Michael Connelly (43 page)

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 he 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. Nobody 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 fucking way.”

Orozco leaned across the hood and rolled his blueprint up. As he snapped a rubber band around it, he said, “Gentlemen, don’t
fuck 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 fuck 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.

“For two reasons,” the SWAT man said. “If they wire the tunnel as we assume they will, the flash could detonate the charges.
We could see Wilshire Boulevard out there drop thirty feet, and we don’t want that. Think of the paperwork.”

When no one smiled, he continued. “Secondly, that’s a glass room we are talking about. Our position in there would be very
vulnerable. If they have a lookout, we’re dead. We think they go with radio silence when they’ve got the explosives out. But
what if they don’t and this lookout lets them know we’re out there. They might be ready to toss something out at
us
while we’re tossing something in.”

Rourke added his own thoughts. “Never mind the lookout. We put a SWAT team in that glass room and they can watch it on TV.
We’ll have every station in L.A. with a camera out on the sidewalk and traffic backed up to Santa Monica. It’d be a circus.
So forget that. SWAT will get with Gearson, do the recon and get the exits down by the freeway covered. We wait for them underneath
and we take ’em on
our
terms. That’s it.”

The SWAT man nodded and Rourke continued. “Starting tonight we’ll have twenty-four-hour surveillance topside on the vault.
I want Wish, Bosch, on the vault side of the building. Hanlon, Houck, on Rincon Street so you can see the door. If it looks
or sounds like it is going down, I want to be alerted and I will alert SWAT to stand by. Use landlines if possible. We don’t
know if they are monitoring our freeks. You people on the surveillance will have to work out a code to use on the radio. Everybody
got that?”

“What if there is an alarm?” Bosch asked. “There have been three so far this week.”

Rourke thought a moment and said, “Handle it routinely. Meet the call-out manager, Avery or whoever, at the door and reset
the alarm and send him on his way. I’ll get back to Orozco and tell him to send his patrols on the alarms but we’ll handle
things.”

“Avery will get the callouts,” Wish said. “He already knows what we think is going to happen here. What if he wants to open
the vault, take a look around?”

“Don’t let him. It’s that simple. It’s his vault but his life would be endangered. We can prevent it.”

Rourke looked around at the faces. There were no more questions.

“Then that’s it. I want people in position in ninety minutes. That gives you all-nighters time to eat, piss and get coffee.
Wish, give me status reports, landline, at midnight and oh six hundred. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Rourke and the SWAT man got in the car where Gearson was waiting and drove down the ramp. Bosch, Wish, Hanlon, and Houck then
worked out a radio code to use. They decided to switch the streets in the surveillance area with the names of streets downtown.
The idea was if anyone was listening to the simplex 5 public safety frequency, they would think they were hearing reports
on a surveillance at Broadway and First Street in downtown instead of Wilshire and Rincon in Beverly Hills. They also decided
to refer to the vault room as a pawnshop while on the radio. That done, the two sets of investigators split up and agreed
to check in at the start of the surveillance. As Hanlon and Houck’s car headed toward the ramp, Bosch, alone with Wish for
the first time since the plans were set, asked what she thought.

“I don’t know. I don’t like the idea of letting them go into the vault and then run around loose down there after. I wonder
if the SWAT team can really cover everything.”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

A car came up the ramp and drove toward them. The lights blinded Bosch, and for a moment he thought of the car that had come
at them the night before. But then the car swerved and came to a stop. It was Hanlon and Houck. The passenger window was rolled
down and Houck held a thick manila envelope out the window.

“Mail call, Harry,” the agent said. “Forgot we were supposed to give this to you. Somebody from your office dropped it by
the bureau today, said you were waiting for it but hadn’t been by Wilcox to get it.”

Bosch took the envelope and held it out away from his body. Houck noticed the discomfort on his face.

“The guy’s name was Edgar, a black guy, said you used to be partners,” Houck said. “Said it had been sitting in your mailbox
two days and he thought it might be important. Said he was showing somebody a house out in Westwood and decided to drop it
by while he was in the area. That sound legit to you?”

