The Drop (22 page)

He hit the light switch next to the door.

“Why don’t we have a glass on the back deck?” he said.

“That sounds lovely,” she said.

He walked her through the living room to the sliding door to the deck.

“This is a great place, Harry. How long have you lived here?”

“I guess it’s almost twenty-five years. It just hasn’t seemed that long. I rebuilt it once. After the earthquake in ’ninety-four.”

They were greeted by the hissing sound of the freeway from down at the bottom of the pass. In their exposed position on the deck, the wind was crisp. Hannah walked right out to the rail and took in the view.

“Wow.”

She made a full turn, her eyes toward the sky.

“Where’s the moon?”

Bosch pointed toward Mount Lee.

“It must be behind the mountain.”

“I hope it comes out.”

Bosch held the bottle up by its neck. It was what was left from the restaurant, brought along because he knew he had nothing at home. He had stopped drinking at home since Maddie had started living with him, and he rarely imbibed when out.

“I’m going to turn on some music and get a couple glasses. I’ll be right back.”

Back inside, he turned on the DVD player but wasn’t sure what was in the slot. Soon he heard Frank Morgan’s saxophone and he knew all was good. He quickly moved down the hallway and did a quick cleanup of his bedroom and bathroom, grabbing fresh sheets from the closet and making the bed. He then went into the kitchen and grabbed two wineglasses before returning to the deck.

“I was wondering what happened to you,” Hannah said.

“I had to straighten up at least a little bit,” he said.

Bosch poured the wine. They touched glasses and sipped and then Hannah moved close to him and they kissed for the first time. They held it until Hannah broke away from him.

“I’m sorry to have put you through all of that, Harry. My soap opera.”

Bosch shook his head.

“It’s not a soap opera. He’s your son. Our children are our hearts.”

“‘Our children are our hearts.’ That’s nice. Who said that?”

“I don’t know. Me, I guess.”

She smiled.

“It doesn’t sound like something a hard-boiled detective would say.”

Bosch shrugged.

“Maybe I’m not one. I live with a fifteen-year-old girl. I think she keeps me soft.”

“Have I put you off by being so forward tonight?”

Bosch smiled and shook his head.

“I like what you said about not wasting time. We both felt the connection the other night. So here we are. If it’s right, then I don’t want to waste time either.”

She put her glass down on the railing and moved closer to him.

“Yes, here we are.”

Bosch put his glass down next to hers. He then stepped into her and put his hand on the back of her neck. He moved even closer and kissed her, using his other hand to hold her body tightly against his.

Eventually, she slipped her lips off his and they stood cheek to cheek. He felt her hand go inside his jacket and up his side.

“Forget about the moon and the wine,” she whispered. “I want to go inside now.”

“Me, too,” he said.

24

A
t 10:30
P.M
. Bosch walked Hannah Stone out to her car. She had followed him up the hill from the restaurant earlier. She had told him she could not spend the night and he was okay about that. At the car, they held each other in a long embrace. Bosch felt good. The time with her in his bedroom had been wonderful. He had waited a long time for someone like Hannah.

“Call me when you get home, okay?”

“I’ll be all right.”

“I know but call me anyway. I want to know you’re home safe.”

“Okay.”

They looked at each other for a long moment.

“I had a nice time, Harry. I hope you did, too.”

“You know it.”

“Good. I want to do it again.”

He smiled.

“Yeah, me, too.”

She broke away and opened the door to her car.

“Soon,” she said as she got in.

He nodded. They smiled. She started the car and drove off. Harry watched her taillights disappear around a bend in the road and then he went to his own car.

Bosch pulled into the rear lot of Hollywood Division and parked in the first slot he found open. He hoped he was not too late. He got out and walked toward the back door of the station. His phone buzzed and he pulled it from his pocket. It was Hannah.

“You’re home?”

“Made it. Where are you?”

“Hollywood Division. I need to see somebody on
P.M
. watch.”

“So that’s why you pushed me out the door.”

“Uh, actually, I think you were the one who said you needed to go.”

