The Black Echo

by Michael Connelly

  “He already knows.”

  Clarke looked at Lewis and shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “When’d you drop the bug in my phone?”

  “Didn’t,” Lewis said.

  “Bullshit. But never mind. You saw me interview the kid down in Boytown.” It was a statement, not a question. Bosch wanted them to think he knew most of it and just needed the gaps filled in.

  “Yeah,” Lewis said. “That was our first day on it. So you made us. So fucking what?”

  Harry saw Lewis pull his hand toward his coat pocket. He quickly moved in and got his hand in first. He pulled out a key ring that included a cuff key. He threw the keys into the car. Behind Lewis, he said, “Who’d you tell about it?”

  “Tell?” Lewis said. “About the kid? Nobody. We didn’t tell anybody, Bosch.”

  “You write up a daily surveillance log, don’t you? You take pictures, don’t you? I bet there’s a camera in the backseat of that car. Unless you forgot and left it in the trunk.”

  “Course we do.”

  Bosch lit a cigarette and started walking again. “Where did it all go?”

  It was a few moments before Lewis answered. Bosch saw him make eye contact with Clarke. “We turned in the first log and the film yesterday. Put it in the deputy chief’s box. Like always. Don’t even know if he looked at it yet. That’s the only paper we’ve done so far. So, Bosch, take these cuffs off. This is embarrassing. People seein’ us and all. We can still talk after.”

  Bosch walked up between them and blew smoke into the center of the huddle and told them the cuffs stayed on until the conversation was over. He then leaned close to Clarke’s face and said, “Who else was copied?”

  “With the surveillance report? Nobody was copied, Bosch,” Lewis said. “That would violate department procedure.”

  Bosch laughed at that, shook his head. He knew they would not admit any illegality or violation of department policy. He started to walk away, back to his house.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute, Bosch,” Lewis called out. “We copied the report to your lieutenant. All right? Come on back.”

  Bosch did and Lewis continued. “He wanted to be kept apprised. We had to do it. The DC, Irving, okayed it. We did what we were told.”

  “What did the report say about the kid?”

  “Nothing. Just some kid is all. . . . Uh, ‘Subject engaged juvenile in conversation. Juvenile was transported to Hollywood Station for formal interview,’ something like that.”

  “Did you ID him in the report?”

  “No name. We didn’t even know his name. Honest, Bosch. We just watched you, that’s all. Now uncuff us.”

  “What about Home Street Home? You watched me take him there. Was that in the report?”

  “Yeah, on the log.”

  Bosch moved in close again. “Now here’s the big question. If there is no complaint from the bureau anymore, why is IAD still on me? The FBI made the call to Pounds and withdrew the complaint. Then you guys act like you were called off but you weren’t. Why?”

  Lewis started to say something but Bosch cut him off. “I want Clarke to tell me. You’re thinking too fast, Lewis.”

  Clarke didn’t say a word.

  “Clarke, the kid you saw me with ended up dead. Somebody did him because he talked to me. And the only people who knew he talked to me were you and your partner here. Something is going on here, and if I don’t get the answers I need I’m just going to lay it all out, go public with it. You are going to find your own ass being investigated by Internal Affairs.”

  Clarke said his first two words in five minutes: “Fuck you.”

  Lewis jumped in then.

  “Look, Bosch, I’ll tell you. The FBI doesn’t trust you. That’s the thing. They said they brought you into the case, but they told us they weren’t sure about you. They said you muscled onto the case and they were going to have to watch you, make sure you weren’t pulling a scam. That’s all. So we were told to drop back but stay on you. We did. That’s all, man. Now cut us loose. I can hardly breathe, and my wrists are starting to hurt with these cuffs. You really put them on tight.”

  Bosch turned to Clarke. “Where’s your cuff key?”

  “Right front pocket,” he said. He was cool about it, refusing to look at Bosch’s face. Bosch walked around behind him and reached both hands around his waist. He pulled a key ring out of Clarke’s pocket and then whispered in his ear, “Clarke, you ever go in my home again and I’ll kill you.”

  Then he yanked the detective’s pants and boxer shorts down to his ankles and started walking away. He threw the key ring into the car.

  “You bastard!” Clarke yelled. “I’ll kill you first, Bosch.”

  As long as he kept the bug and the Nagra, Bosch was reasonably certain Lewis and Clarke would not seek departmental charges against him. They had more to lose than he. A lawsuit and public scandal would cut their careers off at the stairway to the sixth floor. Bosch got in his car and drove back to the Federal Building.

  Too many people knew about Sharkey or had the opportunity to know, he realized as he tried to assess the situation. There was no clear-cut way of flushing out the inside man. Lewis and Clarke had seen the boy and passed the information on to Irving and Pounds and who knew who else. Rourke and the FBI records clerk knew about him as well. And those names didn’t even include the people on the street who might have seen Sharkey with Bosch, or had heard that Bosch was looking for him. Bosch knew that he would have to wait for things to develop.

