The Harry Bosch Novels Vol I Part 34

Then Bosch remembered Eleanor. Was she the one in the tunnel at the end? What had happened? Edgar seemed to read him. Everybody had been doing that lately.

"Your lady partner is fine. She and you are in the spotlight, man, heroes."

Heroes. Bosch thought about that. After a while, Edgar said, "I gotta book on out of here. If they know I talked to you first, I'll get s.h.i.+pped out to Newton."

Bosch nodded. Most cops wouldn't mind Newton Division. Nonstop action in Shootin' Newton. But not Jerry Edgar, real estate agent.

"Who's coming?"

"Usual crew, I guess. IAD, Officer Involved Shooting team, the FBI is in on the act. Bev Hills, too. I think everybody's still figurin' out what the f.u.c.k happened down there. And they only got you and Wish to tell 'em. They probly want to make sure you two have the same story. That's why I'm saying, tell 'em you don't remember d.i.c.k. You're shot, man. You are an injured officer. Line of duty. It's your right not to remember what happened."

"What do you know about what happened?"

"The department isn't saying s.h.i.+t. No scut going around on this at all. When I heard it went down I went out to the scene and Pounds was already there. He saw me and ordered me back. f.u.c.kin' Ninety-eight, he wouldn't say s.h.i.+t. So I only know what's in the press. The usual load of bulls.h.i.+t. TV last night didn't know s.h.i.+t. The Times Times this morning doesn't have much, either. The department and the bureau, they look like they joined up to make everybody a valiant soldier." this morning doesn't have much, either. The department and the bureau, they look like they joined up to make everybody a valiant soldier."

"Everybody?"

"Yeah. Rourke, Lewis, Clarke - they all went down in the line of duty."

"Wish said that stuff?"

"No. She's not in the story. I mean, she isn't quoted. I 'spect they're keeping her kind of under wraps till the investigation is over."

"What's the official line?"

"The Times Times says the department says Lewis and Clarke and you were part of the FBI surveillance at that vault. Now I know that's a lie 'cause you'd never let those clowns near one of your operations. Besides, they're IAD. I think the says the department says Lewis and Clarke and you were part of the FBI surveillance at that vault. Now I know that's a lie 'cause you'd never let those clowns near one of your operations. Besides, they're IAD. I think the Times Times knows something about it stinks, too. That Bremmer guy you know was calling me yesterday, seeing what I heard. But I didn't talk. My name gets in the paper on this and I'll get worse than Newton. If there is such a place." knows something about it stinks, too. That Bremmer guy you know was calling me yesterday, seeing what I heard. But I didn't talk. My name gets in the paper on this and I'll get worse than Newton. If there is such a place."

"Yeah," Bosch said. He looked away from his old partner and became immediately depressed. It seemed to make his arm throb all the harder.

"Look, Harry," Edgar said after a half minute. "I better get out of here. I don't know when they'll be coming, but they will be, man. You take care and do like I told you. Amnesia. Then take the eighty percent line-of-duty disability and f.u.c.k 'em."

Edgar pointed a finger to his temple and nodded his head. Harry nodded absently and then Edgar left. Bosch could see a uniformed officer sitting on a chair outside the door.

After a while Bosch picked up the phone that was attached to the railing alongside his bed. He couldn't get a dial tone, so he pushed the nurse call b.u.t.ton and a few minutes later a nurse came in and told him the phone was shut off, as per LAPD orders. He asked for a newspaper and she shook her head. Same thing.

He became even more depressed. He knew that both LAPD and the FBI faced huge public relations problems with what had happened, but he couldn't see how it could be covered up. Too many agencies. Too many people. They could never keep a lid on it. Could they be stupid enough to try?

He loosened the strap across his chest and tried to sit all the way up. It made him dizzy, and his arm screamed to be left alone. He felt nausea overtake him and reached for a stainless steel pan on the bed table. The feeling subsided. But it jogged loose a memory of being in the tunnel with Rourke the morning before. He began remembering pieces of Rourke's conversation. He tried to fit the new information with what he had already known. Then he wondered about the diamonds - the cache from the WestLand job - and whether they had been found. Where? As much as he had grown to admire the engineering of the caper, he could not bring himself to admire its maker. Rourke.

