The Drop

28

McQuillen 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 truth, I’m not going to be too worried about the small stuff. That’s the best I can do right now.”

“I guess I’ll just have to take you at your word on that, Bosch.”

“You have my word. Can we start?”

“We already did. And my answer is, I didn’t throw George Irving from the balcony at the Chateau Marmont. George Irving threw himself off the balcony.”

Bosch leaned back and drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

“Come on, McQuillen, how do you expect me to believe that? How do you expect anybody to believe that?”

“I don’t expect anything from you. I’m just telling you, I didn’t do it. You have the whole story wrong. You have a set of preconceived ideas, probably mixed around with a little bit of circumstantial evidence and you put it all together and come up with I killed the guy. But I didn’t and you can’t prove I did.”

“You hope I can’t prove it.”

“No, hope’s got nothing to do with it. I know you can’t prove it because I didn’t do it.”

“Let’s start at the beginning. You hate Irvin Irving for what he did to you twenty-five years ago. He hung you out to dry, destroyed your career, if not your life.”

“‘Hate’ is a difficult word. Sure, I’ve hated him in the past but it’s been a long time.”

“What about Sunday night? Did you hate him then?”

“I wasn’t thinking about him then.”

“That’s right. You were thinking about his son, George. The guy trying to take away your job this time. Did you hate George on Sunday night?”

McQuillen shook his head.

“I’m not going to answer that. I don’t have to. But no matter what I thought about him, I didn’t kill him. He killed himself.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“Because he told me he was going to.”

Bosch was ready for just about anything he thought McQuillen could parry with. But he wasn’t ready for that.

“He told you that.”

“That’s right.”

“When did he tell you that?”

“Sunday night. In his room. That’s what he was there for. He said he was going to jump. I got out of there before he did.”

Bosch paused again, mindful that McQuillen had had several days to prepare for this moment. He could have concocted an elaborate story that would cover all the facts. But in the file in front of him Bosch still had the photograph of the wound on George Irving’s shoulder blade. It was a game changer. McQuillen wouldn’t be able to explain it away.

“Why don’t you tell me your story and how you came to have this conversation with George Irving. And don’t leave anything out. I want the details.”

McQuillen took in a big breath and then slowly exhaled.

“You realize the risk I’m taking here? Talking to you? I don’t know what you have or think you have. I could tell you the God’s honest truth and you could twist it and use it to fuck me over. And I don’t even have a lawyer in the room.”

“It’s your call, Mark. You want to talk, then talk. You want a lawyer, we get you a lawyer and all talk ends. Everything ends and we play it that way. You were a cop and you’re smart enough to know how this really works. You know there’s only one way for you to get out of here and get home tonight. You gotta talk your way out.”

Bosch made a gesture with his hand, as though he was passing the choice to him. McQuillen nodded. He knew it was now or never. A lawyer would tell him to sit tight and keep quiet, let the police put up or shut up in the courtroom. Never give them something they don’t already have. And it was good advice but not always. Some things have to be said.

“I was in that room with him,” he said. “Sunday night. Actually, Monday morning. I went up there to see him. I was angry. I wanted. . I’m not sure what I wanted. I didn’t want to lose my life again and I wanted to. . scare him, I guess. Confront him. But—”

He pointed emphatically at Bosch.

“—he was alive when I left that room.”

Bosch realized that he now had enough on tape to arrest McQuillen and hold him on a murder charge. He had just admitted to being with the victim in the place from which Irving had been dropped. But Bosch showed no excitement. There was more to get here.

“Let’s go back,” he said. “Tell me how you knew George Irving was even in the hotel and where.”

McQuillen shrugged like the question was for a dummy.

“You know that,” he said. “Hooch Rollins told me. He dropped a fare there Sunday night and happened to see Irving going in. He told me because he’d heard me going on once in the break room about the Irvings. I held a staff meeting after the DUIs and told everybody, ‘This is what they’re doing and this is the guy behind it.’ Got his photo off Google, the little shit.”

“So Rollins told you he was going into the hotel. How’d you know he had a room and how’d you know which room it was?”

“I called the hotel. I knew they wouldn’t tell me his room for security reasons and I couldn’t ask to be transferred to the room. What was I going to say, ‘Dude, do you mind giving me your room number?’ No, so I called up and asked for the garage. Hooch had told me he saw him valeting his car, so I called the garage and said I was Irving and wanted them to check and see if I left my phone in the car. I said, You know my room number? Can you bring it up if you find it? And the guy said yes, you’re in seventy-nine and if I find the phone I’ll send it up. So there, I had his room.”

