The Black Echo Part 28

"So, what have we got? I don't know what to tell them," he whispered as he looked around the desk and two chairs in the room for a sc.r.a.p of paper or anything else Tran might have mistakenly left behind. There was nothing. He opened the drawers of the mahogany desk. There were pens and pencils and envelopes and a stack of bond paper. Nothing else. There was a fax machine on a table against the wall opposite the door but it was not turned on.

"We watch and wait," she said, speaking very quickly. "Rourke says he is putting together a tunnel crew. They'll go in and have a look around. They're going to get with DWP first to see exactly what's down there. They should be able to figure what the best spot for a tunnel would be and then they'll go from there. Harry, you really think this is it?"

He nodded. He wanted to smile but didn't. Her excitement was contagious.

"Did he get a tail on Tran in time?" he asked. "By the way, here they know him as Mr. Long."

There was a knocking on the door and someone's voice saying, "Excuse me. Excuse me." Bosch and Wish ignored it.

"Tran, Bok, now Long," Wish said. "I don't know about the tail. Rourke said he was going to try. I gave him the plate and told him where the Mercedes was parked. Guess we'll find out later. He said he'd also send over a crew to work the surveillance with us. We are going to have a surveillance meeting in the garage across the street at eight o'clock. What did they say here?"

"I haven't told them what's going on yet." There was another knock, this one louder. "Well, then, let's go see the head man."

The owner and chief operating officer of Beverly Hills Safe & Lock turned out to be Avery's father, Martin B. Avery III. He was of the same stock as many of his customers and wanted everybody to know it. He had a private office at the rear of the alcove. Behind his desk was a collection of framed photographs attesting to the fact that he was not just another chiseler feeding off the rich. He was one of them. There was Avery III with a couple of presidents, a movie mogul or two, and English royalty. One photo was of Avery and the Prince of Wales in full polo regalia, though Avery appeared too thick around the middle and loose in the jowls to be much of a horseman.

Bosch and Wish summarized the situation for him and he was immediately skeptical. He said his vault was impregnable. They told him to save the sales pitch and asked to see design and operation plans for the vault. Avery III flipped his $60 blotter over, and there was the vault schematic taped to the back. It was clear that Avery III and his blow-cut salesmen were overselling the vault. Starting from its outermost skin and going inward, it was one-inch steel plating followed by a foot of rebarred concrete followed by another inch of steel. The vault was thicker on the bottom and top, where there was another two-foot layer of concrete. As with all vaults, the most impressive thing was the thick steel door, but that was for show. Just like the hand X-ray and the mantrap. Only a show. Bosch knew that if the tunnel bandits were really down below, they would have little trouble coming up for air.

Avery III said that there had been a vault alarm on each of the past two nights, including two alarms on Thursday night. Each time he was called at home by the Beverly Hills police. He in turn called his son, Avery IV, and dispatched him to meet the officers. The officers and the heir then entered the business and reset the alarm after finding nothing amiss.

"We had no idea that there might be someone in the sewers below us," Avery III said. He said it like the word sewers was wholly beneath his usage. "Hard to believe, hard to believe."

Bosch asked more detailed questions about the vault's operation and security devices. Not realizing its significance, Avery III mentioned matter-of-factly that unlike conventional bank vaults his vault had a time-lock override. He had a code he could enter into the computer lock which would purge the time-lock coordinates. He was able to open the vault door anytime.

"We must accede to our client's needs," he explained. "If a Beverly Hills lady should call on a Sunday because she needs her tiara for the charity ball, I want to be able to get that tiara for her. You see, it is the service we sell."

"Do all your clients know about that weekend service?" Wish asked.

"Of course not," Avery III said. "Only a select few. You see, we charge a hefty fee. We must bring in a security guard to do it."

"How long does it take to do the override and swing the door open?" Bosch asked.

"Not long. I tap in the override code on the keypad next to the vault door and it is done in a matter of seconds. You then set the vault unlock code in, then turn the wheel and the door opens under its own weight. Thirty seconds, perhaps a minute, perhaps less."

Not fast enough, Bosch thought. Tran's box was located near the front of the vault. That's where the bandits would be working. They would see and probably hear the vault door being opened. No element of surprise.

