The Drop hb-17 Page 3

  Just past Laurel Canyon Boulevard the hotel rose behind the profusion of billboards that lined Sunset. By night the hotel was marked with a simple neon-lit sign, modest by Sunset Strip standards, and even more so by day, when the light was off. The hotel was technically located on Marmont Lane, which split off from Sunset and wound around the hotel and up into the hills. As they approached, Bosch saw that Marmont Lane was blocked by temporary barricades. Two patrol cars and two media trucks were parked along the hedge line at the front of the hotel. This told him that the death scene was on the west side or rear of the hotel. He pulled in behind one of the black-and-whites.

  “The vultures are already here,” Chu said, nodding toward the media vans.

  It was impossible to keep a secret in this town, especially a secret like this. A neighbor would call, a hotel guest or a patrol officer, maybe somebody down at the coroner’s office trying to impress a blond TV reporter. News traveled fast.

  They got out of the car and approached the barricades. Bosch signaled one of the uniformed officers away from the two camera crews so they could speak without the media hearing.

  “Where is it?” Bosch asked.

  The cop looked like he had at least ten years on the job. His shirt plate said RAMPONE.

  “We have two scenes,” he said. “We’ve got the splat around back here on the side. And then the room the guy was using. That’s the top floor, room seventy-nine.”

  It was the routine way of police officers to dehumanize the daily horrors that came with the job. Jumpers were called splats.

  Bosch had left his rover in the car. He nodded to the mike on Rampone’s shoulder.

  “Find out where Glanville and Solomon are.”

  Rampone cocked his head toward his shoulder and pressed the transmit button. He quickly located the initial investigative team in room seventy-nine.

  “Okay, tell them to stay put. We’re going to check out the lower scene and then head up.”

  Bosch went back to his car to grab the rover out of the charging dock and then walked with Chu around the barricade and up the sidewalk.

  “Harry, you want me to go up and talk to those guys?” Chu asked.

  “No, it always starts with the body and goes from there. Always.”

  Chu was used to working cold cases, where there was never a crime scene. Only reports. Also, he had issues with seeing dead bodies. It was the reason he’d opted for the cold case squad. No fresh kills, no murder scenes, no autopsies. This time things would be different.

  Marmont Lane was a steep and narrow road. They came to the death scene at the northwestern corner of the hotel. The forensics team had put up a canopy over the scene to guard against visual intrusion from media choppers and the houses that terraced the hills behind the hotel.

  Before stepping under the canopy, Bosch looked up the side of the hotel. He saw a man in a suit leaning over the parapet, looking down from a balcony on the top floor. He guessed it was Glanville or Solomon.

  Bosch went under the canopy and found a bustle of activities involving forensic techs, coroner’s investigators and police photographers. At the center of it all was Gabriel Van Atta, whom Bosch had known for years. Van Atta had spent twenty-five years working for the LAPD as a crime scene tech and supervisor before retiring and taking a job with the coroner. Now he got a salary and a pension and still worked crime scenes. That counted as a break for Bosch. He knew that Van Atta wouldn’t be cagey about anything. He would tell Harry exactly what he thought.

  Bosch and Chu stood under the canopy but stayed on the periphery. The scene belonged to the techs at the moment. Bosch could tell that the body had been turned over from the impact point and that they were far along. The body would soon be removed and transported to the medical examiner’s office. This bothered him but it was the cost of coming into a case so late.

  The gruesome extent of the injuries from seven floors of gravity was on full display. Bosch could almost feel his partner’s revulsion at the sight. Harry decided to give him a break.

  “Tell you what, I’ll handle this and meet you upstairs.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. But you’re not getting out of the autopsy.”

  “That’s a deal, Harry.”

  The conversation had drawn Van Atta’s attention.

  “Harry B.,” he said. “I thought you were still working cold cases.”

  “This one’s a special, Gabe. All right if I step in?”

  Meaning the inner circle of the death scene. Van Atta waved him in. As Chu ducked out from under the canopy, Bosch grabbed a pair of paper booties from a dispenser and put them on over his shoes. He then put on rubber gloves and worked his way as best he could around the coagulated blood on the sidewalk and squatted down next to what was left of George Thomas Irving.

  Death takes everything, including one’s dignity. George’s naked and battered body was surrounded on all sides by technicians who viewed it as a piece of work. His earthly vessel had been reduced to a ripped bag of skin containing shattered bones and organs and blood vessels. His body had bled out through every natural orifice and many new ones created by his impact on the sidewalk. His skull was shattered, leaving his head and face grossly misshapen like it would be in a fun house mirror. His left eye had broken free of its orbit and hung loosely on his cheek. His chest had been crushed by the impact and several sheared bones from the ribs and clavicle protruded through the skin.

  Unblinking, Bosch studied the body carefully, looking for the unusual on a canvas that was anything but usual. He searched the inside of the arms for needle tracks, the fingernails for foreign debris.

  “I got here late,” he said. “Anything I should know?”

  “I’m thinking the guy hit face-first which is very unusual, even for a suicide,” Van Atta said. “And I want to draw your attention to something here.”

