The Black Echo

Bosch laughed at that, shook his head. He knew they would not admit any illegality or violation of department policy. He started to walk away, back to his house.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, Bosch,” Lewis called out. “We copied the report to your lieutenant. All right? Come on back.”

Bosch did and Lewis continued. “He wanted to be kept apprised. We had to do it. The DC, Irving, okayed it. We did what we were told.”

“What did the report say about the kid?”

“Nothing. Just some kid is all… Uh, ‘Subject engaged juvenile in conversation. Juvenile was transported to Hollywood Station for formal interview,’ something like that.”

“Did you ID him in the report?”

“No name. We didn’t even know his name. Honest, Bosch. We just watched you, that’s all. Now uncuff us.”

“What about Home Street Home? You watched me take him there. Was that in the report?”

“Yeah, on the log.”

Bosch moved in close again. “Now here’s the big question. If there is no complaint from the bureau anymore, why is IAD still on me? The FBI made the call to Pounds and withdrew the complaint. Then you guys act like you were called off but you weren’t. Why?”

Lewis started to say something but Bosch cut him off. “I want Clarke to tell me. You’re thinking too fast, Lewis.”

Clarke didn’t say a word.

“Clarke, the kid you saw me with ended up dead. Somebody did him because he talked to me. And the only people who knew he talked to me were you and your partner here. Something is going on here, and if I don’t get the answers I need I’m just going to lay it all out, go public with it. You are going to find your own ass being investigated by Internal Affairs.”

Clarke said his first two words in five minutes: “Fuck you.”

Lewis jumped in then.

“Look, Bosch, I’ll tell you. The FBI doesn’t trust you. That’s the thing. They said they brought you into the case, but they told us they weren’t sure about you. They said you muscled onto the case and they were going to have to watch you, make sure you weren’t pulling a scam. That’s all. So we were told to drop back but stay on you. We did. That’s all, man. Now cut us loose. I can hardly breathe, and my wrists are starting to hurt with these cuffs. You really put them on tight.”

Bosch turned to Clarke. “Where’s your cuff key?”

“Right front pocket,” he said. He was cool about it, refusing to look at Bosch’s face. Bosch walked around behind him and reached both hands around his waist. He pulled a key ring out of Clarke’s pocket and then whispered in his ear, “Clarke, you ever go in my home again and I’ll kill you.”

Then he yanked the detective’s pants and boxer shorts down to his ankles and started walking away. He threw the key ring into the car.

“You bastard!” Clarke yelled. “I’ll kill you first, Bosch.”

***

As long as he kept the bug and the Nagra, Bosch was reasonably certain Lewis and Clarke would not seek departmental charges against him. They had more to lose than he. A lawsuit and public scandal would cut their careers off at the stairway to the sixth floor. Bosch got in his car and drove back to the Federal Building.

Too many people knew about Sharkey or had the opportunity to know, he realized as he tried to assess the situation. There was no clear-cut way of flushing out the inside man. Lewis and Clarke had seen the boy and passed the information on to Irving and Pounds and who knew who else. Rourke and the FBI records clerk knew about him as well. And those names didn’t even include the people on the street who might have seen Sharkey with Bosch, or had heard that Bosch was looking for him. Bosch knew that he would have to wait for things to develop.

At the Federal Building, the red-haired receptionist behind the glass window on the FBI floor made him wait while she called back to Group 3. He checked the cemetery again through the gauze curtains and saw several people working in the trench cut in the hill. They were lining the earth wound with blocks of black stone that reflected sharp white light points in the sun. And Bosch at last believed he knew what it was they were doing. The door lock buzzed behind him and Bosch headed back. It was twelve-thirty and the heavy squad was out, except for Eleanor Wish. She sat at her desk eating an egg salad sandwich, the kind they sold in plastic triangle-shaped boxes at every government building cafeteria he’d ever been in. The plastic bottle of water and a paper cup were on the desk. They exchanged small hellos. Bosch felt that things had changed between them, but he didn’t know how much.

“You been here since this morning?” he asked.

She said she hadn’t. She told him that she had taken the mugs of Franklin and Delgado to the vault clerks at WestLand National and one of the women positively identified Franklin as Frederic B. Isley, the holder of a box in the vault. The scout.