The Crossing (27 page)

“No problem.”

Bosch gave her Schubert’s name and she said she would call him back as soon as she had something. He thanked her and disconnected. A car had now cleared the bend and was approaching with its high beams on. Bosch felt lit up and vulnerable in the darkness.

The near-silent Tesla came to a stop in front of him. Bosch checked the clock on his phone. Marko was right on time. Being new to Uber, Bosch didn’t know if he was supposed to get in the front or the back but opted for opening the front door.

“Marko?”

“Yes, sir.”

A deep eastern European accent.

“Where do I sit?”

“Right in front is very good.”

Bosch got in.

“Which way?” Marko asked. “You did not put in destination.”

“I thought that was an option,” Bosch said. “I want you to go up the hill. When we get to the top at Mulholland we’ll turn around and come back down.”

“That’s it?”

“No, then we’re going to go down into Beverly Hills, I think.”

“Do you have address? I plug it in.”

“Not yet. But I’ll get it before we get there.”

“Whatever you say.”

The car took off up the hill. There was no engine sound. It reminded Bosch of amusement park bumper cars.

“It’s quiet,” he said. “You could sneak up on people.”

“Yes, I drive Tesla,” Marko said. “The people out here like the electric car. The Hollywood people. I get the repeat business, you see. Besides this, I am Serb. From Smiljan.”

Bosch nodded like he understood the connection between Hollywood and Smiljan.

“Tesla,” Marko explained. “A great man who came from my hometown.”

“The car? It’s his company?”

“No, he worked with Edison to make electricity. Long time ago. The car, it is name for him.”

“Right. I forgot.”

Bosch noted that based on his singular experience, Uber drivers seemed to talk way more than taxi drivers. The ride was as much a social outing as it was getting from point A to point B. When they got up to the stop sign at Mulholland, Bosch told Marko to turn the car around and go back down Woodrow Wilson past his house.

Bosch saw nothing suspicious on the ride back through his neighborhood. No out-of-place cars, no pedestrians who didn’t belong, no glowing cigarettes in the dark recesses between houses. He felt confident that the GPS tracker on his car was the key to the surveillance. He could work with that—drive the Cherokee when he needed to go to insignificant locations, just to show movement, then use Uber or rent a car for when he needed to go places he didn’t want the followers to know about. Just to be sure, Bosch turned and looked back through the rear window to see if a car was trailing in their wake.

He saw nothing.

Soto called him back just as they got to the bottom of the hill and had turned south on Cahuenga toward Hollywood. She had come up with a residential address for Schubert on Elevado in the flats of Beverly Hills.

“It comes up the same on three different searchwares, so I think it’s legit and current,” she said.

“Excellent,” Bosch said. “Thank you.”

“Glad to help, Harry. Anything else?”

“Uh, actually one other thing. Did you ever get the names on that Vice Unit I gave you the call sign for? The guys that might’ve been working James Allen off book as an informant?”

“Yeah, I thought I sent that to you,” Soto said.

“You mean an e-mail? I haven’t checked. I’ll do it as soon—”

“Just hold on. I have it right here.”

Bosch waited and listened as he heard her flip through the pages of a notebook. In the short period they had been partners, she had adopted Bosch’s habit of carrying a small notebook with her at all times.

“Okay,” she finally said. “That was six-Victor-fifty-five and that belongs to Don Ellis and Kevin Long. Do you know them?”

Bosch thought for a moment. The names meant nothing to him. It had been more than ten years since he worked out of Hollywood Division. The personnel there were probably 95 percent different now.

“No, I don’t know them,” he said.

“How are you going to check that?” she asked. “If they were working an informant off book, they’re not going to just tell you about it.”

“I don’t know yet.”

He thanked her again and told her to get some sleep. He disconnected and then told Marko to work his way down to Sunset and head west toward Beverly Hills.

“You sure?” Marko said. “Sunset Strip will be very slow this time of the night. I think Santa Monica better.”

“Santa Monica is better but I want to take Sunset,” Bosch said. “There’s something I want to see.”