  At the Federal Building, the red-haired receptionist behind the glass window on the FBI floor made him wait while she called back to Group 3. He checked the cemetery again through the gauze curtains and saw several people working in the trench cut in the hill. They were lining the earth wound with blocks of black stone that reflected sharp white light points in the sun. And Bosch at last believed he knew what it was they were doing. The door lock buzzed behind him and Bosch headed back. It was twelve-thirty and the heavy squad was out, except for Eleanor Wish. She sat at her desk eating an egg salad sandwich, the kind they sold in plastic triangle-shaped boxes at every government building cafeteria he’d ever been in. The plastic bottle of water and a paper cup were on the desk. They exchanged small hellos. Bosch felt that things had changed between them, but he didn’t know how much.

  “You been here since this morning?” he asked.

  She said she hadn’t. She told him that she had taken the mugs of Franklin and Delgado to the vault clerks at WestLand National and one of the women positively identified Franklin as Frederic B. Isley, the holder of a box in the vault. The scout.

  “It’s enough for a warrant, but Franklin isn’t around,” she said. “Rourke sent a couple crews to the addresses DMV had on both him and Delgado. Called back in a little while ago. Either they’ve moved on or never lived in the places in the first place. Looks like they’re in the wind.”

  “So, what’s next?”

  “I don’t know. Rourke’s talking about closing shop on it until we catch them. You’ll probably get to go back to your homicide table. When we catch one of them, we’ll bring you down to work on him about the Meadows murder.”

  “Sharkey’s murder, too. Don’t forget that.”

  “That, too.”

  Bosch nodded. It was over. The bureau was going to close it down.

  “By the way, you got a message,” she said. “Someone called for you, said his name was Hector. That was all.”

  Bosch sat down at the desk next to hers and dialed Hector Villabona’s direct line. He picked up after two rings.

  “It’s Bosch.”

  “Hey, what’re you doing with the bureau?” he asked. “I called the number you gave and somebody said it was the FBI.”

  “Yeah, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you later. Did you come up with anything?”

  “Not much, Harry, and I’m not going to, either. I can’t get the file. This guy Binh, whoever he is, he has got s
ome connections. Like we figured. His file is still classified. I called a guy I know out there and asked him to send it out. He called me back and said no can do.”

  “Why would it still be classified?”

  “Who knows, Harry? That’s why it’s still classified. So people won’t find this shit out.”

  “Well, thanks. It’s not looking that important anymore.”

  “If you have a source at State, somebody with access, they might have better luck than me. I’m just the token beaner in the bean-counting department. But, listen, there is one thing this guy I know kind of let slip.”

  “What?”

  “Well, see, I gave him Binh’s name, you know, and when he calls back he says, ‘Sorry, Captain Binh’s file is classified.’ Just like that is how he said it. Captain, he called him. So this guy musta been a military guy. That’s probably why they got him out of there and over here so fast. If he was military, they saved his ass for sure.”

  “Yeah,” Bosch said, then he thanked Hector and hung up.

  He turned to Eleanor and asked if she had any contacts in the State Department. She shook her head no. “Military intelligence, CIA, anything like that?” Bosch said. “Somebody with access to computer files.”

  She thought a moment and said, “Well, there is a guy on the State floor. I sort of know him from D.C. But what’s going on, Harry?”

  “Can you call him and tell him you need a favor?”

  “He doesn’t talk on the phone, not about business. We’ll just have to go down there.”

  He stood up. Outside the office, while they waited for the elevator, Bosch told her about Binh, his rank, and the fact that he left Vietnam on the same day as Meadows. The elevator opened and they got on and she pushed seven. They were alone.

  “You knew all along, that I was being tailed,” Bosch said. “Internal Affairs.”

  “I saw them.”

  “But you knew before you saw them, didn’t you?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “I think it does. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She took a while. The elevator stopped.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t at first, and then when I wanted to tell you I couldn’t. I thought it would spoil everything. I guess it did, anyway.”

  “Why didn’t you at first, Eleanor? Because there was still a question about me?”

  She looked into the stainless steel corner of the elevator. “In the beginning, yes, we weren’t sure about you. I won’t lie about that.”

  “What about after the beginning?”

  The door opened on the seventh floor. Eleanor moved through it, saying, “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

  Bosch stepped out after her. He took hold of her arm and stopped her. They stood there as two men in almost matching gray suits charged through the open elevator door.

  “Yes, I’m still here, but you didn’t tell me about them.”

  “Harry, can we talk about this later?”

  “The thing is, they saw us with Sharkey.”

  “Yes, I thought so.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say anything when I was talking about the inside man, when I was asking about who you told about the kid?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Bosch looked down at his feet. He felt like the only man on the planet who didn’t understand what was going on.

  “I talked to them,” he said. “They claim they just watched us with the kid. They never followed up to see what it was about. Said they didn’t have his ID. Sharkey’s name wasn’t in their reports.”

  “And do you believe them?”

  “Never have before. But I don’t see them involved in this. It just doesn’t fit. They’re just after me and they’ll do anything to get me. But not take out a witness. That’s crazy.”

  “Maybe they’re feeding information to someone who is involved and they just don’t realize it.”

  Bosch thought about Irving and Pounds again.

