The Black Echo Part 3

Bosch sat alone, thinking, and scanning the room for secrets. His eyes eventually came down on the cards spread out before him on the coffee table. Solitaire. He saw that all four aces were up. He picked up the deck of remaining cards and went through it, peeling off three cards at a time. In the course of going through he came across the two and three of spades and the two of hearts. The game hadn't stalled. It had been interrupted. And never finished.

He became restless. He looked down into the green gla.s.s ashtray and saw that all the b.u.t.ts were nonfiltered Camels. Was that Meadows's brand or his killer's? He got up and walked around the room. The faint smell of urine hit him again. He walked back into the bedroom. He opened the drawers of the bureau and stared at their contents once more. Nothing turned in his mind. He went to the window and looked out at the back end of another apartment building across an alley. There was a man with a supermarket cart in the alley. He was poking through a Dumpster with a stick. The cart was half full of aluminum cans. Bosch walked away and sat down on the bed and put his head back against the wall where the headboard should have been and the white paint was a dingy gray. The wall felt cool against his back.

"Tell me something," he whispered to no one.

Something had interrupted the card game and Meadows had died here, he believed. Then he was taken to the pipe. But why? Why not leave him? Bosch leaned his head back to the wall and looked straight across the room. It was at that moment that he noticed a nail in the wall. The nail was about three feet above the bureau and had been painted white along with the wall at some point a long time ago. That was why he hadn't noticed it before. He got up and went to look behind the bureau. In the three-inch s.p.a.ce between it and the wall, he saw the edge of a fallen picture frame. With his shoulder, he pushed the heavy bureau away from the wall and picked up the frame. He stepped backward and sat on the edge of the bed studying it. The gla.s.s was cracked into an intricate spiderweb that had probably occurred when the frame fell. The damaged gla.s.s partially obscured an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph. It was grainy and fading to a brownish yellow around the edges. The photo was more than twenty years old. Bosch knew this because between two cracks in the gla.s.s he saw his own, young face staring out and smiling.

Bosch turned the frame over and carefully bent back the tin p.r.o.ngs that kept the cardboard backing in place. As he was sliding the yellowed photo out, the gla.s.s finally gave way and the pieces dropped to the floor in shatters. He moved his feet away from the gla.s.s but didn't get up. He studied the photograph. There were no markings on front or back to tell where or when it had been taken. But he knew it must have been sometime in late 1969 or early 1970, because some of the men in the picture were dead after that.

There were seven of them in the photo. All tunnel rats. All s.h.i.+rtless and proudly displaying their T-s.h.i.+rt tan lines and tattoos, each man's dog tags taped together to keep them from jangling while they crawled through the tunnels. They had to have been in the Echo Sector of Cu Chi District, but Bosch could not tell or remember what village. The soldiers stood in a trench, positioned on both sides of a tunnel entrance no wider than the pipe in which Meadows would later be found dead. Bosch looked at himself and thought that his smile in the photograph was foolish. He was embarra.s.sed by it now, in light of what was still to come after the moment was captured. Then he looked at Meadows in the photo and saw the thin smile and vacant stare. The others had always said Meadows would have a thousand-yard stare in an eight-by-eight room.

Bosch looked down at the gla.s.s between his feet and saw a pink piece of paper about the size of a baseball card. He picked it up by its edges and studied it. It was a p.a.w.n ticket from a shop downtown. The customer name on it was William Fields. It listed one item p.a.w.ned: an antique bracelet, gold with jade inlay. The ticket was dated six weeks earlier. Fields had gotten $800 for the bracelet. Bosch slipped it into an evidence envelope from his pocket and stood up.

The trip downtown took an hour because of the traffic heading to Dodger Stadium. Bosch spent the time thinking about the apartment. It had been searched, but Edgar was right. It was a rush job. The pants pockets were the obvious tip. But the bureau drawers should've been put back in correctly, and the photo and the hidden p.a.w.n slip should not have been missed. What had been the hurry? He concluded it was because Meadows's body was in the apartment. It had to be moved.

Bosch exited on Broadway and headed south past Times Square to the p.a.w.nshop located in the Bradbury Building. Downtown L.A. was as quiet as Forest Lawn on most weekends, and he didn't expect to find the Happy Hocker open. He was curious and just wanted to drive by and take a look at the place before heading to the communications center. But when he drove past the storefront he saw a man outside with an aerosol can painting the word OPEN in black on a sheet of plywood. The board stood in place of the shop's front window. Bosch could see shards of gla.s.s on the dirty sidewalk below the plywood. He pulled to the curb. The spray painter was inside by the time he got to the door. He stepped through the beam of an electric eye, which sounded a bell from somewhere above all the musical instruments hanging from the ceiling.

"I'm not open, not Sundays," a man called from the back. He was standing behind a chrome cash register that was atop a gla.s.s counter.

