The Black Echo

by Michael Connelly

  He opened the door and stepped out before she could protest the plan. She said, “Harry, why did you let me sleep?”

  “I don’t know. What’s his number?”

  “I should call him.”

  “Let me. Give me the number.”

  She gave it to him and Bosch walked around the corner and a short distance to the twenty-four-hour diner called Darling’s. He was in a daze the whole way, ignoring the panhandlers who had come out with the sun, trying to fathom that it was Rourke who was the inside man. What was he doing? There was a part of this that was missing and Bosch couldn’t figure it. If Rourke was the insider, then why would he allow them to set up surveillance on the vault? Did he want his people caught? He saw the pay phones out front of the restaurant.

  “You’re late,” Rourke said after picking up on half a ring.

  “We forgot.”

  “Bosch? Where’s Wish? She’s supposed to make the call.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Rourke. She’s watching the vault like she’s supposed to. What are you doing?”

  “I’ve been waiting to hear from you people before I headed in. Did you two fall asleep or what? What is happening there?”

  “Nothing is happening. But you already know that, don’t you?”

  There was a silence during which an old panhandler walked up to the booth and asked Bosch for money. Bosch put his hand on the man’s chest and firmly pushed him away.

  “You still there, Rourke?” he said into the phone.

  “What was that supposed to mean? How do I know what’s going on there when you people don’t call in like you’re supposed to? And you with the veiled references all the time. Bosch, I don’t get you.”

  “Let me ask you something. Did you really put people down at the tunnel exits, or was that blueprint and your pointer and the SWAT guy all for show?”

  “Put Wish on the line. I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Sorry, she can’t come to the phone at the moment.”

  “Bosch, I’m calling you in. Something is wrong. You’ve been out all night on this. I think you should — no, I’ll get a couple of fresh people out there. I’m going to have to call your lieutenant and—”

  “You knew Meadows.”

  “What?”

  “What I said. You knew him. I have his file, man. His complete file. Not the edited version you gave Wish to give me. You were his CO at the embassy in Saigon. I know.”

  More silence. Then, “I was CO to a lot of people, Bosch. I didn’t know them all.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “That’s weak, Lieutenant Rourke. Really weak. That was worse than just admitting it. I tell you what, I’ll see you around.”

  Bosch hung up the phone and went into Darling’s, where he ordered two coffees and two mineral waters. He stood by the cash register, waiting for the girl to put the order together, and looking out the window. He was thinking only of Rourke.

  The girl came up to the cash register with the order in a cardboard carry-out box. He paid and tipped her and went back out to the pay phone.

  Bosch called Rourke’s number again with no plan other than to see if he was on the phone or had left. He hung up after ten rings. Then he called the LAPD dispatch center and told an operator to call FBI dispatch and ask if they had a SWAT callout working in the Wilshire area in or near Beverly Hills and if they needed any help. While he waited he tried to put his mind inside Rourke’s caper. He opened up one of the coffees and sipped it.

  The dispatcher came back on the line with a confirmation that FBI did have a SWAT surveillance in the Wilshire district. No backup was requested. Bosch thanked her and hung up. Now he thought he knew what Rourke was doing. It had to be that there were no men about to break into the vault. The setup on the vault was just that, a setup. The vault was a decoy. Bosch thought about how he had let Tran go his way after following him to the vault. What he had done was flush the second captain out, with his diamonds, so Rourke could have at him. Bosch had simply played into his hands.

  When Bosch got back to the car he saw that Eleanor was looking through Meadows’s files. She hadn’t gotten to the congressman’s letter yet.

  “Where have you been?” she said good-naturedly.

  “Rourke had a lot of questions.” He took the Meadows file out of her hands and said, “There is something I want you to see here. Where did you get the file on Meadows that you showed me?”

  “I don’t know. Rourke got it. Why?”

  He found the letter and handed it to her without saying anything.

  “What is this? Nineteen seventy-three?”

  “Read it. This is Meadows’s file, the one I had copied and sent from St. Louis. There is no letter like this one in the file Rourke gave you to give me. He sanitized it. Read, you’ll see why.”