An hour later, Bosch and Wish were back in his car. They had moved to the second level of the parking garage across Wils.h.i.+re and east a half block from Beverly Hills Safe & Lock. From there they had an open view of the vault room. After they had left Avery III and taken the surveillance position, they had watched as Avery IV and Grant swung the huge stainless steel vault door closed. They turned the wheel and typed on the computer keypad, locking it. Then the lights inside the business went out, all except those in the gla.s.s vault room. Those always stayed on to display the very symbol of the security they offered.

"You think they'll come through tonight?" Wish asked.

"Hard to say. Without Meadows, they're down a man. They might be behind schedule."

They had told Avery III to go home and be ready for a call out. The owner had agreed but remained skeptical of the whole scenario Bosch and Wish had spun for him.

"We are going to have to get them from underground," Bosch said, his hands holding the steering wheel as if he were driving. "We'd never get that door open fast enough."

Bosch idly looked to his left, up Wils.h.i.+re. He saw a white LTD with police wheels parked at the curb a block away. It was parked next to a fire hydrant and there were two figures in it. He still had company.

Bosch and Wish stood next to his car, which was parked on the second level of the garage facing the retainer wall at the south end. The garage had been virtually empty for more than an hour, but the drab concrete enclosure smelled of exhaust fumes and burning brakes. Bosch was sure the brakes smell was from his car. The stop-and-go tail from Little Saigon had taken its toll on the replacement car. From their position they could look across Wils.h.i.+re and west a half block to the vault showroom of Beverly Hills Safe & Lock. Farther down Wils.h.i.+re the sky was pink and the setting sun a deep orange. Evening lights were coming on in the city and traffic was thinning out. Bosch looked east up Wils.h.i.+re and could see the white LTD parked at the curb, its occupants shadows behind the tinted winds.h.i.+eld.

At eight o'clock a procession of three cars, the last a Beverly Hills patrol car, came up the ramp and cut across the empty parking s.p.a.ces to where Bosch and Wish stood at the wall.

"Well, if our perps have their lookout in any of these high rises and they saw this little parade, you can bet he is pulling them out now," Bosch said.

Rourke and four other men got out of the two unmarked cars. Bosch could tell by the suits that three of them were agents. The fourth man's suit was a little too worn, its pockets baggy like Bosch's. He carried a cardboard tube. Harry figured him for the DWP supe Wish had said was coming. Three Beverly Hills uniforms, one with captain's bars on his collar, got out of the patrol car. The captain was also carrying a rolled tube of paper.

Everybody converged at Bosch's car and used its hood as the meeting table. Rourke made some quick introductions. The three from BHPD were there because the operation was in their jurisdiction. Interdepartmental courtesy, Rourke said. They were also on hand because Beverly Hills Safe & Lock had filed a design plan with the local police department's commercial security division. They would only observe the meeting, Rourke said, and be called on later if their department was needed for backup. Two of the FBI agents, Hanlon and Houck, would work the overnight surveillance with Bosch and Wish. Rourke wanted a view of Beverly Hills Safe & Lock from at least two angles. The third agent was the FBI's SWAT coordinator. And the last man was Ed Gearson, a DWP underground facilities supervisor.

"Okay, let's set the battle plans," Rourke announced at the end of the introductions. He took the cardboard tube from Gearson without asking and slid out a rolled blueprint. "This is a DWP schematic print for this area. It has all the utility lines, the tunnels and culverts. It tells us exactly what is down there."

He unfurled the grayish map with smeared blue lines on it across the hood. The three Beverly Hills cops anch.o.r.ed the other end with their hands. It was getting dark in the garage and the SWAT man, an agent named h.e.l.ler, held a penlight with a surprisingly wide and bright beam over the drawing. Rourke took a pen out of his s.h.i.+rt pocket, pulled on it until it telescoped into a pointer.

"Okay, we are . . . right . . ." Before he could find the spot Gearson reached his arm into the light and put a finger on the map. Rourke brought his pen point over to the spot. "Yes, right here," he said and gave Gearson a don't-f.u.c.k-with-me look. The DWP man's shoulders seemed to stoop a little more in his threadbare jacket.

Everyone around the car leaned in closer over the hood to study the location. "Beverly Hills Safe & Lock is here," Rourke said. "The actual vault is here. Can we see your blueprint, Captain Orozco?"

