The Black Echo

“The street whore, was she telling the truth? About the pillow?”

“Don’t they all?”

***

Bosch parked in the lot behind the station on Wilcox and smoked right up until he reached the rear door. He killed the butt on the ground and went in, leaving behind the odor of vomit that wafted from the mesh windows at the rear of the station holding tank. Jerry Edgar was pacing in the back hall waiting for him.

“Harry, we’ve got a forthwith from Ninety-eight.”

“Yeah, what about?”

“I don’t know, but he’s been coming out of the glass box every ten minutes looking for you. You got your beeper and the Motorola turned off. And I saw a couple of the IAD silks up from downtown go in there with him a while ago.”

Bosch nodded without saying anything comforting to his partner.

“What’s going on?” Edgar blurted. “If we’ve got a story, let’s get it straight before we go in there. You’ve had experience with this shit, not me.”

“I’m not sure what’s going on. I think they’re kicking us off the case. Me, at least.” He was very nonchalant about the whole thing.

“Harry, they don’t bring IAD in to do that. Something’s on, and, man, I hope whatever you did, you didn’t fuck me up, too.”

Edgar immediately looked embarrassed.

“Sorry, Harry, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Relax. Let’s go see what the man wants.”

Bosch headed toward the detective squad room. Edgar said he’d cut through the watch office and then come in from the front hall so it wouldn’t look like they had collaborated on a story. When Bosch got to his desk, the first thing he noticed was that the blue murder book on the Meadows case was gone. But he also noticed that whoever had taken it had missed the cassette tape with the 911 call on it. Bosch picked up the cassette and put it in his coat pocket just as Ninety-eight’s voice boomed out of the glass office at the head of the squad room. He yelled just one word: “Bosch!” The other detectives in the squad room looked around. Bosch got up and slowly walked toward the glass box, as the office of Lieutenant Harvey “Ninety-eight” Pounds was called. Through the windows he could see the backs of two suits sitting in there with Pounds. Bosch recognized them as the two IAD detectives who had handled the Dollmaker case. Lewis and Clarke.

Edgar came into the squad through the front hallway just as Bosch passed and they walked into the glass box together. Pounds sat dull-eyed behind his desk. The men from Internal Affairs did not move.

“First thing, no smoking, Bosch, you got that?” Pounds said. “In fact, the whole squad stunk like an ashtray this morning. I’m not even going to ask if it was you.”

Department and city policy outlawed smoking in all community-shared offices such as squad rooms. It was okay to smoke in a private office if it was your office or if the office’s occupant allowed visitors to smoke. Pounds was a reformed smoker and militant about it. Most of the thirty-two detectives he commanded smoked like junkies. When Ninety-eight wasn’t around, many of them would go into his office for a quick fix, rather than have to go out to the parking lot, where they’d miss phone calls and where the smell of piss and puke migrated from the rear windows of the drunk tank. Pounds had taken to locking his office door, even on quick trips up the hall to the station commander’s office, but anybody with a letter opener could pop the door in three seconds. The lieutenant was constantly returning and finding his office space fouled by smoke. He had two fans in the ten-by-ten room and a can of Glade on the desk. Since the frequency of the fouling had increased with the reassignment of Bosch from Parker Center to Hollywood detectives, Ninety-eight Pounds was convinced Bosch was the major offender. And he was right, but he had never caught Bosch in the act.

“Is that what this is about?” Bosch asked. “Smoking in the office?”

“Just sit down,” Pounds snapped.

Bosch held his hands up to show there were no cigarettes between his fingers. Then he turned to the two men from Internal Affairs.

“Well, Jed, it looks like we might be off on a Lewis and Clarke expedition here. I haven’t seen the great explorers on the move since they sent me on a no-expense-paid vacation to Mexico. Did some of their finest work on that one. Headlines, sound bites, the whole thing. The stars of Internal Affairs.”

The two IAD cops’ faces immediately reddened with anger.

“This time, you might do yourself a favor and keep your smart mouth shut,” Clarke said. “You’re in serious trouble, Bosch. You get it?”

“Yeah, I get it. Thanks for the tip. I got one for you, too. Go back to the leisure suit you used to wear before you became Irving’s bendover. You know, the yellow thing that matched your teeth. The polyester does more for you than the silk. In fact, one of the guys out there in the bullpen mentioned that the ass end of that suit is getting shiny, all the work you do riding a desk.”

“All right, all right,” Pounds cut in. “Bosch, Edgar, sit down and shut up for a minute. This-”