Edgar looked at Lourdes as he spoke, but Bosch and Lourdes had agreed on the ride down that Harry would take lead in the meeting, even though Bella had first made contact with Edgar. Bosch had the history with Edgar and would know best how to work the conversation to their advantage.
“We’re not a hundred percent on that yet,” Bosch said. “But it’s getting there. The whole thing was on video, and our read on it is that this was a hit disguised as a robbery. Two shooters, masks, gloves, in and out, no brass left behind. We’re looking at the kid as the target and that brings us to the complaint he sent. He was a good kid—no record, no gangs, most-likely-to-succeed sort of kid just out of pharmacy school. He and his father were at issue about something and it might have been filling prescriptions from that clinic.”
“The sad irony here is that the kid probably went to pharmacy school on money the old man banked filling shady scrips,” Edgar said.
“That is sad,” Bosch said. “So what happened with the kid’s complaint?”
“Okay,” Edgar said. “Well, like I told Detective Lourdes, the complaint landed on my desk but I had not acted on it yet. I pulled it up when we spoke, and judging by the date it was sent and received, this thing was gathering dust in Sacramento for about five or six weeks before they took a look at it and sent it down here to me. Bureaucracy—you know about that, right, Harry?”
“Right.”
“The statute of limitations on these offenses is three years. I would have gotten to it sooner rather than later, but the harsh reality is, it would have been a couple months before I’d have acted on it. I’ve got more open files than I can handle.”
He gestured to the stacks of files on his desk and a shelf to his right.
“Like everybody else in this building, we are critically understaffed. We are supposed to have six investigators and two clerical support slots in this unit to cover the whole county but we have four and one and they added half of Orange County to our territory last year. Just driving down and back to the OC on a case takes half a day.”
Edgar seemed to be going out of his way to explain why the complaint hadn’t yet been followed up on and Bosch realized that it was because of their prior history. Bosch had been so demanding as a partner that Edgar always felt under pressure to perform, and after all these years, he was still making excuses and trying to justify himself to Bosch. It made Bosch regretful and impatient at the same time.
“We understand all of that,” Bosch said. “Nobody’s got enough bullets—that’s the system. We’re just sort of trying to jump-start some stuff here because we’ve got a double murder. What can you tell us about this clinic over in Pacoima that the pharmacist was complaining about?”
Edgar nodded and opened a thin file on his desk. It had a single page of notes in it, and Bosch got the feeling that Edgar hadn’t done much with it until Lourdes called and mentioned Bosch and that they were on their way downtown.
“I checked it out,” Edgar said. “The clinic is licensed and doing business as Pacoima Pain and Urgent Care. The doctor who owns it is listed as Efram Herrera, but then I checked his DEA number and he—”
“What’s a DEA number?” Bosch asked.
“Every physician needs a DEA number to write prescriptions. Every pharmacy is supposed to check that on the scrip before putting pills in the bottle. There is a lot of abuse with phony numbers and stolen numbers. I checked Dr. Herrera’s number and he wrote no prescriptions at all for two years and then came back with a vengeance last year and has been writing them like a madman. I’m talking hundreds a week.”
“Hundreds of pills, or hundreds of prescriptions?”
“Prescriptions. Scrips. As far as pills go, you’re talking thousands.”
“So what’s that tell you?”
“It confirms that the place is a pill mill and no doubt the kid pharmacist’s complaint was on target.”
“I know you told Bella some of this already, but can you school me a little bit? How does a pill mill—how does all of this work?”
Edgar nodded vigorously as Bosch asked the question, jumping at the opportunity to show some expertise to the man who had always doubted him.
“They call the people involved in the mills ‘cappers,’” he said. “They run the show and you need unscrupulous doctors and pharmacies in the mix to make it all work.”
“The cappers are not the doctors or pharmacists?” Bosch asked.
