The Black Echo (1992) Page 16

  “You looked good in a crew cut,” Wish said, interrupting his thoughts. “Reminded me of my brother when I saw that.”

  Bosch looked at her but didn’t say anything. He put the photo down and went back to roaming through the documents in the file, reading snatches of information about a stranger who was himself.

  Wish said, “We were able to find nine men with Vietnam tunnel experience living in Southern California. We checked them all out. Meadows was the only one we really moved up to the level of suspect. He was a hype, had the criminal record. He also had a history of working in tunnels even after he came back from the war.” She drove in silence for a few minutes while Bosch read. Then she said, “We watched him a whole month. After the burglary.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Nothing that we could tell. He might have been doing some dealing. We were never sure. He’d go down to Venice to buy balloons of tar about every three days. But it looked like it was for personal consumption. If he was selling, no customers ever came. No other visitors the whole month we watched. Hell, if we could prove he was selling, we would have popped him and then had something decent to scam him with when we talked about the bank job.”

  She was quiet again for a moment, then in a tone that Bosch thought was meant more to convince herself than him said, “He wasn’t selling.”

  “I believe you,” he said.

  “You going to tell me what we’re looking for in Hollywood?”

  “We’re looking for a wit. A possible witness. How was Meadows living during the month you watched? I mean, moneywise. How’d he get money to go down to Venice?”

  “Near as we could tell, he was on welfare and had a VA disability check. That’s it.”

  “Why did you call it off after a month?”

  “We didn’t have anything, and we weren’t even sure he had anything to do with it. We—”

  “Who pulled the plug?”

  “Rourke did. He couldn’t—”

  “The administrator.”

  “Let me finish. He couldn’t justify the cost of continued surveillance without any results. We were going on a hunch, nothing more. You’re just looking at it from hindsight. But it had been almost two months since the robbery. There was nothing there that pointed to him. In fact, we were just going through the motions after a while. We thought whoever it really was, they were in Monaco or Argentina. Not scoring balloon hits of tar heroin on Venice beach and living in a tramp apartment in the Valley. At the time, Meadows didn’t make sense. Rourke called the watch. But I concurred. I guess now we know we fucked up. Satisfied?”

  Bosch didn’t answer. He knew Rourke had been correct in calling the watch. Nowhere is hindsight better than in cop work. He changed the subject.

  “Why that bank, did you ever think about that? Why WestLand National? Why not a Wells Fargo or a vault in a Beverly Hills bank? Probably more money in the banks over in the Hills anyway. You said these underground tunnels go all over the place.”

  “They do. I don’t know the answer to that one. Maybe they picked a downtown bank because they wanted a full three days to open the boxes and they knew downtown banks aren’t open Saturdays. Maybe only Meadows and his friends know the answer. What are we looking for in this neighborhood? There was nothing in your reports about a possible witness. Witness to what?”

  They were in the neighborhood. The street was lined with run-down motels that had looked depressing the day they were finished being built. Bosch pointed out one of these, the Blue Chateau, and told her to park. It was as depressing as all the others on the street. Concrete block, early fifties design. Painted light blue with darker blue trim that was peeling. It was a two-story courtyard building with towels and clothes hanging out of almost every open window. It was a place where the interior would rival the exterior as an eyesore, Bosch knew. Where runaways crowded eight or ten to a room, the strongest getting the bed, the others the floor or the bathtub. There were places like this on many of the blocks near the Boulevard. There always had been and always would be.

  As they sat in the fed car looking at the motel Bosch told her about the half-finished paint scrawl he had found on the pipe at the reservoir and the anonymous 911 caller. He told her he believed the voice went with the paint. Edward Niese, AKA Sharkey.

  “These kids, the runaways, they form street cliques,” Bosch said as he got out of the car. “Not exactly like gangs. It’s not a turf thing. It’s for protection and business. According to the CRASH files, Sharkey’s crew has been hanging out at the Chateau here for the last couple of months.”

  As Bosch closed the car door, he noticed a car pull to the curb a half-block up the street. He took a quick glance at it but didn’t recognize the car. He thought he could see two figures in it, but it was too far away for him to be sure, or to tell if it was Lewis and Clarke. He headed up a flagstone walkway to an entrance hallway below a broken neon sign for the motel office.

  In the office Bosch could see an old man sitting behind a glass window with a slide tray at its base. The man was reading the day’s green sheet from Santa Anita. He didn’t pull his eyes away until Bosch and Wish were at the window.

  “Yes, officers, what can I do for you?”

  He was a worn-out old man whose eyes had quit caring about anything but the odds on three-year-olds. He knew cops before they flipped their buzzers. And he knew to give them what they wanted without much fuss.

  “Kid named Sharkey,” Bosch said. “What’s the room?”

  “Seven, but he’s gone. I think. His motorbike usually sets there in the hall when he’s around. There’s no bike there. He’s gone. Most probably.”