  He glanced over at the vault door. Nothing was happening and he didn’t expect anything to be. Then he watched her as she read. She raised an eyebrow as she scanned both pages, not seeing the name.

  “Yes, so he was some kind of a hero, it says. I don’t—” Her eyes widened as she got to the bottom. “Copied to Lieutenant John Rourke.”

  “Uh huh. You also missed the first reference.”

  He pointed to the sentence that named Rourke as Meadows’s CO.

  “The inside man. What do you think we should do?”

  “I don’t know. Are you sure? This doesn’t prove anything.”

  “If it was a coincidence, he should have said he knew the guy, cleared it up. Like me. I came in. He didn’t because he didn’t want the connection known. I called him on it when we were on the phone. He lied. He didn’t know we had this.”

  “Now he knows you know?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what he thinks I know. I hung up on him. The question is, what do we do about it? We’re probably spinning our wheels here. The whole thing’s a charade. Nobody’s going into that vault. They probably took Tran down after he checked his diamonds out and left. We led him right to slaughter.”

  Then he realized that maybe the white LTD belonged to the robbers, not Lewis and Clarke. They had followed Bosch and Wish to Tran.

  “Wait a minute,” Eleanor said. “I don’t know. What about the alarms all week? The fire hydrant and the arson? It has to be happening like we thought.”

  “I don’t know. Nothing is making sense right now. Maybe Rourke is leading his people into a trap. Or a slaughter.”

  They both stared ahead at the vault. The rain had slacked off, the sun was completely up now and it set the steel door aglow. Eleanor finally spoke.

  “I think we have to get some help. We have Hanlon and Houck sitting on the other side of the bank, and SWAT, unless that was part of Rourke’s charade.”

  Bosch told her he had checked on the SWAT surveillance and learned that it actually was in place.

  “Then what is Rourke doing?” she said.

  “Pushing all the buttons.”

  They kicked it around for a few minutes and decided to call Orozco at Beverly Hills police. First, Eleanor checked in with Hanlon and Houck. Bosch wanted to keep them in place.

  “You guys awake over there?” she said into the Motorola.

  “That’s a ten-four, barely. I feel like that guy stuck in his car in the overpass after the earthquake up in Oakland. What’s up, anything?”

  “No, just checking. How’s the front door?”

  “Not a knock all night.”

  She signed off and there was a moment of silence before Bosch turned to get out of the car, to call Orozco. He stopped and looked back at her.

  “You know, he died,” he said.

  “Who died?”

  “The guy that was in that overpass.”

  Just then there was a thump that slightly shook the car. Not as much a sound as a vibration, an impact, not unlike the first jolt of an earthquake. There was no following vibration. But after one or two seconds an alarm sounded. The ringing came loud and clear from the Beverly Hills Safe & Lock C
ompany. Bosch sat bolt upright, staring into the vault room. There was no visible sign of intrusion. Almost immediately, the radio crackled with Hanlon’s voice.

  “We’ve got a bell. What’s our plan of action?”

  Neither Bosch nor Wish answered the radio call at first. They just sat staring at the vault, dumbfounded. Rourke had let his people walk right into a trap. Or so it seemed.

  “Son of a bitch,” Bosch said. “They’re in.”

  Bosch said, “Tell Hanlon and Houck to stay cool until we get orders.”

  “And who is going to give the orders?” Eleanor asked.

  Bosch didn’t answer. He was thinking of what was going on in the vault. Why would Rourke lead his people into a setup?

  “He must not have been able to warn them, tell them that the diamonds aren’t there and that we’re up here,” he said. “I mean, twenty-four hours ago we didn’t know about this place or what was going on. Maybe by the time we got onto it, it was too late. They were too far in.”

  “So they are just proceeding as planned,” Eleanor said.

  “They’ll pop Tran’s box first, if they’ve done their homework and know which one it is. They’ll find it empty, and then what do they do? Split, or open more boxes until they get enough stuff to make the whole thing worth their while?”

