Michael Connelly - The Black Echo

He next called up the information on the two bulletins. Both had come from the FBI, the first issued two weeks after Beecham had been burglarized. It was then reissued three months later when Beecham’s jewelry had still not turned up. Bosch wrote down the bulletin number and turned off the computer. He went across the room to the robbery/commercial burglary section. On a steel shelf that ran along the back wall were dozens of black binders that held the bulletins and BOLOs from past years. Bosch took down the one marked September and began looking through it. He quickly realized that the bulletins were not in chronological order and weren’t all issued in September. In fact, there was no order. He might have to look through all ten months since Beecham’s burglary to find the bulletin he needed. He pulled an armful of the binders off the shelf and sat down at the burglary table. A few moments later he felt the presence of someone across the table from him.

“What do you want?” he said without looking up.

“What do I want?” the duty detective said. “I want to know what the fuck you are doing, Bosch. This isn’t your place anymore. You can’t just come in here like you’re running the crew. Put that shit back on the shelf, and if you want to look through it come back down here tomorrow and ask, goddammit. And don’t give me any bullshit about an autopsy. You’ve already been here a half hour.”

Bosch looked up at him. He put his age at twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine, even younger than Bosch had been when he had made it to Robbery-Homicide. Either standards had dropped or RHD wasn’t what it was. Bosch knew it was actually both. He looked back down at the bulletin binder.

“I’m talking to you, asshole!” the detective boomed.

Bosch reached his foot up under the table and kicked the chair that was across from him. The chair shot out from the table and its backrest hit the detective in the crotch. He doubled over and made an oomph sound, grabbing the chair for support. Bosch knew he had his reputation going for him now. Harry Bosch: a loner, a fighter, a killer. C’mon kid, he was saying, do something.

But the young detective just stared at Bosch, his anger and humiliation in check. He was a cop who could pull the gun but maybe not the trigger. And once Bosch knew that, he knew the kid would walk away.

The young cop shook his head, waved his hands like he was saying Enough of this, and walked back to the duty desk.

“Go ahead, write me up, kid,” Bosch said to his back.

“Fuck you,” the kid feebly returned.

Bosch knew he had nothing to worry about. IAD wouldn’t even look at an officer-on-officer beef without a corroborating witness or tape recording. One cop’s word against another’s was something they wouldn’t touch in this department. Deep down, they knew a cop’s word by itself was worthless. That was why Internal Affairs cops always worked in pairs.

An hour and seven cigarettes later, Bosch found it. A photocopy of another Polaroid of the gold-and-jade bracelet was part of a fifty-page packet of descriptions and photos of property lost in a burglary at WestLand National Bank at Sixth and Hill. Now Bosch was able to place the address in his mind, and he remembered the dark smoked glass of the building. He had never been inside the bank. A bank heist with jewelry taken, he thought. It didn’t make much sense. He studied the list. Almost every item was a piece of jewelry and there was too much there for a walk-in robbery. Harriet Beecham alone was listed as having lost eight antique rings, four bracelets, four earrings. Besides that, these were listed as burglary losses, not robbery losses. He looked through the Be on Lookout package for any kind of crime summary, but didn’t find any. Just a bureau contact: Special Agent E. D. Wish.

Then he noticed in a block on the BOLO sheet that there were three dates noted for the date of the crime. A burglary over a three-day span during the first week of September. Labor Day weekend, he realized. Downtown banks are closed three days. It had to have been a safe-deposit caper. A tunnel job? Bosch leaned back and thought about that. Why hadn’t he remembered it? A heist like that would have played in the media for days. It would have been talked about in the department even longer. Then he realized he had been in Mexico on Labor Day, and for the next three weeks. The bank heist had occurred while he was serving the one-month suspension for the Dollmaker case. He leaned forward, picked up a phone and dialed.

“ Times, Bremmer.”

“It’s Bosch. Still got you working Sundays, huh?”

“Two to ten, every Sunday, no parole. So, what’s up? I haven’t talked to you since, uh, your problem with the Dollmaker case. How you liking Hollywood Division?”

“It’ll do. For a while, at least.” He was speaking low so the duty detective would not overhear.

Bremmer said, “Like that, huh? Well, I heard you caught the stiff up at the dam this morning.”

Joel Bremmer had covered the cop shop for the Times longer than most cops had been on the force, including Bosch. There was not much he didn’t hear about the department, or couldn’t find out with a phone call. A year ago he called Bosch for comment on his twenty-two-day suspension, no pay. Bremmer had heard about it before Bosch. Generally, the police department hated the Times, and the Times was never short in its criticism of the department. But in the middle of that was Bremmer, whom any cop could trust and many, like Bosch, did.

“Yeah, that’s my case,” Bosch said. “Right now, it’s nothing much. But I need a favor. If it works out the way it’s looking, then it will be something you’d want to know about.”

Bosch knew he didn’t have to bait him, but he wanted the reporter to know there might be something later.

“What do you need?” Bremmer said.

“As you know, I was out of town last Labor Day on my extended vacation, courtesy of IAD. So I missed this one. But there was-”

“The tunnel job? You’re not going to ask about the tunnel job, are you? Over here in downtown? All the jewelry? Negotiable bonds, stock certificates, maybe drugs?”

Bosch heard the reporter’s voice go up a notch in urgency. He had been right, it had been a tunnel and the story had played well. If Bremmer was this interested, then it was a substantial case. Still, Bosch was surprised he had not heard of it after coming back to work in October.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” he said. “I was gone then, so I missed it. Ever any arrests?”

“No, it’s open. FBI’s doing it, last I checked.”

“I want to look at the clips on it tonight. Is that all right?”

“I’ll make copies. When are you coming?”

“I’ll head over in a little while.”

“I take it this has got something to do with this morning’s stiff?”

“It’s looking that way. Maybe. I can’t talk right now. And I know the feebees have the case. I’ll go see them tomorrow. That’s why I want to see the clips tonight.”

“I’ll be here.”

After hanging up the phone, Bosch looked down at the FBI photocopy of the bracelet. There was no doubt it was the piece that had been pawned by Meadows and was in Obinna’s Polaroid. The bracelet in the FBI photo was in place on a woman’s liver-spotted wrist. Three small carved fish swimming on a wave of gold. Bosch guessed it was Harriet Beecham’s seventy-one-year-old wrist and the photo had probably been taken for insurance purposes. He looked over at the duty detective, who was still leafing through the gun catalog. He coughed loudly like he had seen Nicholson do in a movie once and at the same time tore the BOLO sheet out of the binder. The kid detective looked over at Bosch and then went back to the guns and bullets.