  He pointed to the victim’s right arm and then the left, which were spread in the blood puddle.

  “Every bone in both arms is broken, Harry. Shattered, actually. But we have no compound injuries, no breaking of the skin.”

  “Which tells us what?”

  “It means one of two extremes. One, he was really serious about taking a high dive and didn’t even put his hands out to break the fall. If he had, we would’ve had shearing and compound fractures. We don’t.”

  “And the other extreme?”

  “That the reason he didn’t put his arms out to break the fall was that he wasn’t conscious when he hit the ground.”

  “Meaning he was thrown.”

  “Yeah, or more likely dropped. We’ll have to do some distance modeling but this looks like he came straight down. If he was pushed or thrown, as you say, I think he would have been a couple feet farther out from the structure.”

  “Got it. What about time of death?”

  “We took the liver temperature and did the math. This isn’t official, as you know, but we think between four and five.”

  “So he was here on the sidewalk for an hour or more before somebody saw him.”

  “It could happen. We’ll try to narrow the TOD at autopsy. Can we get him rolling now?”

  “If that’s all the wisdom you have for me today, yes, you can get him out of here.”

  A few minutes later Bosch headed up the entrance drive to the hotel’s garage. A black Lincoln Town Car with city plates was idling on the cobblestones. Councilman Irving’s car. As he walked past, Bosch saw a young driver behind the wheel and an older man in a suit in the front passenger seat. The back seat appeared to be empty but it was hard to determine through the smoked glass.

  Bosch took the stairs up to the next level, where the front desk and lobby were located.

  Most people who stayed at the Chateau were night creatures. The lobby was deserted except for Irvin Irving, who was sitting by himself on a couch with a cell phone pressed to his ear. When he saw Bosch coming, he quickly ended the call and pointed toward a couch directly opposite his. Harry had hoped t
o stay standing and to keep momentum but it was one of those times when he took direction. As he sat down he pulled a notebook out of his back pocket.

  “Detective Bosch,” Irving said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “I didn’t have the choice, Councilman.”

  “I guess not.”

  “First, I’d like to express my sympathy for the loss of your son. Second, I’d like to know why you want me here.”

  Irving nodded and glanced out one of the lobby’s tall windows. There was an outdoor restaurant beneath palm trees and umbrellas and space heaters. It was empty, too, except for the wait staff.

  “I guess nobody gets up around here till noon,” he said.

  Bosch didn’t reply. He waited for the answer to his question. Irving’s signature physical trait had always been the shaved and polished scalp. He had the look going long before it was fashionable. In the department, he had been known as Mr. Clean because he had the look and he was the guy brought in to clean up the political and social messes that routinely arose in a heavily armed and political bureaucracy.

  But now Irving’s look was shopworn. His skin was gray and loose and he looked older than he actually was.

  “I always heard that losing a child was the most difficult pain,” Irving said. “Now I know it’s true. It doesn’t matter what age or what circumstances . . . it’s just not supposed to happen. It’s not the natural order of things.”

  There was nothing Bosch could say to that. He had sat with enough parents of dead children to know there was no debating what the councilman had said. Irving had his head down, eyes on the ornate pattern of the rug in front of him.

  “I’ve worked for this city in one capacity or another for over fifty years,” he continued. “And here I am and I can’t trust a soul in it. So I reach out to a man I’ve tried to destroy in the past. Why? I’m not even sure myself. I suppose it’s because there was an integrity to our skirmishes. An integrity to you. I didn’t like you or your methods but I respected you.”

  He looked up at Bosch now.

  “I want you to tell me what happened to my son, Detective Bosch. I want the truth and I think I can trust you to give it to me.”

  “No matter how it falls?”

  “No matter how it falls.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “I can do that.”

  He started to get up but paused when Irving continued.

  “You said once that everybody counts or nobody counts. I remember that. This would put that to the test. Does the son of your enemy count? Will you give your best effort for him? Will you be relentless for him?”

  Bosch just stared at him. Everybody counts or nobody counts. It was his code as a man. But it was never spoken. It was only followed. He was sure he had never said it to Irving.

  “When?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “When did I say that?”

  Realizing he may have misspoken, Irving shrugged and adopted the pose of a confused old man even though his eyes were as sharp as black marbles in snow.

  “I don’t remember, actually. It’s just something I know about you.”

  Bosch stood up.

  “I’ll find out what happened to your son. Is there anything you can tell me about what he was doing here?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “How did you find out this morning?”

  “I was called by the chief of police. Personally. I came right away. But they wouldn’t let me see him.”

  “They were right. Did he have a family? I mean besides you.”

  “A wife and son—the boy just went away to college. I was just on the phone with Deborah. I told her the news.”

  “If you call her back, tell her I’ll be coming to see her.”

  “Of course.”

  “What did your son do for a living?”

  “He was a lawyer specializing in corporate relations.”

  Bosch waited for more but that was all that was offered.

  “‘Corporate relations’? What does that mean?”

  “It means he got things done. People came to him when they wanted things done in this city. He had worked for the city. First as a cop, then for the City Attorney.”

