Michael Connelly - The Black Echo

He became even more depressed. He knew that both LAPD and the FBI faced huge public relations problems with what had happened, but he couldn’t see how it could be covered up. Too many agencies. Too many people. They could never keep a lid on it. Could they be stupid enough to try?

He loosened the strap across his chest and tried to sit all the way up. It made him dizzy, and his arm screamed to be left alone. He felt nausea overtake him and reached for a stainless steel pan on the bed table. The feeling subsided. But it jogged loose a memory of being in the tunnel with Rourke the morning before. He began remembering pieces of Rourke’s conversation. He tried to fit the new information with what he had already known. Then he wondered about the diamonds-the cache from the WestLand job-and whether they had been found. Where? As much as he had grown to admire the engineering of the caper, he could not bring himself to admire its maker. Rourke.

Bosch felt fatigue overcome him like a cloud crossing the sun. He dropped back against the pillow. And the last thing he thought of before dozing off was what Rourke had said in the tunnel. The part about getting a larger share because Meadows, Franklin and Delgado were dead. It was then, as he slid into the black jungle hole that Meadows had jumped into before, that Bosch realized the full meaning of what Rourke had said.

The man in the visitor’s chair wore an $800 pinstripe suit, gold cuff links and an onyx pinky ring. But it was no disguise.

“IAD, right?” Bosch said and yawned. “Wake up from a dream to a nightmare.”

The man started. He hadn’t seen Bosch open his eyes. He stood up and left the hospital room without saying a word. Bosch yawned again and looked around for a clock. There was none. He loosened the chest belt again and tried to sit up. This time he was much better. No dizziness. No sickness. He looked over at the floral arrangements on the windowsill and the bureau. He thought that their number might have grown while he was asleep. He wondered if any of them were from Eleanor. Had she come by to see him? They probably wouldn’t let her.

In another minute, Pinstripe came back in, carrying a tape recorder and leading a procession that included four other suits. One was Lieutenant Bill Haley, head of the LAPD Officer Involved Shooting squad, and one was Deputy Chief Irvin Irving, head of IAD. Bosch figured the other two for FBI men.

“If I’d known I had so many suits waiting for me, I would have set an alarm,” Bosch said. “But they didn’t give me an alarm clock, or a phone that works or a TV or a newspaper.”

“Bosch, you know who I am,” Irving said and threw a hand toward the others. “And you know Haley. This is Agent Stone and this is Agent Folsom, FBI.”

Irving looked at Pinstripe and nodded toward the bed table. The man stepped forward and placed the recorder on the table, put a finger on the record button and looked back at Irving. Bosch looked at him and said, “You don’t rate an introduction?”

Pinstripe ignored him and so did everybody else.

“Bosch, I want to do this quickly and without any of your brand of humor,” Irving said. He flexed his massive jaw muscles and nodded at Pinstripe. The recorder was turned on. Irving dryly spoke the date, day and time. It was 11:30A.M. Bosch had only been asleep a few hours. But he felt much stronger than when Edgar had visited.

Irving then added the names of those present in the room, this time giving a name to Pinstripe. Clifford Galvin, Jr. Same name, minus the junior part, as one of the department’s other deputy chiefs. Junior was being groomed and doomed, Bosch thought. He was on the fast track, under Irving’s wing.

“Let’s do it from the top,” Irving said. “Detective Bosch, you start by telling us everything about this deal since the moment you climbed in.”

“You got a couple days?”

Irving walked over to the recorder and hit the pause button.

“Bosch,” he said, “we all know what a smart guy you are, but we are not going to hear it today. I stop the tape only this once. If I do it again, I will have your badge in a glass block by Tuesday morning. And that’s only because of the holiday tomorrow. And never mind any line-of-duty pension. I will see you get eighty percent of nothing.”

He was referring to the department practice of forbidding a retiring cop to keep his badge. The chief and the city council didn’t like the idea of some of the city’s former finest floating around the city with buzzers to show off. Shakedowns, free meals, free flops, it was a scandal they could see coming a hundred miles away. So if you wanted to take your badge with you, you could: set nicely in a Lucite block with a decorative clock. It was about a foot square. Too big to fit in the pocket.

Irving nodded and Junior pushed the button again. Bosch told it like it had been, leaving out nothing and stopping only when Junior needed to turn the tape over. The suits asked him questions from time to time but mostly just let him tell it. Irving wanted to know what Bosch had dropped from the Malibu pier. Bosch almost didn’t even remember. Nobody took notes. They just watched him tell it. He finally finished the tale an hour and a half after starting. Irving looked at Junior then and nodded. Junior stopped the tape.

When they had no more questions, Bosch asked his.

“What did you find at Rourke’s place?”

“That’s not your business,” Irving said.

“The hell it isn’t. It’s part of a murder investigation. Rourke was the murderer. He admitted it to me.”

“Your investigation has been reassigned.”

Bosch said nothing as the anger pushed its way into his throat. He looked around the room and noticed that none of the others, even Junior, would look at him.

Irving said, “Now, before I would go around shooting my mouth off about fellow law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, I would make sure I knew the facts. And I would make sure that I had the evidence supporting those facts. We don’t want any rumors being spread about good men.”

Bosch couldn’t hold back.

“You think you people will pull this off? What about your two goons? How are you going to explain that? First they put the bug in my phone, then they blunder into a fucking surveillance and get themselves shot. And you want to make them heroes. Who are you kidding?”

“Detective Bosch, it already has been explained. That is not your worry. It is also not your role to contradict the public statements of the department or the bureau on this matter. That, Detective, is an order. If you talk to the press about this, it will be the last time you do as a Los Angeles police detective.”

Now it was Bosch who could not look at them. He stared at the flowers on the table and said, “Then why the tape, the statement, all the suits here with you? What’s the point when you don’t want to know the truth?”

“We want the truth, Detective. You are confusing that with what we choose to tell the public. But out of the public eye I guarantee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation guarantees that we will complete your investigation and take appropriate action where fitting.”

“That’s pathetic.”

“And so are you, Detective. So are you.” Irving leaned over the bed with his face close enough that Bosch could smell his sour breath. “This is one of those rare times when you hold your future in your own hands, Detective Bosch. You do what is right, maybe you find yourself back at Robbery-Homicide. Or you can pick up that phone-yes, I am going to have the nurse turn it on-and call your pals at that rag over on Spring Street. But if you do that, you better ask them if there are any career opportunities there for a former homicide detective.”