Michael Connelly - The Drop

“I’m sorry. I don’t know it. There was just a line of taxis and I jumped in one.”

“You remember what color it was?”

“No. I just remember it was dirty inside. I should’ve waited for the studio car.”

“You told Detectives Solomon and Glanville that you were delayed a bit on your arrival at the hotel while waiting for the cab driver to print out a receipt. Do you have that receipt handy?”

“Hold on.”

While Bosch waited, he opened the file for Irving’s taxi franchise project and started looking through the documents. He found the contract Irving had signed with Regent five months earlier, then came to a letter that was addressed to the city’s franchise board. It informed the board that Regent Taxi would be competing for the Hollywood franchise when it came up for renewal in the coming year. The letter also listed the “performance and trust” issues facing the current franchise holder, Black & White Taxi. Before Bosch finished reading the letter, Rapport came back on the phone.

“I have it here, Detective. It was Black and White. That was the name of the company.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rapport. I have one last question. Does it say on the receipt who the driver was?”

“Uh. . hmm. . uh, no, it just gives his number. It says driver twenty-six. Does that help?”

“It does, sir. It helps a lot. Now, that’s a pretty nice place you’re staying in, right?”

“Very nice, and I think you know who died here.”

“Yes, I do. But the reason I ask is, do you know if that room is equipped with a fax machine?”

“I don’t have to look. I know it is because I faxed pages to the set an hour ago. You want me to fax you this receipt?”

“Exactly, sir.”

Bosch gave him the number to the fax in the lieutenant’s office. No one would be able to look at the receipt except Duvall.

“It will be on its way as soon as I hang up, Lieutenant,” Rapport said.

“That’s Detective.”

“I keep forgetting you’re not Columbo.”

“No, sir, I’m not. But I am going to hit you with just one more question.”

Rapport laughed.

“Go ahead.”

“It’s a tight space in the garage area where you come in. Did your taxi pull in ahead of Mr. Irving’s car or was it the other way around?”

“Other way. We pulled in right behind him.”

“So when Irving got out of his car, did you see him?”

“Yeah, he stood there and gave his keys to the valet guy. The valet then wrote his name on a receipt and tore off the bottom half and gave it to him. The usual thing.”

“Did your driver see this?”

“I don’t know but he had a better view through the windshield than I did in the back.”

“Thank you, Mr. Rapport, and good luck with the scene you’re writing.”

“I hope I’ve helped.”

“You have.”

Bosch hung up and while he waited for the receipt to arrive via fax, he called George Irving’s office manager, Dana Rosen, and asked her about the letter to the city’s franchise board that was in the Regent Taxi file.

“Is this a copy or the original that was not yet sent out?” he asked.

“Oh, no, that was sent out. We sent it individually to every member of the board. That was the first step in announcing the plans to go for the Hollywood franchise.”

Bosch was looking at the letter as they spoke. It was dated two Mondays earlier.

“Was there any response to this?” he asked.

“Not yet. It would have been in the file if there was.”

“Thank you, Dana.”

Bosch hung up and went back to looking through the Regent file. He found a paper-clipped batch of printouts that must have been the backup Irving used for the allegations contained in the letter. There was a copy of a story that had been in the Times which reported that the third Black & White driver in four months had been arrested for driving drunk while operating a taxi. The story also reported that a B&W driver was determined to have been at fault in an accident involving serious injuries to the couple in the cab’s backseat earlier in the year. The stack also contained copies of the arrest reports on the DUI stops and a batch of moving violations that had been written against B&W drivers. Everything from running red lights to double-parking, the moving violations were probably just routine and collateral to the DUI arrests.

The records made it easy for Bosch to see why Irving thought B&W was vulnerable. Snatching the Hollywood franchise was probably going to be the easiest piece of business he had ever done.

Bosch quickly scanned the arrest reports but was snagged by a curiosity. He noticed that in each of the reports, the same badge number had been entered in the block identifying the arresting officer. Three arrests spread over four months. It seemed beyond coincidence that the same cop would have made all three arrests. He knew that it was conceivable that the badge number simply belonged to the jail officer who had administered the Breathalyzer tests at Hollywood Division after the cab drivers were taken into custody by other officers. But even that would have been unusual and out of procedure.

He picked up the phone and called the department’s personnel office. He gave his own name and badge number and said he needed to get an ID off a badge. He was transferred to a mid-level bureaucrat who looked it up on the computer and gave Bosch the name, rank and assignment.

“Robert Mason, P-three, Hollywood.”

As in Bobby Mason. George Irving’s longtime friend — until recently.

Bosch thanked her and hung up. He wrote down the information he had just assembled and then studied it. He could not dismiss as happenstance the fact that Mason had made three DUI arrests of B&W drivers at a time he was apparently still friends with a man representing a rival to B&W’s Hollywood franchise.

He circled Mason’s name in his notes. The patrol officer was definitely someone Bosch wanted to talk to. But not yet. Bosch needed to know far more than he knew now before he could make the approach.

He moved on and next studied the arrest summaries, which contained the probable cause for detaining the drivers. In each case the driver had been observed driving erratically. In one of the cases, the summary noted that a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s whiskey had been found under the driver’s seat of the taxi.

Bosch noted that the report did not mention the size of the bottle and for a moment he mused over the choice of the words half empty over half full and the different interpretations the descriptions might bring. But then Chu rolled his chair over and leaned against his desk.

“Harry, it sounds like you have something going.”

“Yeah, maybe. You want to take a ride?”

Black & White Taxi was located on Gower south of Sunset. It was an industrial neighborhood full of businesses that catered to the movie industry. Costume warehouses, camera houses, prop houses. B&W was in one of two side-by-side sound-stages that looked old and worn-out. The cab company operated out of one, and the other was a storage and rental facility for movie cars. Bosch had been in the car storage facility before on a case. He had taken his time walking through. It was like a museum with every car that had ever caught his eye as a teenager.

The two hangar doors of B&W were wide open. Bosch and Chu walked in. In the moment of blindness when their eyes adjusted from the transition of sunlight to shadows, they were almost hit by a taxi heading out to the street. They jumped back and let the black-and-white-checked Impala go between them.

“Asshole,” Chu said.

There were cars sitting dormant and cars up on jacks being worked on by mechanics in greasy coveralls. At the far end of the large space, two picnic tables sat next to a couple of snack and beverage machines. A handful of drivers were hanging out there, waiting for their chariots to pass muster with the mechanics.