The Black Echo

PART III

TUESDAY, MAY 22

Eleanor Wish called again Tuesday morning while Harry Bosch was fiddling with his tie in front of the bathroom mirror. She said she wanted to meet at a coffee shop in Westwood before taking him into the bureau. He had already had two cups of coffee but said he’d be there. He hung up, fastened the top button on his white shirt and pulled the tie snugly to his neck. He couldn’t remember the last time he had paid such attention to the details of his appearance.

When he got there, she was in one of the booths along the front windows. She had both hands on the water glass in front of her and looked content. There was a plate pushed off to the side that had the paper wrapping from a muffin on it. She gave him a short courtesy smile as he slid in and waved a hand at a waitress.

“Just coffee,” Bosch said.

“You already ate?” Wish said when the waitress went away.

“Uh, no. But I’m fine.”

“You don’t eat much, I can tell.”

Said more like a mother than a detective.

“So, who’s going to tell me about it? You or Rourke?”

“Me.”

The waitress put down a cup of coffee. Bosch could hear four salesmen in the next booth dickering over the table’s breakfast bill. He took a small swallow of hot coffee.

“I would like the FBI’s request for my help put on paper, signed by the senior special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office.”

She hesitated a moment, put her glass down and looked directly at him for the first time. Her eyes were so dark they betrayed nothing about her. At their corners, he saw just the beginning of a gentle web of lines in the tan skin. At the line of her chin there was a small, white crescent scar, very old and almost unnoticeable. He wondered if the scar and the lines bothered her, as he believed they would most women. Her face seemed to him to have a slight sadness cast in it, as if a mystery carried inside had worked its way outside. Perhaps it was fatigue, he thought. Nevertheless, she was an attractive woman. He figured her age for early thirties.

“I think that can be arranged,” she said. “Any other demands before we get to work?”

He smiled and shook his head no.

“You know, Bosch, I got your murder book yesterday and read through it last night. For what you had there, and for one day’s work, it was very good work. Most other detectives, that body’d still be in the waiting line at the morgue and listed as probable accidental OD.”

He said nothing.

“Where should we begin on it today?” she asked.

“I’ve got some things working that weren’t in the book yet. Why don’t you tell me about the bank burglary first? I need the background. All I know is what you put out to the papers and on the BOLOs. You bring me up, then I’ll take it from there, tell you about Meadows.”

The waitress came and checked his cup and her glass. Then Eleanor Wish told the story of the bank heist. Bosch thought of questions as she went along, but he tried to note them in his head to ask afterward. He sensed that she marveled at the story, the planning and execution of the caper. Whoever they were, the tunnelers, they had her respect. He found himself almost jealous.

“Beneath the streets of L.A.,” she said, “there are more than four hundred miles of storm lines that are wide enough and tall enough to drive a car through. After that, you’ve got even more tributary lines. Eleven hundred more miles that you could walk or at least crawl through.

“This means anybody can go under and, if they know the way, get close to any building they want to in the city. And it is not that difficult to find the way. The plans for the whole network are public record, on file with the county recorder’s office. Anyway, these guys used the drainage system to get to WestLand National.”

He had already figured as much but didn’t bother to say. She said the FBI believed there were at least three underground men and then at least one on top to act as lookout, provide other necessary functions. The topsider probably communicated with them by radio, except possibly near the end because of the danger that radio waves might set off the explosive detonators.

The underground men made their way through the drainage system on Honda all-terrain vehicles. There was a drive-in entrance to the storm sewer system at a wash in the Los Angeles River basin northeast of downtown. They drove in there, probably under cover of darkness, and following recorder’s maps, made their way through the tunnel network to a spot under Wilshire Boulevard in downtown, about 30 feet below and 150 yards west of WestLand National. It was a two-mile trip.

An industrial drill with a twenty-four-inch circle bit, probably diamond-tipped, was attached to a generator on one of the ATVs and used to cut a hole through the six-inch concrete wall of the stormwater tunnel. From there the underground men began to dig.