The Drop

16

Because George Irving had maintained his legal practice and license with the California bar, getting a search warrant allowing the investigators access to his office and files took most of Tuesday afternoon and evening. The legal document was finally signed and issued by superior court judge Stephen Fluharty after a special master was appointed to review any documents that were viewed or seized by the police. The special master was an attorney himself and as such was not governed by the need for speed that homicide investigators working an active case were accustomed to. He set the time of the search for a leisurely 10 A.M. start on Wednesday.

Irving and Associates was housed in a two-room office on Spring Street across from the Los Angeles Times parking garage. That put George Irving just two blocks from City Hall. It also put his office even closer to the Police Administration Building. Bosch and Chu walked over Wednesday morning, arriving to find no police officer on the door and someone inside.

They entered and found a woman in her seventies in the front room, boxing files. She identified herself as Dana Rosen, George Irving’s office manager. Bosch had called her the evening before to make sure she would be on hand for the office search.

“Was there a police officer on the door when you arrived?” Bosch asked.

Rosen looked confused.

“No, there was no one.”

“Well, we weren’t supposed to start until the special master got here. Mr. Hadlow. He’s got to look at everything before we put it in boxes.”

“Oh, dear. These are my own files. Does that mean I can’t take them?”

“No, it means we just have to wait. Let’s put all of that down and step back outside. Mr. Hadlow should be here any minute.”

They moved out to the sidewalk and Bosch pulled the door closed. He asked Rosen to lock it with her key. He then pulled his phone and called Kiz Rider. He didn’t bother with a greeting.

“I thought you put a uniform on the door at Irving’s office.”

“I did.”

“Nobody’s here”

“I’ll call you back.”

Bosch closed his phone and appraised Dana Rosen. She was not what he had expected. She was a small and attractive woman but because of her age he dismissed her as a possible mistress of George Irving. Bosch had read that totally wrong with the widow. Dana Rosen could have been Irving’s mother.

“How long did you work for George Irving?” Bosch asked.

“Oh, a long time. I was with him at the City Attorney’s Office. Then when he left he offered me a job and I—”

She stopped when Bosch’s phone began to buzz. It was Rider.

“The watch commander at Central Division took it upon himself to redeploy the unit on the post at day watch roll call today. He thought that you had already been through the place.”

Bosch knew that meant the office was unguarded for nearly three hours, plenty of time for someone to get in ahead of them and remove files. His suspicions and anger rose in equal increments.

“Who is this guy?” he asked. “Is he connected to the councilman?”

Irvin Irving had been out of the department for years but still had connections to many officers he mentored or rewarded with promotions during his years in command staff.

“It’s a she,” Rider said. “Captain Grace Reddecker. As far as I can tell, it was a simple mistake. She’s not political — in that way.”

Meaning of course Reddecker was politically connected in the department — she would have to be to score a division command — but she didn’t play politics on a larger scale.

“She’s not one of Irving’s disciples?”

“No. Her rise came after he was gone.”

Bosch saw a man in a suit approaching them. He guessed it was the special master.

“I have to go,” he said to Rider. “I’ll deal with this later. I hope it’s like you said, just a mistake.”

“I think there’s nothing else to it, Harry.”

Bosch disconnected as the man on the sidewalk joined them. He was tall with reddish-brown hair and a golfer’s tan.

“Richard Hadlow?” Bosch asked.

“That would be me.”

Bosch made introductions and Rosen unlocked the office so they could enter. Hadlow was from one of the silk-stocking firms on Bunker Hill. The evening before, Judge Fluharty had enlisted him as a special master on a pro bono basis. No pay meant no delay. Hadlow had been leisurely about scheduling the search but now that they were there, he would be interested in getting it done quickly so he could get back to his paying clients. And that was fine with Bosch.

