The Drop

a transfer. I don’t care where you go but you’re out of OU. If you don’t do it, I’ll make it known what you did, how you sold out your own partner and your case for a piece of tail. Then you’ll be a pariah and nobody and no unit outside of IAD will take you. You’ll be outside looking in.”
    Bosch stood up and walked away. He heard Chu call his name weakly but he didn’t turn back around.

28

    M cQuillen was waiting with his arms folded on the table when Bosch reentered interview room 1. He checked his watch—apparently not realizing its importance to the coming conversation—and then looked up at Bosch.
    “Thirty-five minutes,” he said. “I thought you’d go over an hour easy.”
    Bosch sat down across from him, putting a thin green file on the table.
    “Sorry,” he said. “I had to bring a few people up-to-date on things.”
    “No problem. I called the job. They’ve got me covered for the whole night if necessary.”
    “Good. So I guess you know why you’re here. I was hoping we could have a conversation about Sunday night. I think that to protect you and to make this formal, I should let you know your rights. You’ve come here voluntarily but it’s my practice to always let people know where they stand.”
    “Are you saying I’m a murder suspect?”
    Bosch drummed his fingers on the file.
    “That’s a hard one to say. I need some answers from you and then I will make a conclusion about that.”
    Bosch opened the file and took out the top sheet. It was a rights waiver containing a printout of McQuillen’s constitutional protections, among them the right to have an attorney present during questioning. Bosch read it out loud and then asked McQuillen to sign it. He handed him a pen and the ex-cop-turned-cab-dispatcher signed without hesitation.
    “Now,” Bosch said, “are you still willing to cooperate and talk to me about Sunday evening?”
    “To a point.”
    “What point is that?”
    “I don’t know yet, but I know how this is done. It’s been a while but some things don’t change. You’re here to talk me into a jail cell. I’m only here because you have some wrong ideas and if I can help you without snagging my nuts on a rusty nail, then I will. That’s the point.”
    Bosch leaned back.
    “Do you remember me?” he asked. “Remember my name?”
    McQuillen nodded.
    “Of course. I remember everybody on the task force.”
    “Including Irvin Irving.”
    “Of course. Man at the top always gets the most attention.”
    “Well, I was the man at the bottom, so I didn’t have a lot of say. But for what it’s worth, I thought you got screwed. They needed to sacrifice somebody and it was you.”
    McQuillen clasped his hands together on the table.
    “All these years later, that doesn’t mean a thing to me, Bosch. So don’t bother trying the sympathy angle.”
    Bosch nodded and leaned forward. McQuillen wanted to play it hard. He was either smart enough or stupid enough to think he could go one-on-one without calling for a lawyer. Bosch decided to give him just want he wanted.
    “Okay, so let’s skip the foreplay, McQuillen. Why’d you throw George Irving off the hotel balcony?”
    A small smile played on McQuillen’s face.
    “Before we have this conversation I want some assurances.”
    “What assurances?”
    “No charges on the weapon. No charges on any of the small stuff I tell you about.”
    Bosch shook his head.
    “You said you know how it works. Then you know I can’t make deals like that. That’s the DA. I can tell them you’ve been cooperative. I can even ask them to give you a break. But I can’t make deals and I think you know that.”
    “Look, you’re here because you want to know what happened to George Irving. I can tell you. And I will, but not without these conditions.”
    “That being the gun and the small stuff, whatever the small stuff is.”
    “That’s right, just some bullshit stuff that happened along the way.”
    It didn’t make sense to Bosch. If McQuillen was going to admit to killing George Irving, then charges like carrying a concealed firearm were strictly collateral and expendable. That McQuillen was concerned about them told Bosch that he wasn’t going to admit to any culpability in Irving’s death.
    That made it a question of who was playing whom and Bosch had to make sure he came out on top.
    “All I can promise is that I’ll go to bat for you,” he said. “You tell me the story about Sunday night and if it’s the