Michael Connelly (11 page)

• • •

By nine Bosch had driven to Westwood and was on the seventeenth floor of the Federal Building on Wilshire Boulevard. The FBI
waiting room was austere, the usual plastic-covered couches and scarred coffee table with old copies of the
FBI Bulletin
fanned across its fake wood-grain veneer. Bosch didn’t bother to sit down or read. He stood before the sheer white curtains
that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out at the panorama. The northern exposure offered a view that stretched
from the Pacific eastward around the rim of the Santa Monica Mountains to Hollywood. The curtains served as a layer of fog
over the smog. He stood with his nose almost touching the soft gauze fabric and looked down, across Wilshire, at the Veterans
Administration Cemetery. Its white stones sprouted in the manicured grass like row after row of baby teeth. Near the cemetery’s
entrance a funeral was in progress, with a full honor guard at attention. But there wasn’t much of a crowd of mourners. Farther
north, at the top of a rise where there were no tombstones, Bosch could see several workers removing sod and using a backhoe
to dig up a long slice of the earth. He checked their progress from time to time as he scanned the view, but he could not
figure out what they were doing. The clearing was far too long and wide for a grave.

By ten-thirty the soldier’s funeral was done but the cemetery workers were still toiling on the hill. And Bosch was still
waiting at the curtain. A voice finally hit him from behind.

“All those graves. Such neat rows. I try never to look out the windows here.”

He turned. She was tall and lithesome with brown wavy hair about to the shoulder with blond highlights. A nice tan and little
makeup. She looked hard-shell and maybe a little weary for so early in the day, the way lady cops and hookers get. She wore
a brown business suit and a white blouse with a chocolate-brown western bow. He detected the unsymmetrical curves of her hips
beneath the jacket. She was carrying something small on the left side, maybe a Rugar, which was unusual. Bosch had always
known female detectives to carry their weapons in their purses.

“That’s the veterans cemetery,” she said to him.

“I know.”

He smiled, but not at that. It was that he had expected Special Agent E. D. Wish to be a man. No reason other than that was
who most of the bureau agents assigned to the bank detail were. Women were part of the newer image of the bureau and weren’t
usually found in the heavy squads. It was a fraternity largely made up of dinosaurs and cast-outs, guys who couldn’t or wouldn’t
cut it in the bureau’s hard-charging focus on white-collar, espionage and drug investigations. The days of Melvin Purvis,
G-man, were just about over. Bank robbery wasn’t flashy anymore. Most bank robbers weren’t professional thieves. They were
hypes looking for a score that would keep them going for a week. Of course, stealing from a bank was still a federal crime.
That was the only reason the bureau still bothered.

“Of course,” she said. “You must know that. How can I help you, Detective Bosch? I’m Agent Wish.”

They shook hands, but Wish made no movement toward the door she had come through. It had closed and the lock had snapped home.
Bosch hesitated a moment and then said, “Well, I’ve been waiting all morning to see you. It’s about the bank squad …One of
your cases.”

“Yes, that’s what you told the receptionist. Sorry to have kept you, but we had no appointment and I had another pressing
matter. I wish you had called first.”

Bosch nodded his understanding, but again there was no movement toward inviting him in. This isn’t working right, he thought.

“Do you have any coffee back there?” he said.

“Uh …yes, I believe we do. But can we make this quick? I’m really in the middle of something at the moment.”

Who isn’t, Bosch thought. She used a card key to open the door and then pulled it open and held it for him. Inside, she led
him down a corridor where there were plastic signs on the walls next to the doors. The bureau didn’t have the same affinity
for acronyms as the police department. The signs were numbered — Group 1, Group 2 and so on. As they went along, he tried
to place her accent. It had been slightly nasal but not like New York. Philadelphia, he decided, maybe New Jersey. Definitely
not Southern California, never mind the tan that went with it.

“Black?” she said.

“Cream and sugar, please.”