Bosch nodded. It was a clever plan. But it also showed some of the elements of premeditation. McQuillen was talking himself into a first-degree murder charge. All Bosch seemingly had to do was direct him with general questions and McQuillen provided the rest. It was a downhill path.

“I waited until the end of shift at midnight and went over there,” McQuillen said. “I didn’t want to be seen by anybody or any cameras. So I went around the hotel and found a fire escape ladder that was on the side. It went all the way up to the roof. But on each landing there was a balcony and I could climb off and take a break if I needed it.”

“Were you wearing gloves?”

“Yeah, gloves and coveralls I keep in the trunk. In my business you never know whether you’ll be crawling under a car or something. I thought if somebody saw me, I’d look like a maintenance guy.”

“You keep that stuff in the trunk? You’re a dispatcher.”

“I’m a partner, man. My name isn’t on the franchise with the city because I didn’t think we’d get the franchise way back when if they knew I was part of it. But I’ve got a third of the company.”

Which helped explain why McQuillen would go to such lengths with Irving. Another potential pothole in the case filled in by the suspect himself.

“So you took the fire escape to the seventh floor. What time was this?”

“I went off shift at midnight. So it was like twelve thirty or thereabouts.”

“What happened when you got to the seventh floor?”

“I got lucky. On the seventh floor, there wasn’t an exit. No door to the hallway. Just two glass doors on the balcony to two different rooms. One to the left and one to the right. I looked in the one on the right and there he was. Irving was sitting right there on the couch.”

McQuillen stopped. It looked as if he was staring at the memory of that night, at what he had seen through the balcony door. Bosch was mindful of needing to keep the story going but with as little from himself as possible.

“So you found him.”

“Yeah, he was just sitting there, drinking Jack Black straight outta the bottle and looking like he was just waiting for something.”

“Then what happened?”

“He took the last pull out of that bottle and all of a sudden he got up and he started coming right at me. Like he knew I was on the balcony watching him.”

“What did you do?”

“I backed up against the wall next to the door. I figured he couldn’t have seen me with the reflection inside on the glass. He was just coming out on the balcony. So I backed up next to the door and he opened it and stepped out. He walked right to the wall and he threw the empty bottle out there as far as he could. Then he leaned over the wall and started looking down, like he was going to puke or something. And I knew when he finished his business and turned around I was going to be standing right in front of him. There was no place to go.”

“Did he vomit?”

“No, he never did. He just—”

A loud and unexpected knock on the door nearly made Bosch jump off his seat.

“Just hold the story right there,” he said.

He got up and used his body to shield the knob from McQuillen. He punched in the combination on the lock and opened the door. Chu was standing there and Bosch almost reached out to strangle him. But he calmly stepped out and closed the door.

“What the fuck are you doing? You know you never barge in on an interview. What are you, a rookie?”

“Look, I wanted to tell you, I killed the story. She’s not running it.”

“That’s great. You could’ve told me after the interview was over. This guy’s about to give up the whole thing and you knock on the fucking door.”

“I just didn’t know if you were making moves with him because you thought the story was going to come out. It won’t now, Harry.”

“We’ll talk about it later.”

Bosch turned back to the interview room door.

“I’m going to make it up to you, Harry. I promise.”

Bosch turned back to him.

“I don’t care about your promises. You want to do something, stop knocking on the door and start working on a search warrant for this guy’s watch. When we send it to forensics I want it on a judge’s order.”

“You got it, Harry.”

“Good. Go away.”

Bosch punched in the combination, reentered the room and sat across from McQuillen.

“Something important?” McQuillen asked.

“No, just some bullshit. Why don’t you keep telling the story? You said Irving was on the balcony and—”

“Yeah, I was standing there behind him against the wall. As soon as he turned to go back in I was going to be like a sitting duck.”

“So what did you do?”

“I don’t know. Instinct took over. I made a move. I came up behind him and grabbed him. I started dragging him back into the room. All those houses on the hillside. I thought somebody might see us out there. I just wanted to get him back into the room.”

“You say you grabbed him. How exactly did you grab him?”

“Around the neck. I used the choke hold. Like old times.”

McQuillen looked directly at Bosch as he said it, as if passing on some sort of significance.

“Did he struggle? Did he put up any resistance?”

“Yeah, he was shocked as shit. He started fighting but he was sort of drunk. I backed him in through the door. He flopped around like a fucking marlin but it didn’t take long. It never did. He went to sleep.”