  “Most probably. Anybody else in seven?”

  “Sure. Somebody’s always around.”

  “First floor?”

  “Yup.”

  “Back door or window?”

  “Both. Sliding door on the back. Very expensive to replace.”

  The old man reached over to the key rack and took a key off a hook marked 7. He slid it into the tray beneath the window between him and Bosch.

  Detective Pierce Lewis found a receipt from an automatic teller machine in his wallet and used it to pick his teeth. His mouth tasted as though there was still a piece of breakfast sausage in there somewhere. He slid the paper card in and out between his teeth until they felt clean. He made a smacking, unsatisfied sound with his mouth.

  “What?” Detective Don Clarke said. He knew his partner’s behavioral nuances. The teeth picking and lip smacking meant something was bothering him.

  “I think he made us, is all,” Lewis said after flipping the card out the window into the street. “That little look he threw down the street when they got out of the car. He was very quick, but I think he made us.”

  “He didn’t make us. If he did, he woulda come charging down here to start up a commotion or something. That’s how they do it. Make a commotion, file a lawsuit. He’d’ve had the Police Protective League up our ass by now. I’m telling you, cops are the last to notice a tail.”

  “Well . . . I guess,” Lewis said.

  He let it go for the moment. But he stayed worried. He didn’t want to mess up this job. He’d had Bosch by the balls once before and the guy skated because Irving, that flying jaw, had pulled Lewis and Clarke back. But not this time, Lewis silently promised himself. This time he goes down.

  “You taking notes?” he asked his partner. “What do you think they’re doing in that dump?”

  “Looking for something.”

  “You’re shitting me. You really think so?”

  “Jeez, who put the pencil up your ass today?”

  Lewis looked away from the Chateau to Clarke, who had his hands folded on his lap and his seat back at a sixty-degree angle. With his mirrored glasses shielding his eyes, it was impossible to tell if he was awake or not.

  “Are you taking notes or what?” Lewis said loudly.

  “If you want notes, whyn’t you takin’ ’em?”

  “Be
cause I’m driving. That’s always the deal. You don’t want to drive, you gotta write and take the pictures. Now, write something down so we have something to show Irving. Otherwise he’ll write up a one eighty-one on us and forget about Bosch.”

  “That’s one point eighty-one. Let’s not take shortcuts, even in our language.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Clarke snickered and took a notebook out of his inside coat pocket and a gold Cross pen from his shirt pocket. When Lewis was satisfied that notes were being taken and looked back at the motel, he saw a teenage boy with blond dreadlocks circle twice in the road on a yellow motorbike. The boy pulled up next to the car Lewis had just watched Bosch and the FBI woman get out of. The boy shaded his eyes and looked through the driver’s-side window into the car.

  “Now, what’s this?” Lewis said.

  “Some kid,” Clarke said after looking up from his notes. “He’s looking for a stereo to snatch. If he makes a move, what are we going to do? Blow the surveillance to save some asshole’s tape deck?”

  “We aren’t going to do anything. And he’s not going to make a move. He sees the Motorola two-way. He knows it’s a cop car. He’s backing away now.”

  The boy revved the bike and did another two circles in the street. As the bike circled, he kept his eyes on the front of the motel. He then cruised through the side parking lot and back out onto the street. He stopped behind an old Volkswagen bus that was parked at the curb and shielded him from the motel. He seemed to be watching the entrance to the Chateau through the windows of the beat-up old bus. He did not notice the two IAD men in the car parked a half-block behind him.

  “Come on kid, get going,” Clarke said. “I don’t want to have to call out patrol on you. Fucking delinquent.”

  “Use the Nikon and get his picture,” Lewis said. “You never know. Something might happen and we’ll need it. And while you’re at it, get the number off the motel sign. We’ll have to call later and see what Bosch and the FBI girl were doing.”

  Lewis could have easily picked the camera up off the seat himself and taken the photos, but that would set a dangerous precedent that could harm the delicate balance of the rules of surveillance. The driver drives. The rider writes—and does all such related work.

  Clarke dutifully picked up the camera, which was equipped with a telephoto lens, and took the photos of the boy on the bike.

  “Get one with the bike’s plate,” Lewis said.

  “I know what I am doing,” Clarke said as he put the camera down.

  “Did you get the motel number? We’ll have to call.”

  “I got it. I’m writing it down. See? What’s the big deal? Bosch is probly in there knocking off a piece. A nice federal piece. Maybe when we call we find out they rented a room.”

  Lewis watched to make sure Clarke wrote down the number on the surveillance log.

  “And maybe we don’t,” Lewis said. “They just met and, anyway, I doubt he’d be so stupid. They’ve got to be in there looking for somebody. A wit maybe.”

  “But there was nothing about any witness in the murder book.”

  “He held it back. That’s Bosch. That’s how he works.”

