The Black Box Read online

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “Then, what the fuck we doin’ here? When did she get her ass killed?”

  “May first, nineteen ninety-two.”

  Coleman did the date math, shook his head, and smiled like he was dealing with a dummy.

  “You got the wrong guy. ’Ninety-two I was in Corcoran on a five spot. Eat that shit, Dee-tective.”

  “I know exactly where you were in ’ninety-two. You think I’d come all the way up here if I didn’t know everything about you?”

  “All I know is that I was nowhere near some white girl’s murder.”

  Bosch shook his head as if to say he wasn’t arguing that point.

  “Let me explain it to you, Rufus, because I’ve got somebody else I want to see in here and then a plane to catch. You listening now?”

  “I’m listening. Let’s hear your shit.”

  Bosch held the photo up again.

  “So we’re talking twenty years ago. The night of April thirtieth going into May first, nineteen ninety-two. The second night of the L.A. riots. Anneke Jespersen from Copenhagen is down on Crenshaw with her cameras. She’s taking pictures for the newspaper back in Denmark.”

  “The fuck she doin’ down there? She shouldn’t a been down there.”

  “I won’t argue that, Rufus. But she was there. And somebody stood her up against a wall in an alley and popped her right in the eye.”

  “Wadn’t me and I don’t know a thing about it.”

  “I know it wasn’t you. You’ve got the perfect alibi. You were in prison. Can I continue?”

  “Yeah, man, tell your story.”

  “Whoever killed Anneke Jespersen used a Beretta. We recovered the shell at the scene. The shell showed the distinctive markings of a Beretta model ninety-two.”

  Bosch studied Coleman to see if he was seeing where this was going.

  “You following me now, Rufus?”

  “I’m following but I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “The gun that killed Anneke Jespersen was never recovered, the case was never solved. Then four years later, you come along fresh out of Corcoran and get arrested and charged with the murder of a rival gang member named Walter Regis, age nineteen. You shot him in the face while he was sitting in a booth at a club on Florence. The supposed motivation was that he was seen selling crack on one of the Sixties’ corners. You were convicted of that crime based on multiple eyewitness testimony and your own statements to police. But the one piece of evidence they didn’t have was the gun you used, a Beretta model ninety-two. The gun was never recovered. You see where I’m going with this?”

  “Not yet.”

  Coleman was starting to dummy up. But that was okay with Bosch. Coleman wanted one thing: to get out of prison. He would eventually understand that Bosch could either help or hurt his chances.

  “Well, let me keep telling the story and you try to follow along. I’ll try to make it easy for you.”

  He paused. Coleman didn’t object.

  “So now we’re up to nineteen ninety-six and you get convicted and get fifteen to life and go off to prison like the good Rolling Sixties soldier that you were. Another seven years go by and now it’s two thousand three and there’s another murder. A street dealer in the Grape Street Crips named Eddie Vaughn gets whacked and robbed while he’s sitting in his car with a forty and a blunt. Somebody reaches in from the passenger side and puts two in his head and two in the torso. But reaching in like that was bad form. The shells were ejected and they bounced all around inside the car. No time to grab them all. The shooter gets two of them and just runs off.”

  “What’s it got to do with me, man? I was up here by then.”

  Bosch nodded emphatically.

  “You’re right, Rufus, you were up here. But you see, by two thousand three they had this thing called the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. It’s a computer data bank run by the ATF, and it keeps track of bullets and casings collected from crime scenes and murder victims.”

  “That’s fucking fantastic.”

  “Ballistics, Rufus, it’s practically like having fingerprints now. They matched those shells from Eddie Vaughn’s car to the gun you used seven years earlier to wipe out Walter Regis. Same gun used in both killings by two different killers.”

  “That’s some cool shit there, Dee-tective.”