  “I think they split,” she answered. “I think when they open Tran’s box and find no diamonds, they figure something is going down and get the hell out of there.”

  “Then we won’t have much time. My guess is they will get stuff ready in the vault but they won’t actually drill the box until after we’ve reset the alarm and cleared the scene. We can delay the resetting a bit, but too long and they might get suspicious and clear out, looking and ready for our people in the tunnels.”

  He got out of the car and looked back at Eleanor.

  “Get on the radio. Tell those guys to stay put, then get a message to your SWAT people. Tell them we think we’ve got people in the vault.”

  “They’ll want to know why Rourke isn’t telling them.”

  “Think of something. Tell them you don’t know where Rourke is.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To meet the patrol callout for the alarm. I’ll have them call Orozco out here.”

  He slammed the door shut and walked down the garage ramp. Eleanor made the radio calls.

  As Bosch approached Beverly Hills Safe & Lock he took his badge wallet out, folded it backward and hooked it in the breast pocket of his coat. He turned the corner around the glass vault room and jogged to the front steps just as a Beverly Hills patrol car pulled up, lights flashing but no siren. Two patrolmen got out, sliding their sticks out of the PVC pipe holders on the doors and then into the rings on their belts. Bosch introduced himself, told them what he was doing and asked them to get a message through to Captain Orozco as soon as possible. One of the cops said the manager, a guy named Avery, was being called out to reset the alarm while the cops checked the place out. All routine. They said they were getting to know the guy, it was the third alarm they had been called to here this week. They also said they already had orders to report any calls to this address to Orozco at his home, no matter the hour.

  “You mean these callouts, they weren’t false alarms?” said the one named Onaga.

  “We aren’t sure,” Bosch said. “But we want to handle this like it is a false alarm. The manager gets called out and together you reset the alarm and everybody goes on their way. Okay? Just nice and relaxed. Nothing unusual.”

  “Good enough,” said the other cop. The copper plate over his pocket said Johnstone. Holding his nightstick in place on his belt, he trotted back to their cruiser to make the call to Orozco.

  “Here’s our Mr. Avery now,” Onaga said.

  A white Cadillac floated to a stop at the curb behind the Beverly Hills car. Avery III, who was wearing a pink sport shirt and madras slacks, got out and walked up. He recognized Bosch and greeted him by name.

  “Has there been a break-in?”

  “Mr. Avery, we think something might be going on here, we don’t know. We need time to check it out. What we want for you to do is open up the office, take a walk around like you usually do, like you did when the alarms went off earlier this week. Then reset the alarm and lock up again.”

  “That’s it? What if—”

  “Mr. Avery, what we want you to do is get in your car and drive away like you usually do, like you’re going home. But I want you to go around the corner to Darling’s. Go in and have a coffee. I’ll either come by to tell you what is happening or send for you. I want you to relax. We can handle whatever comes up here. We have other people checking it out, but for the sake of appearances, we want to make it seem that we are passing this off as another false alarm.”

  “I see,” Avery said, digging a key ring from his pocket. He walked to the front door and opened it. “And by the way, that is not the vault alarm that is ringing. It is the exterior alarm, set off by vibrations on the windows of the vault room. I can tell. It’s a different tone, you see.”

  Bosch figured the tunnelers had disabled the vault alarm system, not realizing the exterior alarm was a separate system.

  Onaga and Avery went in, with Bosch trailing behind. As Harry stood in the entryway looking for smoke and not seeing any, sniffing for cordite but not smelling any, Johnstone came in. Bosch put his hands to his lips to warn the officer against yelling above the sound of the alarm. Johnstone nodded, cupped his hand to Bosch’s ear and told him that Orozco would be there in twenty minutes tops. He lived up in the Valley. Bosch nodded and hoped it would be soon enough.

  The alarm shut off and Avery and Onaga came out of Avery’s office into the lobby, where Johnstone and Bosch waited. Onaga looked at Bosch and shook his head, indicating nothing amiss.