Bosch felt fatigue overcome him like a cloud crossing the sun. He dropped back against the pillow. And the last thing he thought of before dozing off was what Rourke had said in the tunnel. The part about getting a larger share because Meadows, Franklin and Delgado were dead. It was then, as he slid into the black jungle hole that Meadows had jumped into before, that Bosch realized the full meaning of what Rourke had said.

The man in the visitor's chair wore an $800 pinstripe suit, gold cuff links and an onyx pinky ring. But it was no disguise.

"IAD, right?" Bosch said and yawned. "Wake up from a dream to a nightmare."

The man started. He hadn't seen Bosch open his eyes. He stood up and left the hospital room without saying a word. Bosch yawned again and looked around for a clock. There was none. He loosened the chest belt again and tried to sit up. This time he was much better. No dizziness. No sickness. He looked over at the floral arrangements on the windowsill and the bureau. He thought that their number might have grown while he was asleep. He wondered if any of them were from Eleanor. Had she come by to see him? They probably wouldn't let her.

In another minute, Pinstripe came back in, carrying a tape recorder and leading a procession that included four other suits. One was Lieutenant Bill Haley, head of the LAPD Officer Involved Shooting squad, and one was Deputy Chief Irvin Irving, head of IAD. Bosch figured the other two for FBI men.

"If I'd known I had so many suits waiting for me, I would have set an alarm," Bosch said. "But they didn't give me an alarm clock, or a phone that works or a TV or a newspaper."

"Bosch, you know who I am," Irving said and threw a hand toward the others. "And you know Haley. This is Agent Stone and this is Agent Folsom, FBI."

Irving looked at Pinstripe and nodded toward the bed table. The man stepped forward and placed the recorder on the table, put a finger on the record b.u.t.ton and looked back at Irving. Bosch looked at him and said, "You don't rate an introduction?"

Pinstripe ignored him and so did everybody else.

"Bosch, I want to do this quickly and without any of your brand of humor," Irving said. He flexed his ma.s.sive jaw muscles and nodded at Pin-stripe. The recorder was turned on. Irving dryly spoke the date, day and time. It was 11:30 A.M. A.M. Bosch had only been asleep a few hours. But he felt much stronger than when Edgar had visited. Bosch had only been asleep a few hours. But he felt much stronger than when Edgar had visited.

Irving then added the names of those present in the room, this time giving a name to Pinstripe. Clifford Galvin, Jr. Same name, minus the junior part, as one of the department's other deputy chiefs. Junior was being groomed and doomed, Bosch thought. He was on the fast track, under Irving's wing.

"Let's do it from the top," Irving said. "Detective Bosch, you start by telling us everything about this deal since the moment you climbed in."

"You got a couple days?"

Irving walked over to the recorder and hit the pause b.u.t.ton.

"Bosch," he said, "we all know what a smart guy you are, but we are not going to hear it today. I stop the tape only this once. If I do it again, I will have your badge in a gla.s.s block by Tuesday morning. And that's only because of the holiday tomorrow. And never mind any line-of-duty pension. I will see you get eighty percent of nothing."

He was referring to the department practice of forbidding a retiring cop to keep his badge. The chief and the city council didn't like the idea of some of the city's former finest floating around the city with buzzers to show off. Shakedowns, free meals, free flops, it was a scandal they could see coming a hundred miles away. So if you wanted to take your badge with you, you could: set nicely in a Lucite block with a decorative clock. It was about a foot square. Too big to fit in the pocket.

Irving nodded and Junior pushed the b.u.t.ton again. Bosch told it like it had been, leaving out nothing and stopping only when Junior needed to turn the tape over. The suits asked him questions from time to time but mostly just let him tell it. Irving wanted to know what Bosch had dropped from the Malibu pier. Bosch almost didn't even remember. n.o.body took notes. They just watched him tell it. He finally finished the tale an hour and a half after starting. Irving looked at Junior then and nodded. Junior stopped the tape.

When they had no more questions, Bosch asked his.