They moved into the offices and set a plan in motion. Hadlow would go to work on the office files, making sure there was no privileged content before turning them over to Chu for review. Meantime, Bosch would continue his discussion with Dana Rosen to determine what was important and timely in terms of Irving’s work.

Files and documentation were always valuable in an investigation but Bosch was smart enough to know that the most valuable thing in the office was Rosen. She could tell them the inside story.

While Hadlow and Chu went to work in the rear office, Bosch pulled the seat from the reception desk into position in front of a couch in the front room and asked Rosen to have a seat. He then locked the front door and the formal interview began.

“Is it Mrs. Rosen?” he asked.

“No, never been married. You can just call me Dana, anyway.”

“Well, Dana, why don’t we continue our conversation from the sidewalk. You were telling me that you had been with Mr. Irving since the City Attorney’s Office?”

“Yes, I was his secretary there before coming with him when he started Irving and Associates. So if you include that, it has been sixteen years.”

“And when he left the City Attorney’s Office you came with him right away?”

She nodded.

“We left the same day. It was a good deal. I was vested with the city so I got a pension when I retired, and then I came here. It was thirty hours a week. Nice and easy.”

“How involved were you in Mr. Irving’s work?”

“Not too much. He wasn’t here too much. I sort of just kept the files organized and everything neat and orderly. Answered the phone and took messages. He never took meetings here. Almost never.”

“Did he have a lot of clients?”

“He had a select few, actually. He charged a lot and people expected results. He worked hard for them.”

Bosch had his notebook out but so far had not jotted down a note.

“Who was he concentrating on lately?”

For the first time Rosen was not quick with her response. She had a confused look on her face.

“Am I to assume because of all these questions that George didn’t kill himself?”

“All I can tell you is that we are not assuming anything. It’s an open investigation and we haven’t made a finding in regard to his death. Until we do, we are trying to conduct a thorough investigation of all possibilities. Now, can you answer the question? Who was Mr. Irving concentrating his time on most recently?”

“Well, he had two clients that he was working with intensively. One was Western Block and Concrete and the other was Tolson Towing. But both those went to council vote last week. George got what he wanted in both cases and was now just coming up for air.”

Bosch wrote the names down.

“What did his work for those companies involve?” he asked.

“Western was bidding on the contract for the new parking garage at Parker Center. They got it. And Tolson was reapplying as OPG designee for Hollywood and Wilshire Divisions.”

The Official Police Garage designation would mean Tolson would continue to handle all towing called for by the LAPD in those two police divisions. A lucrative deal, just as he assumed the concrete pour on a parking garage would be. Bosch had heard or read that the new city garage would be six levels and was designed to service the overflow from all municipal buildings in the civic center.

“So these were his main clients as of late?” he asked.

“That’s right.”

“And they would have been happy with the results they got.”

“Absolutely. Western wasn’t even the low bidder and Tolson had strong competition this time. Plus a two-inch-thick complaint file to overcome. George had his work cut out for him but he came through.”

“And how did it work with his father being on the council? Wasn’t that a conflict of interest?”

Rosen nodded emphatically.

“Of course it was. That was why the councilman abstained from voting whenever one of George’s clients had business before the council.”

This seemed odd to Bosch. Having a father on the council seemed to give George Irving the inside edge. But if his father excused himself from voting on such matters, the edge disappeared.

Or did it?

Bosch assumed that even if the older Irving made a show of abstaining from voting, the other council members knew they could curry his favor for their own pet projects if they supported his son’s.

“What about clients who were unhappy with the work George did?” he asked Rosen.

She said she could not think of a client who was ever upset with George Irving’s efforts. Conversely, the companies competing with his clients for city contracts would be upset.

“Anything that you remember from these situations that Mr. Irving considered to be a threat?”

“Offhand, not that I know of.”

“You said Western Block and Concrete was not the low bidder on the garage. Who was?”

“A company called Consolidated Block Incorporated. They underbid just to try to get the contract. It happens a lot. But the city planners usually see through that. In this case, George helped them. The planning division recommended Western to the council.”