“No, they’re the bosses. It starts with them either opening a clinic or going into an existing clinic in a marginal neighborhood. They go to a dirtbag doctor, somebody just this side of having their license revoked. A lot of docs that worked in the medical marijuana joints are perfect candidates. The capper goes in and says, ‘Doc, how’d you like to make five grand a week for a couple mornings in my clinic?’ That’s good money for somebody like that and they sign up.”
“And they start writing prescriptions.”
“Exactly, the cappers line up the shills in the morning, and they get their scrips from the doctor—no good-faith physical exam, nothing legit about it—and then they go out and get in a van and the capper drives them to the pharmacies to get the pills. Usually, it’s more than one pharmacy in cahoots so they can spread it out and try to fly under the radar for as long as possible. A lot of them have multiple IDs, so they hit two, three, places a day and it doesn’t come up on the computer. Doesn’t matter that the phony IDs are for shit, because the pharmacist is in on it. He doesn’t look too close at anything.”
“And then the pills go to the capper?”
“Exactly right. Most of these shills, they’re addicts themselves. That capper is the straw boss and he reports to somebody down the line, and he’s gotta make sure nobody guzzles those pills. So he keeps everybody in the van and they hit the pharmacies, maybe two going in at a time, and they turn those pills over right away when they get back to the van. The capper will front them what they need out of the day’s haul to maintain their addiction and keep them working. He keeps them high and keeps them moving. It’s a trap. They get in and they can’t get out.”
Bosch thought about the man in the sunglasses with the goatee who was driving the van of old people that he and Lourdes had tailed.
“What happens next?” Bosch asked.
“The pills get distributed,” Edgar said. “They hit the streets, go to the addicts. Fifty-five thousand dead and counting since this all started. Almost as many as we lost in the Vietnam War. That is sadly quantifiable, but the money, forget it. It’s off the charts. So many people are making money off this crisis—it’s the growth industry of this country. Remember what they used to say about the banks and Wall Street being too big to fail? It’s like that. But too big to shut down.”
“David and Goliath,” Bosch said.
“Worse than that,” Edgar said. “Let me tell you one story that to me says it all. Opiate addiction, in case you don’t know, clogs the pipes. It stunts the gastrointestinal tract. Bottom line is, you can’t shit. So one of the big pharmaceutical companies comes up with a prescription laxative that does the job and costs about twenty times what your over-the-counter laxative runs. The next thing you know the pharma’s stock goes through the roof. They’re selling so much of this that they’re advertising on national television. Of course, they don’t say dick about addiction or anything like that. They just show some guy mowing the lawn and, oh, he can’t shit, so get your doctor to give you this. So now you’ve got Wall Street invested and the national media selling ads. Everybody is making bank, Harry, and when that happens it can’t be stopped.”
“I thought they were trying to change things in Washington,” Lourdes offered. “You know, new laws, putting a big focus on this.”
“Not likely,” Edgar said. “The pharmas are major campaign contributors. Nobody’s going to bite the hand that feeds them.”
Edgar seemed to be using the national picture to justify his own local inertia. Bosch wanted to keep the focus small for the moment. You al
ways start small and go big.
“So going back to this particular case in Pacoima, the capper got to Dr. Herrera. He went from signing no prescriptions to doing hundreds.”
“That’s right and these are big prescriptions. Sixty pills, sometimes ninety. There’s nothing subtle about it. I pulled his records and he’s seventy-three years old. It looks like he retired and they brought him back, reopened the clinic, and put a prescription pad in front of him. For all we know, the guy might be senile. We’ve seen that. They drag some schnook out of retirement because he’s still got that DEA number and a license to practice. ‘You want to make an extra twenty K a month?’ and so on.”
Bosch was quiet as he tried to digest all of the information. Edgar went on unprompted.
“Another thing they do with these old doctors is they go through all their old records and pull legit names to phony up IDs and Medicare cards. They use real people who have no idea their names are being used in all of this. The government thinks the subsistence requests are legit.”
