Michael Connelly - EchoPark

“Tell it to the prosecutor,” Bosch said. “Maybe he’ll care.”

He looked at Rachel and she nodded.

“Rachel, you take the Jeep with Swann. I’ll take Detective Pratt in my car. I want to keep them separated.”

“Good idea.”

Bosch signaled Pratt up.

“Let’s go.”

Pratt stood up again and came face-to-face with Bosch.

“Harry, you’ve got to know something first.”

“What’s that?”

“Nobody was supposed to get hurt, okay? It was a perfect plan with nobody getting hurt. It was Waits-he turned it all to shit out there in the woods. If he had just done what he’d been told, everybody would still be alive and everybody’d be happy. Even you. You would’ve solved the Gesto case. End of story. That’s how it was supposed to be.”

Bosch had to work to hold back his anger.

“Nice fairy tale,” he said. “Except for the part of the story where the princess never wakes up and the real killer walks, everybody lives happily ever after. Keep telling yourself that one. You might actually be able to live with it someday.”

Bosch roughly took him by the arm and led him toward the opening in the hedge.

AT 10 A.M. ON MONDAY Abel Pratt walked from his car across the green lawn of Echo Park to a bench where an old man was sitting beneath the protective arms of the Lady of the Lake. There were five pigeons resting on her shoulders and upturned hands and one on her head but she showed no sign of annoyance or fatigue.

Pratt shoved the folded newspaper he carried into the overly full trash can by the statue and then sat on the bench next to the old man. He looked out at the smooth waters of Lake Echo in front of them. The old man, who held a cane down by his knee and wore a tan business suit with a maroon handkerchief in the breast pocket, spoke first.

“I remember when you could take your family here on a Sunday and not have to worry about being shot up by gangbangers.”

Pratt cleared his throat.

“Is that what you’re worried about, Mr. Garland? The gangbangers? Well, I’ll give you a little tip. Right now is one of the safest hours in any neighborhood in the city. Most of your gangbangers don’t roll out of bed until the afternoon. That’s why whenever we go out with warrants we go in the morning. We always catch them in bed.”

Garland nodded approvingly.

“That’s good to know. But that’s not what I am worried about. I’m worried about you, Detective Pratt. Our business was concluded. I was not expecting to hear from you ever again.”

Pratt leaned forward and scanned the park. He studied the rows of tables on the other side of the lake, where the old men played dominoes. His eyes then moved along the cars parked at the curb that edged the park.

“Where’s Anthony?” he asked.

“He’ll be along. He’s taking precautions.”

Pratt nodded.

“Precautions are good,” he said.

“I don’t like this place,” Garland said. “It’s full of ugly people, and that includes you. Why are we here?”

“Wait a minute,” a voice said from behind them. “Don’t say another word, Dad.”

Anthony Garland had approached from their blind side. He came around the statue to the bench at the water’s edge. He stood in front of Pratt and signaled him to stand up.

“Up,” he said.

“What is this?” Pratt protested mildly.

“Just stand up.”

Pratt did as he was asked and Anthony Garland produced a small electronic wand from the pocket of his blazer. He began moving it up and down in front of Pratt from head to toe.

“If you’re transmitting an RF signal this will tell me.”

“Good. I always wondered if I had RF. You never know with those women down in Tijuana.”

Nobody laughed. Anthony Garland seemed satisfied with the scan and started putting his magic wand away. Pratt started to sit down.

“Wait,” Garland said.

Pratt remained standing and Garland started running his hands over Pratt’s body, a second precaution.

“Can’t be too sure with a slimeball like you, Detective. ”

He moved his hands to Pratt’s waist.

“That’s my gun,” Pratt said.

Garland kept searching.

“That’s my cell phone.”

The hands went lower.

“And those are my balls.”

Garland then went down both legs and when he was satisfied, he told Pratt he could sit down. The detective returned to his seat next to the old man.

Anthony Garland remained standing in front of the bench, his back to the lake, his arms folded across his chest.

“He’s clean,” he said.

“Okay, then,” T. Rex Garland said. “We can talk. What’s this about, Detective Pratt? I thought it was made clear to you: You don’t call us. You don’t threaten us. You don’t tell us where to be and when.”

“If I hadn’t threatened you, would you have come?”

Neither of the Garlands answered and Pratt smiled smugly and nodded.

“I rest my case.”

“Why are we here?” the old man asked. “I made it quite clear before. I don’t want my son touched by any of this. Why did he have to be here?”

“Well, because I sort of missed him since our little walk in the woods. We’ve got a bond, don’t we, Anthony?”

Anthony said nothing. Pratt pressed on.

“I mean, a guy leads you to a body in the woods, I’d say normally they’d stay pretty tight. But I haven’t heard from Anthony since we were up at the top of Beachwood together.”

“I don’t want you talking to my son,” T. Rex Garland said. “You don’t talk to my son. You’re bought and paid for, Detective, you get that? This is the only time you will ever call a meeting with me. I call you. You don’t call me.”

The old man never looked at Pratt as he spoke. His eyes were cast toward the lake. The message was clear. Pratt wasn’t worth his attention.

“Yeah, all that was fine, but things have changed,” Pratt said. “In case you haven’t been reading the papers or watching the news, things have gone to shit out there.”

The old man remained seated but stretched his arms forward and put both palms on the polished gold dragon’s head at the top of his cane. He spoke calmly.

“And whose fault is that? You told us you and the lawyer could keep Raynard Waits in line. You told us no one would get hurt. You called it a clean operation. Now look at what you’ve involved us in.”

Pratt took a few moments to respond.

“You involved yourself. You wanted something and I was the provider. No matter whose fault it is, the bottom line is I now need more money.”

T. Rex Garland shook his head slowly.

“You were paid one million dollars,” he said.

“I had to cut it up with Maury Swann,” Pratt responded.

“Your subcontractor costs were not and are not my concern.”

“The fee was based on everything working smoothly. Waits taking the fall for Gesto, case closed. Now there are complications, ongoing investigations to contend with.”

“Again, not my concern. Our deal is done.”

Pratt leaned forward on the bench and put his elbows on his knees.

“It’s not quite done yet, T. Rex,” he said. “And maybe you should be concerned. Because you know who paid me a visit on Friday night? Harry Bosch, and he had an FBI agent with him. They took me to a little meeting with Mr. Rick O’Shea. Turns out that before Bosch capped Waits the little bastard told him that he didn’t kill Marie Gesto. So that puts Bosch back on your ass, Junior. And it puts all of them on mine. They’ve damn near worked the whole story out-connecting me and Maury Swann. They just need somebody to fill in the blanks and, since they can’t get to Swann, they want that somebody to be me. They’re starting to apply the pressure.”