Bosch nodded and the two agents drove away again. The heavy envelope was sealed but the return address was the U.S. Armed
Services Records Archive in St. Louis. He tore off the end of the envelope and looked inside. There was a thick file of papers.

“What is it?” Wish asked.

“It’s Meadows’s package. I forgot I ordered it. Did it Monday, before I knew you guys were on the case. Anyway, I’ve already
seen this stuff.”

He tossed the envelope through the open window of the car onto the backseat.

“Hungry?” she asked him.

“I want some coffee at least.”

“I know a place.”

• • •

Bosch was sipping steaming black coffee from a plastic cup he had taken from the restaurant, an Italian place on Pico behind
Century City. He was in the car, back in place on the second floor of the parking garage across Wilshire from the vault. Wish
opened the door and got in after making her midnight check-in call to Rourke.

“They found the Jeep.”

“Where?”

“Rourke says SWAT did the reconnaissance ride through the Wilshire storm sewer but found no sign of intruders or a tunnel
entry. Looks like Gearson was right. They’re tucked in one of the smaller tributary lines. Anyway, the SWAT guys then went
down to the drainage wash by the freeway to set the trap. They were deploying at three exit positions from the tunnels when
they came across the Jeep. Rourke said there’s a car pool parking lot down by the freeway. There’s a beige Jeep parked with
a covered trailer attached. It’s theirs. The three blue ATVs are in the trailer.”

“Is he getting a warrant?”

“Yeah, he’s got somebody trying to find a judge now. So they’ll have it. But they aren’t going to go near it until they take
down the operation. In case their plan is for someone to come out and get the ATVs. Or somebody already outside is going to
show up and drive ’em in.”

Bosch nodded and sipped. It was the smart way to go. He remembered he had a cigarette going in the ashtray and tossed it out
the open window.

As if guessing what he would be thinking, she said, “Rourke said that from what they could see there was no blanket in the
back of the Jeep. But if it’s the Jeep Meadows’s body was carried to the reservoir in, there still should be fiber evidence.”

“What about the seal that Sharkey saw on the door?”

“Rourke said there was no seal. But there could have been one and they just took it off when they were leaving the Jeep out
there.”

“Yeah,” Bosch said. After a few moments of thought, he said, “Does it bother you how everything is just coming together so
well?”

“Should it?”

Bosch shrugged his shoulders. He looked up Wilshire. The curb in front of the fireplug was empty. Since they had come back
from dinner Bosch hadn’t seen the white LTD, which he’d been sure was an IAD car. He didn’t know if Lewis and Clarke were
around or had called it a night.

“Harry, good detective work pays off with cases that come together,” Eleanor told him. “I mean, we aren’t out of the dark
on this by a long shot. But I think we finally have a measure of control. Damned sight better than we were three days ago.
So why the worry when a few things finally start coming together?”

“Three days ago Sharkey was still alive.”

“Well, while you’re taking the blame for that, why don’t you add everybody else who has ever made a choice and gotten themselves
killed. You can’t change those things, Harry. And you’re not supposed to be a martyr.”

“What do you mean, choice? Sharkey didn’t make any choice.”

“Yes, he did. When he chose the streets, he knew he might die on the streets.”

“You don’t believe that. He was a kid.”

“I believe that shit happens. I believe that the best you can do in this job is come out even. Some people win and some lose.
Hopefully, half the time it is the good guys who win. That’s us, Harry.”

Bosch drank his cup dry and they sat in silence for a while after that. They had a clear view of the vault sitting at the
center of the glass room like a throne. Out there in the open, polished and shiny under the bright ceiling lights, it said
“Take me” to the world, he thought. And somebody would. We’re going to let them.

Wish picked up the radio handset, keyed the transmit button twice and said, “Broadway One to First, do you guys copy?”

“We copy, Broadway. Anything?” It was Houck’s voice on the comeback. There was a lot of static, as the radio waves ricocheted
off the tall buildings in the area.

“Only checking. What’s your position?”

“We are due south of the front door of the pawnshop. A clear view of nothing going on.”