"That's not what the sign you just painted says."

"Yes, but that is for tomorrow. People see boards over your windows they think you're out of business. I'm not out of business. I'm open for business, except for weekends. I just have a board out there for a few days. I painted OPEN so people will know, you see? Starting tomorrow."

"Do you own this business?" Bosch said as he pulled his ID case out and flipped open his badge. "This will only take a couple minutes."

"Oh, police. Why din't you say? I been waiting all day for you police."

Bosch looked around, confused, then put it together.

"You mean the window? I'm not here about that."

"What do you mean? The patrol police said to wait for detective police. I waited. I been here since five A.M. this morning."

Bosch looked around the shop. It was filled with the usual array of bra.s.s musical instruments, electronic junk, jewelry and collectibles. "Look, Mr.-"

"Obinna. Oscar Obinna p.a.w.nshops of Los Angeles and Culver City."

"Mr. Obinna, detectives don't roll on vandalism reports on weekends. I mean, they might not even be doing that during the week anymore."

"What vandalism? This was a breakthrough. Grand robbery."

"You mean a break-in? What was taken?"

Obinna gestured to two gla.s.s counter cases that flanked the cash register. The top plate in each case had been smashed into a thousand pieces. Bosch walked up closer and could see small items of jewelry, cheap-looking earrings and rings, nestled among the gla.s.s. But he also saw velvet-covered jewelry pedestals, mirrored plates and wood ring pegs where pieces should have been but weren't. He looked around and saw no other damage in the store.

"Mr. Obinna, I can call the duty detective and see if anyone is going to come out today, and if so when they will be here. But that is not what I've come for."

Bosch then pulled out the clear plastic envelope with the p.a.w.n ticket in it. He held it up for Obinna to see.

"Can I see this bracelet please?" The moment he said it he felt a bad premonition come over him. The p.a.w.nbroker, a small, round man with olive skin and dark hair noodled over a bare cranium, looked at Bosch incredulously, his dark bushy eyebrows knitted together.

"You're not going to take the report on my cases?"

"No sir, I'm investigating a murder. Can you please show me the bracelet p.a.w.ned on this ticket? Then I will call the detective bureau and find out if anyone is coming today on your break-in. Thank you for your cooperation."

"Aygh! You people! I cooperate. I send my lists each week, even take pictures for your p.a.w.n men. Then all I ask for is one detective to investigate a robbery and I get a man who says his job is murder. I been waiting now since five A.M. in the morning."

"Give me your phone. I'll get somebody over."

Obinna took the receiver off a wall phone behind one of the damaged counters and handed it across. Bosch gave him the number to dial. While Bosch talked to the duty detective at Parker Center, the shopkeeper looked up the p.a.w.n ticket in a logbook. The duty detective, a woman Bosch knew had not been involved in a field investigation during her entire career with the Robbery-Homicide Division, asked Bosch how he had been, then told him that she had referred the p.a.w.nshop break-in to the local station even though she knew there would be no detectives there today. The local station was Central Division. Bosch walked around the counter and dialed the detective bureau there anyway. There was no answer. While the phone rang on unanswered, Bosch began a one-sided conversation.

"Yeah, this is Harry Bosch, Hollywood detectives, I'm just trying to check on the status of the break-in over at the Happy Hocker on Broadway. . . . He is. Do you know when? . . . Uh huh, uh huh. . . . Right, Obinna, O-B-I-N-N-A."

He looked over and Obinna nodded at the correct spelling.

"Yeah, he's here waiting. . . . Right . . . I'll tell him.

Thank you."

He hung up the phone. Obinna looked at him, his bushy eyebrows arched.

"It's been a busy day, Mr. Obinna," Bosch said. "The detectives are out, but they'll get here. Shouldn't be too much longer. I gave the watch officer your name and told him to get 'em over here as soon as possible. Now, can I see the bracelet?"

"No."

Bosch dug a cigarette out of a package he pulled from his coat pocket. He knew what was coming before Obinna spread his arm across one of the damaged display cases.

"Your bracelet, it is gone," the p.a.w.nbroker said. "I looked it up here in my record. I see that I had it here in the case because it was a fine piece, very valuable to me. Now it is gone. We are both victims of the robber, yes?"

Obinna smiled, apparently happy to share his woe. Bosch looked into the glitter of sharp gla.s.s in the bottom of the case. He nodded and said, "Yes."

"You are a day late, detective. A shame."

"Did you say only these two cases were robbed?"

"Yes. A smash and grab. Quick. Quick."

"What time?"

"Police called me at four-thirty A.M. in the morning.

That is the time of the alarm. I came at once. The alarm, when the window was smashed, the alarm went off. The officers found no one. They stayed until I came. Then I begin to wait for detectives that do not come. I cannot clean up my cases until they get here to investigate this crime."