Orozco, who was built like an inverted pyramid, broad shoulders over thin hips, unrolled his drawing across the top of the DWP print. It was a copy of the drawing Avery III had shown Bosch and Wish earlier.

"Three thousand square feet of vault s.p.a.ce," said Orozco, indicating the vault area with his hand. "Small private boxes along the sides and free-standing closets down the middle. If they are under there, they could come up through the floor anywhere along these two aisles. So we are talking about a range of about sixty feet in which they could come through the floor."

"Now, Captain," Rourke said, "if you pick that up and we look back at the DWP chart, we can place that breakthrough zone right here." With a Day-Glo yellow under-liner he outlined the floor of the vault on the utility map. "Using that as a guide, we can see the subterranean structures that offer the closest proximity. What do you think, Mr. Gearson?"

Gearson leaned over the car hood another few inches and studied the utility map. Bosch also leaned in. He saw thick lines he a.s.sumed indicated major east-west drainage lines. The kind the tunnelers would seek. He noticed that they corresponded to major surface streets: Wils.h.i.+re, Olympic, Pico. Gearson pointed out the Wils.h.i.+re line, saying it ran thirty feet below ground and was large enough to drive a truck through. With his finger, the DWP man traced the Wils.h.i.+re line east ten blocks to Robertson, a major north-south stormwater line. From that intersection, he said, it was just a mile south to an open drainage culvert that ran alongside the Santa Monica Freeway. The opening at the culvert was as big as a garage door and blocked only by a gate with a padlock on it.

"I'd say that's where they could've come in," Gearson said. "Like following surface streets. You take the Robertson line up to Wils.h.i.+re. Take a left and you're practically here by your yellow line. The vault. But I don't think they'd dig a tunnel off the Wils.h.i.+re line."

"No?" Rourke said. "How so?"

"Too busy is how so," Gearson said, sensing he was the man with the answers as nine faces peered at him from around the car hood. "We got DWP people underground all the time in these main lines. Checking for cracks, blockages, problems of any sort. And Wils.h.i.+re's the main drag down there, east and west. Just like up top. If somebody knocked a hole in the wall it'd get noticed. See?"

"What if they were able to conceal the hole?"

"You're talking about like they did a year or so ago in that burglary downtown. Yeah, that might work again, maybe somewhere else, but there is a good chance on the Wils.h.i.+re line that it'd be seen. We look for that sort of thing now. And, like I said, there's a lot of traffic on the Wils.h.i.+re line."

There was silence as they took time to consider this. The engines of the cars ticked away the heat.

"Then where would they dig, Mr. Gearson, to get into this vault?" Rourke finally said.

"We got all manner of linkups down there. Don't think us guys don't think of this from time to time when we're working down there. You know, the perfect crime and all that. I've hashed stuff like this around, especially when I read about that last one in the papers. I think if you are saying that's the vault they want to get into, then they'd still do just like I said: come up Robertson and then over on the Wils.h.i.+re line. But then I think they'd move down one of the service tunnels to sort of stay out of sight. The service tunnels are three to five feet wide. They're round. Plenty of room to work and move equipment. They hook up the main artery lines to the street storm drains and the utility systems in the buildings along here."

He put his hand back into the light and traced the smaller lines he was talking about on the DWP map.

"If they did this right," he said, "what they did was get in the gate down by the freeway and drive their equipment and all up to Wils.h.i.+re and then over to your target area. They unload their stuff, hide it in one of these service tunnels, as we call 'em, and then take their vehicle back out. They hike back in on foot and set to work in the service tunnel. h.e.l.l, they could be working in there five, six weeks before we might have occasion to go up that particular line."

Bosch still thought it sounded too simple.

"What about these other storm lines?" he asked, indicating Olympic and Pico on the map. There was a crosshatch pattern of the smaller service tunnels running from these lines north toward the vault. "What about using one of these and coming up behind the vault?"

Gearson scratched his bottom lip with a finger and said, "That's fine. There's that too. But the thing is, these lines aren't going to get you as close to the vault as these Wils.h.i.+re offshoots. See what I mean? Why would they dig a hundred-yard tunnel when they could dig a hundred-footer here?"

