Michael Connelly - The Black Echo

“Mrs. Niese, I’m not looking for your son for something he did. I need to talk to him because of something he saw. He could possibly be in danger.”

“Oh, bullshit. I’ve heard that line before.”

She closed the door and he just stood there. After a few moments he could hear her on the phone, and he thought it was a French accent but couldn’t be sure. He could only make out a few of the sentences but they made him blush. He thought about Sharkey and realized he wasn’t really a runaway, because there was nothing here to run away from. He left the doorstep and went back to the car. That would be it for the day. And he was out of time. Lewis and Clarke must have paper out on him by now. He’d be assigned to a desk at IAD by morning. He drove back to the station and signed out. Everyone was already gone and there were no messages on his desk, not even from his lawyer. On the way home he stopped by the Lucky and bought four bottles of beer, a couple from Mexico, a lager from England called Old Nick and a Henry’s.

He expected to find a message from Lewis and Clarke on his phone tape when he got home. He wasn’t wrong, but the message was not what he expected.

“I know you’re there, so listen,” said a voice Bosch recognized as Clarke’s. “They can change their mind but they can’t change ours. We’ll see you around.”

There were no other messages. He played Clarke’s message over three times. Something had gone wrong for them. They must have been called off. Could his lame threat to the FBI to go to the media have worked? Even as he thought the question, he doubted the answer was yes. So then, what happened? He sat down in the watch chair and began drinking the beers, the Mexicans first, and looking through the war scrapbook he had forgotten to put away. When he had opened it Sunday night he had opened a dark memory. He now found himself entranced by it, the distance of time having faded the threat as well as the photos. Sometime after dark the phone rang and Harry picked it up before the tape machine.

“Well,” said Lieutenant Harvey Pounds, “the FBI now thinks they might have been too harsh. They’ve reassessed and want you back in. You are to aid their investigation in any way they request. That comes down from administration, Parker Center.”

Pounds’s voice betrayed his astonishment at the reversal.

“What about IAD?” Bosch asked.

“Nothing filed on you. Like I said, the FBI is backing away, so is IAD. For now.”

“So I am back in.”

“You’re back in. Not my choice. Just so you know, they went over me, because I told them to blow it out their collective asses. Something about this stinks, but I guess that will have to wait for later. For now, you are on detached assignment. You are working with them until further notice.”

“What about Edgar?”

“Don’t worry about Edgar. He’s not your concern anymore.”

“Pounds, you act like you did me a favor putting me on the homicide table when they kicked me out from Parker Center. I did you the favor, man. So if you’re looking for apologies from me, you aren’t getting any.”

“Bosch, I’m not looking for anything from you. You fucked yourself. Only problem with that is that you may have fucked me in the process. If it was up to me, you wouldn’t be near this case. You’d be checking pawnshop lists.”

“But it isn’t up to you, is it?”

He hung up before Pounds could reply. He stood there thinking for a few moments and his hand was still on the phone when it rang again.

“What?”

“Rough day, right?” Eleanor Wish said.

“I thought it was somebody else.”

“Well, I guess you’ve heard.”

“I heard.”

“You’ll be working with me.”

“How come you called off the dogs?”

“Simple, we want to keep the investigation out of the papers.”

“There’s more to it.”

She didn’t say anything but she didn’t hang up. Finally, he thought of something to say.

“Tomorrow, what do I do?”

“Come see me in the morning. We’ll go from there.”

Bosch hung up. He thought about her, and about how he didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t walk away now. He went into the kitchen and took the bottle of Old Nick from the refrigerator.

Lewis stood with his back to the passing traffic, using his wide body to block the sound from intruding into the pay phone.

“He starts with the FBI-er, the bureau, tomorrow morning,” Lewis said. “What do you want us to do?”

Irving didn’t answer at first. Lewis envisioned him on the other end of the line, jaw worked into a clench. Popeye face, Lewis thought and smirked. Clarke walked over from the car then and whispered, “What’s so funny? What did he say?”

Lewis batted him away and made a don’t-bother-me face at his partner.

“Who was that?” Irving asked.

“It was Clarke, sir. He’s just anxious to know our assignment.”

“Did Lieutenant Pounds talk to the subject?”

“Yes sir,” Lewis said, wondering if Irving was taping the call. “The lieutenant said the, uh, subject has been told he is to work with the F-the bureau. They are consolidating the murder and the bank investigations. He is working with Special Agent Eleanor Wish.”

“What’s his scam…?” Irving said, though no reply was expected, or offered by Lewis. There was silence on the phone line for a while because Lewis knew better than to interrupt Irving’s thoughts. He saw Clarke approaching the phone booth again and he waved him away and shook his head as if he were dealing with an impetuous child. The doorless phone booth was at the bottom of Woodrow Wilson Drive, next to the Barham Boulevard crossing over the Hollywood Freeway. Lewis heard the sound of a semi thunder by on the freeway and felt warm air blow into the booth. He looked up at the lights of the houses on the hillside and tried to pinpoint which one came from Bosch’s stilt house. It was impossible to tell. The hill looked like a giant, fat Christmas tree with too many lights.

“He must have some kind of leverage on them,” Irving finally said. “He’s muscled his way into it. I’ll tell you what your assignment is. You two stay on him. Not so he knows. But stay with him. He is up to something. Find out what. And build your one point eighty-one case along the way. The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have withdrawn its complaint, but we will not back off.”

“What about Pounds, you still want him copied?”

“That is Lieutenant Pounds, Detective Lewis. And yes, copy him your daily surveillance log. That will be enough for him.”

Irving hung up without another word.

“Very good, sir,” Lewis said to the dead phone. He didn’t want Clarke to know he had been slighted. “We’ll stay with it. Thank you, sir. Good night.”

Then he, too, hung up, privately embarrassed that his commander had not deemed it necessary to say good night to him. Clarke quickly walked up.

“So?”

“So we pick him up again tomorrow morning. Bring your piss bottle.”

“That’s it? Just surveillance?”

“At this time.”

“Shit. I want to search that fucker’s house. Break some stuff. He’s probably got the shit from that heist sitting up there.”

“If he was involved, I doubt he would be so stupid. We sit back for now. If he’s dirty on this, we’ll see.”

“Oh, he’s dirty. Don’t worry.”

“We’ll see.”

Sharkey sat on the concrete block wall that fronted a parking lot on Santa Monica Boulevard. He closely watched the lighted front of the 7-Eleven across the street, checking out who was coming and who was going. Mostly tourist trade and couples. No singles yet. None that fit the bill. The boy called Arson sauntered over and said, “This ain’t going nowhere, budro.”