“Okay, you be the boss.”

Marko drove as instructed and was dead-on about the traffic on Sunset. Late-evening cruisers slowed movement to a crawl on the Strip. Bosch saw black-clad crowds lining up outside the clubs, tourist vans on nighttime celebrity patrols, minimum-wage hustlers waving flashlights toward overpriced parking lots, Sheriff’s patrol cars flashing blues to keep people moving along. He gazed out past the neon reflected on the windshield of the Tesla but was deep in reflective thought, the colors not penetrating his dark eyes.

He was thinking about Vin Scully, the Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster. He had been calling games for more than sixty years—more than ten thousand games in all. There was no voice that was as iconic or as synonymous with Los Angeles as his. He had called so many games and yet never lost his love of the game or the city of his team. And he was always and repeatedly tickled when the vagaries of coincidence produced a running line of twos on the scoreboard.
The deuces are wild
, he would announce before a pitch. Two balls, two strikes, two out, two on, and two to two in the bottom of the second.

Bosch could hear Scully’s voice in his head as he considered that the deuces were now wild in his own game. Two murders possibly connected and followed by two brothers killed in the back room of a jewelry store. Two possible killers at the jewelry store. Two car doors heard in the alley where James Allen’s body was left propped against a wall. Two watches said to be stolen and then not. Two vice cops who pull over Mickey Haller on a DUI and two vice cops who may have worked James Allen as an informant. Coincidence? Bosch had a feeling Vin Scully wouldn’t think so, and he didn’t either.

The deuces were wild all right and Bosch was on the case. He called Haller and woke him up.

“What’s wrong?” the lawyer said.

“Nothing,” Bosch said. “Got a question. Your DUI. You said you were pulled over by a couple of plainclothes guys.”

“That’s right. They were lying in wait for me. What’s the question?”

“Were they vice cops?”

“Could have been.”

“What were their names?”

“I don’t know. They passed me off to the backup team. A couple of patrol cops.”

“Aren’t their names on the arrest report?”

“Maybe but I haven’t gotten it yet.”

“Shit.”

“Why are you calling me up at this hour, asking about those bastards?”

“Not sure. When I know more I’ll call you back.”

“Make sure it’s tomorrow. I’m going back to sleep.”

Bosch disconnected and bounced the phone a couple times off his chin as he thought about what he could do to answer the question he had just posed to Haller. He knew he could go back to Lucia Soto but he also knew that a records search for an arrest report would leave digital fingerprints. He couldn’t put her in that kind of danger. He had to find another way of getting there.

When they drove by Nelson Grant & Sons in Sunset Plaza the media trucks were gathered along the curb in front of the jewelry store. Bosch saw television reporters and videographers claiming spots and setting up for live reports at eleven. Looking past them Bosch could see mobile lights set up in the store’s showroom. The crime scene was still being processed twelve hours after the murders. Two Sheriff’s deputies were stationed outside the door for security.

“Something bad happen there,” Marko said.

“Yeah,” Bosch said. “Something really bad.”

Once into Beverly Hills they made a left on Camden and dropped down into the flats, a square mile or so of residences between Sunset and Santa Monica Boulevard that comprised one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in all of California. It was a cool, crisp night with wind rippling through the fronds of the palm trees that lined the streets. The Tesla took one more turn and then came to a silent stop against the curb on Elevado. The house where George Schubert lived was a mansion of Spanish design that sprawled across two lots and stood tall behind a wide and deep lawn displayed beneath lights attached to the palm trees. The lawn’s edges were cut razor sharp and it seemingly was untouched by the ravages of the California drought. In Beverly Hills the lawns always somehow managed to stay green even in times of water restriction.

Bosch made no move to get out. He just studied the home through the car’s window. Finally, Marko spoke.

“You get out here?” Marko asked.

“No, I’m just looking,” Bosch said.

“What you look for?”

“Nothing. Nobody. Just looking.”