Gearson liked holding court, the idea of knowing more than the silk suits and uniforms around him. Having finished his speech, he rocked back on his heels, a satisfied look on his face. Bosch knew the man was probably correct on every detail.

"What about earth displacement?" Bosch asked him. "These guys are digging a tunnel through dirt and rock, concrete. Where do they get rid of it? How?"

"Bosch, Mr. Gearson is not a detective," Rourke said. "I doubt that he knows every nuance of-"

"Easy," Gearson said. "The floors of the main lines like Wils.h.i.+re and Robertson are graded three degrees to center. There is always water running down the center, even most days during a drought. It might not be raining up top but water flows, you know. You'd be surprised how much. Either it's runoff from the reservoirs or commercial use or both. Your fire department gets a call, where you think the water goes when they are done puttin' the fire out? So what I am saying is, if they had enough water they could use it to move the displaced earth or whatever you want to call it."

"It's got to be tons." Hanlon spoke for the first time.

"But it's not several tons at once. You said they took days to dig this. You spread it out over days and the runoff could handle it. Now, if they are in one of the service tunnels they'd have to figure a way to get water through there, down to your main line. I'd check your fire hydrants in the area. You got one leaking or had a report of somebody opening one up, that'd be your boys."

One of the uniforms leaned to Orozco's ear and said something. Orozco leaned over the hood and raised his finger above the map. Then he poked it down on a blue line. "We had a hydrant vandalized here two nights ago."

"Somebody opened it up," the uniform who had whispered to the captain said, "and used a bolt cutter to cut the chain that holds the cap. They took the cap with them, and it took the fire department an hour to get out here with a replacement."

"That would be a lot of water," Gearson said. "That would have taken care of some of your earth displacement."

He looked at Bosch and smiled. And Bosch smiled back. He liked when pieces of the puzzle began to fit.

"Before that, let's see, Sat.u.r.day night it was, we had an arson," Orozco said. "A little boutique in behind the Stock Building off Rincon."

Gearson looked at the spot Orozco pointed to on the blueprint as being the location of the boutique. He put his own finger on the fire hydrant location. "The water from both of those things would have gone into three street catches, here, here and here," he said, moving his hand deftly over the gray paper. "These two drain to this line. The other drains here."

The investigators looked at the two drainage lines. One ran parallel to Wils.h.i.+re, behind the J. C. Stock Building. The other ran perpendicular to Wils.h.i.+re, a straight offshoot, and next to the building.

"Either one and we're still looking at, what, a hundred-foot tunnel?" Wish said.

"At least," Gearson said. "If they had a straight shot. They might've hit ground utilities or hard rock and had to divert some. Doubt any tunnel down there could be a straight shot."

The SWAT expert tugged Rourke's cuff and the two walked away from the crowd for a whispered conversation. Bosch looked at Wish and softly said, "They're not going to go in."

"What do you mean?"

"This isn't Vietnam. n.o.body has to go down there. If Franklin and Delgado and anybody else are down there in one of these lines, there's no way to go in safely and unannounced. They hold all the advantages. They'd know we're coming."

She studied his face but didn't say anything.

"It would be the wrong move," Bosch said. "We know they're armed and probably have trips set up. We know they're killers."

Rourke came back to the gathering around the car hood and asked Gearson to wait in one of the bureau cars while he finished up with the investigators. The DWP man walked to the car with his head down, disappointed he was no longer part of the plan.

"We're not going in after them," Rourke said after Gearson shut the car door. "Too dangerous. They have weapons, explosives. We have no element of surprise. It adds up to heavy casualties for us. . . . So, we trap them. We let things take their course and then we will be there waiting, safely, when they come out. Then we'll have surprise on our side.

"Tonight SWAT will make a recon run through the Wils.h.i.+re line-we'll get some DWP uniforms from Gearson-and look for their entry point. Then we'll set up and wait in whatever's the best location. Whatever's safest from our standpoint."

There was a beat of silence, punctuated by a horn from the street, before Orozco protested.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute." He waited until every face was on his. Except Rourke's. He didn't look at Orozco at all.

"We can't be talking about sitting out here with our thumbs up our a.s.ses and letting these people blast their way into that vault," Orozco said. "To let them go in and pry open a couple hundred boxes and then just back out. My obligation is to protect the property of the citizens of Beverly Hills, who probably happen to const.i.tute ninety percent of that business's customers. I'm not going along with this."

