Michael Connelly - The Overlook

After Ferras was gone Bosch checked the kitchen cabinets and the walk-in pantry and studied all the groceries and supplies stacked on the shelves. After that he went to the guest bathroom in the hall and looked at the spot where the cigarette ash had been collected. On the white porcelain tank top there was a brown discoloration about half the length of a cigarette.

Bosch stared at the mark, curious. It had been seven years since he had smoked but he didn’t remember ever leaving a cigarette to burn like that. If he had finished it he would have thrown it into the toilet and flushed it away. It was clear that this cigarette had been forgotten.

With his search complete, he stepped back into the living room and called to his partner.

“Ignacio, you ready? We’re leaving.”

Maxwell was still on the floor but looked tired from his struggle and resigned to his predicament.

“Come on, damn it!” he finally cried out. “Uncuff me!”

Bosch stepped close to him.

“Where’s your key?” he asked.

“Coat pocket. Left side.”

Bosch bent over and worked his hand into the agent’s coat pocket. He pulled out a set of keys and fingered through them until he found the cuff key. He grabbed the chain between the two cuffs and pulled up so he could work the key in. He wasn’t gentle about it.

“Now be nice if I do this,” he said.

“Nice? I’m going to kick your fucking ass.”

Bosch let go of the chain and Maxwell’s wrists dropped to the floor.

“What are you doing?” Maxwell yelled. “Undo me!”

“Here’s a tip, Cliff. Next time you threaten to kick my ass, you might want to wait until after I’ve cut you loose.”

Bosch straightened up and tossed the keys onto the floor on the other side of the room.

“Uncuff yourself.”

Bosch headed to the front door. Ferras was already going through it. As Bosch was pulling it closed he looked back at Maxwell sprawled on the floor. The agent’s face was as red as a stop sign as he sputtered one last threat in Bosch’s direction.

“This isn’t over, asshole.”

“Got it.”

Bosch closed the door. When he got to the car he looked over the roof at his partner. Ferras looked as mortified as some of the suspects who had ridden in the backseat.

“Cheer up,” Bosch said.

As he got in he had a vision of the FBI agent crawling in his nice suit across the living room floor to the keys.

Bosch smiled.

ON THE WAY BACK DOWN the hill to the freeway Ferras was silent and Bosch knew he had to be thinking about the jeopardy his young and promising career had been placed in because of his old and reckless partner’s actions. Bosch tried to draw him out of it.

“Well, that was a bust,” he said. “I got nada. You find anything in the office?”

“Nothing much. I showed you, the computer was gone.”

There was a sullen tone in his voice.

“What about the desk?” Bosch asked.

“It was mostly empty. One drawer had tax returns and stuff like that. Another had a copy of a trust. Their house, an investment property in Laguna, insurance policies, everything like that is held in a trust. Their passports were in the desk, too.”

“Got it. How much the guy make last year?”

“A quarter million take-home. He also owns fifty-one percent of the company.”

“The wife make anything?”

“No income. Doesn’t work.”

Bosch grew quiet as he contemplated things. When they got down off the mountain he decided not to get on the freeway. Instead he took Cahuenga to Franklin and turned east. Ferras was looking out the passenger-side window but quickly noticed the detour.

“What’s going on? I thought we were going downtown.”

“We’re going to Los Feliz first.”

“What’s in Los Feliz?”

“The Donut Hole on Vermont.”

“We just ate an hour ago.”

Bosch checked his watch. It was almost eight and he hoped he wasn’t too late.

“I’m not going for the doughnuts.”

Ferras cursed and shook his head.

“You’re going to talk to the Man?” he asked. “Are you kidding?”

“Unless I missed him already. If you’re worried about it you can stay in the car.”

“You’re jumping about five links in the chain, you know. Lieutenant Gandle is going to have our asses for this.”

“He’ll have my ass. You stay in the car. It will be like you weren’t even there.”

“Except what one partner does, the other always gets equal blame for. You know that. That’s how it works. That’s why they call them partners , Harry.”

“Look, I’ll take care of it. There’s no time to go through proper channels. The chief should know what is what and I’m going to tell him. He’ll probably end up thanking us for the heads-up.”

“Yeah, well, Lieutenant Gandle won’t be thanking us.”

“Then I’ll deal with him, too.”

The partners drove the rest of the way in silence.

The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the most insular bureaucracies in the world. It had survived for more than a century by rarely looking outward for ideas, answers or leaders. A few years earlier, when the city council decided that after years of scandal and community upset it required leadership from outside the department, it was only the second time in the LAPD’s long history that the position of chief of police was not filled by promoting from within the ranks. Subsequently, the outsider who was brought in to run the show was viewed with tremendous curiosity, not to mention skepticism. His movements and habits were documented and the data was all dumped into an informal police pipeline that connected the department’s ten thousand officers like the blood vessels in a closed fist. The intelligence was passed around in roll calls and locker rooms, text messages to and from patrol car computers, e-mails and phone calls, at cop bars and backyard barbecues. It meant street officers in South L.A. knew what Hollywood premiere the new chief had attended the night before. Vice officers in the Valley knew where he took his dress uniforms to be pressed and the gang detail in Venice knew what supermarket his wife liked to shop at.

It also meant that Detective Harry Bosch and his partner Ignacio Ferras knew what doughnut shop the chief stopped at for coffee every morning on his way into Parker Center.

At 8 a.m. Bosch pulled into the parking lot of the Donut Hole but saw no sign of the chief’s unmarked car. The business was an aptly named establishment in the flats below the hillside neighborhoods of Los Feliz. Bosch killed the engine and looked over at his partner.

“You staying?”

Ferras was looking straight ahead through the windshield. He nodded without looking at Bosch.

“Suit yourself,” Bosch said.

“Listen, Harry, no offense but this isn’t working. You don’t want a partner. You want a gofer and somebody who doesn’t question anything you do. I think I’m going to talk to the lieutenant about hooking me up with someone else.”

Bosch looked at him and composed his thoughts.

“Ignacio, it’s our first case together. Don’t you think you should give it some time? That’s all Gandle’s going to tell you. He’s going to tell you that you don’t want to start out in RHD with a reputation as a guy who cuts and runs on his partner.”

“I’m not cutting and running. It’s just not working right.”

“Ignacio, you’re making a mistake.”

“No, I think it would be best. For both of us.”

Bosch stared at him for a long moment before turning to the door.

“Like I said, suit yourself.”

Bosch got out and headed toward the doughnut shop. He was disappointed in Ferras’s reaction and decisions but knew he should cut him some slack. The guy had a kid on the way and needed to play it safe. Bosch was not one to ever play it safe and it had lost him more than a partner in the past. He would take another shot at changing the young man’s mind once the case settled down.