  “A possibility. The point is, there is an inside man. Somewhere. We know this. And it might be from my side. It might be yours. So we have to be very careful, about who we talk to and what we’re doing.”

  After a moment he looked straight into her eyes and said, “Do you believe me?”

  It took her a long time, but she finally nodded her head. She said, “I can’t think of any other way to explain what’s happening.”

  Eleanor went up to a receptionist while Bosch hung back a bit. After a few minutes a young woman came out from a closed door and showed them down a couple of hallways and into a small office. No one was sitting behind the desk. They sat in two chairs facing the desk and waited.

  “Who is this we’re seeing?” Bosch whispered.

  “I’ll introduce you, and he can tell you what he wants you to know about him,” she said.

  Bosch was about to ask her what that meant when the door opened and a man strode in. He looked to be about fifty, with silvery hair that was carefully groomed and a strong build beneath the blue blazer. The man’s gray eyes were as dull as day-old barbecue coals. He sat down and did not look at Bosch. He kept his eyes exclusively on Eleanor Wish.

  “Ellie, good to see you again,” he said. “How are you doing?”

  She said she was doing fine, exchanged a few pleasantries and then got around to introducing Bosch. The man got up and reached across the desk to shake hands.

  “Bob Ernst, assistant deputy, trade and development, nice to meet you. So this is an official visit then, not just dropping by to see an old friend?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, Bob, but we are working on something and need some help.”

  “Whatever I can do, Ellie,” Ernst said. He was annoying Bosch, and Bosch had only known him a minute.

  “Bob, we need to background somebody whose name has come up on a case we are working,” Wish said. “I think you are in a position that you could get that information for us without a great deal of inconvenience or time.”

  “That’s our problem,” Bosch added. “It’s a homicide case. We don’t have a lot of time to go through normal channels. To wait for things from Washington.”

  “Foreign national?”

  “Vietnamese,” Bosch said.

  “Came here when?”

  “May 4, 1975.”

  “Ah, right after the fall. I see. Tell me, what kind of homicide would the FBI and the LAPD be working on together that involves such ancient history, and history in another country as well?”

  “Bob,” Eleanor began, “I think—”

  “No, don’t answer that,” Ernst yelped. “I think you are right. It would be best if we compartmentalized the information.”

  Ernst went through the motions of straightening his blotter and the knickknacks on his desk. Nothing was really out of order to begin with.

  “How soon you need the information?” he finally said.

  “Now,” Eleanor said.

  “We’ll wait,” Harry said.

  “You realize, of course, I may not come up with anything, especially on short notice?”

  “Of course,” Eleanor said.

  “Give me the name.”

  Ernst slid a piece of paper across his blotter. Eleanor wrote Binh’s name on it and slid it back. Ernst looked at it a moment and got up without ever touching the paper.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said and left the room.

  Bosch looked at Eleanor.

  “‘Ellie’?”

  “Please, I don’t allow anybody to call me that. That’s why I don’t take his calls and don’t return them.”

  “You mean until now. You’ll owe him now.”

  “If he finds something. And so will you.”

  “I guess I’ll have to let him call me Ellie.”

  She didn’t smile.

  “How’d you meet this guy, anyway?”

  She didn’t answer.

  Bosch said, “He’s probably listening to us right now.”

  He looked
around the room, though obviously any listening devices would be hidden. He took out his cigarettes when he saw a black ashtray on the desk.

  “Please, don’t smoke,” Eleanor said.

  “Just a half.”

  “I met him once when we were both in Washington. I don’t even remember what for now. He was assistant something-or-other with State back then, too. We had a couple of drinks. That’s all. Sometime after that, he transferred out here. When he saw me in the elevator here and found out I was transferred, he started calling.”

  “CIA all the way, right? Or something close.”

  “More or less. I think. It doesn’t matter if he gets what we need.”

  “More or less. I knew shitheads like him in the war. No matter how much he tells us today, there will be something more. Guys like that, information is their currency. They never give up everything. Like he said, they compartmentalize everything. They’ll get you killed before they tell it all.”

  “Can we stop talking now?”

  “Sure . . . Ellie.”

  Bosch passed the time smoking and looking at the empty walls. The guy didn’t make much of an effort to make it look like a real office. No flag in the corner. Not even a picture of the president. Ernst was back in twenty minutes, and by then Bosch was on his second half-cigarette. As the assistant deputy for trade and development strode to his desk empty-handed, he said, “Detective, would you mind not smoking? I find it very bothersome in a closed room like this.”

  Bosch stubbed the butt out in the small black bowl on the corner of his desk.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I saw the ashtray. I thought—”

  “It’s not an ashtray, Detective,” Ernst said in a somber tone. “That is a rice bowl, three centuries old. I brought it home with me after my stationing in Vietnam.”

  “You were working on trade and development then, too?”

  “Excuse me, Bob, did you find anything?” Eleanor interjected. “On the name?”

  It took Ernst a long moment to break his stare away from Bosch.

  “I found very little, but what I did find may be useful. This man, Binh, is a former Saigon police officer. A captain. . . . Bosch, are you a veteran of the altercation?”