The Overlook

TWELVE

ON THE WAY BACK DOWN the hill to the freeway Ferras was silent and Bosch knew he had to be thinking about the jeopardy his young and promising career had been placed in because of his old and reckless partner’s actions. Bosch tried to draw him out of it.

“Well, that was a bust,” he said. “I got nada. You find anything in the office?”

“Nothing much. I showed you, the computer was gone.”

There was a sullen tone in his voice.

“What about the desk?” Bosch asked.

“It was mostly empty. One drawer had tax returns and stuff like that. Another had a copy of a trust. Their house, an investment property in Laguna, insurance policies, everything like that is held in a trust. Their passports were in the desk, too.”

“Got it. How much the guy make last year?”

“A quarter million take-home. He also owns fifty-one percent of the company.”

“The wife make anything?”

“No income. Doesn’t work.”

Bosch grew quiet as he contemplated things. When they got down off the mountain he decided not to get on the freeway. Instead he took Cahuenga to Franklin and turned east. Ferras was looking out the passenger-side window but quickly noticed the detour.

“What’s going on? I thought we were going downtown.”

“We’re going to Los Feliz first.”

“What’s in Los Feliz?”

“The Donut Hole on Vermont.”

“We just ate an hour ago.”

Bosch checked his watch. It was almost eight and he hoped he wasn’t too late.

“I’m not going for the doughnuts.”

Ferras cursed and shook his head.

“You’re going to talk to the Man?” he asked. “Are you kidding?”

“Unless I missed him already. If you’re worried about it you can stay in the car.”

“You’re jumping about five links in the chain, you know. Lieutenant Gandle is going to have our asses for this.”

“He’ll have my ass. You stay in the car. It will be like you weren’t even there.”

“Except what one partner does, the other always gets equal blame for. You know that. That’s how it works. That’s why they call them partners, Harry.”

“Look, I’ll take care of it. There’s no time to go through proper channels. The chief should know what is what and I’m going to tell him. He’ll probably end up thanking us for the heads-up.”

“Yeah, well, Lieutenant Gandle won’t be thanking us.”

“Then I’ll deal with him, too.”

The partners drove the rest of the way in silence.

The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the most insular bureaucracies in the world. It had survived for more than a century by rarely looking outward for ideas, answers or leaders. A few years earlier, when the city council decided that after years of scandal and community upset it required leadership from outside the department, it was only the second time in the LAPD’s long history that the position of chief of police was not filled by promoting from within the ranks. Subsequently, the outsider who was brought in to run the show was viewed with tremendous curiosity, not to mention skepticism. His movements and habits were documented and the data was all dumped into an informal police pipeline that connected the department’s ten thousand officers like the blood vessels in a closed fist. The intelligence was passed around in roll calls and locker rooms, text messages to and from patrol car computers, e-mails and phone calls, at cop bars and backyard barbecues. It meant street officers in South L.A. knew what Hollywood premiere the new chief had attended the night before. Vice officers in the Valley knew where he took his dress uniforms to be pressed and the gang detail in Venice knew what supermarket his wife liked to shop at.

It also meant that Detective Harry Bosch and his partner Ignacio Ferras knew what doughnut shop the chief stopped at for coffee every morning on his way into Parker Center.

At 8 a.m. Bosch pulled into the parking lot of the Donut Hole but saw no sign of the chief’s unmarked car. The business was an aptly named establishment in the flats below the hillside neighborhoods of Los Feliz. Bosch killed the engine and looked over at his partner.

“You staying?”

Ferras was looking straight ahead through the windshield. He nodded without looking at Bosch.

“Suit yourself,” Bosch said.

“Listen, Harry, no offense but this isn’t working. You don’t want a partner. You want a gofer and somebody who doesn’t question anything you do. I think I’m going to talk to the lieutenant about hooking me up with someone else.”

Bosch looked at him and composed his thoughts.

“Ignacio, it’s our first case together. Don’t you think you should give it some time? That’s all Gandle’s going to tell you. He’s going to tell you that you don’t want to start out in RHD with a reputation as a guy who cuts and runs on his partner.”

“I’m not cutting and running. It’s just not working right.”

“Ignacio, you’re making a mistake.”

“No, I think it would be best. For both of us.”

Bosch stared at him for a long moment before turning to the door.

“Like I said, suit yourself.”

Bosch got out and headed toward the doughnut shop. He was disappointed in Ferras’s reaction and decisions but knew he should cut him some slack. The guy had a kid on the way and needed to play it safe. Bosch was not one to ever play it safe and it had lost him more than a partner in the past. He would take another shot at changing the young man’s mind once the case settled down.

Inside the shop Bosch waited in line behind two people and then ordered a black coffee from the Asian man behind the counter.

“No doughnut?”

“No, just coffee.”

“Cappuccino?”

“No, black coffee.”

Disappointed with the meager sale, the man turned to a brewer on the back wall and filled a cup. When he turned back around, Bosch had his badge out.

“Has the chief been in yet?”