Several lights were on behind the windows of the house and as he lowered his window Bosch thought he could hear music coming from within. He made no move to get out of the car. Music and lights aside, he saw no movement behind the windows. He checked his watch—it was 11 o’clock—and knew it was too late to brace Schubert at his door.

“So, are you pie?” Marko asked.

Bosch turned his eyes from the house to look at him.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“You know, pie,” Marko said. “You watch people and investigate?”

Bosch understood.

“You mean a PI. Private investigator. Yeah, I’m a PI.”

“PI. Very cool, yes?”

Bosch shrugged and turned back to look at the house. He thought that the lighting configuration had changed. Bosch was sure a light had been turned out behind one of the windows but he couldn’t remember which one had been lit.

“So,” Marko said. “We stay?”

Bosch didn’t look back at him this time. He kept his eyes on the house.

“You still get paid for sitting here, right?” he asked.

“Yes, I make pay,” Marko said.

“Okay, then let’s sit here for a little while, see what happens.”

“Is it dangerous, this work? If so, I should get extra pay.”

“No, it’s not dangerous. We’re just sitting here watching a house.”

“How much you get paid to watch house?”

“As a matter of fact, nothing.”

“This then is not very good job for you.”

“No kidding.”

Bosch grasped the door’s handle but still hesitated. Not because it was late, but because he hated the idea of knocking on a door and not knowing what exactly to ask—especially with a new witness. Sometimes you only got one shot at a witness, and being unprepared could cripple you. He went back to his first decision to wait.

“Okay, Marko, we can go,” he said.

“Where to now?” Marko asked.

“The airport.”

“You have no suitcase.”

“I just need to pick up a car.”

“No car. I, Marko, will drive you.”

“Not where I have to go.”

B
osch pulled to the curb on Wilcox south of Hollywood Station. It was quiet on the street. The neon glow from the bail bonds office across from the station entrance cast a red tint on the night. Bosch watched the gate to the parking lot that hugged the south side of the two-story station. He was sitting in a black Chrysler 300 he had rented at Hertz. It was the closest approximation to a plain-wrap detective car he could get on such short notice.

He was counting on the lateness of the hour working in his favor. They would be shorthanded on the midnight shift in the watch office. He doubted anybody would be watching the lot monitors. Getting by the gate was the first and easiest step to his plan.

Almost ten minutes went by before he saw the glow of headlights coming up on the other side of the five-foot metal gate. A car was coming out. Bosch dropped the 300 into drive and waited until he saw the gate start to roll open on its track. He then pulled away from the curb, put on his turn signal, and headed toward the opening.

He timed it perfectly. A black-and-white was moving out through the gate with speed just as Bosch came cruising up. The gate was still on its opening circuit, just crossing the entrance lane. Bosch barely touched the brake pedal as he turned in, putting his hand out the window in the traditional smooth-waves signal to the officers in the emerging car. The Chrysler hit the gate’s metal track a little hard and loud but Bosch was in. He checked the rearview and saw no brake lights on the patrol car as it turned north on Wilcox.

Bosch drove into the lot and down the parking lane that would give him a view of the back door to the station. He found an open spot and pulled in. He checked the door and immediately saw that he had an opportunity. There was a patrol car parked in one of the two booking stalls next to the door, and two officers were unloading two custodies. The station’s rear entrance had an electronic lock requiring a key card. It would be the last hurdle.

Bosch gathered himself for a moment and got out. He had worked in the Hollywood Division for several years as both a patrol officer and, later, as a detective. He knew the layout of the place like he knew his own house, and he had a good sense of the ebb and flow of personnel in the station. Inside it would be a skeleton staff on duty, concentrated primarily in the watch office, front desk, report room, and the jail.

All of these locations were in the front of the station at the end of a hallway entered through the rear door of the station. There was a second hallway that ran along the back of the building and led to the detective unit, the station commander’s suite of offices, and the stairs leading up to the Vice Unit offices, the roll-call room, and the break room.

Bosch knew that all of these areas would likely be deserted unless the Vice Unit was working a late-night operation or patrol officers were in the break room or detective room, writing reports. Those were the risks he would have to take.