Michael Connelly - The Drop

“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.”

“All right, so how does this lead to McQuillen?”

“I was just a grunt on the task force. A gatherer. I handled the autopsies. I know this, though. The statistics matched up across racial and geographic lines. Sure, there were more choke hold deaths in the south end. Far more African Americans died than other races. But the ratios were even. There were far more incidents involving use of force in the south end. The more confrontations, scuffles, fights, resisting arrests you get, the more uses of the choke hold. The more you use the choke hold, the more deaths you will have. It was simple math. But nothing is simple when racial politics are involved.”

Rider was black and had grown up in South L.A. But Bosch was speaking to her cop to cop and there was no awkwardness in his telling the story. They had been partners and had operated as a team under extreme pressures. Rider knew Bosch as well as anyone could. They were brother and sister and there was no holdback between them.

“McQuillen worked P.M. watch in Seventy-seventh,” he said. “He liked action and he got it almost every night. I don’t remember the exact number but he’d had something like sixty-plus use-of-force incidents in four years. And as you know, those are only the ones they write reports on. In those incidents, he used the choke hold a lot and he ended up killing two people in a three-year span. Of all the choke hold deaths over all the years, there was nobody involved in more than one. Only him, because he had used it more than anybody else. So when the task force came along. .”

“He got special attention.”

“Right. Now, every one of his use-of-force incidents came back clean on review at the time of occurrence. Including the two deaths. It was determined by a review board that both times he used the hold within policy. But one time and it’s an unlucky thing. Two times and there is a pattern. Somebody leaked his name and history to the Times , which was hovering over the task force like the smog over downtown. They ran a story and McQuillen became the face of what was wrong in the department. Didn’t matter that he was never found to have acted out of policy. He was the guy. A killer cop. The head of the ministers’ coalition at the time held a press conference it seemed every other day. He started calling him McKillin and it stuck.”

Bosch got up from the bench so he could pace a little bit as he continued.

“The task force recommended that the bar hold be dropped from the use-of-force progression and it was. Funny thing is, the department then told officers to rely more on their batons — in fact, you could be disciplined if you got out of a patrol car without carrying your baton in your hand or on your belt. Added to that, Tasers were coming into use just as the choke hold went out. And what did we get? Rodney King. A video that changed the world. A video of a guy being Tased and whaled on with batons when a proper choke hold would’ve just put him to sleep.”

“Huh,” Rider said. “I never looked at it that way.”

Bosch nodded.

“Anyway, dropping the choke hold wasn’t enough. There had to be an offering to the angry mob and it was McQuillen. He was suspended on what I always thought were trumped-up, politically motivated charges. The review of the deaths determined that in the second case he had been out of policy in the escalation of the use-of-force sequence. In other words, the choke hold that killed the guy was okay but everything he did up until he used it was wrong. He was brought up on a board of rights and fired. The case was referred to the DA and the DA took a pass. At the time, I remember thinking McQuillen was lucky they didn’t ride the wave and prosecute him. He sued to get his job back but that was a nonstarter. He was done.”

Bosch ended it there for the moment to see if Rider had a response. She had folded her arms across her chest and was staring into the shadows. Bosch knew she was grinding it down. Seeing how all of this played out in the present.