The man hesitated. He had no idea about the intelligence pipeline and was unsure about responding. He knew he could lose a high-profile customer if he spoke out of turn.

“It’s all right,” Bosch said. “I’m supposed to meet him here. I’m late.”

Bosch tried to smile as though he was in trouble. It didn’t come out right and he stopped.

“He not here yet,” the counterman said.

Relieved he hadn’t missed him, Bosch paid for the coffee and put the change in the tip jar. He went to an empty table in the corner. It was mostly a takeout operation at this time of morning. People grabbing fuel on their way into work. For ten minutes Bosch watched a cross section of the city’s culture step up to the counter, all united by the addiction to caffeine and sugar.

Finally, he saw the black Town Car pull in. The chief was riding in the front passenger seat. Both he and the driver got out. Both scanned their surroundings and headed toward the doughnut shop. Bosch knew the driver was an officer and served as a bodyguard as well.

There was no line at the counter when they came in.

“Hiyou, Chief,” the counterman said.

“Good morning, Mr. Ming,” the chief responded. “I’ll have the usual.”

Bosch stood up and approached. The bodyguard, who was standing behind the chief, turned and squared himself in Bosch’s direction. Bosch stopped.

“Chief, can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Bosch asked.

The chief turned and did a double take when he recognized Bosch and realized he wasn’t a citizen wanting to make nice. For a moment Bosch saw a frown move across the man’s face-he was still dealing with some of the fallout from the Echo Park case-but then it quickly disappeared into impassivity.

“Detective Bosch,” he said. “You’re not here to give me bad news, are you?”

“More like a heads-up, sir.”

The chief turned away to accept a cup of coffee and a small bag from Ming.

“Have a seat,” he said. “I have about five minutes and I’ll pay for my own coffee.”

Bosch went back to the same table as the chief paid for his coffee and doughnuts. He sat down and waited while the chief took his purchase to another counter and put cream and sweetener into his coffee. Bosch believed that the chief had been good for the department. He had made a few missteps politically and some questionable choices in command staff assignments but had largely been responsible for raising the morale of the rank and file.

That was no easy task. The chief had inherited a department operating under a federal consent decree negotiated in the wake of the FBI’s Rampart corruption probe and myriad other scandals. All aspects of operation and performance were subject to review and compliance assessment by federal monitors. The result was that the department was not only answering to the feds but was awash in federal paperwork. Already an undersized department, it was hard sometimes to see where any police work was getting done. But under the new chief the rank and file had somehow pulled together to get the job done. Crime stats were even down, which to Bosch meant there was a good possibility that actual crime was down as well-he viewed crime statistics with suspicion.

But all of that aside, Bosch liked the chief for one overarching reason. Two years earlier he had given Bosch his job back. Bosch had retired and gone private. It didn’t take him long to realize it was a mistake and when he did, the new chief welcomed him back. It made Bosch loyal and that was one reason he was forcing the meeting at the doughnut shop.

The chief sat down across from him.

“You’re lucky, Detective. Most days I would have been here and gone an hour ago. But I worked late last night hitting Crime Watch meetings in three parts of the city.”

Rather than open his doughnut bag and reach in, the chief tore it down the middle so he could spread it and eat his two doughnuts off it. He had a powdered-sugar and a chocolate-glazed.

“Here’s the most dangerous killer in the city,” he said as he raised the chocolate-glazed doughnut and took a bite.

Bosch nodded.

“You’re probably right.”

Bosch smiled uneasily and tried an icebreaker. His old partner Kiz Rider had just come back to work after recovering from gunshot wounds. She transferred out of Robbery-Homicide to the chief’s office, where she had worked once before.

“How’s my old partner doing, Chief?”

“Kiz? Kiz is good. She does fine work for me and I think she’s in the right spot.”

Bosch nodded again. He did that a lot.

“Are you in the right spot, Detective?”

Bosch looked at the chief and wondered if he might already be questioning his jumping the chain of command. Before he could work up an answer the chief asked another question.

“Are you here about the Mulholland overlook case?”

Bosch nodded. He assumed that the word had gone up the pipe from Lieutenant Gandle and that the chief had been briefed in some detail about the case.

“I work out for an hour every morning just so I can eat this stuff,” the chief said. “The overnights are faxed to me and I read them on the recumbent bike. I know you caught the overlook case and it’s got federal interest. Captain Hadley also called me this morning. He said there is a terrorism angle.”

Bosch was surprised to learn that Captain Done Badly and the OHS were already in the picture.

“What is Captain Hadley doing?” he asked. “He hasn’t called me.”

“The usual. Checking our own intelligence, trying to open lines with the feds.”

Bosch nodded.

“So, what can you tell me, Detective? Why did you come here?”

Bosch gave him a fuller rundown on the case, accenting the federal involvement and what was looking like an effort to shut the LAPD out of its own investigation. Bosch acknowledged that the missing cesium was a priority and true cause for the feds to throw their weight around. But he said the case was a homicide, and that cut the LAPD in. He went over the evidence he had collected and laid out some of the theories he had been con-sidering.