  “And he had an office?”

  “He had a small place downtown, but mostly he had a cell phone. That was how he worked.”

  “What did he call his company?”

  “It was a law firm. Irving and Associates—only there weren’t any associates. Just a one-man shop.”

  Bosch knew he would have to come back to this. But it wasn’t useful to spar with Irving when he had so little basic knowledge through which to filter the councilman’s answers. He would wait until he knew more.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  Irving raised his hand and flipped two fingers out with a business card between them.

  “This is my private cell number. I’ll expect to hear something from you by the end of the day.”

  Or you’ll take another ten million out of the overtime budget? Bosch didn’t like this. But he took the card and headed to the elevators.

  On the way up to seven he thought about the stilted conversation with Irving. What bothered him most was that Irving knew his code, and Harry had a pretty good idea how he had come by the information. It was something he would have to deal with later.

  5

  The upper floors of the hotel followed an L pattern. Bosch got off the elevator on seven and took a left to go around a corner and down to room 79 at the end of the hallway. There was a uniformed officer on the door. It made Bosch think of something and he pulled his phone. He called Kiz Rider’s cell and she answered right away.

  “Did you know what he did for a living?” he asked.

  “Who are you talking about, Harry?” she responded.

  “Who else, George Irving. Did you know he was some sort of fixer?”

  “I heard that he was a lobbyist.”

  “A lawyer lobbyist. Listen, I need you to flex the muscles of the chief’s office and put a cop on his office door until I can get there. Nobody in or out.”

  “Not a problem. Is what he did as a lobbyist in play here?”

  “You never know. I’d just feel better if there was somebody on the door.”

  “You got it, Harry.”

  “I’ll talk to you later.”

  Bosch put his phone away and approached the cop posted in front of room 79. He signed his clipboard, noting the time, and went in. He stepped into a living room with open French doors that led to the balcony and a western exposure. The wind was billowing the curtains and Bosch saw Chu out there on the balcony. He was looking down.

  Standing in the room were Solomon and Glanville. Crate and Barrel. They didn’t look happy. When Jerry Solomon saw Bosch, he stretched his hands out in a what gives? gesture. Actually, Bosch realized, it was more of a what the fuck? gesture.

  “What can I tell you?” Bosch said. “High jingo. We do what we’re told.”

  “You aren’t going to find anything here we didn’t find. We have it right, the guy took the dive.”

  “And that’s what I told the chief and the councilman, but here I am.”

  Now Bosch spread his hands in a what can I do? gesture.

  “So you want to stand around complaining about it or you want to tell me what you’ve got?”

  Solomon nodded to Glanville, the junior of the two partners, and he pulled a notebook out of his back pocket. He flipped through a few pages and then started telling the story. Meantime, Chu came in from the balcony to listen as well.

  “Last night at eight fifty the front desk gets a call from a man identifying himself as George Irving. He reserves a room for the night and says he’s on the way. He specifically asks what rooms with balconies they’ve got on the top floor. They give him a choice and he takes seventy-nine. He gives an American Express number to hold the room and it checks out to the card in his wallet, which is in the bedroom in the safe.”

  Glanville point
ed down a hallway to Bosch’s left. Harry saw an open doorway at the end and a bed.

  “Okay, so he shows up at nine forty,” Glanville continued. “He valets his car in the garage, uses the AmEx to register and then goes up to his room. Nobody ever sees him again.”

  “Until they find him on the sidewalk down below,” Solomon said.

  “When?” Bosch asked.

  “At five fifty one of the kitchen guys reports for work. He’s heading up the sidewalk to get to the rear entrance where the time-card rack is located. He finds the body. Patrol comes out first, then we get called when they make a tentative ID.”

  Bosch nodded and looked around the room. There was a writing table next to the balcony door.

  “No note?”

  “Not that we’ve found in here.”

  Bosch noticed a digital clock on the floor. It was plugged into a wall outlet near the desk.

  “Is that how that was found? Is it supposed to be on the desk?”

  “It’s where we found it,” Solomon said. “We don’t know where it is supposed to be.”

  Bosch walked over and squatted down next to the clock while he put on a fresh set of gloves. He carefully picked up the clock and studied it. It had a dock for connecting an iPod or an iPhone.

  “Do we know what kind of phone Irving had?”

  “Yeah, iPhone,” Glanville said. “It’s in the safe in the bedroom.”

  Bosch checked the alarm on the clock. It was switched off. He pushed the set button to see what time it had previously been set for. The red digits shifted. The last time the alarm was used it was set for 4 A.M.

  Bosch put the clock back on the floor and stood up, his knee joints popping with the effort. He left the main room behind and stepped through the French doors onto the balcony. There was a small table and two chairs. A white terry cloth robe had been left lying across one of the chairs. Bosch looked down over the edge. The first thing he noticed was that the balustrade came up only to the top of his thighs. It seemed low to him, and while he had no idea how tall Irving had been, he immediately had to consider the possibility of an accidental fall. He wondered whether that was what he was here for. Nobody wants a suicide on the family ledger. An accidental tumble over a low balustrade was far more acceptable.