Michael Connelly: The Black Echo

“Mr. Obinna, I can call the duty detective and see if anyone is going to come out today, and if so when they will be here. But that is not what I’ve come for.”

Bosch then pulled out the clear plastic envelope with the pawn ticket in it. He held it up for Obinna to see.

“Can I see this bracelet please?” The moment he said it he felt a bad premonition come over him. The pawnbroker, a small, round man with olive skin and dark hair noodled over a bare cranium, looked at Bosch incredulously, his dark bushy eyebrows knitted together.

“You’re not going to take the report on my cases?”

“No sir, I’m investigating a murder. Can you please show me the bracelet pawned on this ticket? Then I will call the detective bureau and find out if anyone is coming today on your break-in. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Aygh! You people! I cooperate. I send my lists each week, even take pictures for your pawn men. Then all I ask for is one detective to investigate a robbery and I get a man who says his job is murder. I been waiting now since fiveA.M. in the morning.”

“Give me your phone. I’ll get somebody over.”

Obinna took the receiver off a wall phone behind one of the damaged counters and handed it across. Bosch gave him the number to dial. While Bosch talked to the duty detective at Parker Center, the shopkeeper looked up the pawn ticket in a logbook. The duty detective, a woman Bosch knew had not been involved in a field investigation during her entire career with the Robbery-Homicide Division, asked Bosch how he had been, then told him that she had referred the pawnshop break-in to the local station even though she knew there would be no detectives there today. The local station was Central Division. Bosch walked around the counter and dialed the detective bureau there anyway. There was no answer. While the phone rang on unanswered, Bosch began a one-sided conversation.

“Yeah, this is Harry Bosch, Hollywood detectives, I’m just trying to check on the status of the break-in over at the Happy Hocker on Broadway… He is. Do you know when?… Uh huh, uh huh… Right, Obinna, O-B-I-N-N-A.”

He looked over and Obinna nodded at the correct spelling.

“Yeah, he’s here waiting… Right… I’ll tell him. Thank you.”

He hung up the phone. Obinna looked at him, his bushy eyebrows arched.

“It’s been a busy day, Mr. Obinna,” Bosch said. “The detectives are out, but they’ll get here. Shouldn’t be too much longer. I gave the watch officer your name and told him to get ’em over here as soon as possible. Now, can I see the bracelet?”

“No.”

Bosch dug a cigarette out of a package he pulled from his coat pocket. He knew what was coming before Obinna spread his arm across one of the damaged display cases.

“Your bracelet, it is gone,” the pawnbroker said. “I looked it up here in my record. I see that I had it here in the case because it was a fine piece, very valuable to me. Now it is gone. We are both victims of the robber, yes?”

Obinna smiled, apparently happy to share his woe. Bosch looked into the glitter of sharp glass in the bottom of the case. He nodded and said, “Yes.”

“You are a day late, detective. A shame.”

“Did you say only these two cases were robbed?”

“Yes. A smash and grab. Quick. Quick.”

“What time?”

“Police called me at four-thirty in the morning. That is the time of the alarm. I came at once. The alarm, when the window was smashed, the alarm went off. The officers found no one. They stayed until I came. Then I begin to wait for detectives that do not come. I cannot clean up my cases until they get here to investigate this crime.”

Bosch was thinking of the time scheme. The body dumped sometime before the anonymous 911 call at 4A.M. The pawnshop broken into about the same time. A bracelet pawned by the dead man taken. There are no coincidences, he told himself.

“You said something about pictures. Lists and pictures for the pawn detail?”

“Yes, LAPD, that is true. I turn over lists of everything I take in to the pawn detectives. It is the law. I cooperate fully.”

Obinna nodded his head and frowned mournfully into the broken display case.

“What about the pictures?” Bosch said.

“Yes, pictures. These pawn detectives, they ask me to take pictures of my best acquisitions. Help them better identify for stolen merchandise. It is not the law, but I say sure, I cooperate fully. I buy the Polaroid kind of camera. I keep pictures if they want to come and look. They never do. It’s bullshit.”

“You have a picture of this bracelet?”

Obinna’s eyebrows arched again as he considered the idea for the first time.

“I think,” he said, and then he disappeared through a black curtain in a doorway behind the counter. He came out a few moments later with a shoe box full of Polaroid photos with yellow carbon slips paper-clipped to them. He rustled through the photos, occasionally pulling one out, raising his eyebrows, and then sliding it back into place. Finally, he found what he wanted.

“Here. There it is.”

Bosch took the photo and studied it.

“Antique gold with carved jade, very nice,” Obinna said. “I remember it, top line. No wonder the shitheel that broke through my window took it. Made in the 1930s, Mexico… I gave the man eight hundred dollars. I have not often paid such a price for a piece of jewelry. I remember, very big man, he came here with the ring for the Super Bowl. Nineteen eighty-three. Very nice. I gave him one thousand dollars. He did not come back for it.”

He held out his left hand to display the oversized gold ring, which seemed even larger on his small finger.

“The guy who pawned the bracelet, you remember him as well?” Bosch asked.

Obinna looked puzzled. Bosch decided that watching his eyebrows was like watching two caterpillars charging each other. He took one of the Polaroids of Meadows out of his pocket and handed it to the pawnbroker. He studied it closely.

“The man is dead,” Obinna said after a moment. The caterpillars seemed to quiver with fear. “The man looks dead.”

“I don’t need your help for that,” Bosch said. “I want to know if he pawned the bracelet.”

Obinna handed the photo back. He said, “I think yes.”

“He ever come in here and pawn anything else, before or after the bracelet?”

“No. I think I’d remember him. I’ll say no.”

“I need to take this,” Bosch said, holding up the Polaroid of the bracelet. “If you need it back, give me a call.”

He put one of his business cards on the cash register. The card was one of the cheap kind, with his name and phone number handwritten on a line. As he walked to the front door, crossing under a row of banjos, Bosch looked at his watch. He turned to Obinna, who was looking through the box of Polaroids again.

“Mr. Obinna, the watch officer, he said to tell you that if the detectives didn’t get here in a half hour, you should go home and they will be by in the morning.”

Obinna looked at him without saying a word. The caterpillars charged and collided. Bosch looked up and saw himself in the polished brass elbow of a saxophone that hung overhead. A tenor. Then he turned and walked out the door, heading to the com center to pick up the tape.

The watch sergeant in the com center beneath City Hall let Bosch record the 911 call off one of the big reel-to-reels that never stop rolling and recording the cries of the city. The voice of the emergency operator was female and black. The caller was male and white. The caller sounded like a boy.

“Nine one one emergency. What are you reporting?”

“Uh, uh-”

“Can I help you? What are you reporting?”