"What did you find at Rourke's place?"

"That's not your business," Irving said.

"The h.e.l.l it isn't. It's part of a murder investigation. Rourke was the murderer. He admitted it to me."

"Your investigation has been rea.s.signed."

Bosch said nothing as the anger pushed its way into his throat. He looked around the room and noticed that none of the others, even Junior, would look at him.

Irving said, "Now, before I would go around shooting my mouth off about fellow law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, I would make sure I knew the facts. And I would make sure that I had the evidence supporting those facts. We don't want any rumors being spread about good men."

Bosch couldn't hold back.

"You think you people will pull this off? What about your two goons? How are you going to explain that? First they put the bug in my phone, then they blunder into a f.u.c.king surveillance and get themselves shot. And you want to make them heroes. Who are you kidding?"

"Detective Bosch, it already has been explained. That is not your worry. It is also not your role to contradict the public statements of the department or the bureau on this matter. That, Detective, is an order. If you talk to the press about this, it will be the last time you do as a Los Angeles police detective."

Now it was Bosch who could not look at them. He stared at the flowers on the table and said, "Then why the tape, the statement, all the suits here with you? What's the point when you don't want to know the truth?"

"We want the truth, Detective. You are confusing that with what we choose to tell the public. But out of the public eye I guarantee and the Federal Bureau of Investigation guarantees that we will complete your investigation and take appropriate action where fitting."

"That's pathetic."

"And so are you, Detective. So are you." Irving leaned over the bed with his face close enough that Bosch could smell his sour breath. "This is one of those rare times when you hold your future in your own hands, Detective Bosch. You do what is right, maybe you find yourself back at Robbery-Homicide. Or you can pick up that phone - yes, I am going to have the nurse turn it on - and call your pals at that rag over on Spring Street. But if you do that, you better ask them if there are any career opportunities there for a former homicide detective."

The five of them then left, leaving Bosch alone with his anger. He sat up and was ready to take a swing with his good arm at a vase of daisies on the bedside table, when the door opened and Irving came back in. Alone. No tape recorder.

"Detective Bosch, this is unofficial. I told the others I forgot to give you this."

He pulled a greeting card out of his coat pocket and propped it upright on the windowsill. On the front was a busty policewoman with her uniform blouse unb.u.t.toned to the navel. She was rapping her nightstick in her hand impatiently. A bubble from her mouth said Get Well Soon or.... Bosch would have to read the inside to get the punch line.

"I didn't forget. I just wanted to say something private." He stood mute at the foot of the bed until Bosch nodded. "You are good at what you do, Detective Bosch. Anybody knows that. But that doesn't mean you are a good police officer. You refuse to be part of the Family. And that's not good. And, meantime, you see, I have this department to protect. To me, that's the most important job in the world. And one of the best ways to do that is to control public opinion. Keep everybody happy. So if it means putting out a couple of nice press releases and putting on a couple of big funerals with the mayor and the TV cameras and all the bra.s.s there, that's what we are going to do. The protection of the department is more important than the fact that two dumb cops made a mistake.

"Same goes for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They will grind you up before they publicly flog themselves with Rourke. So what I am telling you is that rule one is you have to go along to get along."

"That's bulls.h.i.+t and you know it."

"No, I do not know it. Deep down neither do you. Let me ask you something. Why is it, you think, that Lewis and Clarke were pulled back on the investigation of the Dollmaker shooting? Who do you think reined them in?"

When Bosch didn't say anything Irving nodded. "You see, we had to make a decision. Would it be better to see one of our detectives dragged through the papers and brought up on criminal charges, or for him to be quietly demoted and transferred?" He let that hang there a few seconds before continuing. "Another thing. Lewis and Clarke came to me last week with the story about what you did to them. Cuffing them to that tree. Very brutal, that was. But they were as happy as a couple of high school cheerleaders after an evening with the football team. They had you by the b.a.l.l.s and were ready to put the paper in right then. They -"

"They had me, but I had them."

"No. That's what I'm telling you. They came to me with this story about the bug in the phone, what you told them. But the thing is, they didn't drop the bug in your phone, like you thought. I checked it out. That is what I am telling you. They had you."

