The Black Echo

Clarke still showed no sign of alert or that the bug had been discovered. Lewis was through picking his teeth.
    Bosch turned on the stereo and put on a Wayne Shorter CD. He then went out a side door in the kitchen into the carport. He could not be seen from the IAD car. He found the tape recorder in the first place he looked; the junction box beneath the DWP electric meter on the back wall of the carport. The two-inch reels were turning to the sound of Shorter’s saxophone. The Nagra recorder, like the T-9, was wired to the house current but had a battery backup. Bosch disconnected it and brought it inside, where he set it on the table next to its counterpart.
    Shorter was finishing “502 Blues.” Bosch sat in the watch chair, lit a cigarette and looked at the device as he tried to form a plan. He reached over, rewound the tape and pushed the play button. The first thing he heard was his own voice saying he wasn’t there, then Jerry Edgar’s message about the Hollywood Bowl. Then the next sounds were the door opening and closing twice, then Wayne Shorter’s sax. They had changed reels at least once since the test call had been made. Then he realized that Eleanor Wish’s visit had been taped. He thought about that and wondered if the bug had picked up what had been said on the back porch. Bosch’s stories about himself and Meadows. He grew angry thinking about the intrusion, the delicate moment stolen by the two men in the black Plymouth.
    He shaved, showered and dressed in a fresh set of clothes, a tan summer suit with pink oxford shirt and blue tie. Then he went to the living room and loaded the bug and recorder into the pockets of his jacket. He took another look through the curtains with the field glasses: still no movement in the Internal Affairs car. He went out the side door again and carefully climbed down the embankment to the base of the first stilt, an iron I beam. He gingerly made his way across the incline beneath his house. He noticed along the way that the dried brush was sprinkled with pieces of gold foil, the beer label he had picked at and dropped from the porch when he was with Eleanor.
    Once he got to the other side of his property, he picked his way across the hill, going under the next three stilt houses. After the third, he scrambled up the hillside and looked around the front corner into the street. He was now behind the black Plymouth. He picked the burrs off the cuffs of his pants and then walked casually into the road.

    ***

    Bosch came up unnoticed on the passenger-side door. The window was down and just before he flung the door open he thought he could hear snoring coming from the car.
    Clarke’s mouth was open and his eyes still shut when Bosch leaned in through the open door and grabbed both men by their silk ties. Bosch put his right foot on the doorsill for leverage and pulled both men toward him. Though there were two of them, the advantage belonged to Bosch. Clarke was disoriented and Lewis had little more idea what was happening. Pulling them by their ties meant that any struggle or resistance tightened the ties around their necks, cutting off their air. They came out almost willingly, tumbling like dogs on leashes and landing next to a palm tree planted three feet from the sidewalk. Their faces were red and sputtering. Their hands went to their necks, clawing at the knots of their ties as they fought to get air back into their pipes. Bosch’s hands went to their belts and yanked away the handcuffs. As the two IAD detectives were gulping air through their reopened throats Bosch managed to cuff Lewis’s left hand to Clarke’s right. Then, on the other side of the tree, he got Lewis’s right into the other set of cuffs. But Clarke realized what Bosch was doing and tried to stand up and pull away. Bosch grabbed his tie again and gave it a sharp yank down. Clarke’s head came forward and his face rammed the palm tree. He was momentarily stunned and Bosch slapped the last cuff on his wrist. Both IAD cops were wallowing on the ground then, locked to each other with the palm tree in the middle of the circle of their arms. Bosch unholstered their weapons, then stepped back to catch his own breath. He threw their guns onto the front seat of their car.
    “You’re dead,” Clarke finally managed to croak through his swollen throat.
    They worked their way up into standing positions, the palm tree between them. They looked like two grown men caught playing