I don’t have to tell you how frustrating that is.”

“I can see that. The pill shills, have you heard of them being moved around by plane?”

Bosch asked the question casually, but it came out of the blue and gave Edgar pause. Bosch read in the hesitation that they might be onto something out of the routine with the Esquivel case.

“Is that what you have up there?” Edgar asked.

“It looks like it,” Bosch said. “We followed a van from the clinic to Whiteman Airport and several people were loaded onto an old jump plane. It took off and headed south. They didn’t file a flight plan. We checked with the tower. A guy said the plane comes in and goes out every day. The clinic is right across the street from the airport.”

“The fuel bills from Whiteman go to a company down in Calexico,” Lourdes added.

Bosch could see a change come over Edgar, an added level of concern working its way into his eyes and the deep set of his brow. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk.

“Things make a little more sense now,” he said.

“How so?” Bosch asked.

“I mean as far as killing the kid. One of the biggest operators in the pill-mill business in the country is a Russian-Armenian syndicate. Most of the pills that come out of these small operations go to them, and they feed Chicago, Las Vegas, all the hot spots.”

Bosch threw a sideways glance at Lourdes. O’Connor at the Whiteman tower had said the pilot spoke with a Russian accent. Lourdes exchanged eye contact and then returned attention to Edgar, who was still talking.

“Supposedly they use planes to keep people in motion, hitting multiple clinics and pharmacies a day,” he said. “The planes help keep the shills in circulation, cashing out scrips for pills. Like I said before, they have multiple IDs and they’re moved through three, four, pharmacies a day. We are talking big money and with big money comes big danger. This kid had no idea what he was bringing on when he decided to stand tall.”

“They would hit him just to send a message?” Bosch asked.

“Entirely possible. ‘If you ain’t filling my scrips, you ain’t filling nobody’s scrips.’ Like that.”

“Where is this syndicate based? Here?”

“You need to be talking to the DEA, Harry. This is a whole different level of—”

“I’m talking to you, Jerry. Tell me what you know.”

“Not a lot, Harry. We handle enforcement for the medical board, man. This isn’t an organized crime unit. What I heard through my contact at Drug Enforcement is that they’re out there in the desert.”

“Which desert? Las Vegas?”

“No, down toward the border and Calexico. Out near Slab City, Bombay Beach — that no-man’s-land they call the south side of nowhere. There’s all kinds of airstrips down there abandoned by cartels, even the U.S. military, and that’s what they use when they’re flying people around. Out in the middle of nowhere it’s like a gypsy caravan or something. They stay mobile. They sense trouble, they move like fucking nomads.”

“What about names? Who runs the syndicate?”

“Some Armenian guy who uses Russian enforcers and pilots. He calls himself Santos because he looks Mexican, but he isn’t. And that’s all I’ve got on that.”

“If they know where these people are and what they’re doing, why don’t they move in and take them down?”

“That’s a DEA question, man. I wonder the same thing. I think it’s Santos. They want him and he’s like smoke.”

“Give me a name at DEA.”

“Charlie Hovan. He’s their expert on Armenian drug dealers. He told me his family Americanized the name from Hovanian or something like that.”