“And no threat came out of it? No bad blood?”

“Well, I doubt they were happy about it over at CBI but as far as I know, we didn’t hear anything. It was just business.”

Bosch knew that he and Chu would have to review both contracts and Irving’s work on them. But he decided to move on.

“What did Mr. Irving have coming up next on his work schedule?”

“There wasn’t a lot. He had been talking about slowing down a little bit. His son went away to college and George and his wife were going through the empty nest phase. I know George really missed his son. He was depressed about it.”

“So he had no active clients?”

“He was talking to people but he only had one under contract. That was Regent Taxi. They’re going to try to get the Hollywood franchise next year and they hired us back in May to work with them.”

Under Bosch’s questioning, Rosen explained that the city awarded geographic franchises for taxi service. The city was divided into six taxi zones. Each zone had two or three lease or franchise holders, depending on the population of the district. The franchising controlled where in the city a company could pick up fares. Of course, a taxi with a fare onboard could go anywhere instructed.

The designation allowed them to sit on taxi stands and at hotels or cruise for fares and take phone requests within their franchise zone only. Competition on the streets for fares was sometimes fierce. Competition for a franchise designation was equally so. Rosen explained that Regent Taxi already had a franchise in South L.A. but was seeking a more lucrative assignment in Hollywood.

“When was that going to come up?” Bosch asked.

“Not till after the new year,” Rosen said. “George was just getting started on the application.”

“How many franchises are given in Hollywood?”

“There are only two and they are two-year terms. They stagger them, so one comes up for renewal or reassignment every year. Regent has been waiting for this upcoming year because the current franchise holder coming up for renewal has problems and is vulnerable. George told the clients that their best shot was in the coming year.”

“What’s the name of the company that’s vulnerable?”

“Black and White. Better known as B and W.”

Bosch knew that there had been an issue a decade or so ago with B&W Taxi painting its cars so that they looked a little too much like police cars. The LAPD had complained and the company changed their design to a black and white checkerboard scheme. But he didn’t think this was what Rosen meant by the company’s being vulnerable.

“You said it has problems. What problems?”

“Well, for starters, they’ve had three DUIs in the last four months alone.”

“You mean cabdrivers driving drunk?”

“Exactly, and that’s the ultimate no-no. That doesn’t go over well with the city franchise board or the city council, as you can imagine. Who wants to vote for a company with that record? So George was pretty confident that Regent could get the franchise. They’ve got a clean record, plus they’re minority owned.”

And he had a father who was a powerful member of the city council, which appointed the members of the franchise board. Bosch was intrigued by this information because it all came down to money. Somebody making it and somebody losing it. That often played into the motivations for murder. He got up and stuck his head into the back room, telling Hadlow and Chu that he would want to take any files relating to the taxi franchise matter.

He then came back to Rosen and moved the interview back toward the personal side of things.

“Did George keep any personal files here?”

“Yes, he did. But they’re locked in the desk and I don’t have the key.”

From his pocket Bosch pulled the keys that had been taken from the Chateau’s valet and impounded along with Irving’s car.

“Show me.”

Bosch and Chu emerged from the office at noon and headed back to the PAB. Chu carried the box containing the files and other materials they had seized with Hadlow’s approval under the authority of the search warrant. This included the records pertaining to the most recent projects George Irving had been working on or planning, as well his personal files, which contained a number of insurance policies and a copy of a will that was dated only two months earlier.

As they walked, they discussed their next moves. They agreed that the rest of the day would be worked inside the PAB. They had several records to study concerning Irving’s projects and will. Reports were also overdue from Glanville and Solomon concerning their interview of the guest who checked in behind Irving at the Chateau Marmont and the canvasses conducted in the hotel and on the hillside neighborhood behind it.

“It’s time to start the murder book,” Bosch said.

It was one of his favorite things to do.