The Drop (3 page)

“Of course I’m sure. The chief called me directly and he’s going to call you. So grab Chu and get going.”

3

A
s expected, Chu was full of questions while they were driving out of downtown on the 101 freeway. They had been partnered for nearly two years and by now Bosch was more than used to the manifestation of Chu’s insecurities in a nonstop verbal outpouring of questions, comments and observations. He usually spoke about one thing while his real concern was something else. Sometimes Bosch took it easy on him and told him what he wanted to know. Sometimes he let things play out till they became excruciating to his young partner.

“Harry, what the hell is going on? We got one case this morning and now they say we have another?”

“The LAPD is a paramilitary organization, Chu. That means when someone of higher rank tells you to do something, you do it. The order came down from the chief and we’re following it. That’s what’s going on. We’ll eventually get back to the cold hit. But for now we have a live one and it’s the priority.”

“Sounds like bullshit politics.”

“High jingo.”

“What’s that?”

“The confluence of police and politics. We are investigating the death of Councilman Irvin Irving’s son. You know about Irving, right?”

“Yeah, he was a deputy chief when I came on. Then he quit and ran for the council.”

“Well, he didn’t voluntarily quit. He was forced out and ran for the council so he could seek his revenge on the department. Pure and simple, he lives for one thing—putting the boot to the LAPD. You should also know that back in the day, he had a particular dislike for me. We had a few collisions, you could say.”

“Then why would he want you on his son’s case?”

“We’ll be finding that out pretty soon.”

“What did the lieutenant tell you about this case? Is it suicide?”

“She didn’t tell me anything. She just gave me the address.”

He decided not to reveal anything else he knew about the case. To do so might also reveal that he had a source inside the OCP. He didn’t want to share that with Chu yet and had always kept his monthly lunches with Kiz Rider private.

“This all sounds a little spooky.”

Bosch’s phone buzzed and he checked the screen. The ID was blocked but he took the call. It was the chief of police. Bosch had known him for years and had even worked cases with him. He had come up through the ranks, including a long stint in RHD as both an investigator and supervisor. He had been chief for only a couple years and still had the support of the rank and file.

“Harry, it’s Marty. What’s your location?”

“We’re on the one-oh-one. We left as soon as I got the word.”

“I need to clear before the media gets wind of this, which won’t be long now. No need to turn this from a one-ring to a three-ring circus. As you no doubt have been told, the victim is the son of Councilman Irving. The councilman insisted that I bring you into this.”

“Why?”

“He hasn’t really expressed his reasons to me. I know you two have a history.”

“But not a good one. What can you tell me about the case?”

“Not a lot.”

He gave Bosch the same summary as Rider had with few additional details.

“Who’s there from Hollywood?”

“Glanville and Solomon.”

Bosch was familiar with them from prior cases and task forces. Both investigators were known for their wide bodies and tall egos. They were called Crate and Barrel and enjoyed it. They were flashy dressers with big pinkie rings. And as far as Bosch knew, they were competent detectives. If they were about to wrap the investigation as a suicide, then they most likely had it right.

“They will continue under your direction,” the chief said. “I told them personally.”

“Okay, Chief.”

“Harry, I need your best work on this. I don’t care about your history. Put it aside. We can’t have the councilman go off and say we laid down on this.”

“Understood.”

Bosch was silent for a moment as he thought about what else to ask.

“Chief, where is the councilman?”

“We’ve got him down in the lobby.”

“Did he go into the room?”

“He insisted. I let him look around without touching anything and then we walked him out.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Marty.”

Bosch knew he was taking a risk telling the chief of police he had done something wrong. It didn’t matter that they used to roll bodies over together.

“I guess you had no choice,” Bosch added.

“Just get here as soon as you can and keep me apprised. If you can’t get directly to me, use Lieutenant Rider as a go-between.”

But he didn’t offer his cell phone’s blocked number, so the message was clear to Bosch. He would no longer be talking directly with his old pal the chief. What wasn’t clear was what the chief was telling Bosch to do about the investigation.

“Chief,” he said, going formal to make sure it was clear he wasn’t calling on old loyalties. “If I get up there and it’s a suicide, I’m going to call it a suicide. If you want something else, get somebody else.”

“It’s okay, Harry. Just let the chips fall. It is what it is.”

“You sure about that? Is that what Irving wants?”

“It’s what I want.”

“Got it.”

“By the way, did Duvall give you the news about the DROP?”

“Yeah, she told me.”

“I pushed for the whole five but you got a couple of people on the commission who didn’t like everything in your file. We got what we could, Harry.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Good.”