She turned and entered a room that was furnished as a small kitchen. There was a counter and cabinets, a four-cup coffeemaker,
a microwave and a refrigerator. The place reminded Bosch of law offices he had been to to give depositions. Nice, neat, expensive.
She handed him a Styrofoam cup of black coffee and signaled for him to put in his own cream and sugar. She wasn’t having any.
If it was an attempt to make him uncomfortable, it worked. Bosch felt like an imposition, not someone who brought good news,
a break in a big case. He followed her back into the hallway and they went through the next doorway, which was marked Group
3. It was the bank robbery-kidnap unit. The room was about the size of a convenience store. It was the first federal squad
room Bosch had been in, and the comparison to his own office was depressing. The furniture here was newer than anything he
had ever seen in any LAPD squad. There was actually carpet on the floor and a typewriter or computer at almost every desk.
There were three rows of five desks and all of them but one were empty. A man in a gray suit sat at the first desk in the
middle row, holding a phone to his ear. He didn’t look up as Bosch and Wish walked in. Except for the background noise of
a tactical channel coming from a scanner on a file cabinet in the back, the place could have passed for a real estate office.

Wish took a seat behind the first desk in the first row and gestured for Bosch to take the seat alongside it. This put him
directly between Wish and Gray Suit on the phone. Bosch put his coffee down on her desk and began to figure right away that
Gray Suit wasn’t really on the phone, even though the guy kept saying “Uh huh, uh huh” or “Uh uh” every few moments or so.
Wish opened a file drawer in her desk and pulled out a plastic bottle of water, some of which she poured into a paper cup.

“We had a two eleven at a savings and loan in Santa Monica, just about everybody’s out on it,” she explained as he scanned
the almost empty room. “I was coordinating from here. That’s why you had to wait out there. Sorry.”

“No problem. Get him?”

“What makes you say it was a him?”

Bosch shrugged his shoulders. “Percentages.”

“Well, it was two of them. One of each. And yes, we got them. They were in a stolen from Reseda reported yesterday. Female
went in and took care of business. Male was the wheel. They took the 10 to the 405, then into LAX, where they left the car
in front of a skycap at United. Then they took the escalator to the arrivals level, got on a shuttle bus to the Flyaway station
in Van Nuys and then took a cab all the way back down to Venice. To a bank. We had an LAPD copter over them the whole time.
They never looked up. When she went into the second bank we thought we were going to see another two eleven so we rushed her
while she was waiting in line for a teller. Got him in the parking lot. Turns out she was just going to deposit the take from
the first bank. An interbank transfer, the hard way. See some dumb people in this business, Detective Bosch. What can I do
for you?”

“You can call me Harry.”

“As I am doing what for you?”

“Interdepartmental cooperation,” he said. “Kinda like you and our helicopter this morning.”

• • •

Bosch drank some of his coffee and said, “Your name is on a BOLO I came across yesterday. Year-old case out of downtown. I’m
interested in it. I work homicide out of Hollywood Div —”

“Yes, I know,” Agent Wish interrupted.

“— ision.”

“The receptionist showed me the card you gave. By the way, do you need it back?”

That was a cheap shot. He saw his sad-looking business card on her clean green blotter. It had been in his wallet for months
and its corners were curled up at the edges. It was one of the generic cards the department gave detectives who worked out
in the bureaus. It had the embossed police badge on it and the Hollywood Division phone number but no name. You could buy
yourself an ink pad and order a stamp and sit at your desk at the beginning of each week and stamp out a couple dozen cards.
Or you could just write your name on the line with a pen and not give out too many. Bosch had done the latter. Nothing the
department could do could embarrass him anymore.

“No, you can keep it. By the way, you have one?”

In a quick, impatient motion, she opened the top middle drawer of the desk, took a card out of a little tray and put it down
on the desk top next to the elbow Bosch had leaned there. He took another sip of coffee while glancing down at it. The E stood
for Eleanor.

“So anyway you know who I am and where I come from,” he began. “And I know a little bit about you. For instance, you investigated,
or are investigating, a bank caper from last year in which the perps came in through the ground. A tunnel job. WestLand National.”

He noticed her attention immediately pick up with that, and even thought he sensed Gray Suit’s breathing catch. Bosch had
a line in the right water.