Bosch waited to see if he would continue but that was it.

“He was unconscious then,” he said.

“That’s right,” McQuillen said.

“What happened next?”

“He started breathing again pretty quick but he was asleep. I told you, he drank that whole bottle of Jack. He was snoring. I had to shake him and wake him up. He finally came to and he was drunk and confused and when he saw me he didn’t know me from Adam. I had to tell him who I was and why I was there. He was on the floor, sort of propped up on his elbow. And I was standing over him like God.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him he was fucking with the wrong guy and that I wasn’t going to let him do what his father had done to me. And that’s when things sort of went screwy because I didn’t know what he was going to do.”

“Wait a minute, I’m not tracking that. What do you mean by ‘things going screwy’?”

“He started laughing at me. I had just jumped the fucker and choked him out and he thinks it’s funny. I’m trying to scare the shit out of him and he’s too drunk. He’s on the floor laughing his ass off.”

Bosch thought about this a long moment. He didn’t like the way this was going because it was not in any direction he could have expected.

“Is that all he did, laugh? He didn’t say anything?”

“Yeah, eventually he got over laughing and that’s when he told me I didn’t have anything to worry about anymore.”

“What else?”

“That’s pretty much it. He said I had nothing to worry about and that I could go on home. He waved me off, like good-bye now.”

“Did you ask him how he was sure there was nothing to worry about?”

“I didn’t think I had to.”

“Why not?”

“Because I just sort of got it. He was there to off himself. When he went out on the balcony looking over the wall, he was picking his spot. His plan was to jump and he was drinking the Jack to give him the courage to do it. So I left and that’s. . that’s what he did.”

Bosch said nothing at first. McQuillen’s story was either an elaborate cover story or just strange enough to be true. There were elements of it that could be checked. The results of the blood-alcohol test were not in yet, but the mention of the bottle of Jack Daniel’s was new. There had been no sign of it on the video of Irving checking in. No witness had reported seeing him taking a bottle to his room.

“Tell me about the bottle of Jack,” he said.

“I told you, he drank it and then chucked it.”

“How big was it? Are you talking about a whole fifth?”

“No, no, smaller. It was a six-shooter.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It’s like a smaller flask bottle they put out. Holds a good six shots. I drink Jack myself and I recognized the bottle. We call ’em six-shooters.”

Bosch was thinking that six good-sized shots probably added up to ten or twelve ounces. It was possible Irving could have concealed a flask-shaped bottle that size while he was checking in. Harry also remembered the array of bottles and snacks lined up on the kitchenette counter in the hotel suite. It could have come from there as well.

“Okay, when he threw the bottle, what happened?”

“I heard it shatter out there in the darkness. I think it hit the street or somebody’s roof or something.”

“Which direction did he throw it?”

“Straight out.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay, sit tight, McQuillen. I’ll be back.”

Bosch got up, punched in the combo again and left the room. He started down the hall toward Open-Unsolved.

As he passed the video room, the door came open and Kiz Rider stepped out. She had been watching the interview. Bosch wasn’t surprised. She knew he was bringing McQuillen in.

“Holy shit, Harry.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, do you believe him?”

Bosch stopped and looked at her.

“The story hangs together and it’s got parts we can check. When he went into the interview room he had no idea what we had — the button on the floor, the wounds on the shoulder, the witness who put him on the fire escape three hours too early — and his story hit every marker.”

Rider put her hands on her hips.

“And at the same time, he puts himself in that room. He admits choking the vic out.”

“It was a risky move, putting himself in the dead guy’s room.”

“So you believe him?”

“I don’t know. There’s something else. McQuillen was a cop. He knows—”

Bosch stopped cold and snapped his fingers.

“What?”

“He’s covered by an alibi. That’s what he hasn’t said. Irving didn’t go down for another three or four hours. McQuillen’s got an alibi and he’s waiting to see if we jack him up. Because if we do, he can ride it out, then drop the alibi and walk. It would embarrass the department, maybe give him a little payback for all that happened to him.”

Bosch nodded. That had to be it.

“Look, Harry, we’ve already primed the pump. Irvin Irving’s expecting the announcement of an arrest. You said the Times already has it.”

“Fuck Irving. I don’t care what he’s expecting. And my partner claims we don’t have to worry about the Times.”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t know how but he got them to kill the story. Look, I need to put Chu on the Jack Daniel’s bottle and then get back in there and get the alibi.”

“All right, I’m going back up to ten. You call me as soon as you’re finished with McQuillen. I need to know where we stand.”

