The Drop

and angry, ready to put a paw out through the bars and take a swipe at the first thing that goes by.
    He got up and went over to Tim Marcia’s desk.
    “Is the L.T. in?”
    “Yeah, she’s in there.”
    “Can I go in? I need to give her an update.”
    “She’s all yours—if you can get her to open up.”
    Bosch knocked on the agoraphobic lieutenant’s door. After a pause, he heard Duvall give the okay and he went in. She was at her desk, working on the computer. She glanced up to see who it was but then finished typing something as she spoke.
    “What’s up, Harry?”
    “What’s up is that I’m going to be bringing in a body today on the Irving case.”
    This made her look up.
    “The plan is to get him to come in voluntarily. But if that doesn’t work, we’ll hook him up.”
    “Thanks for keeping me in the loop.”
    It was not said as a sincere thanks. Bosch had not updated her in twenty-four hours and a lot had happened in that time. He pulled out the chair in front of her desk and sat down. He gave her the short version, taking ten minutes to lead her up to the phone call from the reporter.
    “My bad for not keeping you updated,” he said. “Things have just been breaking quickly. The chief’s office is up to speed—I just spoke to his adjutant today at the funeral—and they’ll let the councilman know.”
    “Well, I guess I should be glad you kept me in the dark.
    Now I won’t be a suspect in the leak to the Times . Any idea about that?”
    “I’m assuming it was Irving or someone in his camp.”
    “But what does he get out of this? He’s not going to end up looking good here.”
    It was the first time Bosch had considered this. The lieutenant was right. Why would Irving leak a story that was ultimately going to taint him with, at minimum, the whiff of corruption? That didn’t make sense.
    “Good question,” Bosch said. “But I don’t have an answer. All I know is that it got across the street somehow.”
    Duvall glanced at the blinds that covered the window looking out at the Times Building. It was as if her paranoia about reporters watching had been confirmed. Bosch stood up. He had said what he needed to say.
    “What about backup, Harry?” Duvall asked. “You and Chu can handle this by yourselves?”
    “I think so. McQuillen won’t see us coming—and like I said, we want him to come voluntarily.”
    She thought about this and then nodded.
    “Okay, let me know. In a timely manner this time.”
    “Right.”
    “That means tonight.”
    “You got it.”
    Bosch went back to the cubicle. Chu still wasn’t back.
    Harry was consumed by the idea that the leak hadn’t come from the Irving camp. This left the chief’s office and the possibility that moves were being made that Kiz Rider didn’t know about, or that she was hiding from him. He went to his computer and opened up the Times website. In the search box he typed “Emily Gomez-Gonzmart” and hit return.
    Soon he had a page full of citations—the headlines of stories that carried the reporter’s byline in reverse chronological order. He started scrolling through, reading the headlines, and quickly came to the conclusion that GoGo did not cover politics or city government. There were no stories in the last year that put her in proximity to Irvin or George Irving. She appeared to be a feature writer who specialized in crime stories. The day-later kind of stories in which she expanded on a crime, reporting on victims and their families. Bosch clicked on a few of these, read the opening paragraphs and then went back to the list.
    He scrolled backwards through more than three years of stories, not seeing anything that would connect Gomez-Gonzmart to anyone involved in the George Irving case. And then a headline from early 2008 caught his eye.

    Triads Exact Toll on Local Chinese

    Bosch opened the story. It was an anecdotal lead about an old woman who owned an apothecary store in Chinatown and who had been paying a monthly protection fee to a Triad boss for more than thirty years. The story then widened into a report on the cultural history of local small-business owners continuing the age-old, Hong Kong–based tradition of paying Triad crime syndicates for protection. The story was spawned by the then-recent murder of a Chinatown landlord that was suspected to have been a Triad hit.
    Bosch froze when he got to the ninth paragraph of the story.

“The Triads are alive and well in L.A.,” said Detective David Chu, a