“Your name is on the bulletins. I am investigating a homicide I believe is related to your case and I want to know … basically,
I want to know what you’ve got…. Can we talk about suspects, possible suspects…. I think we might be looking for the same
people. I think my guy might have been one of your perps.”

Wish was quiet for a moment and played with a pencil she’d picked up off the blotter. She pushed Bosch’s card around on the
green square with the eraser end. Gray Suit was still acting like he was on the phone. Bosch glanced over at him and their
eyes briefly connected. Bosch nodded and Gray Suit looked away. Bosch figured he was looking at the man whose comments had
been in the newspaper articles. Special Agent John Rourke.

“You can do better than that, can’t you, Detective Bosch?” Wish said. “I mean, you just walk in here and wave the flag of
cooperation and you expect me to just open up our files.”

She tapped the pencil three times on the desk and shook her head like she was disciplining a child.

“How about a name?” she said. “How about giving me some reason for the connection? We usually handle this kind of request
through channels. We have liaisons that evaluate requests from other law enforcement agencies to share files and information.
You know that. I think it might be best —”

Bosch pulled the FBI bulletin with the insurance photo of the bracelet out of his pocket. He unfolded it and laid it on the
blotter. Then he took the pawnshop Polaroid out of the other pocket and also dropped that on the desk.

“WestLand National,” he said, tapping a finger on the bulletin. “The bracelet was pawned six weeks ago in a downtown shop.
My guy pawned it. Now he’s dead.”

She kept her eyes on the Polaroid bracelet and Bosch saw recognition there. The case had stayed that much with her.

“The name is William Meadows. Found him in a pipe yesterday morning, up at the Mulholland Dam.”

Gray Suit ended his one-sided conversation. He said, “I appreciate the information. I have to go, we’re wrapping up a two
eleven. Uh huh…. Thank you…. You too, good-bye now.”

Bosch didn’t look at him. He watched Wish. He thought he sensed that she wanted to look over at Gray Suit. Her eyes darted
that way but then quickly went back to the photograph. Something wasn’t right, and Bosch decided to jump back into the silence.

“Why don’t we skip the bullshit, Agent Wish? As far as I can tell, you’ve never recovered a single stock certificate, a single
coin, a single jewel, a single gold-and-jade bracelet. You’ve got nothing. So screw the liaison stuff. I mean, what is this?
My guy pawned the bracelet; he ended up dead. Why? We have parallel investigations here, don’t you think? More likely, the
same investigation.”

Nothing.

“My guy was either given that bracelet by your perps or he stole it from them. Or possibly, he was one of them. So, maybe
the bracelet wasn’t supposed to turn up yet. Nothing else has. And he goes and breaks the rules and pawns the thing. They
whack him, then go to the pawnshop and steal it back. Whatever. The thing is, we are looking for the same people. And I need
a direction to start in.”

She remained silent still, but Bosch sensed a decision coming. This time he waited her out.

“Tell me about him,” she finally said.

He told her. About the anonymous call. About the body. About the apartment that had been searched. About finding the pawn
stub hidden behind the photo. And then going to the pawnshop to find the bracelet stolen. He didn’t say that he had known
Meadows.

“Anything else taken from the pawnshop, or just this bracelet?” she asked when he was done.

“Of course. Yes. But just as a cover for the real thing they wanted. The bracelet. Way I see it, Meadows was killed because
whoever killed him wanted the bracelet. He was tortured before he was murdered because they wanted to know where it was. They
got what they needed, killed him, then went and got the bracelet. Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes, I do. What could be so important about one bracelet? This bracelet is only a drop in the bucket of what was taken, of
what hasn’t ever turned up.”

Bosch had thought of that and didn’t have an answer. He said, “I don’t know.”

“If he was tortured as you say, why was the pawn ticket there for you to find? And why did they have to break into the pawnshop?
You’re suggesting that he told them where the bracelet was but didn’t give up the ticket?”

Bosch had thought about this, too. He said, “I don’t know. Maybe he knew they wouldn’t let him live. So he only gave them
half of what they needed. He kept something back. It was a clue. He left the pawn stub behind as a clue.”

Bosch thought about the scenario. He had first begun to put it together when rereading his notes and the reports he had typed.
He decided it was time to play one more card.