The Black Echo

tunnels. I was over there, though, till the very end. What a shame.”
    “What was the shame, that it ended?”
    Rourke eyed him a long moment, and Bosch saw red spread across his face from the point where his dark eyebrows knitted together. Rourke was a very pale man with a sallow face that gave the impression he was sucking on a sourball. He was a few years older than Bosch. They were the same height but Rourke had more weight on his frame. To the bureau’s traditional uniform of blue blazer and light-blue button-down shirt, he had added a red power tie.
    “Look, detective, you don’t have to like me, that’s fine,” Rourke said. “But, please, work with me on this. We want the same thing.”
    Bosch gave in for the time being.
    “What is it that you want me to do? Tell me exactly. Am I just along for the ride or do you really want my work?”
    “Bosch, you are supposedly a top-notch detective. Show us. Just follow your case. Like you said yesterday, you find who killed Meadows and we find who ripped off WestLand. So, yes, we want your best work. Proceed as you normally would but with Special Agent Wish as your partner.”
    Rourke walked away and out of the squad. Bosch figured he must have his own office somewhere off the quiet hallway. He turned to Wish’s desk and picked up the stack of files. He said, “Okay then, let’s go.”

    ***

    Wish signed out a bureau car and drove while Bosch looked through the stack of military files on his lap. He noticed his own was on top. He glanced at some of the others and recognized only Meadows’s name.
    “Where to?” Wish asked as she pulled out of the garage and took Veteran Avenue up to Wilshire.
    “Hollywood,” he said. “Is Rourke always such a stiff?”
    She turned east and smiled one of those smiles that made Bosch wonder whether she and Rourke had something going on.
    “When he wants,” she said. “He’s a good administrator, though. He runs the squad well. Always has been the leader type, I guess. I think he said he was in charge of a whole outfit or something when he was with the army. Over there in Saigon.”
    No way there was anything between them, he thought then. You don’t defend your lover by calling him a good administrator. There was nothing there.
    “He’s in the wrong business for administrating,” Bosch said. “Go up to Hollywood Boulevard, the neighborhood south of the Chinese theater.”
    It would take fifteen minutes to get there. He opened the top file-it was his own-and began looking through the papers. Between a set of psychiatric evaluation reports he found a black-and-white photo, almost like a mug shot, of a young man in uniform, his face unlined by age or experience.
    “You looked good in a crew cut,” Wish said, interrupting his thoughts. “Reminded me of my brother when I saw that.”
    Bosch looked at her but didn’t say anything. He put the photo down and went back to roaming through the documents in the file, reading snatches of information about a stranger who was himself.
    Wish said, “We were able to find nine men with Vietnam tunnel experience living in Southern California. We checked them all out. Meadows was the only one we really moved up to the level of suspect. He was a hype, had the criminal record. He also had a history of working in tunnels even after he came back from the war.” She drove in silence for a few minutes while Bosch read. Then she said, “We watched him a whole month. After the burglary.”
    “What was he doing?”
    “Nothing that we could tell. He might have been doing some dealing. We were never sure. He’d go down to Venice to buy balloons of tar about every three days. But it looked like it was for personal consumption. If he was selling, no customers ever came. No other visitors the whole month we watched. Hell, if we could prove he was selling, we would have popped him and then had something decent to scam him with when we talked about the bank job.”
    She was quiet again for a moment, then in a tone that Bosch thought was meant more to convince herself than him said, “He wasn’t selling.”
    “I believe you,” he said.
    “You going to tell me what we’re looking for in Hollywood?”
    “We’re looking for a wit. A possible witness. How was Meadows living during the month you watched? I mean, moneywise. How’d he get money to go down to Venice?”
    “Near as we could tell, he was on welfare and had a VA disability check. That’s it.”
    “Why did you call it off