The Black Echo

After a moment he looked straight into her eyes and said, “Do you believe me?”

It took her a long time, but she finally nodded her head. She said, “I can’t think of any other way to explain what’s happening.”

***

Eleanor went up to a receptionist while Bosch hung back a bit. After a few minutes a young woman came out from a closed door and showed them down a couple of hallways and into a small office. No one was sitting behind the desk. They sat in two chairs facing the desk and waited.

“Who is this we’re seeing?” Bosch whispered.

“I’ll introduce you, and he can tell you what he wants you to know about him,” she said.

Bosch was about to ask her what that meant when the door opened and a man strode in. He looked to be about fifty, with silvery hair that was carefully groomed and a strong build beneath the blue blazer. The man’s gray eyes were as dull as day-old barbecue coals. He sat down and did not look at Bosch. He kept his eyes exclusively on Eleanor Wish.

“Ellie, good to see you again,” he said. “How are you doing?”

She said she was doing fine, exchanged a few pleasantries and then got around to introducing Bosch. The man got up and reached across the desk to shake hands.

“Bob Ernst, assistant deputy, trade and development, nice to meet you. So this is an official visit then, not just dropping by to see an old friend?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, Bob, but we are working on something and need some help.”

“Whatever I can do, Ellie,” Ernst said. He was annoying Bosch, and Bosch had only known him a minute.

“Bob, we need to background somebody whose name has come up on a case we are working,” Wish said. “I think you are in a position that you could get that information for us without a great deal of inconvenience or time.”

“That’s our problem,” Bosch added. “It’s a homicide case. We don’t have a lot of time to go through normal channels. To wait for things from Washington.”

“Foreign national?”

“Vietnamese,” Bosch said.

“Came here when?”

“May 4, 1975.”

“Ah, right after the fall. I see. Tell me, what kind of homicide would the FBI and the LAPD be working on together that involves such ancient history, and history in another country as well?”

“Bob,” Eleanor began, “I think-”

“No, don’t answer that,” Ernst yelped. “I think you are right. It would be best if we compartmentalized the information.”

Ernst went through the motions of straightening his blotter and the knickknacks on his desk. Nothing was really out of order to begin with.

“How soon you need the information?” he finally said.

“Now,” Eleanor said.

“We’ll wait,” Harry said.

“You realize, of course, I may not come up with anything, especially on short notice?”

“Of course,” Eleanor said.

“Give me the name.”

Ernst slid a piece of paper across his blotter. Eleanor wrote Binh’s name on it and slid it back. Ernst looked at it a moment and got up without ever touching the paper.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said and left the room.

Bosch looked at Eleanor.

“‘Ellie’?”

“Please, I don’t allow anybody to call me that. That’s why I don’t take his calls and don’t return them.”

“You mean until now. You’ll owe him now.”

“If he finds something. And so will you.”

“I guess I’ll have to let him call me Ellie.”

She didn’t smile.

“How’d you meet this guy, anyway?”

She didn’t answer.

Bosch said, “He’s probably listening to us right now.”

He looked around the room, though obviously any listening devices would be hidden. He took out his cigarettes when he saw a black ashtray on the desk.

“Please, don’t smoke,” Eleanor said.

“Just a half.”

“I met him once when we were both in Washington. I don’t even remember what for now. He was assistant something-or-other with State back then, too. We had a couple of drinks. That’s all. Sometime after that, he transferred out here. When he saw me in the elevator here and found out I was transferred, he started calling.”

“CIA all the way, right? Or something close.”

“More or less. I think. It doesn’t matter if he gets what we need.”

“More or less. I knew shitheads like him in the war. No matter how much he tells us today, there will be something more. Guys like that, information is their currency. They never give up everything. Like he said, they compartmentalize everything. They’ll get you killed before they tell it all.”

“Can we stop talking now?”

“Sure… Ellie.”

Bosch passed the time smoking and looking at the empty walls. The guy didn’t make much of an effort to make it look like a real office. No flag in the corner. Not even a picture of the president. Ernst was back in twenty minutes, and by then Bosch was on his second half-cigarette. As the assistant deputy for trade and development strode to his desk empty-handed, he said, “Detective, would you mind not smoking? I find it very bothersome in a closed room like this.”

Bosch stubbed the butt out in the small black bowl on the corner of his desk.

“Sorry,” he said. “I saw the ashtray. I thought-”