Rourke collapsed his pen pointer, put it in the inside pocket of his coat and then spoke. He still did not look at Orozco.

"Orozco, your exception can be noted for the record, but we're not asking you to go along with this," Rourke said. Bosch noticed that along with failing to address Orozco by his rank, Rourke had dropped all pretense of courtesy.

"This is a federal operation," Rourke continued. "You are here as a professional courtesy. Besides, if my thinking is correct, they will open one deposit box only. When they find it empty they will cancel the operation and leave the vault."

Orozco was lost. His face showed it. Bosch could see be obviously had not been given many details of the investigation. He felt sorry for him, hung out to dry by Rourke.

"There are things we can't discuss at this point," Rourke said. "But we believe their target is only one box. We have reason to believe it is now empty. When the perps break into the vault and open that particular box and find it is empty, we believe they will back out in a hurry. Our job now is to be ready for that."

Bosch wondered about Rourke's supposition. Would the thieves back out? Or would they think they had the wrong box and keep drilling, looking for Tran's diamonds? Or would they loot the other boxes in hope of stealing property valuable enough to make the tunnel caper worth it? Bosch didn't know. He certainly wasn't as sure as Rourke, but then he knew the FBI agent might just be posturing to get Orozco out of the way.

"What if they don't back out?" Bosch asked. "What if they keep drilling?"

"Then we all have a long weekend ahead of us," Rourke said, "because we are going to wait them out."

"Either way, you're going to put that place out of business," Orozco said, pointing in the direction of the Stock Building. "Once it is known that somebody blew a hole through the vault they've got sitting out there in the big window, there will be no public confidence. n.o.body will put their property in there."

Rourke just stared at him. The captain's plea was falling on deaf ears.

"If you can catch them after they break in, why not before?" Orozco said. "Why don't we open up that place, run a siren, make some noise, even sit a patrol car out front? Do something to let 'em know we are here and we know about them. That'll scare 'em out before they break in. We catch them, we save the business. We don't, we still save the business and we get them another day."

"Captain," Rourke said, the false congeniality back, "if you let them know we are here, you take away our one advantage-surprise-and invite a firefight in the tunnels and perhaps up on the street in which they will not care who is hurt, who is killed. That's including themselves and perhaps innocent bystanders. Then, how do we explain to the public and even ourselves that we did it this way because we wanted to try to save a business?"

Rourke waited a beat to let his words sink in, then said, "You see, Captain, I am not going to hedge on safety on this operation. I can't. These men that are down there, they don't scare. They kill. Two people that we know about, including a witness. And that's only this week. No way are we going to let them get away. No f.u.c.king way."

Orozco leaned across the hood and rolled his blueprint up. As he snapped a rubber band around it, he said, "Gentlemen, don't f.u.c.k up. If you do, my department and I will not hold back our criticism or the details of what was discussed at this meeting. Good night."

He turned and walked back to the patrol car. The two uniforms followed without being told to. Everybody else just watched. When the patrol car drove down the ramp, Rourke said, "Well, you heard the man. We can't f.u.c.k this up. Anybody else want to suggest something?"

"What about putting people in the vault now and waiting for them to come up?" Bosch said. He hadn't really considered it but threw it out as it came to him.

"No," the SWAT man said. "You put people in the vault and they are in a corner. No options. No way out. I wouldn't even ask my men for volunteers."

"They could be injured by the blast," Rourke added. "No telling where or when the perps will come up."

Bosch nodded. They were right.

"Can we open the vault and go in, once we know they have come up?" one of the agents said. Bosch couldn't remember now whether he was Hanlon or Houck.

"Yes, there's a way to take the door off the time lock," Wish said. "We'd need to get Avery, the owner, back out here."

"From what Avery said, it looks like that would take too long," Bosch said. "Too slow. Avery can take it off time lock and open it, but it's a two-ton door that swings open on its own weight. At best, it would take a half minute to get it open. Maybe less, but they'd still have the drop on us, the people inside. Same risk as coming at them through the tunnels."

"What about a flash bang?" one of the agents said. "We open the vault door just a bit and throw in a flash grenade. Then we go in and take them."

Rourke and the SWAT man shook their heads in unison.