  “It sure is but it’s not really news to you. I know they came up here to talk to you about the Vaughn case. The investigators on that one, they wanted to know who you gave the gun to after you hit Regis. They wanted to know who the Rolling Sixties shot caller that you did the hit for was. Because they were thinking the same guy might’ve called the shot on Vaughn.”

  “I think I might remember that. It was a long time ago. I didn’t tell them shit then and I ain’t telling you shit now.”

  “Yeah, I pulled the report. You told them to fuck themselves and go on back home. See, back then you were still a soldier, brave and strong. But that was nine years ago and you had nothing to lose then. The thought of making parole in ten years was pie-in-the-sky stuff to you. But now it’s a different story. And now we’re talking about three murders with the same gun. Earlier this year I took the shell we picked up at the Jespersen scene in ’ninety-two and had it run through the ATF data bank. It matched up to Regis and Vaughn. Three killings tied to one gun—a Beretta model ninety-two.”

  Bosch sat back in his chair and waited for a reaction. He knew that Coleman knew what he wanted.

  “I can’t help you, man,” Coleman said. “You can call the hacks back in for me.”

  “You sure? Because I can help you.”

  He lifted the envelope.

  “Or I could hurt you.”

  He waited.

  “I could make sure you put in another ten years here before they even look at you again for parole. Is that how you want to play it?”

  Coleman shook his head.

  “And how long you think I’d last out there if I helped you, man?”

  “Not long at all. I’ll give you that. But nobody has to know about this, Rufus. I’m not asking you to testify in court or give a written statement.”

  At least not yet, Bosch thought.

  “All I want is a name. Between you and me right here and that’s it. I want the guy who called the hit. The guy who gave you the gun and told you to take out Regis. The guy you gave the gun back to after you did the job.”

  Coleman cast his eyes to the table as he thought. Bosch knew he was weighing the years. Even the strongest of soldiers has a limit.

  “It’s not like that,” he finally said. “The shot caller never talks to the gunner. There are buffers, man.”

  Bosch had been briefed by Gang Intelligence before making the journey. He had been told that the hierarchies of the longtime South Central gangs were usually set up like paramilitary organizations. It was a pyramid and a bottom-level enforcer like Coleman wouldn’t even know who had called the hit on Regis. So Bosch had used the question as a test. If Coleman named the shot caller, he would know Coleman was lying.

  “All right,” Bosch said. “I get that. So then let’s keep it simple. Keep it on the gun. Who gave it to you the night you hit Regis and who’d you give it back to after?”

  Coleman nodded and kept his eyes down. He remained silent and Bosch waited. This was the play. This was what he had come for.

  “I can’t do this no more,” Coleman whispered.

  Bosch said nothing and tried to keep his breathing normal. Coleman was going to break.

  “I got a kid,” he said. “She’s practically a grown woman and I never seen her anywhere but this place. I seen her in prison, that’s all.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “That shouldn’t be,” he said. “I’ve got a daughter myself and I went through a lot of years without her.”

  Bosch now saw a wet shine in Coleman’s eyes. The gang soldier was worn by years of incarceration and guilt and fear. Sixteen yea
rs of watching his own back. The layers of muscle were simply the disguise of a broken man.

  “Give me the name, Rufus,” he urged. “And I send the letter. Done deal. You don’t give me what I want and you know you’ll never get out of here alive. And there’ll always be glass between you and your girl.”

  With his arms cuffed behind him, Coleman could do nothing about the tear that dripped down his left cheek. He bowed his head.

  “True story,” Bosch heard him say.

  Bosch waited. Coleman said nothing else.

  “Tell it,” Bosch finally said.

  “Tell what?” Coleman asked.

  “The true story. Tell it.”

  Coleman shook his head.

  “No, man, that’s the name. Trumont Story. They call him Tru, like T-R-U. He gave me the gun to do the job and I gave it back after.”

  Bosch nodded. He had gotten what he’d come for.

  “One thing, though,” Coleman said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Tru Story’s dead, man. Least that’s what I heard up here.”