“Oh. Well, then, okay. Have fun.”

“It’s work. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Bosch walked through the double doors and down the hall to the watch office. There were two custodies cuffed to the bench that ran down the middle of the hall. They were waiting to be processed into the jail. They looked like a couple of Hollywood hustlers who came up short on the hustle.

“Hey, man, you help me out?” one of them asked as Bosch went by.

“Not tonight,” Bosch replied.

Bosch ducked his head into the watch office. There were two sergeants standing side by side, looking at the deployment chart for
A.M
. watch. No lieutenant. This told Bosch that the next shift was still upstairs in roll call and he hadn’t missed the shift change. He knocked on the glass window next to the door. Both sergeants turned to him.

“Bosch, RHD. Can you call Adam-sixty-five in? I need ten minutes with him.”

“He’s already on the way. He’s first in.”

They staggered the shift change—one car at a time—so the division would not be left with no one on patrol. Usually the first in was the car containing the most senior officer or the patrol team that had had the toughest night.

“You think you can send him over to detectives? I’ll wait over there.”

“You got it.”

Bosch walked back past the custodies and then took a left down the back hallway, past the kit room and into the detective squad room. He had worked in Hollywood Division for many years before his RHD assignment and knew the station well. As expected, the D bureau was deserted. At most Bosch thought he might find a patrol officer writing up his reports but there wasn’t anyone in the room at all.

There were wooden signs hanging from the ceiling above the pods for the different crime units. Bosch went over to the homicide pod and looked for his old partner Jerry Edgar’s desk. He identified it because of a photo taped to the back of the cubicle of Edgar with Tommy Lasorda, the former manager of the Dodgers. Bosch sat down and tried the pen drawer but found it locked. This gave him an idea and he quickly stood back up and scanned all the desks and counters in the squad room until he saw a stack of newspapers on a break table near the front of the room. He walked over and looked through the stack until he found the sports section. He then leafed through it until he found one of the ubiquitous advertisements for pharmaceutical treatment of erectile dysfunction. He tore the ad out and then went back to Edgar’s desk.

Bosch had just finished slipping the ad through the crack above Edgar’s locked desk drawer when a voice surprised him from behind.

“RHD?”

Bosch swiveled around on Edgar’s chair. A uniformed cop was standing by the entrance from the back hallway. He had gray close-cropped hair and a muscular build. He was in his midforties but looked younger, even with the gray hair.

“Yeah, that’s me. Robert Mason?”

“That’s me. What is—”

“Come on over here so we can talk, Officer Mason.”

Mason came over. Bosch noticed that his short sleeves were tight on his biceps. He was the breed of cop who wanted any potential challengers to see the guns and know what they would be up against.

“Have a seat,” Bosch said.

“No, thanks,” Mason said. “What’s going on? I’m EOW and I want to get out of here.”

“Three deuces.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Three deuces.”

Bosch was watching his eyes, looking for any sort of tell.

“Okay, three deuces. You got me. What does it mean?”

“It means there are no coincidences, Mason. And you writing up three deuces last summer on three different B and W taxi drivers, all in Adam-sixty-five, stretches the limits of possible coincidence. My name isn’t RHD. It’s Bosch and I’m investigating the murder of your buddy George Irving.”

Now he saw the tell. But it came and went. Mason was about to make a bad choice. But when he did, Bosch was still surprised.

“George Irving was a suicide.”

Bosch looked at him for a moment.

“Really? You know that?”

“I know it’s the only way it could’ve happened. Him going there, to that hotel. He killed himself and it had nothing to do with Black and White. You’re barking up the wrong tree, dog.”

Bosch started to get annoyed with this arrogant asshole.

“Let’s cut the bullshit, Mason. You’ve got a choice here. You can take a seat and tell me what you did and who told you to do it and maybe you’ll get out of this okay. Or you can stand there and keep spinning bullshit and then I won’t really care what happens to you.”

Mason folded his arms across his thick chest. He was going to turn this into a mano a mano battle of who backs down first, and it wasn’t a game where big biceps gave you the edge. He was ultimately going to lose.

