Michael Connelly - The Black Echo

“So, how’d they do it?” Bosch said.

“It was dirty money. Money that no Vietnamese police captain could or should have. I suppose they could have wired it to Zurich, but you have to remember you are dealing with the Vietnamese culture. Born of turmoil and distrust. War. These people did not even trust banks in their homeland. And besides it wasn’t money anymore.”

“What?” Eleanor said, puzzled.

“They had been converting all along. Do you know what eighteen million dollars looks like? Would probably fill a room. So they found a way to shrink it. At least, that’s what we believe.”

“Precious gems,” Bosch said.

“Diamonds,” Ernst said. “It is said eighteen million dollars’ worth of the right diamonds would easily fit in two shoe boxes.”

“And into a safe-deposit box,” Bosch said.

“That could be, but, please, I don’t want to know what I don’t need to know.”

“Binh was one of the captains,” Bosch said. “Who were the other two?”

“I am told one of them was named Van Nguyen. And he is believed to be dead. He never left Vietnam. Killed by the other two, or maybe the North Army. But he never got out. That was confirmed by our agents in Ho Chi Minh after the fall. The other two did. They came here. And both had passes, arranged through connections and money, I suppose. I can’t help you there… There was Binh, who it seems you have found, and the other was Nguyen Tran. He came with Binh. Where they went and what they did here, I can’t help you with. It’s been fifteen years. Once they came across they were no longer our concern.”

“Why would you allow them to come across?”

“Who says we did? You have to realize, Detective Bosch, that much of this information was put together after the fact.”

Ernst stood up then. That was all the information he would decompartmentalize for today.

Bosch didn’t want to go back up to the bureau. The information from Ernst was amphetamine in his blood. He wanted to walk. He wanted to talk, to storm. When they got in the elevator he pushed the button for the lobby and told Eleanor they were going outside. The bureau was like a fishbowl. He wanted a big room.

In any investigation, it had always seemed to Bosch, information would come slowly, like sand dropping steadily through the cinched middle of an hourglass. At some point, there was more information in the bottom of the glass. And then the sand in the top seemed to drop faster, until it was cascading through the hole. They were at that point with Meadows, the bank burglary, the whole thing. Things were coming together.

They went out through the front lobby and onto the green lawn where there were eight U.S. flags and a California state flag flapping lazily on poles posted in a semicircle. There were no protestors on this day. The air was warm and unseasonably humid.

“Do we have to walk out here?” Eleanor asked. “I would rather be upstairs, where we’d be near the phones. You could have a coffee.”

“I want to smoke.”

They walked north toward Wilshire Boulevard.

Bosch said, “It’s 1975. Saigon is about to go down the sewer. Police Captain Binh pays people to get him and his share of diamonds out. Who he pays, we don’t know. But we do know that he gets VIP treatment all the way. Most people took boats out, he flew. Four days from Saigon to the States. He is accompanied by an American civilian adviser to help smooth things. That’s Meadows. He-”

“He may have been accompanied,” she said. “You forgot the word ‘may’ there.”

“We’re not in court. I’m saying it the way I see it might’ve been, okay? Afterward, if you don’t like it, you say it your way.”

She raised her arms in a hands-off kind of way and Bosch continued.

“So, Meadows and Binh are together. Nineteen seventy-five. Meadows is working refugee security or something. See, he’s getting out of there, too. He may or may not have known Binh from his old sideline, dealing heroin. The chances are he did. He was probably, in effect, working for Binh. Now, he may or may not have known what Binh was carrying with him to the States. Chances are he at least had an idea.”

Bosch stopped to organize his thoughts and Eleanor reluctantly took over.

“Binh takes with him his cultural dislike or distrust for putting his money in the hands of bankers. He has an additional problem, too. His money is not kosher. It is undeclared, unknown and illegal for him to have. He can’t declare it or make a normal deposit because this would be noticed and then have to be explained. So, he keeps this sizable fortune in the next best thing: a safe-deposit vault. Where are we going?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He was too consumed by his thoughts. They were at Wilshire. When the walk sign flashed above the crosswalk they went with the flow of bodies. On the other side of the street they turned west, walking along the hedges that bordered the veterans cemetery. Bosch took over the story.

“Okay, so Binh’s got his share in the safe-deposit box. He starts the great American dream as a refugee. Only he’s a rich refugee. Meantime, Meadows comes back after the war, can’t get into the groove of real life, can’t beat his habit, and starts capering to feed it. But things aren’t as easy as in Saigon. He gets caught, spends some time in stir. He gets out, goes back, gets out, then finally starts blocking some real time on federal raps on a couple of bank jobs.”

There was an opening in the hedge and a brick walkway. Bosch followed it and they stood looking at the expanse of the cemetery, the rows of carved stones a weather-polished white against the sea of grass. The tall hedge buffered the sound from the street. It was suddenly very peaceful.

“It’s like a park,” Bosch said.

“It’s a graveyard,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t have to whisper. Let’s walk around. It’s quiet.”

Eleanor hesitated but then trailed him as he followed the bricks beneath an oak tree that shaded the graves of a grouping of World War I veterans. She caught up and continued the dialogue.

“So we have Meadows in TI. Somehow, he hears about this place Charlie Company. He gets the ear of the ex-soldier-slash-minister who operates the place, gets his backing and gets early release from TI. Now, at Charlie Company, he connects with two old war buddies. Or so we assume. Delgado and Franklin. Except there is only one day that all three of them are at Charlie Company at the same time. Just one day. Are you telling me they hatched this whole thing on that one day?”

“I don’t know,” Bosch said. “Could’ve been, but I doubt it. It might have been planned later, after they made that recontact at the farm. The important thing is that we have them together, or in close proximity, in Saigon, 1975. Now we have them together again at Charlie Company. After that, Meadows graduates, takes a few cover jobs until he finishes parole. Then he quits and disappears from view.”

“Until?”

“Until the WestLand burglary. They go in, they hit the boxes until they find Binh’s box. Or maybe they already knew which one was his. They must have followed him to plan the job and find out where he kept whatever was left of his share of the diamonds. We need to go back to the vault records and see if this Frederic B. Isley ever visited at the same time as Binh. I bet we find that he did. He saw which box was Binh’s because he was in the vault with him at the same time.

“Then during the vault break-in, they hit his box and then all the others, taking everything as camouflage. The genius of it was that they knew Binh couldn’t report what was taken from him because it did not exist, legally. They knew this. It was perfect. And what made it that way is them taking all the other stuff, to cover for the real target. The diamonds.”