The Black Echo

Wish signed out a bureau car and drove while Bosch looked through the stack of military files on his lap. He noticed his own was on top. He glanced at some of the others and recognized only Meadows’s name.

“Where to?” Wish asked as she pulled out of the garage and took Veteran Avenue up to Wilshire.

“Hollywood,” he said. “Is Rourke always such a stiff?”

She turned east and smiled one of those smiles that made Bosch wonder whether she and Rourke had something going on.

“When he wants,” she said. “He’s a good administrator, though. He runs the squad well. Always has been the leader type, I guess. I think he said he was in charge of a whole outfit or something when he was with the army. Over there in Saigon.”

No way there was anything between them, he thought then. You don’t defend your lover by calling him a good administrator. There was nothing there.

“He’s in the wrong business for administrating,” Bosch said. “Go up to Hollywood Boulevard, the neighborhood south of the Chinese theater.”

It would take fifteen minutes to get there. He opened the top file-it was his own-and began looking through the papers. Between a set of psychiatric evaluation reports he found a black-and-white photo, almost like a mug shot, of a young man in uniform, his face unlined by age or experience.

“You looked good in a crew cut,” Wish said, interrupting his thoughts. “Reminded me of my brother when I saw that.”

Bosch looked at her but didn’t say anything. He put the photo down and went back to roaming through the documents in the file, reading snatches of information about a stranger who was himself.

Wish said, “We were able to find nine men with Vietnam tunnel experience living in Southern California. We checked them all out. Meadows was the only one we really moved up to the level of suspect. He was a hype, had the criminal record. He also had a history of working in tunnels even after he came back from the war.” She drove in silence for a few minutes while Bosch read. Then she said, “We watched him a whole month. After the burglary.”

“What was he doing?”

“Nothing that we could tell. He might have been doing some dealing. We were never sure. He’d go down to Venice to buy balloons of tar about every three days. But it looked like it was for personal consumption. If he was selling, no customers ever came. No other visitors the whole month we watched. Hell, if we could prove he was selling, we would have popped him and then had something decent to scam him with when we talked about the bank job.”

She was quiet again for a moment, then in a tone that Bosch thought was meant more to convince herself than him said, “He wasn’t selling.”

“I believe you,” he said.

“You going to tell me what we’re looking for in Hollywood?”

“We’re looking for a wit. A possible witness. How was Meadows living during the month you watched? I mean, moneywise. How’d he get money to go down to Venice?”

“Near as we could tell, he was on welfare and had a VA disability check. That’s it.”

“Why did you call it off after a month?”

“We didn’t have anything, and we weren’t even sure he had anything to do with it. We-”

“Who pulled the plug?”

“Rourke did. He couldn’t-”

“The administrator.”

“Let me finish. He couldn’t justify the cost of continued surveillance without any results. We were going on a hunch, nothing more. You’re just looking at it from hindsight. But it had been almost two months since the robbery. There was nothing there that pointed to him. In fact, we were just going through the motions after a while. We thought whoever it really was, they were in Monaco or Argentina. Not scoring balloon hits of tar heroin on Venice beach and living in a tramp apartment in the Valley. At the time, Meadows didn’t make sense. Rourke called the watch. But I concurred. I guess now we know we fucked up. Satisfied?”

Bosch didn’t answer. He knew Rourke had been correct in calling the watch. Nowhere is hindsight better than in cop work. He changed the subject.

“Why that bank, did you ever think about that? Why WestLand National? Why not a Wells Fargo or a vault in a Beverly Hills bank? Probably more money in the banks over in the Hills anyway. You said these underground tunnels go all over the place.”

“They do. I don’t know the answer to that one. Maybe they picked a downtown bank because they wanted a full three days to open the boxes and they knew downtown banks aren’t open Saturdays. Maybe only Meadows and his friends know the answer. What are we looking for in this neighborhood? There was nothing in your reports about a possible witness. Witness to what?”