The Drop

and they pull up and pull ’im outta the car. He refuses to blow but then they find the bottle under the seat and he’s toast. That bottle, man, is always under there. It stays in that car and nobody be driving drunk. You take a couple sips a night to make yourself right. But everybody wants to know how those officers knew about that bottle, you know?”
    Bosch sat back in his chair and tried to follow and decipher what had been said. Chu came back in and put a can of Coke down in front of Rollins. He then took a seat at the corner of the table and to Bosch’s right.
    “This conspiracy to set you guys up, who’s behind it? Who’s running it?”
    Rollins raised his hands in a gesture meant to say Isn’t it obvious?
    “It’s the councilman and he just lets his son do the dirty work and run things. I mean, he did. Now he’s dead.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “I seen it in the paper. E’rybody knows that.”
    “Did you ever see the son before? In person?”
    Rollins didn’t speak for a long moment. His mind was probably working, dancing around the trap being set for him. He decided not to lie.
    “For like ten seconds. I was on a drop Sunday at the Chateau and saw him going in. That was it.”
    Bosch nodded.
    “How did you know who he was?”
    “Because I seen a picture of him.”
    “Where? The newspaper?”
    “No, somebody had a picture of him after we got the letter.”
    “What letter?”
    “B and W, man. We got a copy of a letter from the Irving guy telling the city people that they were coming after our ticket. They were going to shut us down. Somebody Googled the motherfucker in the office. They got his picture and showed it around. It was on the bulletin board with the letter. They wanted us drivers to know what was up and what was at stake. That this guy was leading the charge against us and we better shape up and fly straight.”
    Bosch understood the strategy.
    “So you recognized him when you pulled into the Chateau Marmont on Sunday night.”
    “Damn right. I knew he was the asshole tryin’ to run us out of business.”
    “Have some Coke.”
    Bosch needed to break momentum to think about this. While Rollins opened the can and started to drink, Harry thought of the next set of questions. There were a number of things going on here that he had not seen coming.
    Rollins took a long drink and put the can down.
    “When did you get off shift Sunday night?” Bosch asked.
    “I didn’t. I need doubles on account of my girl’s about to drop a kid without no insurance. I took a second shift just like I’m doing today and worked on through to the light a day. That would be Monday.”
    “What were you wearing that night?”
    “What is this shit, man? You said I’m not a suspect.”
    “You’re not as long as you keep answering questions. What were you wearing, Hooch?”
    “My usual thing. Tommy Bahama and my cargoes. You sit in a car sixteen hours and you want to be comfortable.”
    “What color was the shirt?”
    He gestured to his chest.
    “This is the shirt.”
    It was bright yellow with a surfboard design on it. Bosch was pretty sure of one thing. It was a Tommy Bahama knockoff, not the real thing. Either way, it seemed to him to be a stretch to consider the shirt gray. Unless Rollins had changed clothes, he wasn’t the man on the fire escape ladder.
    “So who did you tell that you had seen Irving at the hotel?” Bosch asked.
    “No one.”
    “Are you sure about that, Hooch? You don’t want to start lying to us. That would make it tough for us to let you go.”
    “Nobody, man.”
    Bosch could tell by the sudden lack of eye contact that Rollins was lying.
    “That’s too bad, Hooch. I figured you were smart enough to know we wouldn’t ask a question we didn’t already know the answer to.”
    Bosch stood up. He reached under his jacket and pulled his handcuffs off his belt.
    “I only told my shift supervisor,” Rollins said quickly. “Just like in passing. On the radio. I said, Guess who I just saw. Like that.”
    “Yeah, and did he guess it was Irving?”
    “No, I had to tell him. But that was it.”
    “Did your shift supervisor ask where you just saw Irving?”
    “No, he knew ’cause I had called in my twenty on the drop-off. He knew where I was.”
    “What else did you tell him?”
    “That was it. Just that, like conversation.”
    Bosch paused to see if anything else would come out. Rollins was silent, his eyes holding on the cuffs in Bosch’s