The Drop

goddamn Times had this information before I did. Before my son’s family did.”
    He stabbed a finger down on the table to hammer home his outrage. Luckily Bosch was seated on a swivel chair. This allowed him to calmly pivot and look at the faces across from him and at the head of the table. He said nothing in response, waiting for the power in the room to tell him to speak. That power was not Irvin Irving, no matter how hard he hit the table with his stubby finger.
    “Detective Bosch,” the chief finally said. “Tell us what you know about this.”
    Bosch nodded and swiveled back so that he was directly facing Irving.
    “First of all, I don’t know anything about the story in the paper. It didn’t come from me but it doesn’t surprise me. This investigation has been leaking like a sieve since day one. Whether it was coming out of the OCP or the city council staff or RHD doesn’t matter, the story is out there and it’s accurate. And I want to correct one thing the city councilman said. The victim’s immediate family was informed of our conclusions. The victim’s wife, in fact, provided the information that was most important to my partner and me in calling the death a suicide.”
    “Deborah?” Irving said. “She told you nothing.”
    “On the first day she told us nothing. That is correct. It was during a subsequent interview that she was more forthcoming about the details of her marriage and her husband’s life and work.”
    Irving leaned back, dragging a balled fist on the table.
    “I was informed by this office just yesterday that this was a homicide investigation, that there was evidence of assault on my son’s body prior to the fatal impact and that it was likely that there was a former or current police officer involved. Now today I pick up the paper and read something completely different. I read that it’s a suicide. You know what this is? This is a payback. And it’s a cover-up and I will formally petition the council for an independent review of your so-called investigation and I will ask the district attorney—whoever that may be after next month’s election—to also review the case and its handling.”
    “Irv,” the chief said. “You asked for Detective Bosch to be put on the case. You said let the chips fall and now you don’t like how they have fallen. So you want to investigate how it was investigated?”
    The chief went back long enough in the department to call the councilman by his first name. No one else in the room would even dare.
    “I chose him because I thought he had the integrity not to be swayed from the truth but what obviously has—”
    “Harry Bosch has more integrity than anybody I’ve ever met. Anybody in this room.”
    It was Chu and the whole room looked at him, shocked by his outburst. Even Bosch was taken aback.
    “We’re not going to get into personal attacks here,” the chief said. “We first want to—”
    “If there is an investigation of the investigation,” Bosch said, daring to cut the chief off, “it will most likely lead to your indictment, Councilman.”
    That stunned the group. But Irving recovered quickly.
    “How dare you!” he said, his eyes full of growing rage. “How dare you say such a thing about me in front of other people. I will have your badge for this! I have served this city for nearly fifty years and not once has anyone accused me of any impropriety. I am less than a month from being reelected to my seat for the fourth time and you won’t stop me or the will of the people who want me to represent them.”
    A silence followed, during which one of Irving’s aides opened a leather folder with a legal pad inside. He wrote something down on the pad and Bosch half-imagined it was Take Bosch’s badge .
    “Detective Bosch,” Rider said. “Why don’t you explain your statement?”
    It was said with a tone of shock and maybe even outrage, as if she were joining the defense of Irving’s reputation. But Bosch knew that she was giving him the entrée he needed to say what he wanted.
    “George Irving billed himself as a lobbyist, but he wasn’t really much more than a fixer and a bagman. He sold influence. He used his own connections as a former cop and assistant city attorney but his most notable connection was to his father, the city councilman. You wanted something? He could get it to his father. You wanted a concrete supply contract or a taxi franchise, George was the man to see because he could get it