Michael Connelly - The Black Echo

Bosch told her he had checked on the SWAT surveillance and learned that it actually was in place.

“Then what is Rourke doing?” she said.

“Pushing all the buttons.”

They kicked it around for a few minutes and decided to call Orozco at Beverly Hills police. First, Eleanor checked in with Hanlon and Houck. Bosch wanted to keep them in place.

“You guys awake over there?” she said into the Motorola.

“That’s a ten-four, barely. I feel like that guy stuck in his car in the overpass after the earthquake up in Oakland. What’s up, anything?”

“No, just checking. How’s the front door?”

“Not a knock all night.”

She signed off and there was a moment of silence before Bosch turned to get out of the car, to call Orozco. He stopped and looked back at her.

“You know, he died,” he said.

“Who died?”

“The guy that was in that overpass.”

Just then there was a thump that slightly shook the car. Not as much a sound as a vibration, an impact, not unlike the first jolt of an earthquake. There was no following vibration. But after one or two seconds an alarm sounded. The ringing came loud and clear from the Beverly Hills Safe & Lock Company. Bosch sat bolt upright, staring into the vault room. There was no visible sign of intrusion. Almost immediately, the radio crackled with Hanlon’s voice.

“We’ve got a bell. What’s our plan of action?”

Neither Bosch nor Wish answered the radio call at first. They just sat staring at the vault, dumbfounded. Rourke had let his people walk right into a trap. Or so it seemed.

“Son of a bitch,” Bosch said. “They’re in.”

Bosch said, “Tell Hanlon and Houck to stay cool until we get orders.”

“And who is going to give the orders?” Eleanor asked.

Bosch didn’t answer. He was thinking of what was going on in the vault. Why would Rourke lead his people into a setup?

“He must not have been able to warn them, tell them that the diamonds aren’t there and that we’re up here,” he said. “I mean, twenty-four hours ago we didn’t know about this place or what was going on. Maybe by the time we got onto it, it was too late. They were too far in.”

“So they are just proceeding as planned,” Eleanor said.

“They’ll pop Tran’s box first, if they’ve done their homework and know which one it is. They’ll find it empty, and then what do they do? Split, or open more boxes until they get enough stuff to make the whole thing worth their while?”

“I think they split,” she answered. “I think when they open Tran’s box and find no diamonds, they figure something is going down and get the hell out of there.”

“Then we won’t have much time. My guess is they will get stuff ready in the vault but they won’t actually drill the box until after we’ve reset the alarm and cleared the scene. We can delay the resetting a bit, but too long and they might get suspicious and clear out, looking and ready for our people in the tunnels.”

He got out of the car and looked back at Eleanor.

“Get on the radio. Tell those guys to stay put, then get a message to your SWAT people. Tell them we think we’ve got people in the vault.”

“They’ll want to know why Rourke isn’t telling them.”

“Think of something. Tell them you don’t know where Rourke is.”

“Where are you going?”

“To meet the patrol callout for the alarm. I’ll have them call Orozco out here.”

He slammed the door shut and walked down the garage ramp. Eleanor made the radio calls.

As Bosch approached Beverly Hills Safe & Lock he took his badge wallet out, folded it backward and hooked it in the breast pocket of his coat. He turned the corner around the glass vault room and jogged to the front steps just as a Beverly Hills patrol car pulled up, lights flashing but no siren. Two patrolmen got out, sliding their sticks out of the PVC pipe holders on the doors and then into the rings on their belts. Bosch introduced himself, told them what he was doing and asked them to get a message through to Captain Orozco as soon as possible. One of the cops said the manager, a guy named Avery, was being called out to reset the alarm while the cops checked the place out. All routine. They said they were getting to know the guy, it was the third alarm they had been called to here this week. They also said they already had orders to report any calls to this address to Orozco at his home, no matter the hour.

“You mean these callouts, they weren’t false alarms?” said the one named Onaga.

“We aren’t sure,” Bosch said. “But we want to handle this like it is a false alarm. The manager gets She didn’t and together you reset the alarm and everybody goes on their way. Okay? Just nice and relaxed. Nothing unusual.”

“Good enough,” said the other cop. The copper plate over his pocket said Johnstone. Holding his nightstick in place on his belt, he trotted back to their cruiser to make the call to Orozco.

“Here’s our Mr. Avery now,” Onaga said.

A white Cadillac floated to a stop at the curb behind the Beverly Hills car. Avery III, who was wearing a pink sport shirt and madras slacks, got out and walked up. He recognized Bosch and greeted him by name.

“Has there been a break-in?”

“Mr. Avery, we think something might be going on here, we don’t know. We need time to check it out. What we want for you to do is open up the office, take a walk around like you usually do, like you did when the alarms went off earlier this week. Then reset the alarm and lock up again.”

“That’s it? What if-”

“Mr. Avery, what we want you to do is get in your car and drive away like you usually do, like you’re going home. But I want you to go around the corner to Darling’s. Go in and have a coffee. I’ll either come by to tell you what is happening or send for you. I want you to relax. We can handle whatever comes up here. We have other people checking it out, but for the sake of appearances, we want to make it seem that we are passing this off as another false alarm.”

“I see,” Avery said, digging a key ring from his pocket. He walked to the front door and opened it. “And by the way, that is not the vault alarm that is ringing. It is the exterior alarm, set off by vibrations on the windows of the vault room. I can tell. It’s a different tone, you see.”

Bosch figured the tunnelers had disabled the vault alarm system, not realizing the exterior alarm was a separate system.

Onaga and Avery went in, with Bosch trailing behind. As Harry stood in the entryway looking for smoke and not seeing any, sniffing for cordite but not smelling any, Johnstone came in. Bosch put his hands to his lips to warn the officer against yelling above the sound of the alarm. Johnstone nodded, cupped his hand to Bosch’s ear and told him that Orozco would be there in twenty minutes tops. He lived up in the Valley. Bosch nodded and hoped it would be soon enough.

The alarm shut off and Avery and Onaga came out of Avery’s office into the lobby, where Johnstone and Bosch waited. Onaga looked at Bosch and shook his head, indicating nothing amiss.

“Do you usually check the vault room?” Bosch asked.

“We just look around,” Avery said. He proceeded to the X-ray machine, switched it on and explained it took fifty seconds to warm up. They passed the time without talking. Finally, Avery put his hand on the reader. It read it and approved the bone structure and the lock on the first door of the mantrap snapped open.

“Since I don’t have my man inside the vault room, I have to override the lock on the second door,” Avery said. “Gentlemen, if you don’t mind not looking once we are in.”

The four of them moved into the tiny mantrap and Avery pushed a set of numbers on the combination lock on the second door. It snapped open and they moved into the vault room. There was nothing to see but steel and glass. Bosch stood near the vault door and listened but heard nothing. He walked to the glass wall and looked up Wilshire. He could see that Eleanor was back in the car on the second floor of the garage. He turned his attention to Avery, who walked up to his side as if to look out the window himself but instead huddled into a conspiratorial posture.