The chief had consumed both doughnuts by the time Bosch was finished. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and then checked his watch before responding. They were well past the five minutes he had initially offered.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked.

Bosch shrugged.

“Not much. I just had a little dustup with an agent at the victim’s house but I don’t think anything will come of it.”

“Why isn’t your partner in here? Why is he waiting in the car?”

Bosch understood. The chief had seen Ferras when he scanned the lot upon his arrival.

“We’re having a little bit of a disagreement on how to proceed. He’s a good kid but he wants to roll over for the feds a little too easy.”

“And of course we don’t do that in the LAPD.”

“Not in my time, Chief.”

“Did your partner think it was appropriate to ignore the department’s chain of command by coming directly to me with this?”

Bosch dropped his eyes to the table. The chief’s voice had taken on a stern tone.

“As a matter of fact he wasn’t happy about it, Chief,” Bosch said. “It wasn’t his idea. It was mine. I just didn’t think there was enough time to-”

“Doesn’t matter what you thought. It’s what you did. So if I were you I would keep this meeting to yourself and I will as well. Don’t ever do it this way again, Detective. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, clear.”

The chief glanced toward the glass display case where the doughnuts were lined up on trays.

“And by the way, how did you know that I would be here?” he asked.

Bosch shrugged.

“I don’t remember. I just sort of knew.”

He then realized that the chief might be thinking that Bosch’s source was his old partner.

“It wasn’t Kiz, if that’s what you mean, Chief,” he said quickly. “It’s just something that gets known, you know? Word gets around the department.”

The police chief nodded.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “I liked this place. Convenient, good doughnuts and Mr. Ming takes care of me. What a shame.”

Bosch realized that the chief would now have to change his routine. It did not serve him well if it was known where he could be found and when.

“Sorry, sir,” Bosch said. “But if I might make a recommendation. There’s a place in the Farmer’s Market called Bob’s Coffee and Doughnuts. It’s a bit out of the way for you but the coffee and doughnuts would be worth it.”

The chief nodded thoughtfully.

“I’ll keep it in mind. Now, what is it you want from me, Detective Bosch?”

Bosch decided that the chief obviously wanted to get down to business.

“I need to take the case where it goes and to do that I need access to Alicia Kent and her husband’s partner, a guy named Kelber. The feds have them both and I think my window of access closed about five hours ago.”

After a pause, Bosch got to the point of the whole unscheduled meeting.

“That’s why I’m here, Chief. I need access. I figure you can get it for me.”

The chief nodded.

“Besides my position in the department, I sit on the Joint-Terrorism Task Force. I can make some calls, raise some hell and probably open the window. As I said before, we have Captain Hadley’s unit on this already and perhaps he can open up the channels of communication. We have been kept out of the loop on these things in the past. I can raise the flag, put in a call to the director.”

To Bosch it sounded like the chief was going to go to bat for him.

“You know what reflux is, Detective?”

“Reflux?”

“It’s a condition where all the bile backs up into your throat. It burns, Detective.”

“Oh.”

“What I am telling you is that if I make these moves and I get that window open for you, I don’t want any reflux. You understand me?”

“I understand.”

The chief wiped his mouth again and put the napkin down on his torn bag. He then crumpled it all into a ball, careful not to spill any powdered sugar on his black suit.

“I’ll make the calls but it’s going to be tough. You don’t see the political angle here, do you, Bosch?”

Bosch looked at him.

“Sir?”

“The bigger picture, Detective. You see this as a homicide investigation. It is actually much more than that. You have to understand that it serves the federal government extremely well with this thing on the overlook being part of a terrorism plot. A bona fide domestic threat would go a long way toward deflecting public attention and easing the pressure in other areas. The war’s gone to shit, the election was a disaster. You’ve got the Middle East, the price of a gallon of gasoline and a lame-duck president’s approval ratings. The list goes on and on and there would be an opportunity here for redemption. A chance to make up for past mistakes. A chance to shift public attention and opinion.”

Bosch nodded.

“Are you saying that they might try to keep this thing going, maybe even exaggerate the threat?”

“I’m not saying anything, Detective. I am just trying to broaden your perspective. A case like this, you have to be aware of the political landscape. You can’t be running around like a bull in a china shop-which in the past has been your specialty.”

Bosch nodded.

“Not only that, you have local politics to consider,” the chief continued. “You have a man on the city council who lies in wait for me.”

The chief was talking about Irvin Irving, a longtime commander in the department whom the chief had forced out. He’d run for a city council seat and won. He was now the department’s and the chief’s harshest critic.

“ Irving?” Bosch said. “He’s just one vote on the council.”

“He knows a lot of secrets. It’s allowed him to start building a political base. He sent me a message after the election. It was just two words. ‘Expect me.’ Don’t turn this into something he can use, Detective.”

The chief stood up, ready to go.

“Think about it and be careful,” he said. “Remember, no reflux. No blowback.”

“Yes, sir.”

The chief turned and nodded to his driver. The man went to the door and held it open for his charge.