The Drop (26 page)

But that was okay. Bosch was ready for the challenge and had a few things up his sleeve that he was pretty sure McQuillen hadn’t seen.

Once they got into the PAB, they walked McQuillen through the vast RHD squad room and then placed him in one of the Open-Unsolved Unit’s two interview rooms.

“We just need to check on a few things and we’ll get right back to you,” Bosch said.

“I know how it works,” McQuillen said. “See you in about an hour, right?”

“No, not that long. We’ll be right back.”

The door automatically locked when he pulled it closed. Bosch went down the hall to the next door and stepped into the video room. He started the video and audio recorders and then went to the squad room. Chu was at his desk, opening the envelopes containing George Irving’s credit-card records. Bosch took his own seat.

“How long are you going to let him cook?” Chu asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe a half hour. I missed his cell phone during the pat-down. Maybe he’ll make a call and say the wrong thing and we’ll have it on video. Might get lucky.”

“It’s happened before. You think he’s walking out of here tonight?”

“I kind of doubt it. Even if he gives us nothing. Did you see his watch?”

“No, he’s got long sleeves.”

“I saw it. It fits. We book him and take the watch and it goes to forensics. We go for DNA and wound matching. DNA will take a while but maybe they can make the wound match by lunch tomorrow and then we go to the DA.”

“Sounds like a plan. I’m going to get a cup of coffee. You want something?”

Bosch turned and looked at his partner for a long moment. Chu’s back was to him. He was putting the credit-card reports into one stack and tapping the edges clean.

“Nah, I’m fine.”

“As long as you’re letting him cook awhile, I might sit down and look at all of this stuff. You never know.”

Chu got up, putting the credit-card data into a fresh green file.

“Yeah, you never know.”

Chu walked out and Bosch watched him go. He then got up and went to the lieutenant’s office, popping his head in and telling Duvall that they had placed McQuillen in interview room 1 and that he was there voluntarily.

He then went back to his desk and texted his daughter, making sure she had gotten home safely from school. She replied quickly, as her phone was an extension of her right hand and they had a rule that they never delayed responses to each other.

Home safe. Thought you were working last night.

Bosch wasn’t sure what she was getting at. He had taken pains that morning to erase any indication that Hannah Stone had been there. He sent back an innocent response and then she nailed him.

Two wineglasses in the Bosch.

They always called the dishwasher after its manufacturer’s name. Bosch realized he had left one detail uncovered. He thought for a moment and then typed out a text.

They were getting dusty on the shelf. I just washed them. But I am glad to know you are doing your chores.

He doubted it would get by her but he waited two minutes and there was no reply. He felt bad about not telling her the truth but it wasn’t the right time to open up a discussion with his daughter about his romantic life.

Deciding he had given Chu enough of a head start, he took the elevator down to the ground floor. He went out the front entrance of the PAB and over to Spring Street, where he crossed and entered the Los Angeles Times Building.

The
Times
had a full cafeteria on the bottom floor. The PAB had snack machines and that was it. In what was billed as a gesture of neighborliness when the new police headquarters was opened a couple years earlier, the
Times
had offered use of its cafeteria to all PAB officers and workers. Bosch had always thought it was a hollow gesture, primarily motivated by the financially beleaguered newspaper’s hope to make at least the cafeteria profitable while no other department in the once powerful institution was.

After badging his way past the security desk, he entered the cafeteria that had been put in the cavernous space where the old printing presses had turned for decades. It was a long room with a buffet line on one side and rows of tables on the other. He quickly scanned the room, hoping to see Chu before his partner saw him.

Chu was sitting on the far side of the room at a table with his back turned to Bosch. He was with a woman who looked like she was of Latin descent. She was writing in a notebook. Bosch walked up to their table, pulled out a chair and sat down. Both Chu and the woman looked like they were being joined at the table by Charles Manson.

“I changed my mind about the coffee,” Bosch said.

“Harry,” Chu blurted out. “I was just—”

“Telling Emily here about our case.”

Bosch looked directly at Gomez-Gonzmart.

“Isn’t that right, Emily?” he said. “Or can I call you GoGo?”

“Look, Harry, it’s not what you think,” Chu said.

“Really? It’s not? Because it looks to me like you’re laying out our case for the
Times
right here on their home court.”

He quickly reached out and grabbed the notebook off the table.

“Hey!” Gomez-Gonzmart cried. “That’s mine.”

Bosch read the notes on the exposed page. The notes were in some sort of shorthand but he saw repeated notations about
McQ
and the phrase
watch match = key
. It was enough to confirm his suspicions. He handed her the notebook.

“I’m going,” she said as she snatched the notebook out of his hands.

“Not quite yet,” Bosch said. “Because you two are going to sit here and work out a new arrangement.”

“You don’t tell me what to do!” she snapped.

She pushed back her chair so hard it fell over as she stood up.

“You’re right, I don’t,” Bosch said. “But I do have your boyfriend’s future and career in my hands here. So if any of that means anything to you, then you’ll sit down and hear me out.”

He waited and watched her. She pulled her purse strap over her shoulder, ready to walk off.

“Emily?” Chu said.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she said. “I have a story to write.”

She walked away, leaving Chu’s face drained of blood. He stared into the distance until Bosch snapped him out of it.

“Chu, what the fuck did you think you were doing?”

“I thought . . .”

“Whatever it was, you got burned. You fucked up and you better start thinking of a way to back her off. What exactly did you just tell her?”

“I . . . I told her we brought McQuillen in and that we were going to try to turn him in the room. I told her it wouldn’t matter if he confessed or not if the watch matched the wound.”

Bosch was so angry, he had to hold back from swinging at Chu and smacking the back of his head.

“When did you start talking to her?”

“The day we got the case. I knew her from before. She did a story a few years ago and we had a few dates. I always liked her.”

“So she calls up this week and starts leading you by the dick right into my case.”

Chu turned and looked at him for the first time.

“Yeah, you got it, Harry.
Your
case. Not our case.
Your
case.”

“But why, David? Why would you do this?”

“You did this. And don’t start calling me David. I’m surprised you even know my first name.”

“What?
I
did this? Are you—”

“Yeah, you. You cut me out, Harry. You wouldn’t tell me shit and you cut me out, made me chase down the other case while you ran this one. And this wasn’t the first time. More like every time. You don’t do that to a partner. If you had treated me right, I never would have done it!”

Bosch composed himself and calmed his voice. He sensed they had drawn the attention of people sitting at nearby tables. Newspaper people.

“We’re not partners anymore,” Bosch said. “We finish out these two cases and then you put in for a transfer. I don’t care where you go but you’re out of OU. If you don’t do it, I’ll make it known what you did, how you sold out your own partner and your case for a piece of tail. Then you’ll be a pariah and nobody and no unit outside of IAD will take you. You’ll be outside looking in.”

Bosch stood up and walked away. He heard Chu call his name weakly but he didn’t turn back around.

28

M
cQuillen 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.”