“I don’t want to sit down. I have no involvement in this case other than that I knew the guy who jumped. That’s it.”

“Then tell me about the three deuces.”

“I don’t have to tell you shit.”

Bosch nodded.

“You’re right. You don’t.”

He stood up and glanced back at Edgar’s desk to make sure he hadn’t left anything out of place. He then took a step toward Mason and pointed at his chest.

“Remember this moment. Because this was the moment you blew it,
dog
. This was the moment you could have saved your job but instead you gave it away. You’re not EOW. You just put the P in front of it—permanent end of watch.”

Bosch headed toward the back hallway. He knew he was a walking contradiction. A guy who on Monday morning said he wouldn’t investigate cops, and now here he was. He was going to burn this cop in order to get to the truth of George Irving.

“Hey, wait.”

Bosch stopped and turned back. Mason lowered his arms and Bosch read it as a dropping of his guard.

“I did nothing wrong. I responded to a direct request from a member of the city council. It was not a request involving specific action. It was no more than an alert and we get them passed on to us in roll call every day, every shift. Requests from council—RFCs, we call them. I did nothing wrong and if you burn me, you are burning the wrong guy.”

Bosch waited without moving but that was it. He moved back toward Mason. He pointed to a chair.

“Sit down.”

This time Mason did take a seat, pulling one away from the Robbery module. Bosch returned to Edgar’s chair and they sat facing each other in the aisle between Robbery and Homicide.

“So tell me about this request from council.”

“I knew George Irving a long time. The academy, we were rookies together. Even after he left for law school we stayed close. I was best man at his wedding. Hell, I was the one who rented the honeymoon suite for them.”

He reached out and gestured behind him in the direction of the squad lieutenant’s office, as if that were the honeymoon suite.

“We did birthdays, Fourth of Julys . . . and I knew his father through him and saw him at a lot of these things over the years.”

“Okay.”

“So last summer in June—I forget the exact date—I went to a party for George’s kid. He—”

“Chad.”

“Yeah, Chad. Chad had just graduated from high school and was valedictorian and was going on a full ride up to USF, so they had a party for him and I went with Sandy, my wife. The councilman was there and we talked, mostly bullshit about the department and him trying to justify to me why the council fucked us on OT and things like that. Then at the end he told me sort of oh-by-the-way that he got a complaint from a constituent who said she got in a cab outside a restaurant in Hollywood and the driver was drunk. She said the car stank like a brewery and he was clearly impaired. He said that after a few blocks the lady had to tell the guy to pull over and she got out. She said it was a Black and White taxi and so he told me to keep an eye on the taxi drivers, that there could be a problem. He knew I worked
P.M
. watch and I might see something. And that was it. No conspiracy, no bullshit. I reacted to that when I was on patrol and there was nothing wrong with it at that time. And every case I made on those drivers was righteous.”

Bosch nodded. If it was a true story, Mason had done nothing wrong. But his story brought Irvin Irving solidly back into the picture. The question for the district attorney or even a grand jury would be about the councilman. Was he subtly using his influence to help benefit his son’s client, or was he motivated by concerns for public safety? There was a fine line and Bosch doubted the question would ever get so far as a grand jury. Irving was too smart. Still, Bosch was intrigued by what Mason had tagged to the end of his story. There was nothing wrong with the chain of events “at that time.”

“Did the councilman tell you when this complaint came in or how exactly it got to him?”

“No, he did not.”

“Did this sort of alert ever come up in a roll call over the summer?”

“Not that I remember but I probably wouldn’t know, to tell you the truth. I’ve been around. I’ve got years and I’m allowed certain indulgences, I guess you might call it. I usually roll in first on shift change. I get priority vacation dibs, shit like that. I miss a lot of roll calls. I’ve been to too many and I can’t stand sitting up there in that little room and listening to the same thing night after night. But my partner, who’s a rookie, never misses and he tells me what I need to know. So this RFC could’ve come up. I just wasn’t there.”