"Then who -" Bosch stopped right there. He knew the answer.

"I told them to hold back a few days. To watch, see what happened. Something was going on. Those two men were always hard to bridle when it came to you. They overstepped when they decided to stop that fellow Avery and then told him to take them back to the vault. They paid the price."

"What about the FBI, what do they say about the bug?"

"I don't know and I'm not asking. If I did, they would say, 'What bug?' You know that."

Bosch nodded and was immediately tired of the man. A thought was pus.h.i.+ng into his head that he didn't want to allow in. He looked away from Irving to the window. Irving told him once more to think of the department before he did anything, then walked out. When he was sure Irving had made his way down the hall, Bosch lashed out with his left arm and sent the vase of daisies tumbling into the corner of the room. The vase was plastic and didn't break. The damage was just spilled water and flowers. Galvin Junior's ferret face momentarily poked in and then out of the room. He said nothing, but it tipped Bosch that the IAD man was posted outside in the hall. Was that for his protection? Or for the department's? Bosch didn't know. He didn't know anything anymore.

Bosch pushed away an untouched tray containing an inst.i.tutional meal of turkey loaf with flour gravy, corn, yams, a hard roll that was supposed to be soft, and strawberry shortcake with flat whipped cream.

"You eat that, you might never get out of here."

He looked up. It was Eleanor. She stood in the open door, smiling. He smiled back. He couldn't help himself.

"I know."

"How are you, Harry?"

"Okay. I'll be okay. Might not be able to do chin-ups anymore, but I'll survive with that. How are you, Eleanor?"

"I'm fine," she said, and her smile just slayed him. "They put you through the Veg-O-Matic today?"

"Oh, yeah. Sliced and diced. The best and the brightest of my fine department - a couple of your pals, too - had me on the ropes all morning. There's a chair on this side."

She circled the bed but continued standing next to the chair. She looked around and a slight frown creased her brow, as if she knew this room and therefore knew something wasn't right.

"They got me, too. Last night. They wouldn't let me come see you till they were through with you. Orders. Didn't want us going together on the story. But I guess our stories came out all right. At least they didn't pull me back in after they talked to you today. Told me that was it."

"They find the diamonds?"

"Not that I've heard, but they aren't telling me much anymore. They've got two crews working it today, but I'm out of it. I'm on a desk till it cools off and the shooting team finishes up. They're still probably at Rourke's place looking."

"What about Tran and Binh, they cooperate?"

"No. They aren't saying one word. I know that from a friend who was on the interrogation. They don't know anything about any diamonds. Probably got their own people together in a posse. They'll be out on the treasure hunt, too."

"Where do you think the treasure is?"

"I don't have any idea. This whole thing, Harry, it's kind of thrown me. I don't know what I think about things anymore."

That included how she thought about him, he knew. He didn't say anything and after a while the silence became uneasy.

"What happened, Eleanor? Irving told me Lewis and Clarke intercepted Avery. But that's all I know. I don't understand."

"They watched us watch the vault all night. They must've gotten it into their heads that we were lookouts. If you start with the a.s.sumption that you were a bad cop, like they did, then you might come to the same conclusion. So when they see you turn Avery away and send the two uniforms home, they figure they know your game. They grab Avery at Darling's and he tells them about your visit the day before, and all the alarms this week, and then he lets it slip that you didn't want him to open the vault."

"And they said, 'You mean you can open the vault?' and the next thing is they are sneaking down the alley."

"Yeah. They had an idea about being heroes. Catching the bad cops and the robbers all at once. Nice plan until the payoff."

"Poor dumb jerks."

"Poor dumb jerks."

The silence came back then and Eleanor didn't wait for it to settle.

"Well, I just wanted to see how you were doing."

He nodded.

"And ...and to tell you -"

Here it is, he thought, the kiss good-bye.

"- I've decided to quit. I'm going to leave the bureau."

"What about.... What will you do?"

"I don't know. But I'm going to leave here, Harry. I have some money so I'll travel awhile and then see what I want to do."

"Eleanor, why?"