  “Do you usually check the vault room?” Bosch asked.

  “We just look around,” Avery said. He proceeded to the X-ray machine, switched it on and explained it took fifty seconds to warm up. They passed the time without talking. Finally, Avery put his hand on the reader. It read it and approved the bone structure and the lock on the first door of the mantrap snapped open.

  “Since I don’t have my man inside the vault room, I have to override the lock on the second door,” Avery said. “Gentlemen, if you don’t mind not looking once we are in.”

  The four of them moved into the tiny mantrap and Avery pushed a set of numbers on the combination lock on the second door. It snapped open and they moved into the vault room. There was nothing to see but steel and glass. Bosch stood near the vault door and listened but heard nothing. He walked to the glass wall and looked up Wilshire. He could see that Eleanor was back in the car on the second floor of the garage. He turned his attention to Avery, who walked up to his side as if to look out the window himself but instead huddled into a conspiratorial posture.

  “Remember, I can open the vault,” he said in a low whisper.

  Bosch looked at him and shook his head, then said, “No. I don’t want to do that. Too dangerous. Let’s get out of here.”

  Avery had a perplexed look on his face, but Bosch walked away. Five minutes later Beverly Hills Safe & Lock was cleared and locked down. The two cops went back out on patrol and Avery left. Bosch walked back to the garage. The street was busier now, and the noise of the day had begun. The garage was filling with cars and the stink of exhaust. Inside the car, Wish told him that Hanlon, Houck, and SWAT were in holding positions. He told her Orozco was on the way.

  Bosch wondered how long it would take before the men in the tunnel believed it was safe to start drilling. Orozco was still ten minutes away. It was a long time.

  “So what do we do when he gets here?” she said.

  “His town, his call,” he said. “We just lay it out for him and do whatever he wants to do. We tell him we have one fucked-up operation going here and we don’t know who to trust. Not the guy in charge of it, at least.”

  They sat in silence for a
minute or two after that. Bosch smoked a cigarette and Eleanor didn’t say anything about it. She seemed lost in her own thoughts, a puzzled look on her face. They both nervously checked their watches every thirty seconds or so.

  Lewis waited until the white Cadillac he tailed had turned north off Wilshire. As soon as the car was out of sight of Beverly Hills Safe & Lock, Lewis picked the blue emergency light up off the floor and put it on the dashboard. He flicked it on, but the driver of the Cadillac was already pulling to the side of the road in front of Darling’s. Lewis got out of his car and walked up to the Caddy; he was met halfway by Avery.

  “What is going on, officer?” Avery said.

  “Detective,” Lewis said and he opened his badge wallet. “Internal Affairs, LAPD. I need to ask you a few questions, sir. We are conducting an investigation of the man, Detective Harry Bosch, who you were just speaking with at Beverly Hills Safe & Lock.”

  “What do you mean ‘we’?”

  “I left my partner on Wilshire so he can keep an eye on your business. But what I would like is for you to step into my car so we can talk for a few minutes. Something is going on and I need to know what.”

  “That Detective Bosch — hey, how do I know you are for real?”

  “How do you know he is? The thing is, we have had Detective Bosch under surveillance for a week, sir, and we know he is engaged in activities that could be, if not illegal, embarrassing to the department. We aren’t sure what at this juncture. That’s why we need you, sir. Would you step into the car, please?”

  Avery took two tentative steps toward the IAD car and then seemed to decide, What the heck. He moved quickly to the passenger side and got in. Avery identified himself as the owner of Beverly Hills Safe & Lock and briefly told Lewis what had been said during his two encounters with Bosch and Wish. Lewis listened without commenting, then opened the car door. “Wait here, please. I’ll be right back.”

  Lewis walked briskly up to Wilshire; he stood on the corner a few moments apparently looking for someone, then made an elaborate show of checking his watch. He came back to the car and slid in behind the wheel. On Wilshire, Clarke was waiting in the alcove of a store entrance and watching the vault. He caught sight of Lewis’s signal and strolled casually to the car.