  Clarke didn’t say anything. Lewis looked back down the street to the Chateau. He then noticed that the kid was gone. There was no sign of the motorbike.

  Bosch waited a minute to give Eleanor Wish time to get behind the Chateau to watch the sliding door on the back of room 7. He bent and held his ear to the door and thought he heard a rustling sound and an occasional word mumbled. There was someone in the room. When it was time, he knocked heavily on the door. He heard the sound of movement—fast steps on carpet—from the other side of the door, but no one answered. He knocked again and waited, then heard a girl’s voice.

  “Who is it?”

  “Police,” Bosch said. “We want to talk to Sharkey.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Then I guess we want to talk to you.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Open the door, please.”

  He heard more noise, like someone banging into furniture. But nobody opened the door. Then he heard a rolling sound, a glass door sliding open. He put the key in the doorknob and opened the door in time to catch a glimpse of a man going through the back doorway and jumping off the porch to the ground. It wasn’t Sharkey. He heard Wish’s voice outside, ordering the man to stop.

  Bosch took a quick inventory of the room. An entrance hall with closet to the left, bathroom to the right, both empty except for some clothes on the closet floor. Two large double beds pushed up against opposite walls, a dresser with a mirror on the wall above it, a yellow-brown carpet worn flat on the pathways around the beds and to the bathroom. The girl, blond-haired, small, maybe seventeen years old, sat on the front edge of one of the beds with a sheet around her. Bosch could see the outline of a nipple pressing out against the dingy, once-white cloth. The room smelled like cheap perfume and sweat.

  “Bosch, you all right in there?” Wish called from outside. He could not see her because of a sheet hung like a curtain over the sliding door.

  “Okay. You?”

  “Okay. What have we got?”

  Bosch walked to the sliding door and looked out. Wish stood behind a man who had his arms extended and his hands on the motel’s back wall. He was about thirty, with the sallow skin of a man who just did a month in county lockup. His pants were open in the front. His plaid shirt was buttoned incorrectly. And he stared straight down to the ground with the bugeyed look of a man who had no explanation but needed one badly. Bosch was momentarily struck by the man’s apparent decision to button his shirt before his pants.

  “He’s clean,” she said. “Looks a little winded, though.”

  “Looks like soliciting sex with a minor if you want to spend the time with it. Otherwise kick him loose.”

  He turned to the girl on the bed.

  “No bullshit, how old are you and what did he pay? I’m not here to bust you.”

  She thought it over a moment. Bosch never took his eyes off hers.

  “Almost seventeen,” she said in a bored monotone. “He didn’t pay me anything. He said he would, but he didn’t get to that yet.”

  “Who’s in charge of your crew, Sharkey? Didn’t he ever tell you to get the money first?”

  “Sharkey ain’t always around. And how’d you get his name?”

  “Heard it around. Where is he today?”

  “I tol’ you, I don’t know.”

  The plaid-shirted man came into the room through the front door followed by Wish. His hands were cuffed behind him.

  “I am going to book him. I want to. This is sick. She looks—”

  “She told me she was eighteen,” Plaid Shirt said.

  Bosch walked up to him and pulled open his shirt with a finger. There was a blue eagle with its wings spreading across his chest. In its talons it carried a dagger and a Nazi swastika. Beneath that it said One Nation. Bosch knew that meant the Aryan Nation, the white supremacist prison gang. He let the shirt fall back into place.

  “Hey, how long you been out?” he asked.

  “Hey, come on, man,” Plaid Shirt said. “This is bullshit. She pulled me in from the street. And let me at least button my goddam pants. This is bullshit.”

  “Give me my money, fucker,” the girl said.

  She jumped from the bed, the sheet falling to the floor, and lunged naked at the john’s pants pockets.

  “Get her off me, get her off,” he called out as he squirmed to avoid her hands. “See, you see! She should be going, not me.”

  Bosch moved in and separated the two and pushed the girl back to the bed. He moved behind the man and said to Wish, “Give me your key.”

  She made no move, so he reached into his own pocket and got out his own cuff key. One size fits all. He unlocked the cuffs and walked Plaid Shirt over to the room’s front door. He opened it and pushed him through. In the hallway the man stopped to button his pants
, which gave Bosch the opportunity to put his foot on his butt and push. “Get out of here, short eyes,” he said as the man stumbled down the hall. “This is your lucky day.”

  The girl was wrapped in the dirty sheet again when Bosch went back into the room. He looked at Wish and saw anger in her eyes. He knew it wasn’t just for the man in the plaid shirt. Bosch looked at the girl and said, “Get your clothes, go into the bathroom and get dressed.” When she didn’t move, he said, “Now! Let’s go!”

  After she grabbed up some clothes from the floor next to the bed and walked to the bathroom, letting the sheet fall to the ground, Bosch turned to Wish.