  Bosch had prepared himself on the way up. In the past two decades, the gang body count in South L.A. was in the thousands. He knew that there was a better-than-good chance he was looking for a dead man. But he also knew that the trail didn’t necessarily stop with Tru Story.

  “You still going to send in that letter?” Coleman asked.

  Bosch stood up. He was done. The brutish man in front of him was a stone-cold killer and was in the place he deserved to be. But Bosch had made a deal with him.

  “You’ve probably thought about it a million times,” he said. “What do you do after you get out and hug your daughter?”

  Coleman answered without missing a beat.

  “I find a corner.”

  He waited, knowing Bosch would jump to the wrong conclusion.

  “And I start to preach. I tell everybody what I’ve learned. What I know. Society won’t have no problem with me. I’ll be a soldier still. But I’ll be a soldier for Christ.”

  Bosch nodded. He knew that many who left here had the same plan. To go with God. Few of them made it. It was a system that relied on repeat customers. In his gut he knew Coleman was probably one of them.

  “Then I’ll send the letter,” he said.

  3

  In the morning, Bosch went to the South Bureau on Broadway to meet with Detective Jordy Gant in the Gang Enforcement Detail. Gant was at his desk and on a phone call when Bosch arrived but it didn’t sound important and he quickly got off.

  “How’d it go up there with Rufus?” he said.

  He smiled as a way of showing understanding if Bosch said, as expected, that the trip to San Quentin was a bust.

  “Well, he gave me a name but he also told me the guy was dead, so the whole thing could have been him playing me while I was playing him.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “Trumont Story. Heard of him?”

  Gant just nodded and turned to a short stack of files on the side of his desk. Next to it was a small black box labeled “Rolling 60s—1991–1994.” Bosch recognized it as a box that was used in the old days for holding field interview cards. That was before the department started using computers to store intelligence data.

  “Imagine that,” Gant said. “And I just happen to have Tru Story’s file right here.”

  “Yeah, imagine that,” Bosch said, taking the file.

  He opened it directly to an 8 × 10 shot of a man lying dead on a sidewalk. There was a contact entry wound on his left temple. His right eye had been replaced with a large exit wound. A small amount of blood had oozed onto the concrete and coagulated by the time the photo had been shot.

  “Nice,” Bosch said. “Looks like he let somebody get a little too close. This still an open case?”

  “That’s right.”

  Harry flipped past the photo and checked the date on the incident report. Trumont Story had been dead almost three years. He closed the file and looked at Gant sitting smugly in his desk chair.

  “Tru Story’s been dead since ’oh-nine and you just happen to have his file on your desk?”

  “Nope, I pulled it for you. Pulled two others as well and thought you might even want to look at our shake cards from back in ’ninety-two. Never know, a name in there might mean something to you.”

  “Maybe so. Why’d you pull the files?”

  “Well, after we talked about your case and the ATF matches to the other two—you know, three cases, one gun, three different shooters—I started to—”

  “Actually, it’s a long shot, but it could be just two shooters. The same guy who kills my victim in ’ninety-two comes back around and hits Vaughn in ’oh-three.”

  Gant shook his head.

  “Could be but I’m thinking no. Too long a shot. So I was thinking for the sake of argument, three victims, three different shooters, one gun. So I went through our Rolling Sixties cases. That is, cases they were involved in on either side of the violence. As killers or the killed. I pulled cases that might be related to this gun and I got three where there were gunshot killings in which no ballistics evidence was recovered. Two were hits on Seven-Treys, and one—you guessed it—was Tru Story.”

  Bosch was still standing. Now he pulled up a chair and sat down.

  “Can I take a quick look at the other two?”

  Gant handed the files across the desk and Bosch started a quick survey. These weren’t murder books. They were gang files and therefore abbreviated accounts and reports on the killings. The full murder books would be in the hands of the homicide investigators assigned to the cases. If he wanted more, Bosch would have to requisition them, or drop by the lead detective’s desk to borrow a look.