“That’s crazy,” Lourdes said.
“So then what do you guys do about it?” Bosch asked.
“When we can identify it, we can shut the doctor down,” Edgar said. “We work with the DEA to get the number revoked and then we yank the license to practice. But it is a long administrative process and most of the time these cappers have moved on to the next guy. A guy like Efram Herrera is left holding the bag. Not that I have any sympathy for the doctors, but the real villains here are elusive. I don’t have to tell you how frustrating that is.”
“I can see that. The pill shills, have you heard of them being moved around by plane?”
Bosch asked the question casually, but it came out of the blue and gave Edgar pause. Bosch read in the hesitation that they might be onto something out of the routine with the Esquivel case.
“Is that what you have up there?” Edgar asked.
“It looks like it,” Bosch said. “We followed a van from the clinic to Whiteman Airport and several people were loaded onto an old jump plane. It took off and headed south. They didn’t file a flight plan. We checked with the tower. A guy said the plane comes in and goes out every day. The clinic is right across the street from the airport.”
“The fuel bills from Whiteman go to a company down in Calexico,” Lourdes added.
Bosch could see a change come over Edgar, an added level of concern working its way into his eyes and the deep set of his brow. He leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk.
“Things make a little more sense now,” he said.
“How so?” Bosch asked.
“I mean as far as killing the kid. One of the biggest operators in the pill-mill business in the country is a Russian-Armenian syndicate. Most of the pills that come out of these small operations go to them, and they feed Chicago, Las Vegas, all the hot spots.”
Bosch threw a sideways glance at Lourdes. O’Connor at the Whiteman tower had said the pilot spoke with a Russian accent. Lourdes exchanged eye contact and then returned attention to Edgar, who was still talking.
“Supposedly they use planes to keep people in motion, hitting multiple clinics and pharmacies a day,” he said. “The planes help keep the shills in circulation, cashing out scrips for pills. Like I said before, they have multiple IDs and they’re moved through three, four, pharmacies a day. We are talking big money and with big money comes big danger. This kid had no idea what he was bringing on when he decided to stand tall.”
“They would hit him just to send a message?” Bosch asked.
“Entirely possible. ‘If you ain’t filling my scrips, you ain’t filling nobody’s scrips.’ Like that.”
“Where is this syndicate based? Here?”
“You need to be talking to the DEA, Harry. This is a whole different level of—”
“I’m talking to you, Jerry. Tell me what you know.”
“Not a lot, Harry. We handle enforcement for the medical board, man. This isn’t an organized crime unit. What I heard through my contact at Drug Enforcement is that they’re out there in the desert.”
“Which desert? Las Vegas?”
“No, down toward the border and Calexico. Out near Slab City, Bombay Beach—that no-man’s-land they call the south side of nowhere. There’s all kinds of airstrips down there abandoned by cartels, even the U.S. military, and that’s what they use when they’re flying people around. Out in the middle of nowhere it’s like a gypsy caravan or something. They stay mobile. They sense trouble, they move like fucking nomads.”
“What about names? Who runs the syndicate?”
“Some Armenian guy who uses Russian enforcers and pilots. He calls himself Santos because he looks Mexican, but he isn’t. And that’s all I’ve got on that.”
“If they know where these people are and what they’re doing, why don’t they move in and take them down?”
“That’s a DEA question, man. I wonder the same thing. I think it’s Santos. They want him and he’s like smoke.”
“Give me a name at DEA.”
“Charlie Hovan. He’s their expert on Armenian drug dealers. He told me his family Americanized the name from Hovanian or something like that.”
“Charlie Hovan. Thanks, Jerry.”
Bosch looked at Lourdes to see if she had anything else to ask. She shook her head. She was ready to go. Bosch looked back at his old partner.
“So we’ll leave you to it,” he said. “Thanks for the cooperation.”
Bosch stood up and Lourdes followed.
