The Black Echo

“We are, Sharkey,” Bosch said. “I just want to figure out who we’re dealing with here, is all. Take it from the top. Tell us the story. I got pizza coming and there’s more cigarettes. We got the time.”

“It won’t take any time. I din’t see anything, except the body in there. I hope there’s no anchovies.”

He said this looking at Wish while pulling himself up in the chair. He had established a pattern in which he would look at Bosch when he was telling the truth, at Wish when he was shading it or outright lying. Scammers always play to the women, Bosch thought.

“Sharkey,” Bosch said, “if you want we can take you up to Sylmar and have ’em hold you overnight. We can start again in the morning, maybe when you’re memory’s a little-”

“I’m worried about my bike back there, might get stole.”

“Forget the bike,” Bosch said, leaning into the boy’s personal space. “We aren’t spoiling you, Sharkey, you haven’t told us anything yet. Start the story, then we’ll worry about the bike.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll tell you everything.”

The boy reached for his cigarettes on the table and Bosch pulled back and got out one of his own. The leaning in and out of his face was a technique Bosch had learned while spending what seemed like ten thousand hours in these little rooms. Lean in, invade that foot and a half that is all theirs, their own space. Lean back when you get what you want. It’s subliminal. Most of what goes on in a police interrogation has nothing to do with what is said. It is interpretation, nuance. And sometimes what isn’t said. He lit Sharkey’s cigarette first. Wish leaned back in her chair as they exhaled the blue smoke.

“You wanna smoke, Agent Wish?” Bosch said.

She shook her head no.

Bosch looked at Sharkey and a knowing look passed between them. It said, You and me, sport. The boy smiled. Bosch nodded for him to start his story and he did. And it was a story.

***

“I go up there to crash sometimes,” Sharkey said. “You know? When I don’t find anybody to help me out with some motel money or nothing. Sometimes the room at my crew’s motel is too crowded. I gotta get out. So I go up there, sleep in the pipe. It stays warm most the night. Not bad. So anyway, it was one of those nights. So I went up there-”

“What time was this?” Wish asked.

Bosch gave her a look that said, Cool it, ask the questions after the story is out. The kid had been going pretty good.

“Musta been pretty late,” Sharkey answered. “Three, maybe four o’clock. I don’t have a watch. And so I went up there. And I went in the pipe and I saw the guy that was dead. Just laying there. I climbed out and split. I wasn’t going to stay in there with a dead guy. When I got down the hill I called you guys, nine one one.”

He looked back from Wish to Bosch.

“That’s it,” he said. “Can I get a ride back to my bike?”

No one answered, so Sharkey lit another cigarette and pulled himself up in the chair.

“That’s a nice story, Edward, but we need the whole thing,” Bosch said. “We also need it right.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean it sounds like it was made up by a moron, is what I mean. How’d you see the body in there?”

“I had a flashlight,” he explained to Wish.

“No you didn’t. You had matches, we found one.” Bosch leaned forward until his face was only a foot from the boy’s. “Sharkey, how do you think we knew it was you that called? You think the operator just recognized your voice? ‘Oh, that’s old Sharkey. He’s a good kid, calling us about the body.’ Think, Sharkey. You signed your name-or at least half of it on the pipe up there. We got your prints off a half a can of paint. And we know you only crawled halfway in the pipe. That’s when you got scared and got out. You left tracks.”

Sharkey stared forward, his eyes slightly lifted toward the mirrored window on the door.

“You knew the body was there before you went in. You saw somebody drag it into the pipe, Sharkey. Look at me now and tell me the real story.”

“Look, I didn’t see nobody’s face. It was too dark, man,” the boy said to Bosch. Eleanor let out a breath. Bosch felt like telling her that if she thought the boy was a waste of time she could leave.

“I was hiding,” Sharkey said. “ ’Cause, see, at first I thought they were after me or something. I had nothin’ to do with this. Why you dragging me down, man?”

“We got a man dead, Edward. We’ve got to find out why. We don’t care about faces. That’s fine. Tell us what you did see, and then you’re no longer in it.”

“That’ll be it?”

“That’ll be it.”

Bosch leaned back then and lit his second cigarette.

“Well, yeah, I was up there and I wasn’t too tired yet so I was doing my paint thing and I heard a car coming. Like holy shit. And what was weird was that I heard it before I saw it. ’Cause the guy has no lights on. So, man, I hauled ass and hid in the bushes on the hill right by there, you know, right by the pipe, right by where I hide my bike, you know, while I’m sleeping.”

The boy was becoming more animated, using his hands and nodding his head and looking mostly at Bosch now.