The Black Echo

Pounds talk to the subject?”
    “Yes sir,” Lewis said, wondering if Irving was taping the call. “The lieutenant said the, uh, subject has been told he is to work with the F-the bureau. They are consolidating the murder and the bank investigations. He is working with Special Agent Eleanor Wish.”
    “What’s his scam…?” Irving said, though no reply was expected, or offered by Lewis. There was silence on the phone line for a while because Lewis knew better than to interrupt Irving’s thoughts. He saw Clarke approaching the phone booth again and he waved him away and shook his head as if he were dealing with an impetuous child. The doorless phone booth was at the bottom of Woodrow Wilson Drive, next to the Barham Boulevard crossing over the Hollywood Freeway. Lewis heard the sound of a semi thunder by on the freeway and felt warm air blow into the booth. He looked up at the lights of the houses on the hillside and tried to pinpoint which one came from Bosch’s stilt house. It was impossible to tell. The hill looked like a giant, fat Christmas tree with too many lights.
    “He must have some kind of leverage on them,” Irving finally said. “He’s muscled his way into it. I’ll tell you what your assignment is. You two stay on him. Not so he knows. But stay with him. He is up to something. Find out what. And build your one point eighty-one case along the way. The Federal Bureau of Investigation may have withdrawn its complaint, but we will not back off.”
    “What about Pounds, you still want him copied?”
    “That is Lieutenant Pounds, Detective Lewis. And yes, copy him your daily surveillance log. That will be enough for him.”
    Irving hung up without another word.
    “Very good, sir,” Lewis said to the dead phone. He didn’t want Clarke to know he had been slighted. “We’ll stay with it. Thank you, sir. Good night.”
    Then he, too, hung up, privately embarrassed that his commander had not deemed it necessary to say good night to him. Clarke quickly walked up.
    “So?”
    “So we pick him up again tomorrow morning. Bring your piss bottle.”
    “That’s it? Just surveillance?”
    “At this time.”
    “Shit. I want to search that fucker’s house. Break some stuff. He’s probably got the shit from that heist sitting up there.”
    “If he was involved, I doubt he would be so stupid. We sit back for now. If he’s dirty on this, we’ll see.”
    “Oh, he’s dirty. Don’t worry.”
    “We’ll see.”

    ***

    Sharkey sat on the concrete block wall that fronted a parking lot on Santa Monica Boulevard. He closely watched the lighted front of the 7-Eleven across the street, checking out who was coming and who was going. Mostly tourist trade and couples. No singles yet. None that fit the bill. The boy called Arson sauntered over and said, “This ain’t going nowhere, budro.”
    Arson’s hair was red and waxed into spiky flames. He wore black jeans and a dirty black T-shirt. He was smoking a Salem. He wasn’t stoned but he was hungry. Sharkey looked at him and then past him to where the third boy, the one known as Mojo, sat on the ground near the bikes. Mojo was shorter and wider, with his black hair slicked back in a knob behind his head. Acne scars marked his face forever as sullen.
    “Give it a few more minutes,” Sharkey said.
    “I want to eat, man,” Arson said.
    “Well, what do you think I’m trying to do? We all want to eat.”
    “Maybe we could see how Bettijane’s doing,” Mojo said. “She’ll have made enough for us to eat.”
    Sharkey looked over at him and said, “You two go ahead. I’m staying till I score. I’m gonna eat.”
    As he said this he watched a maroon Jaguar XJ6 pull into the convenience store’s lot.
    “How about the guy in the pipe?” Arson asked. “You think they found him yet? We could go up there and check him out, see if there is any bread. I don’t know why you didn’t have the balls to do it last night, Shark.”
    “Hey, you go up there by yourself and check it out if you want,” Sharkey said. “See who has balls then.”
    He hadn’t told them that he had called 911 about the body. That would be harder for them to forgive than his fear of going into the pipe. A lone man got out of the Jaguar. He looked like late thirties, brush cut, baggy white slacks and shirt, sweater draped around his shoulders. Sharkey saw no one waiting in the car.
    “Hey, check out the Jag,” he said. The other two looked over at the store. “This is it.