“You got it.”

Bosch went down the hall to Open-Unsolved and found Chu at his computer.

“I need you to check something. Did you release the room at the Chateau?”

“No, you didn’t tell me to so I—”

“Good. Call the hotel and see if they put bottles of Jack Daniel’s in their suites. I’m not talking about miniatures. Something bigger in a flask-size bottle. If they do, have them see if the bottle is missing from suite seventy-nine.”

“I put a seal on the door.”

“Have them cut it. When you’re finished with that, call the M.E. and see if the blood-alcohol on Irving has come back yet. I’m going back to McQuillen.”

“Harry, you want me to come in when I get this?”

“No, don’t come in. Just get it and wait for me.”

Bosch punched in the combo and opened the door. He swiftly moved back to his seat.

“Back so soon?” McQuillen asked.

“Yeah, I forgot something. I didn’t get the full story from you, McQuillen.”

“Yes, you did. I told you exactly what happened in that room.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me what happened after.”

“He jumped, that’s what happened after.”

“I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about you, what you did. You knew what he was going to do and rather than, say, pick up a phone and call somebody to try to stop it, you just shagged your ass on out of there and let him jump. But you were smart, you knew it could come back to you. That someone like me might show up.”

Bosch leaned back in his chair and appraised McQuillen and nodded.

“So you went and got yourself alibied.”

McQuillen kept a straight face.

“You came in here hoping we’d arrest you and then you’d eventually pop the alibi out there and embarrass the department for all the shit you got dragged through before. Maybe get a lawsuit for false arrest going. You were going to use Irving for some payback.”

McQuillen showed nothing. Bosch leaned forward and across the table.

“You might as well tell me because I’m not arresting you, McQuillen. I’m not giving you this play, no matter what I think of what was done to you twenty-five years ago.”

McQuillen finally nodded and flicked a hand as though to say, What the hell, it was worth a try.

“I had parked over at the Standard across Sunset. They know me there.”

The Standard was a boutique hotel a few blocks from the Chateau.

“Good customers of ours. Technically, that’s West Hollywood, so we can’t sit on the place but we’ve got the doormen wired. When a customer needs a cab, they call us. We always have a car sitting nearby.”

“So you went there after seeing Irving.”

“Yeah, they got a restaurant there called Twenty-four/Seven. It never closes and it’s got a camera over the counter. I went there and I never left that counter until the sun came up. You go get the disc and I’ll be on it. When Irving jumped, I was drinking hot coffee.”

Bosch shook his head like the story didn’t add up.

“How’d you know Irving wouldn’t jump before you got there — when you were still in the Chateau or walking over? What was that, fifteen minutes at least. That was risky.”

McQuillen shrugged.

“He was temporarily incapacitated.”

Bosch stared at him for a long moment until understanding came. McQuillen had choked Irving out again.

Bosch leaned across the table and stared hard at McQuillen.

“You put him to sleep again. You choked him out, made sure he was breathing and left him there snoring on the floor.”

Bosch remembered the alarm clock in the room.

“Then you went into the bedroom and brought the clock out. You plugged it in next to him on the floor and set the alarm for four A.M. to make sure he’d wake up. Just so he could jump while you were alibied at the Standard with your hot coffee.”

Another shrug from McQuillen. He was finished talking.

“You’re a hell of a guy, McQuillen, and you’re free to go.”

McQuillen nodded smugly.

“I appreciate that.”

“Yeah, well, appreciate this. For twenty-five years I thought you got a bad deal. Now I think maybe they got it right. You’re a bad guy and that means you were a bad cop.”

“You don’t know shit about me, Bosch.”

“I know this. You went up to that room to do something. You don’t climb the fire escape just to confront a guy. So I don’t care that you got a bad deal before. What I care about is that you knew what Irving was going to do and you didn’t try to stop it. Instead, you allowed it to happen. No, actually, you helped it happen. To me, that’s not small stuff. If it’s not a crime, then it should be. And when this is all over I’m going to hit up every prosecutor I know until I find one who will take it to the grand jury. You can walk out of here tonight, but the next time you won’t be so lucky.”

McQuillen kept nodding while Bosch spoke, as if he was impatiently allowing Bosch his final say. When Harry was finished, McQuillen was nonchalant in his response.

“Then I guess it’s good to know where I stand.”

“Sure. Glad to help with that.”

“How do I get back to B and W? You promised me a ride.”

Bosch got up from the table and headed to the door.

“Call a cab,” he said.