The chief closed the connection. Bosch barely had time to close his phone before Chu was on him with questions about what had been said. Harry relayed the conversation as he pulled off the freeway onto Sunset Boulevard and headed west.

Chu parlayed the report on the chief’s call into a question about what really had been bothering him all morning.

“What about the lieutenant?” he said. “Are you ever going to tell me what that was about?”

Bosch played dumb.

“What what was about?”

“Don’t play dumb, Harry. When she held you back in the office, what was she saying? She wants me out of the unit, doesn’t she? I never liked her either.”

Bosch couldn’t help himself. His partner’s glass was always half empty and an opportunity to needle him about it was not to be missed.

“She said she wanted to move you laterally—keep you in homicide. She said there were some slots coming up in South Bureau and she’s talking to them about a switch.”

“Jesus Christ!”

Chu had recently moved out to Pasadena. The commute to South Bureau would be a nightmare.

“Well, what did you tell her?” he demanded. “Did you stick up for me?”

“South is a good gig, man. I told her you’d get seasoned down there in two years. It would take five anywhere else.”

“Harry!”

Bosch started laughing. It was a good release. The impending meeting with Irving was weighing on him. It was coming and he wasn’t sure yet how to play it.

“Are you shitting me?” Chu cried, fully turned in his seat now. “Are you fucking shitting me?”

“Yes, I’m fucking shitting you, Chu. So chill out. All she told me was that my DROP came through. You’re going to have to put up with me for another three years and three months, okay?”

“Oh . . . well, that’s good, right?”

“Yes, that’s good.”

Chu was too young to worry about things like the DROP. Almost ten years before, Bosch had taken a full pension and retired from the department in an ill-advised decision. After two years as a citizen he came back under the department’s Deferred Retirement Option Plan, which was designed to keep experienced detectives in the department and doing the work they did best. For Bosch that was homicide. He was a retread with a seven-year contract. Not everybody in the department was happy with the program, especially divisional detectives hoping for a shot at some of the prestige slots in the downtown Robbery-Homicide Division.

Department policy allowed for one extension of the DROP of three to five years. After that, retirement was mandated. Bosch had applied for his second contract the year before and, bureaucracy being what it was in the department, waited more than a year for the news the lieutenant gave him, going well past his original DROP date. He had been anxious while waiting, knowing that he could be dismissed from the department immediately if the police commission decided not to extend his stay. It was certainly good news to finally get but he now saw a defined limit on his time carrying a badge. So the good news was tinged with a certain melancholy. When he got the formal notification from the commission, it would have an exact date on it that would be his last day as a cop. He couldn’t help but focus on that. His future had limitations. Maybe he was a half-empty kind of guy himself.

Chu gave him a break on the questions after that and Harry tried to avoid thinking about the DROP. Instead he thought about Irvin Irving as he drove west. The councilman had spent more than forty years in the police department but had never gotten to the top floor. After a career spent grooming and positioning himself for the chief’s job, it had been snatched from him in a political windstorm. A few years after that, he was engineered out of the department—with Bosch’s help. A man scorned, he ran for the city council, won the election, and made it his business to exact retribution on the department where he had toiled for so many decades. He had gone so far as to vote against every proposed raise in salaries for police officers and expansion of the department. He was always first to call for an independent review or investigation of any perceived impropriety or alleged transgression committed by officers. His sharpest poke, however, had come the year before when he had wholeheartedly joined the cost-cutting charge that slashed a hundred million in overtime out of the department budget. That hurt every officer up and down the ladder.

Bosch had no doubt that the current chief of police had made some sort of deal with Irving. A quid pro quo. Bosch would be delivered to take over the case in exchange for something else. While Harry had never considered himself very politically astute, he was confident he would figure things out soon enough.

4

T
he Chateau Marmont sat at the east end of the Sunset Strip, an iconic structure set against the Hollywood Hills that had enticed movie stars, writers, rock and rollers and their entourages for decades. Several times during his career Bosch had been to the hotel as he had followed cases and sought witnesses and suspects. He knew its beamed lobby and hedged courtyard and the layout of its spacious suites. Other hotels offered amazing levels of comfort and personal service. The Chateau offered Old World charm and a lack of interest in your personal business. Most hotels had security cameras, hidden or not, in all public spaces. The Chateau had few. The one thing the Chateau offered that no other hotel on the strip could touch was privacy. Behind its walls and tall hedges was a world without intrusion, where those who didn’t want to be watched were not. That is, until things went wrong, or private behavior became public.

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 R
AMPONE
.

“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.