  “Typical stuff,” Gant said as Bosch read. “You sell on the wrong corner or visit a girl in the wrong neighborhood and you’re marked for death. The reason I threw Tru Story in there was that he was shot elsewhere and dumped.”

  Bosch looked over the files at Gant.

  “And why’s that significant?”

  “Because it might mean it was an inside job. His own crew. It’s unusual to see a body dump in a gang killing. You know, with the drive-bys and straight-up assassinations. Nobody takes the time to pop a guy and then move the body unless there’s a reason. One might be to disguise that it was internal housekeeping. He was dumped on Seven-Trey turf, so the thinking was he was probably hit on his own turf and then dumped in enemy territory to make it look like he strayed across the line.”

  Bosch registered all of this. Gant shrugged his shoulders.

  “Just a working guess,” he said. “The case is still open.”

  “It’s gotta be more than a working guess,” Bosch said. “What do you know that leads you to make a guess like that? Are you working this?”

  “I’m not homicide, I’m intel. I was called in to consult. But that was back then—three years ago. All I know now is that the case is still open.”

  The Gang Enforcement Detail was the overarching street gang branch of the LAPD. It had homicide squads, detective squads, intelligence units, and community outreach programs.

  “Okay, so you consulted,” Bosch said. “So, what do you know from three years ago?”

  “Well, Story was high up in the pyramid I told you about the other day. It can get contentious up there. Everybody wants to be at the top, and then when you’re there, you gotta look over your shoulder, see who’s coming up behind you.”

  Gant gestured toward the files Bosch held.

  “You said so yourself when you saw the picture. He let somebody get too close. That’s for damn sure. You know how many gang murders involve contact wounds? Almost none—unless like it’s a club shooting or something. Then only sometimes. But most of the time these guys don’t get up close and personal. This time, however, with Tru Story, they did. So the theory at the time was that the Sixties did this one themselves. Somebody near the top of the pyramid had reason to believe Tru Story had to go and it go
t done. Bottom line, it could be the same gun you’re looking for. There was no slug and no shell recovered, but the wound would work with a nine-mill, and now that you’ve got Rufus Coleman up there in the Q putting your Beretta model ninety-two in Tru Story’s hands, then it sounds even better.”

  Bosch nodded. It made a certain amount of sense.

  “And the GED never picked up on what this was about?”

  Gant shook his head.

  “Nah, they never got close. You gotta understand something, Harry. The pyramid is most vulnerable to law enforcement at the bottom. The street level. It’s also most visible there.”

  He was saying that the GED’s efforts were largely focused on street dealers and street crimes. If a gang homicide wasn’t solved within forty-eight hours, there would soon be a new one to run with. It was a war of attrition on both sides of the line.

  “So . . .,” Bosch said. “Let’s go back to the Walter Regis killing, the one Rufus Coleman carried out and was convicted for in ’ninety-six. Coleman said Tru Story gave him the gun and his instructions, he did the job, and then he gave the gun back. He said that it wasn’t Story’s idea to whack Regis. He, too, had gotten the order. So, do we have any idea who it came from? Who was the shot caller for the Rolling Sixties back in ’ninety-six?”

  Gant shook his head again. He was doing a lot of that.

  “It was before my time, Harry. I was in a black-and-white in Southeast. And to tell you the truth, we were kind of naive back then. That was when we ran CRASH at them. You remember CRASH?”

  Bosch did. The explosion of the gang population and its attendant violence occurred with the same speed as the crack epidemic in the 1980s. The LAPD in South Central was overwhelmed and responded with a program called Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums. The program had an ingenious acronym and some said they spent more time coming up with that than they did on the actual program. CRASH attacked the lower levels of the pyramid. It disrupted the street business of the gangs but rarely reached toward the top. And no wonder. The street soldiers who sold drugs and carried out missions of retribution and intimidation rarely knew more than what the day’s job was and rarely gave even that up.