“Harry, there’s a story about Santos,” Edgar said. “I don’t know if it’s true but you should know.”
“Go.”
“The DEA flipped one of his shills. Guy was an oxy addict and they leveraged him. He was supposed to keep working the game and feed intel back to the narcs.”
“What happened?”
“Somehow Santos figured it out or got wind of it. One day the informant got on the plane with a bunch of other shills and took off for a day’s work. But when the plane landed, he wasn’t on it anymore.”
“He got tossed.”
Edgar nodded.
“They’ve got the Salton Sea down there,” he said. “Supposedly the high salt content of the water chews a body up pretty quick.”
Bosch nodded.
“Good to know who we’re dealing with,” he said.
“Yeah, you two watch yourselves out there,” Edgar added.
12
After leaving the meeting in the Reagan Building, Bosch and Lourdes walked over to the Nickel Diner on Main Street for a late lunch. Bosch was a regular at the restaurant when he had worked downtown for the LAPD but had not been back since he’d left the department. Monica, one of the owners, welcomed him warmly and still remembered his routine order of a BLT sandwich.
Bosch and Lourdes discussed the information they had gotten from Edgar and debated whether to reach out to the DEA agent they had gotten a line on. Ultimately, they decided to wait until they had a better handle on their case and knew more about the activities surrounding La Farmacia Familia and the clinic in Pacoima. They still had nothing connecting the two things other than José Esquivel Jr.’s complaint about the clinic.
On the drive back up to the Valley, Lourdes took a call from Sisto, who said he had found a few things during his review of video from the pharmacy cameras that he wanted everybody on the team to see. Lourdes told him to set it up in the war room and they’d be back by four.
Exhaustion started to settle over Bosch as the car moved slowly in early rush-hour traffic. He made the mistake of leaning his head against the passenger-door window and soon he was out. It was the buzzing of his phone in his pocket that woke him up a half hour later.
“Shit,” he said as he dug the phone out. “Was I snoring?”
“A little bit,” Lourdes said.
He answered the call before it went to message. He was still disoriented from sleep when he mumbled his name into the device.
“Yes, si
r, this is Officer Jericho with San Quentin ISU. Did you say you are Detective Bosch?”
“Yes, Bosch. That’s me.”
“Lieutenant Menendez asked me to handle an inmate research request and get back to you. The inmate is Preston Ulrich Borders.”
“Yes, what’ve you got?”
Bosch reached in his pocket for a notebook and pen. He tilted his head to hold the phone between his ear and shoulder and got ready to write.
“Not a lot, sir,” Jericho said. “He only has one approved visitor and that is his attorney. His name is Lance Cronyn.”
“Okay,” Bosch said. “Do you have any cross-outs? People who used to be approved?”
“This is off a computer, sir. We don’t have cross-outs.”
“Okay, do you have a visitation history with the lawyer?”
“Yes, sir. It shows he received approved-visitor status in January last year. He has made regular visits on the first Thursday of every month ever since. Except he missed December last year.”
“That’s a lot of visits, isn’t it? I mean that’s like fourteen or fifteen visits so far.”
“I wouldn’t know what would constitute a lot of visits, sir. These guys on death row get a lot of legal attention.”
“Okay, what about mail? Did the lieutenant ask you to see what was going on with mail that goes to Borders?”
“Yes, he did. I reviewed that, sir, and Inmate Borders receives about three pieces of mail per day and it goes through a review process. He has had mail rejected because the letters were pornographic in nature or contained pornography. Nothing else unusual.”
“Do you keep any sort of entry log for knowing who is sending the mail to him?”
“No, sir, we don’t do that.”
Bosch thought for a moment. The results of his request to Menendez were coming up dry. He looked out the windshield at a freeway sign and realized that he had slept through almost the entire drive back to San Fernando. They would be on Maclay in five minutes.
He took a long shot on one last tack with Jericho.
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