Michael Connelly - The Concrete Blonde

Bosch ejected the tape and held it up over his left shoulder to Mora.

“No, no, I want you to do this for me, Harry. Open the bottom drawer and take out the magnet.”

That’s what the hockey puck was. Bosch put the tape on top of the stand next to the TV and reached down for the magnet. Feeling its heaviness as he lifted it, he wondered if he’d have a chance, if he could maybe turn and hurl it at Mora before the vice cop got off a shot.

“You’d be dead before you tried,” Mora said, knowing his thoughts. “You know what to do with it.”

Bosch ran the magnet over the top side of the tape.

“Let’s put it in and see how we did,” Mora instructed.

“Okay, Ray. Whatever you say.”

Bosch put the tape into the VCR and pushed the play button. The screen filled with the static of a dead channel. It cast a grayish shroud of dull light over Bosch. He hit the fast forward button and the static continued. The tape had been wiped clean.

“Good,” Mora said. “That ought to do it. That was the last tape.”

“No evidence, Ray. You’re in the clear.”

“But you’ll always know. And you’ll tell them, won’t you, Harry? You’ll tell IAD. You’ll tell the world. I’ll never be clear, so don’t fuckin’ say I’ll be clear. Everyone will know.”

Bosch didn’t answer. After a moment, he thought he heard the creaking of the wood floor. When Mora spoke, he was very close behind.

“Let me give you a tip, Harry… Nobody in this world is who they say they are. Nobody. Not when they’re in their own room with the door shut and locked. And nobody knows anybody, no matter what they think… The best you can hope for is to know yourself. And sometimes when you do, when you see your true self, you have to turn away.”

Bosch heard nothing for several seconds. He kept his eyes on the television screen and thought he could see ghosts forming and disintegrating in the static. He felt the grayish-blue glow burning behind his eyes and the start of a headache. He hoped he was going to live long enough to get it.

“You were always a good guy to me, Harry. I-”

There was a sound from the hallway, then a shout.

“Mora!”

It was Sheehan’s voice. Immediately it was followed by light that flooded the room. Bosch heard the pounding of several feet on the wood floor, then there was a shout from Mora and the sound of impact as he was tackled. Bosch took his thumb off the rover’s transmit button and began to throw himself to the right, out of harm’s way. And in that moment, a gunshot cracked across the room, echoing, it seemed, as loudly as anything he had ever heard.

Once Bosch had cleared the rover channel, Rollenberger came up almost immediately.

“Bosch! Sheehan-Team One! What is happening there. What is-report immediately.”

After a long moment went by, Bosch answered calmly.

“This is Six. Team Leader, be advised you should proceed to the subject’s twenty.”

“His home? What-did we have shots fired?”

“Team Leader, be advised to keep the channel open. And all task force units, disregard the callout. All units are ten-seven until further notice. Unit Five, are you up?”

“Five,” Edgar responded.

“Five, could you meet me at our subject’s twenty?”

“On my way.”

“Six out.”

Bosch turned off the rover before Rollenberger could get back on the channel.

It took the lieutenant a half hour to get from the Parker Center operations post to the house on Sierra Linda. By the time he arrived, Edgar was already there and a plan was in place. Bosch opened the front door just as Rollenberger reached it. The lieutenant strode through the entrance with a face turned red with equal parts of anger and befuddlement.

“Okay, Bosch, what the hell is going on here? You had no authority to cancel the call out, to countermand my order.”

“I thought the less people that know, the better, Lieutenant. I called out Edgar. I thought that would be enough to handle it and that way not too many would-”

“Know what, Bosch? Handle what? What is going on here?”

Bosch looked at him a moment before answering, then in an even voice said, “One of the men in your command conducted an illegal search of the suspect’s residence. He was caught in the act when the suspect eluded the surveillance you were supervising. That’s what happened.”

Rollenberger reacted as if he had been slapped.

“Are you crazy, Bosch? Where’s the phone? I want-”

“You call Chief Irving and you can forget about ever running a task force again. You can forget about a lot of things.”

“Bullshit! I had nothing to do with this. You went freelancing on your own and got your fingers caught in the jar. Where’s Mora?”

“He’s upstairs in the room to the right, handcuffed to the Nautilus machine.”

Rollenberger looked around at the others standing in the living room. Sheehan, Opelt, Edgar. They all gave him deadpan looks. Bosch said, “If you knew nothing about it, Lieutenant, you’ll have to prove that. Everything said on Symplex five tonight is on the reel-to-reel down at the city com center. I said I was in the house, you were listening. You even spoke to me a few times.”

“Bosch, you were talking in codes, I didn’t-I knew nuh-”

Rollenberger suddenly sprang wildly at Bosch, his hands up and going for his neck. Bosch was ready and reacted more aggressively. He pounded both palms into the other man’s chest and slammed him back against a hallway wall. A picture two feet to his side slid off the wall and clattered to the floor.

“Bosch, you fool, the bust is ruined now,” he said while slumped against the wall. “It was all il-”

“There’s no bust. He’s the wrong man. I think. But we have to be sure. You want to help us search the place and think about how to contain this, or do you want to call out the chief and explain how badly you handled your command?”

Bosch stepped away, adding, “The phone’s in the kitchen.”

The search of the house took more than four hours. The five of them, working methodically and silently, searched every room, every drawer, every cabinet. What little evidence they gathered of Detective Ray Mora’s secret life they put on the dining room table. All the while, their host remained in the upstairs gym room, cuffed to one of the chrome bars of the weight machine. He was accorded fewer rights than a murderer would have received had he been arrested in his home. No phone call. No lawyer. No rights. This was always the case when cops investigated cops. Every cop knew the most flagrant abuses of police power occurred when cops turned on their own.

Occasionally, as they began the initial work, they would hear Mora call out. He called for Bosch most often, sometimes Rollenberger. But no one came to him until finally Sheehan and Opelt-concerned that the neighbors would hear and maybe call the police-went into the room and gagged him with a bathroom towel and black electrical tape.

The silence of the searchers was not in deference to the neighbors, however. The detectives worked quietly because of the tensions among them. Though Rollenberger was visibly angry with Bosch, most of the tension was derived from Sheehan and Opelt having blown the surveillance, which directly led to Mora’s discovery of Bosch inside his house. No one except Rollenberger was upset by Bosch’s illegal entry of the house. Bosch’s own home had been similarly violated at least twice that he knew about during times when he had been the focus of internal investigations. Just like the badge, it came with the job.

When they completed the search the dining room table was stacked with the porno magazines and store-bought tapes, the video equipment, the wig, the women’s clothing and Mora’s personal phone book. The television that had been hit by Mora’s stray shot was also there. By then Rollenberger had cooled somewhat, having apparently used the hours to consider his situation as well as to search.