Bosch was thinking of the time scheme. The body dumped sometime before the anonymous 911 call at 4 A.M. The p.a.w.nshop broken into about the same time. A bracelet p.a.w.ned by the dead man taken. There are no coincidences, he told himself.

"You said something about pictures. Lists and pictures for the p.a.w.n detail?"

"Yes, LAPD, that is true. I turn over lists of everything I take in to the p.a.w.n detectives. It is the law. I cooperate fully."

Obinna nodded his head and frowned mournfully into the broken display case.

"What about the pictures?" Bosch said.

"Yes, pictures. These p.a.w.n detectives, they ask me to take pictures of my best acquisitions. Help them better identify for stolen merchandise. It is not the law, but I say sure, I cooperate fully. I buy the Polaroid kind of camera. I keep pictures if they want to come and look. They never do. It's bulls.h.i.+t."

"You have a picture of this bracelet?"

Obinna's eyebrows arched again as he considered the idea for the first time.

"I think," he said, and then he disappeared through a black curtain in a doorway behind the counter. He came out a few moments later with a shoe box full of Polaroid photos with yellow carbon slips paper-clipped to them. He rustled through the photos, occasionally pulling one out, raising his eyebrows, and then sliding it back into place. Finally, he found what he wanted.

"Here. There it is."

Bosch took the photo and studied it.

"Antique gold with carved jade, very nice," Obinna said. "I remember it, top line. No wonder the s.h.i.+theel that broke through my window took it. Made in the 1930s, Mexico . . . I gave the man eight hundred dollars. I have not often paid such a price for a piece of jewelry. I remember, very big man, he came here with the ring for the Super Bowl. Nineteen eighty-three. Very nice. I gave him one thousand dollars. He did not come back for it."

He held out his left hand to display the oversized gold ring, which seemed even larger on his small finger.

"The guy who p.a.w.ned the bracelet, you remember him as well?" Bosch asked.

Obinna looked puzzled. Bosch decided that watching his eyebrows was like watching two caterpillars charging each other. He took one of the Polaroids of Meadows out of his pocket and handed it to the p.a.w.nbroker. He studied it closely.

"The man is dead," Obinna said after a moment. The caterpillars seemed to quiver with fear. "The man looks dead."

"I don't need your help for that," Bosch said. "I want to know if he p.a.w.ned the bracelet."

Obinna handed the photo back. He said, "I think yes."

"He ever come in here and p.a.w.n anything else, before or after the bracelet?"

"No. I think I'd remember him. I'll say no."

"I need to take this," Bosch said, holding up the Polaroid of the bracelet. "If you need it back, give me a call."

He put one of his business cards on the cash register. The card was one of the cheap kind, with his name and phone number handwritten on a line. As he walked to the front door, crossing under a row of banjos, Bosch looked at his watch. He turned to Obinna, who was looking through the box of Polaroids again.

"Mr. Obinna, the watch officer, he said to tell you that if the detectives didn't get here in a half hour, you should go home and they will be by in the morning."

Obinna looked at him without saying a word. The caterpillars charged and collided. Bosch looked up and saw himself in the polished bra.s.s elbow of a saxophone that hung overhead. A tenor. Then he turned and walked out the door, heading to the com center to pick up the tape.

The watch sergeant in the com center beneath City Hall let Bosch record the 911 call off one of the big reel-to-reels that never stop rolling and recording the cries of the city. The voice of the emergency operator was female and black. The caller was male and white. The caller sounded like a boy.

"Nine one one emergency. What are you reporting?"

"Uh, uh-"

"Can I help you? What are you reporting?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm reporting you have a dead guy in a pipe."

"You said you are reporting a dead body?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"What do you mean a pipe, sir?"

"He is in a pipe up by the dam."

"What dam is that?"

"Uh, you know, where they got the water reservoir and everything, the Hollywood sign."

"Is that the Mulholland Dam, sir? Above Hollywood?"

"Yeah, that's it. You got it. Mulholland. I couldn't remember the name."

"Where is the body?"

"They have a big old pipe up there. You know, the one that people sleep in. The dead guy is in the pipe. He's there."

"Do you know this person?"

"No, man, no way."

"Is he sleeping?"

"s.h.i.+t, no," The boy laughed nervously. "He's dead."

"How are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I'm just telling you. If you don't want to-"

"What is your name, sir?"

"What is this? What do you need my name for? I just saw it, I didn't do it."

"How am I to know this is a legitimate call?"

"Check the pipe, you'll know. I don't know what else to tell you. What's my name got to do with anything?"

"For our records, sir. Can you give me your name?"

"Uh, no."

"Sir, will you stay there until an officer arrives?"

"No, I'm already gone. I'm not there, man. I'm down-"