Angels Flight

Chapter 37

OUTSIDE of Parker Center there was a candlelight vigil and a funeral procession. Two cardboard caskets – one marked JUSTICE, the other marked HOPE -were being carried aloft by the crowd as they marched back and forth across the front plaza. Others carried signs that said JUSTICE FOR PEOPLE OF ALL COLORS and JUSTICE FOR SOME IS JUSTICE FOR NONE. Above news helicopters circled and on the ground there were at least six news crews that Bosch could see. It was getting close to eleven and all of them were getting ready to put out live reports from the protest front.

At the front door a phalanx of cops in uniforms and riot helmets stood ready to defend the police headquarters if the crowd turned from peaceful demonstration to violence. In 1992 a peaceful demonstration had turned violent and the mob roamed downtown destroying everything in its path. Bosch hurried toward the lobby doors, skirting behind the procession of protesters and through a crack in the human defense line, after holding his badge up high over his head.

Inside, he passed the front counter, which had four cops behind it, also wearing helmets, and went through the elevator lobby and took the stairwell. He went down to the basement level and then followed the hallway to the evidence storage center. He realized as he went through the door into evidence that he hadn’t passed a soul since the front counter. The place seemed empty. Under the emergency response plan, all available hands of the A shift were out on the street.

Bosch looked through the wire-mesh window but didn’t recognize the man on duty. He was an old vet with a white mustache on a face flushed with gin blossoms. They moved a lot of the old broken-down ones to the basement. This one got off his stool and came to the window.

“So what’s the weather like outside? I don’t have no windows in here.”

“The weather? It’s partly cloudy with a chance of riots.”

“I figured. Tuggins still got his crowd out front?”

“They’re there.”

“Yeah, the mutts. Wonder how’d they’d like it if there were no coppers around. See how they’d like life in the jungle then.”

“That’s not their point. They want police. They just don’t want cops that are killers. Can you blame ’em for that?”

“Yeah, well some people need killing.”

Bosch had nothing to say to that. He didn’t even know why he was parrying with this old dog. He looked down at his nameplate. It said HOWDY. Bosch almost laughed. Something about seeing the unexpected name cracked through the tension and anger that had been twisting him all night.

“Fuck you. It’s my name.”

“Sorry. I’m not laughing at – it’s something else.”

“Sure.”

Howdy pointed over Bosch’s shoulder at a little counter with forms on it and pencils tied to strings.

“You want something you gotta fill out the form with the case number.”

“I don’t know the case number.”

“Well, we must have a couple million in here. Why don’t you take a wild guess?”

“I want to see the log.”

The man nodded.

“Right. You the one Garwood sent over?”

“That’s right.”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

Bosch didn’t answer. Howdy reached below the window to someplace Bosch couldn’t see. Then he came up with a clipboard and put it into the pass-through slot beneath the wire mesh.

“How far back you want to look?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” Bosch said. “I think just a couple days will do it.”

“There’s a week on there. That’s all the sign outs. You want sign outs not sign ins, right?”

“Right.”

Bosch took the clipboard over to the forms counter so he could look at it without Howdy watching what he was doing. He found what he was looking for on the top page. Chastain had checked out an evidence box at seven that morning. Bosch grabbed one of the sign-out forms and a pencil and started filling it out. He noticed as he wrote that the pencil was a Black Warrior No. 2, the first choice of the LAPD.

He took the clipboard and form back to the window and slid them through the slot.

“That box might still be on the go-back cart,” he said. “It was just checked out this morning.”

“No, it will be back in place. We run a tight ship” – he looked down at the form and the name Bosch had filled out – “Detective Friendly.”

Bosch nodded and smiled.

“I know you do.”

Howdy walked over and got on a golf cart and then drove away into the bowels of the huge storage room. He was gone less than three minutes before the cart came back into view and he parked it. He carried a pink box with tape on it over to the window, unlocked the mesh window gate and passed the box over to Bosch.

“Detective Friendly, huh? They send you around to the schools to talk to the kids, tell ’em to say no to drugs, stay out of the gang, shit like that?”

“Something like that.”

Howdy winked at Bosch and closed the window gate. Bosch took the box over to one of the partitioned cubicles so he could look through its contents privately.

The box contained evidence from a closed case, the investigation of the shooting of Wilbert Dobbs five years earlier by Detective Francis Sheehan. It had fresh tape sealing it, having just been signed out that morning. Bosch used a little knife he kept on his key chain to cut the tape and open the box. The process of unsealing the box actually took longer than it did for him to find what he was looking for inside it.

• • •

Bosch opened his briefcase after getting to his car and looked through all the paperwork until he found the call-out sheet he’d had put together on Saturday morning. He called Chastain’s pager and punched in the number of his cell phone. He then sat in the car for five minutes, waiting for the callback and watching the protest march. As he watched, several of the television crews broke away from their positions and hurried with their equipment toward their vans and he realized that the helicopters were already gone. He sat up straight in his seat. His watch said ten minutes to eleven. He knew that if the media were leaving all at once, and before making their broadcasts, then something must have happened – something big. He flipped on the radio, which was already tuned to KFWB, and caught the middle of a report being delivered in an urgent, quavering voice.

“-out of the truck, then the beating began. Several bystanders attempted to stop the attack but initially the angry mob of youths held them back. The firefighters were pulled into separate knots of attackers and were being assaulted until a platoon of LAPD units stormed the intersection and rescued the victims, who were pulled into the patrol cars and then driven away – to receive medical attention, we assume, at nearby Daniel Freeman Hospital. The fire engine, left behind, had been set ablaze after the mob unsuccessfully tried to turn it over. The police quickly established a perimeter in the area and calmed things. While some of the attackers were arrested, several escaped into the residential neighborhoods bordering Normandie Boul- ”

Bosch’s phone began ringing. He cut off the radio and flipped the phone open.

“Bosch.”

“It’s Chastain, what do you want?”

Bosch could hear lots of voices and radio squawking in the background. Chastain wasn’t at home.

“Where are you? We have to talk.”

“Not tonight. I’m on duty. Twelve and twelves, remember?”

“Where are you?”

“In wonderful south L.A.”

“You’re A shift? I thought all detectives were B shift.”

“All except IAD. We got the shaft – night shift. Listen, Bosch, I’d love to talk about the schedule but – ”

“Where are you? I’ll come to you.”

Bosch turned the car’s ignition and started backing out of his spot.

“I’m at the Seventy-seventh.”

“I’m on my way. Meet me out front in fifteen minutes.”

“Forget it, Bosch. I’ll be swamped. I’m on arrest processing and I hear they’re bringing in a dozen mooks who just attacked a fire truck, for chrissakes. These guys were trying to put out a fire in their neighborhood and these animals go after them. I tell you, it’s un-fucking believable.”

“It never is believable. Be out front in fifteen minutes, Chastain.”

“You’re not listening to me, Bosch. Things are going to hell out there and Big Blue is about to put down the boots on it. I don’t have time to talk. I have to get ready to put people in jail. You want me to stand out front like a target for some mook with a gun? What is this about, Bosch?”

“Frank Sheehan.”

“What about him?”

“Fifteen minutes. Be out there, Chastain, or I’ll come find you. You won’t want that.”

Chastain started another protest but Bosch closed the phone.