The Black Echo

killed a man last year. He was a killer himself but that didn’t matter. According to the reports, you thought he was reaching under a pillow on the bed for a gun. Turned out he was reaching for his toupee. Almost laughable, but IAD found a witness who said she told you beforehand that the suspect kept his hair under the pillow. Since she was a street whore, her credibility was in question. It wasn’t enough to bounce you, but it cost you your position. Now you work Hollywood, the place most people in the department call the sewer.”
    Her voice trailed off. She was finished. Bosch didn’t say anything, and there was a long period of silence. The waitress cruised by the booth but knew better than to speak to them.
    “When you get back to the office,” he finally began, “you tell Rourke to make one more call. He got me off the case, he can get me back on.”
    “I can’t do it. He won’t do it.”
    “Yes, he’ll do it, and tell him he has until tomorrow morning to do it.”
    “Or what? What can you do? I mean, let’s be honest. With your record, you’ll probably be suspended by tomorrow. As soon as Pounds got off the phone with Rourke he probably called IAD, if Rourke didn’t do it himself.”
    “Doesn’t matter. Tomorrow morning I hear something, or tell Rourke he’ll be reading a story in the
Times
about how an FBI suspect in a major bank heist, a subject of FBI surveillance no less, was murdered right under the bureau’s nose, taking with him the answers to the celebrated WestLand tunnel caper. All the facts might not be right or in the correct order, but it will be close enough. More important than that, it will be a good read. And it’ll make waves all the way to D.C. It’ll be embarrassing and it’ll also be a warning to whoever did Meadows. You’ll never get them then. And Rourke will always be known as the guy who let them get away.”
    She looked at him, shaking her head as if she were above this whole mess. “It’s not my call. I’ll have to go back to him and let him decide what to do. But if it was me, I’d call your bluff. And I will tell you straight out that’s what I’ll tell him to do.”
    “It’s no bluff. You’ve checked me out, you know I’ll go to the media and the media will listen to me and like it. Be smart. You tell him it’s no bluff. I’ll have nothing to lose by doing it. He’ll have nothing to lose by bringing me in.”
    He began to slide out of the booth. He stopped and threw a couple of dollar bills on the table.
    “You’ve got my file. You know where you can reach me.”
    “Yes, we do,” she said, and then, “Hey, Bosch?”
    He stopped and looked back at her.
    “The street whore, was she telling the truth? About the pillow?”
    “Don’t they all?”

    ***

    Bosch parked in the lot behind the station on Wilcox and smoked right up until he reached the rear door. He killed the butt on the ground and went in, leaving behind the odor of vomit that wafted from the mesh windows at the rear of the station holding tank. Jerry Edgar was pacing in the back hall waiting for him.
    “Harry, we’ve got a forthwith from Ninety-eight.”
    “Yeah, what about?”
    “I don’t know, but he’s been coming out of the glass box every ten minutes looking for you. You got your beeper and the Motorola turned off. And I saw a couple of the IAD silks up from downtown go in there with him a while ago.”
    Bosch nodded without saying anything comforting to his partner.
    “What’s going on?” Edgar blurted. “If we’ve got a story, let’s get it straight before we go in there. You’ve had experience with this shit, not me.”
    “I’m not sure what’s going on. I think they’re kicking us off the case. Me, at least.” He was very nonchalant about the whole thing.
    “Harry, they don’t bring IAD in to do that. Something’s on, and, man, I hope whatever you did, you didn’t fuck me up, too.”
    Edgar immediately looked embarrassed.
    “Sorry, Harry, I didn’t mean it that way.”
    “Relax. Let’s go see what the man wants.”
    Bosch headed toward the detective squad room. Edgar said he’d cut through the watch office and then come in from the front hall so it wouldn’t look like they had collaborated on a story. When Bosch got to his desk, the first thing he noticed was that the blue murder book on the Meadows case was gone. But he also noticed that whoever had taken it had missed the cassette tape with the 911 call on it. Bosch picked up the cassette